Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Making Predictions

I'm a huge fan of making testable predictions.  There are several reasons why it's important that beliefs we have (particularly beliefs that are important enough for us to act on) make predictions.

First, if a prediction comes true, it means that in this specific case, the world behaves as if our model is correct.  That's not the same as saying that our model actually is correct, but as we accumulate more and more instances of reality behaving as if our model is true, we become more and more confident that our model is at least a good approximation of reality.

Second, beliefs that make predictions are allowing themselves to be falsified.  This is either a sign of great confidence, or a desire to find truth, even at the expense of preference.  I don't trust anything that doesn't allow itself to be falsified.  If there is no set of evidence that could contradict a given position, then that position cannot be rationally held (I speak here of "evidence" in the broadest sense.  For the purposes of metaphysics, personal experience can count as evidence too)

Third, any model fuzzy enough to explain any conceivable evidence isn't actually making any claims about reality.  And any model that doesn't make claims about reality just isn't very useful.  The geo-centric model is a good example here.  As planetary orbits were observed, the data flat out didn't fit with a geo-centric model.  So, people made up increasingly complex orbits, where planets were looping around themselves, to explain the observed data.  The theory was no longer predicting results and then observing outcome, rather it was changing its underlying assumptions based on the data it observed.  Not terribly useful for anyone who wanted the model to generate any information that wasn't already known about reality.

Ex post facto predictions are sort of a can of worms- since we all know what reality is actually like, we all have a tendency to try to explain how and why our belief system would have predicted reality to be this way.  Often times we feel that if we admit that our model would make predictions that we don't see in reality, that's tantamount to admitting that our model isn't true (I don't think this is the case at all, since its possible, even likely, that we just don't understand all the ramifications of our model.)  Hindsight predictions suffer from a lot of rationalization, so they don't make great scientific tools.  However, I still think it's an interesting excercise to talk about what we think a given model of reality would predict, a priori to actually experiencing that reality.

That are really three questions worth answering in the context of this blog:
1. What would we expect a hypothetical world without God to look like? 
2. What would we expect a hypothetical world with God to look like?
3. What does the world actually look like?

1. What would we expect a hypothetical world without God to look like?

If God is not real, I would not expect life to exist.  Much, much more likely to me would be a universe of inanimate matter (or no universe at all).  However, given that life does exist (particularly the complex life we observe to exist), we would expect there to be a reasonable way life could have arisen, propogated, and grown in complexity.  We find exactly that in evolution- and we find good evidence that it has actually happened.  I would expect that the universe, and the earth, would have existed for billions of years to allow time for evolution to progress far enough to give us the current level of complexity.  We find exactly that as well.  I would also expect life to have arisen on other planets in the universe.  Surely it is too much to think that there is exactly one habitable planet in the universe, or that of all the habitable planets, one and only one actually generated life.  Unfortunately, we are a long way away from exploring the billions of planets in the universe (and unless we flip physics on its head and discover a way to travel faster than light, we will never get there).  However, if we do someday find life on other planets, this seems like a death knell for religion (although some claim that Islam predicts extraterrestrial life forms)

If God is not real, I would not expect conciousness to exist.  Even if we admit that life could arise without divine intervention, it's a staggeringly long way to go from a biological machine to a self aware moral agent.  The very fact that we question why we're here, that we even have the faculties to look for purpose, is something I would never have predicted from a Atheistic universe.

If God is not real, I would not expect morality to matter in the slightest.  We may speak of evolutionary psychology and us being social animals- and these do a decent job of explaining things after the fact- but there's absolutely no way I would have predicted that.

If God is not real, I would not expect guilt to exist.  As social animals, it makes sense that we would need something to curtail our selfish desires in favor of what benefits society.  But guilt seems to be a horrible mechanism to accomplish this.  It's an after-the-fact disappointment in our own behavior, but it's not very good at stopping us from doing the bad behavior in the first place (at least it's not for me.  Perhaps others have had a different experience).

If God is not real, I would expect cheaters, liars, and selfish people to succeed disproportionally to the rest of society.  To have a functioning (read: evolutionarily stable) society, you need to have some critical mass of people willing to play by the rules.  If you don't, then the social fabric will break down, and the resulting free-for-all is detrimental to the survival of all individuals within that group.  But, presuming you have enough of those people, there's a clear survival advantage for those willing to break the rules if the payout is good enough.  This seems to be what we observe in reality- there are lots of corrupt rich people (But perhaps we just hear about the corrupt ones?  Perhaps rich people actually are more honest, as a percentage, than non-rich people?).

If God is not real, I would expect worldly success to yield greater happiness.  Evolutionarily speaking, people should be hardwired to not be happy in low social standing, and to be happy (though vigilant) in high social standing.  This does not seem to be the case- the affluent seem to manufacture artificial problems for themselves, while the destitute often maintain a happy lifestyle.  The things we want are not the things that make us happy.  This market inefficiency should not exist in a world of evolution.

