As I just wrote on another brief blog entry, the dialogue on “Hitchens’s Second Question” has been continuing at a rapid pace for over a month now. It has now divided into two separate questions, and I’m opening up two new threads to deal with them separately.

The entry preceding this post is on whether there is grounding for morality outside of theism. This one is on whether such grounding really matters. Discussion on this thread should be focused on that topic.

To catch up on this discussion from the Hitchens thread, I suggest you begin here, and read at least three or four comments following that one.

Additional Explanation Added Tuesday Morning, per Charlie’s Advice:

The discussion here is not about moral behavior. Several of us worked hard in the earlier thread to keep that clear. It is also not about whether non-theists can live moral lives. That thread began (see the link above) with a strong affirmation that they can; in fact, some readers would consider it surprisingly strong. The discussion is about the grounding for moral duties and values, which I have defined loosely as

An answer to the question, “I don’t believe D moral duty or value applies to me, and I want you to tell me why I should. You might have some instrumental or pragmatic reasons for me to practice D, or you may tell me D is ‘what we customarily do in our culture,’ but I don’t know why D should be considered good in itself, or why I should take it on as a value or duty of my own.”

A proper ground for morals would be something that, if true and if understood by the subject (the questioner, in this case) to be true, would provide sufficient reason for the subject to change his or her mind about the goodness of the behavior, value, or duty in question. It would explain how said behavior, value or duty actually is good in itself; not merely instrumental, pragmatic, or customary.

It would do so by reference to some condition of reality that can bear the weight placed upon it. For example, if it is suggested that D is good because it contributes to reproductive fitness, then reproductive fitness’s goodness would have to be good in itself (or based on something else that is good in itself).

I apologize for being repetitious (this material was in the last blog entry), but I expect some readers to come to this blog entry without having read any others.

The dialogue on “Hitchens’s Second Question” has been continuing at a rapid pace for over a month now. It has now divided into two separate questions, and I’m opening up two new threads to deal with them separately.

This thread is on whether there is grounding for morality outside of theism. The best place to catch up on this question, if you haven’t been part of the dialogue, is probably here, followed by here.

Discussion on this thread will be limited to that topic. Another thread will be provided for the other question that’s come up on that other discussion, which is whether such grounding really matters.

Additional Explanation Added Tuesday Morning, per Charlie’s Advice:

The discussion here is not about moral behavior. Several of us worked hard in the earlier thread to keep that clear. It is also not about whether non-theists can live moral lives. That thread began (see the link above) with a strong affirmation that they can; in fact, some readers would consider it surprisingly strong. The discussion is about the grounding for moral duties and values, which I have defined loosely as

An answer to the question, “I don’t believe D moral duty or value applies to me, and I want you to tell me why I should. You might have some instrumental or pragmatic reasons for me to practice D, or you may tell me D is ‘what we customarily do in our culture,’ but I don’t know why D should be considered good in itself, or why I should take it on as a value or duty of my own.”

A proper ground for morals would be something that, if true and if understood by the subject (the questioner, in this case) to be true, would provide sufficient reason for the subject to change his or her mind about the goodness of the behavior, value, or duty in question. It would explain how said behavior, value or duty actually is good in itself; not merely instrumental, pragmatic, or customary.

It would do so by reference to some condition of reality that can bear the weight placed upon it. For example, if it is suggested that D is good because it contributes to reproductive fitness, then reproductive fitness’s goodness would have to be good in itself (or based on something else that is good in itself).

It’s amazing to see this [Link: World On the Web » World New Media Archive » Ideas have nothing to do with reality] …

Teachers cannot - except serendipitously - fashion moral character or produce citizens of a certain temper.

… showing up on the web so soon after the article I discussed in my last post, “Ideas Have Consequences;” in which researchers were quite able (at least in the short term) to fashion moral character, with hardly any effort at all.

The quote here is from Professor Stanley Fish, who on this topic is all wet.

Ideas have consequences!

One such was recently shown through an experiment described in Scientific American.

