I had followed up on yet another post containing moralistic statements from the atheist of the hour, this time laying out 6 stages of the development of morality within a society. The final one is:
Stage 6 - Universal Principles - this is a theoretical stage in which there is an attempt to define the principles by which a just society operates. In this society, decisions are based on equal respect for all. For example, a majority would not get to vote on restricting the rights of a minority.And later:
So I, only too happy to take such things to their logical conclusion, said:
We don't need fictional characters from Bronze Age myths dictating to us what is right or wrong. We are fully capable of making sound moral decisions all on our own.
I have decided that all of you are worthy of death.The implication is obvious. A firestorm has followed. Apparently, the "we" had quite a few qualifications. Apparently, this "we" means "those who agree with us. The rest are stupid."
We are fully capable of making sound moral decisions all on our own. Right?
But I digress.
Further down, Tom Foss said:
My thinking, though, is that saying "you all deserve death" is like saying "you all deserve bones." Death isn't a punishment or reward that requires people to prove their worthiness, it's an inevitable fact of life.So one wonders why Tom would have a problem with my statement. It's perfectly consistent, as far as I can tell, with a naturalistic viewpoint. What else is an inevitable fact of life? Being born. Eating. Excreting waste. Drinking water. Moving one's limbs and appendages about. Learning.
He goes on to make a statement that, for that reason, is unjustified:
I see a major difference between "you deserve death" and "you deserve to be killed." The latter has some meaning; it implies that the target should encounter death before they otherwise would, which is indeed a punishment (at least, by my reckoning). If that's what Rhology meant, then that has some practical meaning. I'd like to know what his criteria are for determining who deserves to be killed, and how he arrived at that conclusion, and chances are I would disagree.If he were to be consistent, he'd neither disagree nor agree. There's no "should" in his worldview, no way to prescribe nor proscribe the 'right' behavior for anyone to follow.
Further, putting someone to death is simply enabling a natural process to take place. It's the same as giving someone a carrot to eat. Or a slab of steak. Or a live hamster (if one were so inclined). Or brain from a living person. It's all-natural. It's all the same.
Then, my favorite part:
morals are determined not by individuals, but by social consensus... In order for any society--even a mere grouping of two people--to exist, they must agree on some basic moral principles...All morals result from the interactions of social animals, and so the morals of a given society are determined by what that society can agree on.
1) There's no necessity that society exist. On naturalism, it so happens that humans evolved in such a way that living together in community aids in survival, most of the time. But of course, praying mantises have evolved in such a way that they hang out alone all the time, except when they get together for sex and dinner (in that order). So what?
2) I've heard this claim many times and always I have wondered whence this social consensus comes. When and where did "society" get together and establish this moral agreement? What % is a consensus, and what is the basis for pegging the % at that point?
3) What of those in society, such as anarchist protesters, murderers and other psychopaths, and M-16-toting, compound-dwelling Mountain Men, who have no and want no part in this societal moral consensus? Whence comes the "should" in "these guys should have no say in our moral deliberations"? It's arbitrary.
4) What of entire societies who have gone "astray"? The Yanomamo, the Auca, the 3rd Reich, Vichy France (who willingly exceeded the quotas for sending French Jews to Germany set by the Nazis)... when was their moral consensus created? And was it OK? Tom Foss would probably say no, but on what basis? He has to be inconsistent with his own stated views to avoid the awful (and embarrassing) conclusion.
So one wonders why Tom would have a problem with my statement.
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that the statement is nonsensical. What does it mean to be "worthy" of something that does not depend on one's worthiness? If I say, "you are all worthy of feet," I'm not making a moralist statement, I'm making a Dadaist one.
If he were to be consistent, he'd neither disagree nor agree.
Consistent with what? With my determination that "worthy of death" is a meaningless judgment? As I said in the quoted portion, "worthy of death" and "worthy of being killed" are different judgments--one makes sense, the other does not. There is no inconsistency here, only your incoherency.
There's no "should" in his worldview, no way to prescribe nor proscribe the 'right' behavior for anyone to follow.
That's a blatant strawman. The "should" is determined by society, and at its core, by the necessary elements required for society to exist. I discuss this later in the post.
Further, putting someone to death is simply enabling a natural process to take place. It's the same as giving someone a carrot to eat. Or a slab of steak. Or a live hamster (if one were so inclined). Or brain from a living person. It's all-natural. It's all the same.
I suspect there's quite a bit of equivocation going on here, but in any case, you're wrong. Killing someone is not merely allowing death to take place; killing someone necessarily implies that death would not have otherwise taken place at that moment. It is taking a process that would have come about eventually and making it happen immediately. You fail to recognize, in your meandering, that time exists and is significant.
1) There's no necessity that society exist.
There is if the species is to continue. Granted, there are those individuals for whom that's not a concern. For the rest of us, that society exists is a given.
On naturalism, it so happens that humans evolved in such a way that living together in community aids in survival, most of the time.
No, living together is necessary for prolonged survival, all of the time. Last I checked, humans couldn't asexually reproduce.
But of course, praying mantises have evolved in such a way that they hang out alone all the time, except when they get together for sex and dinner (in that order). So what?
So what indeed. What's your point?
2) I've heard this claim many times and always I have wondered whence this social consensus comes. When and where did "society" get together and establish this moral agreement?
It's not a one-off thing, nor is it a universal thing. Surprisingly enough, Rhology, morals evolve as society progresses. It's why, unlike your favorite holy book, the general consensus in the industrialized west is that women are not property, slavery is not right, and unruly children should not, in fact, be stoned to death.