2. What would we expect a hypothetical world with God to look like?

There are actually two cases here- one is that God is real and wants us to know the specifics about him.  The other is that God is real and doesn't really care if we know anything about him.  Since pretty much all religions deal with the first case, that's the position I'll be assuming.

If God is real, I would expect it to be obvious.  It isn't.  Not only is his very existence not obvious, but even if we were prepared to take God's existence as a brute fact, it's not clear which if any of the hundreds of versions of God humanity has come up with is correct.  The fact that there is no dominant religion, some 1500 years after most of the major religions have been formulated, is totally unexpected.

If God is real, I would expect people to share a common base of morality.  C.S. Lewis makes a big deal out of the argument from natural law, but the more I've thought about it and the more I've read about it, it seems that we humans have wildly divergent beliefs about what is right and what it wrong.  Individual freedom, the value of human life, gender equality, anti-slavery sentiment, gay rights- all of these are relatively modern ideals.  We don't share a common morality with our forefathers, we don't share a common morality with our neighbors in the Middle East, and we don't even share a common morality with the various other religious groups in our own modern industrialized countries.  If there is an objective moral standard, our view of it seems totally inadequate to be making any even remotely difficult moral judgements.

If God is real, I would expect love to exist.  Particularly if God is real and deemed humanity worth creating, love- the interaction of two totally foreign beings somehow yielding an intimate relationship- seems like the engine that drives it all.  This is exactly what I find in reality (Perhaps it's too strong to say that a God-based reality would predict love, since love is a little bit absurd.  Let's say instead that it fits the framework amazingly well, admittedly after the fact)

If God is real, I would expect living things to have a consciousness.  You can't love if you aren't aware.

If God is real, I would expect only beings with a moral consciousness to exist.  I would not expect ants, mice, bats, birds, lions, or even apes to exist.  Why create a complicated biological machine that does not fulfill the purpose of love?  But we do find such machines, and we don't hold them accountable as moral agents

If God is real, I would not expect evolution.  Why go to all the trouble of creating just the first life, and letting it morph and mutate over the next 3 billion years- especially if you're capable of snapping your fingers and making it happen?  But we find excellent evidence for evolution.

If God is real, I would expect him to be living and active.  This is not living and active in the way some Christians mean- God working all things behind the scenes for the good of those who love him- but rather obvious, apparent, and actively intervening in every day life.  I would expect God to engage humanity in a relationship, and a relationship is necessarily bi-directional.  Having a bunch of puny humans sing some songs isn't a relationship.  If God wanted to be friends, if he wanted to be a ruler, if he wanted to be a confidant, he could be any of these things- but my experience in reality is that he acts as none of them.  Or rather, any one human conception of God works just as well for these purposes as any other human conception, and it's impossible to distinguish, in practice, the role of Allah in the Muslims life from the role of Yahweh in the Christians life.  They believe different things about their Gods, but they believe it on essentially the same kinds of evidence.  If one were real and the other false, I would expect one to be a demonstrably better relationship- and therefore one religion absolutely wiping the floor with the other.  And that's not what we see in reality.

If God is real, I would expect holding to moral principles to matter.  I would expect kind, generous people to be successful, and crude, selfish people to fail.  This does not always (or even often) seem to be the case.

3. What does the world actually look like?

I am surprised, in writing this post, that this is the question I'm getting stuck on.  I honestly see two different worlds, depending on which lens I look through.  I see one world where morality and justice prevail; a sort of karmic rightness, at least on a large scale.  I see another where people who lie and cheat and steal get ahead.  I see a world where love matters, where people overcome the baseness of their humanity to do amazing (and often self-sacrificing) things.  I see another where idealistic dependance on love strangles a right view of reality; we are born alone and we die alone, and everything else will eventually be stripped away.

I don't think I've made any real progress here- I still see the existence and complexity of humanity, purpose, love, etc. as the primary problem for Atheism, and I still see the existence of other religions with equally staunch adherents as the primary problem for any organized religion.  But I am curious if anyone disagrees with me about what predictions these world views would actually make a priori.

41 comments:

  1. Hey Jake,

    What kind of stipulations are you using to make predictions about a world without a God?

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    1. I guess I'm stipulating a purely materialistic universe (I say "a world without God", but I really mean "a world without a supernatural component"... but that would ruin the symmetry :))

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  2. I disagree with your predictions for the world without God. Part of this could be solved by more careful study of iterated prisoner dilemmas and such. I think you are confusing what creatures you would personally design to win at the game of evolution for what would actually evolve. Love may not be your first guess as to what would evolve, but then I doubt you would expect the tail of a peacock to be an evolutionarily stable strategy, either. Nonetheless, rigorous analysis does in fact imply that things like the peacock's tail can evolve via the handicap principle.