[R]esearchers found that the amount a participant cheated correlated with the extent to which they rejected [the philosophical notion of] free will….

The correlation was positive: those who rejected free will tended to cheat more. The 22-page original research paper, written by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia, opens with a provocative quote from Sartre:

We are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse.

The paper goes on to note the increasing public attention being given to scientists who claim to have disproved the existence of free will. (See below for several relevant links.) These “scientific” conclusions are anything but scientific, however; and more often than, not the researchers who make these claims seem simply unaware of the philosophical discussion surrounding their topics. At any rate, Vohs and Schooler raise an important practical question:

What would happen if people came to believe that their behavior is the inexorable product of a causal chain set into motion without their own volition? Would people carry on, selves and behavior unperturbed, or might, as Sarte (above) suggests, the adoption of a deterministic worldview serves as an excuse for untoward behaviors[?]

We need not have comments pointing out that this does not affect whether free will exists or not. That was obviously not the point of this study (see the related links below for discussions on the reality of free will). The point is the idea’s consequences, not its proof or disproof.

A rich set of research preceding this study shows that those who believe they have the personal capability and responsibility to affect their lives’ outcomes generally have better outcomes than those who think it’s all based on inborn characteristics, fate, or other circumstances beyond their control. This study focused on moral behavior as an outcome measure. In the first of two experiments, a small one involving 30 subjects,

a strong negative relationship was found, r(30)=-.53, indicating that rejection of the idea that personal behavior is determined by one’s own will was associated with more instances of cheating.

(One of the variables here was stated opposite to the way Scientific American stated it: it was acceptance, rather than rejection, of free will. That’s why it’s reported here as a negative relationship, whereas Scientific American reported a positive relationship. Both mean the same thing in the end.)

A correlation in the .5 range is considered rather strong in psychological research, indicating an effect of significant size. If the results from these 30 subjects could be generalized to the rest of us—if the rest of us are like those 30—then belief in determinism could lead to serious negative effects on society. But this was only 30 subjects, a very small sample. The researchers ran a second experiment with 122 participants and stronger controls over possible confounding variables. The result:

In two experiments we found that weakening free will beliefs reliably increased cheating…. The present findings raise the genuine concern that widespread encouragement of a deterministic worldview may have the inadvertent consequence of encouraging cheating behavior.

Their final conclusion was:

If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative. Ultimately, negating the unfavorable consequences of deterministic sentiments will require a deeper understanding of why a dismissal of free will leads to amoral behavior. Does the belief that forces outside the self determine one’s behavior drain the motivation to resist the temptation to cheat, thereby inducing a “why bother?” mentality (cf. Baumeister & Vohs, in press)? Much as thoughts of death and meaninglessness can induce existential angst that can lead to ignoble behaviors (e.g. Arndt et al. 1997; Heine et al., 2006), doubting one’s free will may undermine the sense of self as agent. Or, perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes.

These are tendencies. They do not indicate that if you pair up a believer in free will with a believer in determinism, the believer in determinism will be a less honorable person than the other. It also doesn’t mean (please hear me well) that if you, the reader, believe in determinism, I’m calling you dishonest. I have no reason to believe that about you, and I’m not jumping to any conclusions.

Besides that, we haven’t landed this one yet anyway. Scientific American rightly points out that this study was limited to a very short time frame. Would the same participants cheat the same way a week or two later? We don’t know. Do people who believe in determinism generally cheat more, in the real world, than those who don’t? Well, once again we don’t know; but if they do, it’s at least not obvious that they do. The whole thing raises as many questions as it answers, as Scientific American concludes:

Many philosophers and scientists reject free will and, while there has been no systematic study of the matter, there’s currently little reason to think that the philosophers and scientists who reject free will are generally less morally upright than those who believe in it. But this raises yet another puzzling question about the belief in free will. People who explicitly deny free will often continue to hold themselves responsible for their actions and feel guilty for doing wrong. Have such people managed to accommodate the rest of their attitudes to their rejection of free will? Have they adjusted their notion of guilt and responsibility so that it really doesn’t depend on the existence of free will? Or is it that when they are in the thick of things, trying to decide what to do, trying to do the right thing, they just fall back into the belief that they do have free will after all?