What % is a consensus, and what is the basis for pegging the % at that point?
The consensus is not a matter of percentages, and I'm sure you're not stupid enough to think that it is. It's represented in the ongoing conversations about rights, the progression of laws, and the overall changing social attitude.
3) What of those in society, such as anarchist protesters, murderers and other psychopaths, and M-16-toting, compound-dwelling Mountain Men, who have no and want no part in this societal moral consensus?
They're generally free to band together and secede. In many cases, to some degree, they do just that, which is why there are such things as "compounds" and "enclaves" and "communes." People seclude themselves from the larger social group in order to form their own small societies, based on their own consensus of morality. Hence why those of us in the urban world do not share the Amish belief that buttons and technology are morally forbidden, and why those at the YFZ compound do not share our moral outrage over raping children.
Whence comes the "should" in "these guys should have no say in our moral deliberations"? It's arbitrary.
Not in the least. One, no one says they have no say in the moral deliberations. They have a say, so long as they're participants in the society, but their voices may be drowned out by the general consensus. Two, we come again to the closest thing society has to moral absolutes: the conditions necessary for society to exist. A society as complex as ours is naturally going to have a lot of such necessary qualities, but the most basic is "killing people is morally wrong" (because society cannot exist if we cannot reasonably trust one another not to kill us when we stop watching them). There are others, naturally, but I'd rather keep this post as brief as possible.
The point, anyway, is that we can judge these variant viewpoints by comparing them to our society's foundational moral principles. Those mountain men sure don't seem to fall in line with the qualities we recognize are necessary for our society to continue, but hey, let's give them a fair shake. We recognize that there's a lot of murderous mountain men out there, what might happen to society if we agreed with their point of view? Well, we can imagine that it might fall apart pretty quickly. But we needn't be so quick to dismiss it even now; what if we make an exception to the rules? Well, then we have to roll up our sleeves, get together as a society, and decide what the parameters of the exception will be.
And that's where it does get arbitrary, which is why we come to an explicit consensus and codify it in law. Much of law is arbitrary--arbitrary boundaries drawn in sand by democratic plurality or dictatorial edict. They vary from place to place, and that's not generally a problem. It's not morally significant whether the highest speed limit in the state is 65 or 70 mph; the difference is arbitrary.
That the tiny details are arbitrary does not mean that there are not practical absolutes. That reasonable people can reasonably disagree on moral principles is a demonstration of their malleability and flexibility. More disparate cultures may disagree on more basic points, but even the simplest social animals have codes against killing members of the society and other basic, foundational principles.
4) What of entire societies who have gone "astray"? The Yanomamo, the Auca, the 3rd Reich, Vichy France (who willingly exceeded the quotas for sending French Jews to Germany set by the Nazis)... when was their moral consensus created? And was it OK? Tom Foss would probably say no, but on what basis? He has to be inconsistent with his own stated views to avoid the awful (and embarrassing) conclusion.
Don't presume to speak for me, Rhology. You don't.
On a personal level, Rhology, I would say that these "astray" societies were obviously doing morally wrong things, since I, and the society of which I am a part, consider oppression, murder, pogroms, and so on to be morally reprehensible.
But what about those societies at the time? Certainly in 1945 we could have judged Nazi Germany to be in the wrong; their actions were--again--contrary to the moral values that we hold in the US. Moreover, they were contrary to the foundational values that are necessary for society: killing bad. Applying the same metric we used for the mountain men, we can imagine that a society where folks went around killing anyone they didn't like would fall apart pretty quickly. So maybe they wanted to get together and make an arbitrary guideline about when an exception would be warranted--and they did, making an arbitrary exception to the "no killing" rule that applied to anyone who wasn't Aryan. And we, and others, were able to judge that arbitrary decision to be morally incorrect, based on our own values and some pretty basic applications of reason and logic.
I'm curious, though, how much the actions of Nazi Germany actually fell in line with the moral consensus. Just because a government does something or codifies a law doesn't mean that those actions or codes are in line with the moral consensus of the people.
Said actions were, however, well in line with the moral views of many folks here in the US and abroad, based on judicious applications of anti-Semitism. And much of that anti-Semitism stems from some supposed book of morals which suggests that homosexuals ought to be put to death (which the Nazis did happily) and that Jews deserved to die based on their treatment of some magical God-man centuries before (which was a handy moral justification).
Wow, all that, and without invoking the principle of least suffering or the ethic of reciprocity, both of which are about as foundational to our society (and most others, for that matter), and would probably shortcut the whole "how do you judge the Nazis" question.
I'm sure most of this will fall on deaf ears, Rhology, but I post it anyway.
There's no necessity that society exist.
ReplyDeleteMan = social animal. How could society not exist?
When and where did "society" get together and establish this moral agreement?
This has already been answered in a previous thread, although (as usual) you ignored the answer. It's not a single decision, it's a process consisting of vast numbers of decisions made by huge numbers of people over large expanses of time. Why you find this difficult to understand, who knows.
What of those in society, such as anarchist protesters, murderers and other psychopaths, and M-16-toting, compound-dwelling Mountain Men, who have no and want no part in this societal moral consensus?
By definition they're not part of that consensus. They can either remove themselves from society or risk the consequences. Your point is obscure.
What of entire societies who have gone "astray"?
What about them? They're composed of individuals who make choices. Look more carefully at the individuals, particularly in the context of the Third Reich.