    That said, consciousness seems like a more interesting example of the problem I see with your reasoning. I don't think you have been specific enough about what consciousness is supposed to be in the first place to claim it is precluded by naturalism. After all, it was only by way of material sensation that you concluded that your fellow humans were conscious. Indeed, you must have learned that other people were "conscious" before you learned to apply that word to yourself -- since you did not invent that particular word.

    So how could one conclude that consciousness is precluded by materialism/physicalism/naturalism? It is not sufficient to say that a physical model of the universe does not mention a fundamental component called "consciousness" -- Euclid's axioms never mention pentagons, but that doesn't mean they are precluded by Euclidean Geometry. Instead, you need to define consciousness within the language of physics and show how it violates physical law. I don't see where such a problem would arise, unless you defined consciousness along the lines of "whatever it is, it's not physical," or "whatever it is, it comes from God." But then, neither of these is particularly enlightening regarding the nature of consciousness, or how you identify it in yourself and others. This situation is notably unlike such miracles as walking on water or multiplying loaves and fishes, which are entirely intelligible within the language of physics, but forbidden by such principles as the law of buoyancy and the conservation of mass.

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  3. I don't think the iterative prisoner's dilemma solves the problem I'm trying to get at, because my problem isn't the fact that we make cooperative choices, but rather why we make cooperative choices. We make these choices because we actually feel that they're right and wrong, not because of some rational self-interest (I have a huge problems with rational self-interest based morality, but I realize not everyone does). The fact that some system of meta-ethics would arise at all- when it's totally unnecessary, since rational self-interest could account for such behavior on its own- it totally mind boggling to me.

    I agree in principle that evolution is way more inventive than I am, but the peacock's tail argument fails for me because I don't think it's outside the scope of the model. You're right, I probably wouldn't predict the peacock's tail, but I think that's out of my own limited view of the model I'm using for evolution, not because it actually isn't something my model would predict. An application of game theory to evolution should tell us to expect false signalers, and therefore some method authentication to be developed. The peacock's tail is a particularly novel method, but viewed in the context of handicapping, not really all that surprising

    It's a fair criticism that I haven't been specific enough about consciousness. I tend to use the phrase "self aware moral agent" a lot, but even that seems like hand waiving. This is actually one of the major difficulties I have in attributing consciousness to a materialistic universe- I actually can't give a definition of consciousness in the language of physics. If I could, I should be able to simulate consciousness, and I frankly don't even know what it would mean to simulate consciousness. I agree that "what =ever it is, it's not physical" isn't a very useful definition- but neither is "whatever the current state of electrical and chemical signals inside the lump of organic matter in my head is."

    That said, I think free will does violate physical law (I'm guessing you know the arguments, but if not, read anything by Sam Harris). I think we need to either reject free will or reject materialism (I suspect you'll jettison my definition of free will, and I can't fault you. But the fact remains, that doesn't match with my subjective experience of believing I have free will)

    Also, for the record, I'm not sure I've reached the conclusion that consciousness is precluded by materialism (I honestly need to do a lot more reading into cognitive science first), but it certainly strikes me as wildly unlikely, and not at all a prediction materialism would make.

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  4. "'whatever it is, it's not physical' isn't a very useful definition - but neither is 'whatever the current state of electrical and chemical signals inside the lump of organic matter in my head is.'"

    This is another point of disagreement. I think the latter is a very useful definition, even if it's not immediately enlightening, because it tells you where to look in order to investigate further. The former, on the other hand, only tells you where not to look.

    As for free will, yeah, I'm a compatibilist, but free will isn't the same concept as consciousness in any event. And I don't think libertarian free will so much violates physical law -- after all, whether quantum mechanics is deterministic or not is open to interpretation -- but rather, libertarian free will isn't a coherent concept in the first place -- neither randomness nor regularity nor a mixture of the two seems to satisfy the libertarian. This is again one of those concepts which is defined by what it is not rather than by what it is.

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  5. "This is another point of disagreement. I think the latter is a very useful definition, even if it's not immediately enlightening, because it tells you where to look in order to investigate further"

    Interesting point, I've honestly never thought of it that way. However, I would point out two things- first, your definition seems to preclude a spiritual/supernatural explanation of any sort. If you're prepared to do that, then fair enough, but I don't think I'm prepared to do that. There's enough anecdotal and personal experience evidence for me to at least consider the possibility of the supernatural. But second, it seems like we could just take the converse of each, and you'd be left in a simillar situation:

    "whatever the current state of electrical and chemical signals inside the lump of organic matter in my head" == "whatever it is, it's not spiritual"

    "whatever it is, it's not physical" == "whatever the current state of spiritual reality is that causes me to act and percieve reality in the way I do"

    (though I doubt even staunch spiritualists would deny that the physical plays some role)

    But I absolutely agree that we need to keep looking for a physical explanation, regardless of what we decide is the most likely explanation given the current data. If we stopped looking for evidence any time we had a semi-plausible explination for something, we would have halted scientific progress a long time ago.