We could spend a lot of time discussing those last three questions. Have at it!

Related:

• Same day posting, 1:30 pm: Ideas have nothing to do with reality?

Previous:

• Can Someone Tell Me What I’m Missing Here?
• Can we have free will in an evolutionary framework?
• Freedom Evolves, by Dennett: Final Chapters
• “If It Feels Good To Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural”
• Dawkins and Determinism
• At Last: Responsible Brain-Research Reporting
• New York Times Tries To Understand Free Will
• “Hopeless Hypotheses”
• Unconscious Decisions In the Brain

Update 9/6/08: I have turned off threaded comments, as explained here. This will unfortunately jumble up the sequence of the comments on this post, for which I offer my apologies.

Self-oriented, lightly founded moral philosophy is not so new after all. Going back some 350 years:

Doubtless there are natural laws; but good reason once corrupted has corrupted all…. The result of this confusion is that one affirms the essence of justice to be the authority of the legislator; another, the interest of the sovereign; another, present custom, and this is the most sure. Nothing, according to reason alone, is just in itself; all changes with time. Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted….

Veri juris. We have it no more; if we had it, we should take conformity to the customs of a country as the rule of justice. It is here that, not finding justice, we have found force, etc.

Justice, might.—It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical. Justice without might is gainsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might, and for this end make what is just strong, or what is strong just.

Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just. And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 294, 297, 298. (I hasten to add that Pascal was not writing in support of this position.)

(Note added 9/3/08: Comments are closed here, but the discussion remains open. See the final comment on this thread for explanation.)

The real question Christopher Hitchens was trying to get readers focused on here (as opposed to the one he said he was answering), was something like this:

“Why should we think people who believe in God behave better than those who do not?”

He goes on to tell about Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses whose behaviors are less than exemplary, and he insists (quite rightly) that atheists most certainly do good things. I have several brief responses from a Christian perspective.

1. Christians are by no means committed to believing that belief in God or gods taken generally is good, or that it leads to ethical actions. The Bible is full of people who believed in a God or gods, and yet sacrificed children to their gods, practiced temple prostitution, and committed other abominable acts. Christians believe there is but one God, revealed in Jesus Christ, that contradictory beliefs are in error, and that there is no reason to expect extraordinary good to come from believing in any other religions.

2. This may come as a surprise to some readers, but Christianity is not committed to the belief that Christians are more ethical than others. The explanation for this comes in three parts.*

a. Following Jesus Christ with one’s whole heart, in a supportive context and practicing the normal disciplines of the Christian life, will certainly lead to growth in one’s character, with outwardly visible effects. Christianity is quite committed to this belief. If followers of Christ came from a representative portion of any population, the difference in our lives ought to be apparent for all to see.

b. But Christianity is not committed to the belief that followers of Christ come from a random, representative sample of any population. We’re a bunch of sinners. That means me, and it means any other Christian reading this. It includes Billy Graham and the Pope, and it includes anybody who does not yet believe in Christ, but knows they are not perfect. We do not come to Jesus Christ, and we do not (or should not) present ourselves to the world, as any better than anyone else.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Consider what Jesus said about the Pharisee, who was a model of ideal behavior, and the tax collector, who represented greed, thievery, and betrayal of his people. It was the tax collector who “went home justified.” Jesus was considerably more comfortable with those who misbehaved than he was with the Pharisees, who were outwardly the party of the perfect. He came to call not the righteous, but sinners, to follow him.

c. Therefore even if Christians grow in character through following Christ, we may very well just be catching up with the rest of the world in our outward behavior.

3. Nevertheless, there is good sociological evidence that followers of Christ are, on average, are doing okay with respect to character and ethics, in comparison with social peers.