    "As for free will, yeah, I'm a compatibilist, but free will isn't the same concept as consciousness in any event"

    Those are awfully closely tied in my book. If we say free will isn't necessary for conciousness, then what is? Is any computer program that knows about itself concious? It seems to me that choice is one of the central tennants of conciousness, and choice is an illusion without free will (and yes, I recognize the irony of me failing to give a good definition for conciousness, and then turning around and saying I don't like your definition of conciousness)

    "but rather, libertarian free will isn't a coherent concept in the first place -- neither randomness nor regularity nor a mixture of the two seems to satisfy the libertarian."

    Agreed. Even if subatomic events have some truly random element to them, we still haven't found a way around the fact that choice is an illusion. I can't justify libertarian free will it in a purely physical reality. I would need to invoke the "above our understanding" card of religion. And as much as I hate that tactic, in this case I honestly find it somewhat compelling. The apparent existence of conciounsess/free will/choice in what appears to be a deterministic (or random) universe is either an incredibly impressive (and in my view, unexpected) fiction, or a miracle (or, perhaps, simply not understood as of yet)

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  6. "your definition seems to preclude a spiritual/supernatural explanation of any sort."

    I don't think either can be a viable explanation. As far as I can tell, calling something spiritual is to analogize it to the human mind (or the soul, if you want to imply that the spiritual is supernatural as well.) So a spiritual explanation would be trivially circular. Supernatural is another one of those terms that is defined by what it is not rather than by what it is -- not just outside of the physics we currently know, but outside of any conceivable physics. I don't think it's an explanation if it is expressed in terms of the definitionally inconceivable. So it seems that if I'm precluding anything, it's that no explanation is possible. This is always a possibility, but not exactly one you can base a research program on, or use to make predictions for that matter.

    "Those are awfully closely tied in my book."

    Really? I find it quite easy to imagine consciousness without free will. I see an endless stream of images through my eyes but I am paralyzed and never tempted to try to move, nor do I verbalize any opinions regarding whether the images are good or bad.

    Finally. A question for you -- which I touched on above: Do you deny that you learned the words "consciousness", and "free will" and concluded that it applied to other people through purely physical means (i.e. the five senses)? If physical information is enough to identify these things, why is an explanation of those same physical aspects insufficient? (I don't think there's a serious objection to providing a physical explanation for the physical cues (i.e verbal utterances and other body movements) we use to identify consciousness/ free will in others.)

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    1. "Supernatural is another one of those terms that is defined by what it is not rather than by what it is -- not just outside of the physics we currently know, but outside of any conceivable physics"

      So do you categorically reject the idea that there might be realities (or alternatively, whole categories of knowledge) that we simply don't have the faculties to measure in any meaningful way (if that's a serviceable definition of "supernatural")? Or do you just think that since any such realities would be immeasurable, they're not really worth thinking about (and more to the point, a violation of Occam's Razor)? Or do you simply object to them being called "supernatural", because even such realities would actually still be "natural", just less-knowable then our current definition of natural? (it sounds like you're going with the second, but I want to make sure I understand you correctly)

      "I find it quite easy to imagine consciousness without free will"

      I think we're seeing your definition of consciousness disagreeing with my (lack of a) definition of consciousness. If you are completely devoid of choice, in both thought and action, then you're not conscious- you're an algorithm. I'm not sure what, beyond the ability to choose, differentiates a human from, say, a computer program. Do you disagree that we are categorically different than really advanced computer programs (running on biological hardware)?

      "Do you deny that you learned the words "consciousness", and "free will" and concluded that it applied to other people through purely physical means (i.e. the five senses)?"

      Certainly I learned the words through purely physical means, but I think the concepts are a priori. I'm a huge fan of Descartes' "I think therefore I am"- the way I'm convinced that I am a self aware moral agent is the very fact that I question whether or not I am a self aware moral agent. And I think introspective "who/what am I, what's my purpose, etc." type questions are viable even in the absence of physical input (though it is admittedly difficult for me to imagine a reality where we literally had no input whatsoever)

      But that doesn't quite answer your question- you asked about whether physical input is enough to decide these things apply to other people. I think I would not be able to arrive at this conclusion without the subjective experience of free will or consciousness myself. The only reason I even understand what that means well enough to be able to apply it to someone else is because I have it (or think I have it) myself. Once I acknowledge that such a thing is possible, then I go about looking for physical clues about who or what else shares this nature with me- but not before.

      This raises an interesting turing test related question. If we ever have a program that passes the turing test (humans are consistently unable to distinguish this chat bot from actual human beings on the other end), would you consider this program to be "conscious"? If physical cues are all that determine consciousness, and a program is spoofing physical cues well enough to fool us, why should it not be considered conscious? For that matter, why would we not be obligated to value it at the same level as a human?

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    2. "Or do you simply object to them being called 'supernatural', because even such realities would actually still be 'natural', just less-knowable then our current definition of natural? (it sounds like you're going with the second, but I want to make sure I understand you correctly)"

      Yeah. The second.

      "If physical cues are all that determine consciousness, and a program is spoofing physical cues well enough to fool us, why should it not be considered conscious? For that matter, why would we not be obligated to value it at the same level as a human?"

      Well, anything that can truly duplicate all the physical cues of a human would do it's damnedest to make sure that we did value it as one. Not sure why anyone would want to write a program willing to fight for its own rights -- sounds kind of dangerous -- but treating such a thing with the respect we think we ourselves deserve seems the safest option. Of course, even if you decide it isn't human because it's made of silicon and not flesh, you're still responding to physical cues. How would you feel about torturing an atom for atom copy of yourself made by some unknown technological means?

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    3. Er. On the supernatural: I didn't notice the three options. I guess I mean the third then, although there's a lot to be said for the second. Truth be told, I find supernaturalism is more a literary device than a theory of the world, anyway -- it's sort of a way of saying, don't try to understand this, because it will ruin the story if you do. It's kind of breaking the fourth wall, without breaking the fourth wall, by saying there's no logic to why this happened other than the author thought it would be cool.

      (Not so coincidentally, Christians often use the metaphor of the author writing himself into the story to explain Christ -- but then the metaphor breaks down when you realize that we expect naturalistic explanations for human authors, by way of atoms, neurons, parentage, and evolution, and in any event we don't assign any great moral weight to whether the author of a book kills off characters or allows them to live. The very incomplete world-building of the literary form that allows supernaturalism also robs the characters of their moral weight as they are revealed to be nothing more than figments of the author's imagination with no independent existence of their own. There are thoughts behind the actions of fictional characters, but those thoughts exist only in the mind of the author, who is never in any real danger. -- Well, unless he's Salman Rushdie, but that's a different issue.)

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    4. "Not sure why anyone would want to write a program willing to fight for its own rights"

      You clearly aren't hanging out with the right kind of geeks :)

      "How would you feel about torturing an atom for atom copy of yourself made by some unknown technological means?"

      Not so good, but I wouldn't feel so good about torturing anything under any circumstances, even animals I consider much "lower" than humans (insects, for instance). Causing unnecessary pain seems like a gateway to a lot worse moral behavior, or at least a desensitizing of my moral senses to the point that I will probably start treating humans worse (I seem to be veering dangerously close to Leah's virtue ethics here)

      All that said, I think if replacing me with an atom-for-atom copy creates a creature that is identical to me, then we've disproved dualism. At which point I feel like I lose my rational (thought definitely not my desire) to treat people as anything more than any other randomly assembled bag of atoms (I realize you don't agree, but I so far find this conclusion inescapable)

      On another note, I read an article a long time ago on a psychological experiment done with children and the "furby" toy that was all the rage 15 years back (I can't seem to find it again at the moment). Basically, holding the furby upside down causes it to make distressed noises and complain. The kids are perfectly aware that it has no intelligence, but they still demonstrated an incredible amount of empathy. So even though the furby was convincing enough to at least fool the kids intuitions, I don't think anyone would argue that the fury was actually feeling pain. Rather, this seems like evidence that the reason it would be wrong to torture less-aware creatures is at least partly because of the effect it has on us.

      "The very incomplete world-building of the literary form that allows supernaturalism also robs the characters of their moral weight as they are revealed to be nothing more than figments of the author's imagination with no independent existence of their own"

      That's always been my problem with the analogy. But I find the same problem in materialism- it robs the characters of their moral weight, because there "choices" aren't moral choices at all, but rather the result of some crazily complicated (but ultimately uncontrollable) rube goldberg machine

      Thanks for the discussion on this Ray. I think it's clear I need to put a little more work into what I mean by "conciousness", and really decide if I'm a dualist or not (so far I've been satisfied with "I don't know", but I can't play that card forever...)

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  7. I'd planned to write up my questions I had on this topic tonight but I got sidetracked by Leah's conversion announcement. I can't say that I say that coming or at least not this soon. Are you surprised? I have to keep it short as I've started going crosseyed reading a million comboxes tonight.

    My main problem with trying to imagine what I would expect from a world with God is that it would presuppose an understanding of the mind of God. I believe what I know of God is only what has been given to me through evidence in nature or through His revelation. So I cannot say that I don't see why God would use evolution. If God is outside of time then it all happens in an instant to Him. I cannot say why God does not make himself more evident, perhaps it would make our choices be more irrevocable like the angels'. And as far as what a world without God would look like, I have a hard time getting past "I would not expect life to exist". I guess I could say I would expect more chaos and entropy gone wild without God. Could you help me understand how you view the materialist view of life as more internally consistent. I understand that no one particular religion seems internally consistent for you but if life, love, morality, and free will all make more sense with God, then I have a hard time understanding how a materialist view of life is more internally consistent. What are the parts that add up to a whole that seem to work better together?