*Credit goes to Timothy Keller for bringing this to light.

Update 9/6/08: I have turned off threaded comments, as explained here. This will unfortunately jumble up the sequence of the comments on this post, for which I offer my apologies.

Christopher Hitchens says that since he published God is Not Great,

[t]he case that keeps coming up against me is this: If the heavens are empty (as I maintain in my little book God Is Not Great), then why should anyone behave ethically?

[Link: Search Magazine - Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens]

The question has seemed absurd to him, he says. Now, though, he has heard it so often he feels he has to respond. Watch what happens when he starts to answer:

Yet, I keep being asked, by good and anxious people, how we would teach morality in the absence of God. This question has two minor implications. It first shows a lack of confidence among believers, as if they half know that faith is weak, and suspect that morality might also be so. Second, it insults unbelievers, as if we infidels might at any moment give ourselves over to slaughter and rapine. Beyond this, it suggests a sort of arid pragmatism. So, faith has given people strength?

He took an interesting turn at right about that point, which invalidates his ensuing answer to the question he opened with. I’m not talking about his dismissiveness toward “good and anxious people.” That’s just his typical smugness. The problem is not (just) in his attitude but in his reasoning.

Rather than telling you what I’m seeing, I’m going to let you puzzle it out. Here’s a hint: you might not even need to read the article to see it—it shows up in just these quotes. I would still encourage you to read the article anyway. It’s not long, and none of us would want to misrepresent Mr. Hitchens by taking quotes out of context.

DVD Review

Demographic Winter

“Never in history have we had economic prosperity accompanied by depopulation”

“There won’t be enough people to run the trains and pay the taxes.”

“Now we have forty years of evidence that the deterioration of marriage, the encouragement of sexuality outside of marriage is just not good for society, nor the children, nor men.”

“On every measure ever measured by the social sciences, the intact married family is the strongest on outcome on every measure measured.”

I have just viewed the Demographic Winter DVD. The quotes above, all from highly qualified academic observers including a Nobel laureate, all of which you can hear for yourself by watching the trailer on the website, are soberingly supported by the whole presentation. It would appear that world depopulation trends are taking us toward difficult times.

“There’s not much quibble, there’s not much controversy, among people in the know.”

World population growth is leveling off. We are not birthing enough children to replace ourselves as we age and die. The health revolution hides this trend for now: increased lifespans mean that total population is not falling yet. It is aging instead. The social and economic results appear dangerous if not catastrophic.

“More imminent than global warming, and at least as severe.”

The NY Times Magazine, in an article published Sunday, concurs that there is a significant problem growing here.

Why is this happening? The researchers and producers involved in this film identify five primary factors:

• Inaccurate assumptions, especially in regard to the “population bomb” (Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book)
• Prosperity
• Women working
• The sexual revolution
• The divorce revolution

It almost looks like a list drawn from a Christian family foundation’s talking points (though prosperity in itself is hardly ever considered an evil, it is the self-focus that can often accompany it that contributes to this problem). Phil Longman, one of the researchers most featured in the film (who said “there’s not much quibble…”), emphasizes that he is not speaking from a faith perspective but a research perspective. Others insist that the researchers most in touch with the actual data on social and family trends are in near-total agreement that the family matters.

Could it be that James Dobson and Dennis Rainey have been right all along?

Order the DVD and decide for yourself.

There are two groups of people in the world: those who divide the world into two groups of people, and those who do not.

No, really, there are two groups of people in the world with respect to moral opinions: moral realists and moral relativists. Broadly speaking, moral realists believe that there are at least some moral values that are objective. Objective means (as William Lane Craig says) that these values would hold as valid or true even if nobody on earth agreed with them. Moral relativists, in contrast, generally hold that all moral values are generated or constructed out of persons’ or cultures’ beliefs. They may believe there is a certain kind of reality to moral values, that values are not arbitrary; but this reality is the product of individual or social beliefs, not some ultimate source beyond human culture.

The following is a True/False Quiz that anyone can take. Do you consider the following statements to be true or false?