    If this post seems incoherent, I admit I'm not running on a full tank tonight!

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    1. "My main problem with trying to imagine what I would expect from a world with God is that it would presuppose an understanding of the mind of God"

      ...but you have to do this anyway. How else could you have arrived at your conclusion of what God is actually like? Presumably you've weighed the competing world views (some probably better than others) and decided that Catholicism makes more sense, for one reason or another. But you're still ultimately parsing what you think would make the most sense out of a God, and which version of God you're presented with best fits with reality

      "perhaps it would make our choices be more irrevocable like the angels'"

      If this is true, how do we explain Lucifer? He clearly made a choice counter to God's will/desire/commands (unless you're actually saying God wanted Satan to fall?)

      "Could you help me understand how you view the materialist view of life as more internally consistent... I have a hard time understanding how a materialist view of life is more internally consistent. What are the parts that add up to a whole that seem to work better together? "

      I'll do my best, briefly. The explanation that seems to fit with all the facts is that the universe began to exist some 13 Billion years ago (we're not really sure how). But once that initial event (the big bang) happens, literally everything else that's happened since is totally explicable (with two notable exceptions). Star formation, planet formation, the progression of life from single celled organisms to the complex intelligence we find today, the development of morality as a beneficial psychological construct in social animals, etc.

      The two exceptions (in my view) are the origin of life and the origin of humanity. Science hasn't yet figured out how to bootstrap life from non-life, but there's not really a compelling reason to think we won't. We haven't been trying very long, and we've made some pretty big strides in that direction in the limited time we have been trying. Since we haven't figured it out yet, we can't exactly count this as evidence for an Atheistic universe, but just because we haven't figured it out doesn't mean we won't. That is to say, the fact that we haven't figured it out is good evidence, but far from ironclad.

      The origin of humanity, I'm not even sure is an actual problem. I have this sort of innate belief that self aware moral agents simply can't arise from randomness- that consciousness can't just arbitrarily begin to exist. I'm not so sure the empirical evidence supports this (there seems to be a range of consciousness found in the real world, from barely self aware small rodents, to gorillas able to communicate through sign language, to Stephen Hawking and other luminaries way above our pay grade).

      So the only worldview I've come across that seems internally consistent is Deterministic, materialistic atheism (particularly if we resolve these two problems as "those aren't actual problems"). The only question it really has left to answer is that first mover question, and it's unclear if we're even forming that question correctly (you can't talk bout a "first" anything unless you're already inside the stream of time)

      My problem is that the conclusions this deterministic materialistic atheism leads to (free will is an illusion, our sense of self is an illusion, morality is arbitrary and reciprocation-based, etc.) are doctrines I really, really, really don't like (and they do seem to disagree with my extremely subjective observations about myself)

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    2. ...but you have to do this anyway... you're still ultimately parsing what you think would make the most sense out of a God, and which version of God you're presented with best fits with reality"

      I would have to disagree. I'm thankful there have been great thinkers that have come before me that have done the heavy philosophical lifting to better understand the nature of God. But I agree with them because it makes sense with what Christ taught which has proven to be a perfect explanation and solution to the human condition to me. I think choosing a God who is a trinity of persons would be an odd choice since it’s an idea most people (including myself) find perplexing. Choosing a religion based on what I see the best fit for a god seems like the most likely way I will make an idol of my own choosing to worship. God by definition is of a higher order than man and therefore I cannot expect to know why God does anything except that which has been revealed.

      "If this is true, how do we explain Lucifer? He clearly made a choice counter to God's will/desire/commands (unless you're actually saying God wanted Satan to fall?)"

      Oops, when I said the angels’ choices were irrevocable, I only meant that their choice once made was permanent but did not mean to say it was not of their own free will. My understanding of angels is speculative at best though and my original statement was muchos speculation.

      “My problem is that the conclusions this deterministic materialistic atheism leads to (free will is an illusion, our sense of self is an illusion, morality is arbitrary and reciprocation-based, etc.) are doctrines I really, really, really don't like (and they do seem to disagree with my extremely subjective observations about myself)”

      Thanks for the explanation. I agree those doctrines are ones I don’t like either but I guess I just feel more certain that they are wrong. I salute you for struggling through all of this though. Keep up the good fight.

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    3. "But I agree with them because it makes sense with what Christ taught which has proven to be a perfect explanation and solution to the human condition to me."

      I think this is really my point. Even if you're not the one doing the heavy theological lifting, you're still the one judging if what Christ taught is indeed a perfect explanation and solution to the human condition. If God is really that far above us that he doesn't need to make sense, then it seems like it wouldn't matter if you found the message of Christ to fit with the reality you observe, because something making sense would be completely independant of that thing being true?

      "Choosing a religion based on what I see the best fit for a god seems like the most likely way I will make an idol of my own choosing to worship"

      That's fair. If there is a God, it's reasonable that he might look way different than we would expect

      "God by definition is of a higher order than man and therefore I cannot expect to know why God does anything except that which has been revealed."

      If you really believe this, how do you justify your belief in Yahweh over Allah? If God is so far beyond our reckoning that we can't judge what does or does not constitute "God-like" behavior, then on what basis are you rejecting one conception of God and accepting another? Islam also claims that God revealed certain things- they just claim different things than Christianity. On what basis are you believing the Church's claims over the Islams if not that the teachings of the Church fit with reality better?

      My point is that I think you're the one ultimately making this value judgement and deciding that the Christian God makes more sense. I think it's fine to do that- if we can't trust our sense of reasonability then we've really lost all claim to having a belief that's anything other than arbitrary- I just don't think this should be a barrier to us considering what we would expect from a world with or without God. God may or may not be real, but if we can't make predictions about either hypothetical world, then we can't ever, under any circumstances, arrive at a rational opinion on the matter. If the hypothetical-world-with-God (or the hypothetical-world-with-out-God) doesn't need to make sense, then the whole question is inherently undecidable (how would we recognize which reality we're in if there's no way to differentiate the two?)

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  8. Just a few additional points:

    1. "This seems to be what we observe in reality- there are lots of corrupt rich people"

    Could it be that an inordinate desire for wealth is a corruption in itself?

    2." If there is an objective moral standard, our view of it seems totally inadequate to be making any even remotely difficult moral judgements."

    Do you think you could ever hold the idea that leaving a baby girl to die by starvation or the elements because a baby boy is more preferable is merely bad evolutionary tactics and not an outrageous moral transgression that cries out for justice?

    3. "If God is real, I would expect holding to moral principles to matter. I would expect kind, generous people to be successful, and crude, selfish people to fail. This does not always (or even often) seem to be the case."

    I think you answered that problem when you said "This does not seem to be the case- the affluent seem to manufacture artificial problems for themselves, while the destitute often maintain a happy lifestyle. " Winning at life is never about how much stuff or prestige we have, but only how much love we have shared.

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    1. "Do you think you could ever hold the idea that leaving a baby girl to die by starvation or the elements because a baby boy is more preferable is merely bad evolutionary tactics and not an outrageous moral transgression that cries out for justice?"

      That definitely strikes me as a moral transgression- which is why its so concerning that multiple societies throughout history were totally ok with this. This seems like really good evidence against an objective moral standard (or at least our ability to discern this objective moral standard)

      "I think you answered that problem when you said "This does not seem to be the case- the affluent seem to manufacture artificial problems for themselves, while the destitute often maintain a happy lifestyle. " Winning at life is never about how much stuff or prestige we have, but only how much love we have shared."

      hmm. Good point. I'll backpedal from my original claim that "corrupt rich people win at life", because i also made the claim that "being rich isn't winning".

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  9. "why its so concerning that multiple societies throughout history were totally ok with this"

    No were ok, but still are ok with it.

    http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/16/it%E2%80%99s-a-girl-the-three-deadliest-words-in-the-world/

    Do you think there will ever come a day when you could override that sense of moral certitude that killing infants is absolutely wrong and see just an unfortunate practice?

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    1. I don't see how I can answer anything other than yes here. There are whole societies built up around this as an ethical norm. In the end, I doubt that I'm somehow categorically morally better than these millions of people. If I was raised in such a society, I don't see how I can claim I wouldn't conform to it- after all, millions of people do. Unelss those people are intrinsically morally inferior to me, then it seems extremely likely that if they had been born here, they would view infantcide as the same kind of sickning moral atrocity we do- and if we had been born there, we would view it with the same level of ambivalence they do.

      This seems to me a much bigger problem for religion than it does secularism- religion can't tell us why, if there is an objective moral law, so many peple can be so wrong about it, and not even realize it.

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    2. How do YOU explain that there are whole cultures that don't think this is morally wrong? This seems like it's one of the purest incarnations of the "moral law", so if there is an objective morality, how do you explain that so many people are so wrong about it? Doesn't this seem to indicate morality is not in fact objective?

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  10. Wow, I did not see that answer coming especially given some of your past writings. I picked infanticide because I thought that was a pretty black and white issue that we would both agree on, and it looks like I was wrong, unless I misunderstand. I have to assume you are saying that it is not an absolute wrong to kill babies for all peoples at all times. Does that not bother you to say at all? I’m not sure we will be able to agree on anything if we cannot agree on that, than again I suppose we do at least agree that discussing it is good. I would like to clarify that when I originally asked whether you thought all people hold the same standards, I really meant to highlight the fact that it is the societies that have been influenced by the Christian message that have made the most strides towards bringing about the most good for all (not trying to get back into that topic as we’ve beaten it to death already and I know we don’t really agree there).