1. (T/F) All moral values are entirely constructed or produced out of persons’ or cultures’ beliefs.

If you answered False, that’s it for you on this quiz. If you answered True, please continue:

2. (T/F) Let us assume that everybody in some cultural grouping G believes that some behavior B expresses a good and valid moral value. (It doesn’t really matter what B is.) For that culture, at that time and in those conditions, B is good.

3. (T/F) Another cultural group H may disagree with G on this, but nevertheless for GB is still good; for cultures may validly hold different opinions on moral values. H’s disagreement with G does not make B bad or wrong in itself, it only makes it bad or wrong for H.

4. (T/F) Suppose there is no group H that disagrees that B is good. Then everyone would be in group G, and would agree that B is good. For that time and in those conditions at least, B is therefore good for everybody. It is a universal good in the sense that it is universally shared by all persons then living, though not in the sense that its value comes from somewhere beyond the persons who have made it a value.

5. (T/F) In most cultures of the world, the Holocaust of WW II is regarded as having been a severe moral evil.

6. (T/F) If, however, Hitler had won the war, and if he (and his followers) had been able to exterminate or brainwash everyone who thought the Holocaust was evil, then the situation would be like that of (4), where every person in the world agreed that the Holocaust was morally good. (This example also follows one given by W.L. Craig.)

7. (T/F) In that case, the Holocaust would be correctly regarded by the remaining population as having been morally good.

Self-check: compare your answers to (4) and (7).

We’re not done yet, though…

8. (T/F) Some remaining persons (call them Group H again) may think it was morally evil to massacre and/or brainwash the dissenters. Those persons themselves (the members of Group H) could conceivably be brainwashed and/or killed by the others (Group G), so that every remaining person would then be a member of group G and would believe the following:

(a) To exterminate the Jews was a morally good goal.
(b) To kill and/or brainwash those who disagreed with (a) was morally good.
(c) To kill and/or brainwash those who dissented from (b) was also morally good.

9. (T/F) With no Group H, and with every person alive believing that 8(a), 8(b), and 8(c) were morally good, then those moral beliefs would indeed be universally good, taking “universal” as described in (4).

10 (T/F) In other words, relativism could coherently lead to a possible world, as philosophers term it, in which the Holocaust was morally good, and where brainwashing or killing off all possible dissent was also morally good–universally so, in fact. This moral good, as suggested in (9), would rest on a much stronger social foundation than, say, the current common Western belief that slavery is wrong. It would in fact be more clearly good than current beliefs that slavery is wrong.

Self-check: compare your answers to (9) and (10) with your answer to (4).

And that suggests the following final item in our short quiz:

11. (T/F) It would violate a solidly established universal moral norm, and would rightly be regarded as reprehensible, to suggest that is wrong to kill dissenters just for believing that persons ought to have the freedom of their beliefs.

From this you see one reason I am not a moral relativist.

It’s below the surface, so I might just be imagining it (I’ve done that before); but is there a note of frustration in this Eurekalert article?

Scientific information largely ignored when forming opinions about stem cell research

For one thing, the headline is completely misleading. Where in this, for example, does it say that people are ignoring what they know about science?

“Highly religious audiences are different from less religious audiences. They are looking for different things, bringing different things to the table,” explains Scheufele. “It is not about providing religious audiences with more scientific information. In fact, many of them are already highly informed about stem cell research, so more information makes little difference in terms of influencing public support.”

“Highly religious audiences” bring more to their decision process than scientific information, probably because we know there’s more to the question than science. We do it just the same if we’re highly educated about the science or if we know little about it.

I think some scientists think that if everyone knew what they knew, they would believe what they believe. “More information makes little difference” - - that’s where I sense some frustration. But more information won’t change the fact that this is about embryonic stem cell research. No matter how much might be learned about human disease and health, these are still very young, defenseless, humans being experimented on. They’re not signing informed consent agreements. And we don’t sacrifice our babies to help ourselves.