    I think you and I have a different understanding of how C.S. Lewis meant that all people share a moral standard. Both Chesterton and Lewis admit that we do not find the application of moral standards to be exactly the same amongst all peoples (I remember Leah had a post about C.S. Lewis and modesty as an example), but that we at least find some basic principles shared, i.e. it is wrong to murder, to steal, to lie, to cheat, etc and I know C.S. Lewis goes into more detail on this in The Abolition of Man, not that I’m suggesting you read it since it hasn’t been a week and I promised I wouldn’t. It can be a difference of degree or understanding of how these ethics are put into practice. Even those societies who practice infanticide still hold that murder is wrong in most other instances. There is a great deal of societal pressure and dehumanizing that goes into abhorrent acts (i.e. abortion, infanticide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide). I think this is pretty good write-up on the subject:

    http://www.conversiondiary.com/2008/07/good-people-bad-people-truth-and-lies.html

    The first sin ever mentioned in the Bible was pride and the second was murder. Murder has been with us since the beginning and I find it no surprise that we rationalize it still. We do it often in America and call it “therapeutic” or “merciful”. We also know in our hearts that we shouldn’t lie, steal, cheat, abuse, neglect, etc, etc, but we do anyways. That is the struggle within each one of us and why we must fight and know what we fight for. The moral law is the basics of morality that we can know reasonably but that doesn’t mean we can’t rationalize doing what we want or have been taught. The point of an objective moral law isn’t how many people follow it, but that it exists even if no one follows it. Just as two men may see a color differently because one is color blind doesn’t mean that an object has no objective reflection of the spectrum of light independent of the two men. So too there may be two men who see an action differently based on their perceptions which have been colored by experience or their society, there is still a right and wrong independent of them. I would also point out that Catholics think that it is precisely because man has been unable to stay on the straight and narrow that God had to take on our humanity and show us what radical self giving love we are called to.

    And for a nice wordy Catholic explanation here is what the Catechism has to say on moral law:
    http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a1.htm

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    1. "Wow, I did not see that answer coming especially given some of your past writings. I picked infanticide because I thought that was a pretty black and white issue that we would both agree on, and it looks like I was wrong, unless I misunderstand"

      It sounds like I need to clarify here a bit. I'm not saying that infantcide isn't an objective moral wrong- certainly if anything is objectively wrong, it's infantcide. What I'm saying is that if I was born in one of these infantcide-heavy countries, I doubt I would have reached this conclusion. To claim "I would know infantcide was wrong even if I was born into a culture where it was acceptable" seems tantamount to a claim not just that I have a more accurate idea of morality than these people, but that I'm categorically morally superior to all of them- i.e. I would succeed where this whole society has failed. And that just seems really unlikely.

      So my point was not that I don't think killing babies is objectively wrong, but rather that the knowledge of its objective wrong-ness is not necessarily discernable to someone brought up in one of these cultures. So if what we consider "objective" morality is actually mostly socially inculcated, then we need to take a serious look at what we mean by "objective". If we have no way of accessing "objective" morality because of societal norms, then how do we know our idea of it is any more accurate than pro-infantcide societies? I certainly share your conviction that infantcide is inherently wrong, but these people clearly don't. How do we rectify that with a morality that is supposed to be "objective" and accessible to all of humanity?

      "I really meant to highlight the fact that it is the societies that have been influenced by the Christian message that have made the most strides towards bringing about the most good for all (not trying to get back into that topic as we’ve beaten it to death already and I know we don’t really agree there)"

      Yeah... I remain unconviced on this point, but I do have a lot of reading left to do, and I remain open to becoming convinced of this if that's what the historical record actually shows.

      "I think you and I have a different understanding of how C.S. Lewis meant that all people share a moral standard... Even those societies who practice infanticide still hold that murder is wrong in most other instances"

      Yeah, I think I disagree with you and Lewis that those are differences of degrees. This kind of logic would let us dodge any conceivable society, so long as there was at least one circumstance where they prohibited murder. The fact is that I share basically no moral assumptions about right and wrong with anyone who's cool with killing their own baby (this may sidetrack us into a debate on abortion, so I'll try to curtail it here- I think the only relevant question in the abortion debate is "when do we start counting the baby as a human?" Once it's past that point, there's no more discussion to be had)

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    2. "There is a great deal of societal pressure and dehumanizing that goes into abhorrent acts (i.e. abortion, infanticide, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide)"

      So here's the real question- do you think those people know what they're doing is wrong? If the answer is "yes", then I think we've solved the problem. But if the answer for even one of them is "no", then the objective morality camp is in big trouble. But I see no way of concluding that the answer is "yes", particularly because if you ask those people they would unequivically say "no, it's not wrong". A claim that they're lying seems like an ad hoc argument based on the assumption of objective morality. I guess I'm saying, the best evidence we could hope for against objective morality is to find groups of people with deeply contradictory moral standards- and that's exactly what we find.

      "Just as two men may see a color differently because one is color blind doesn’t mean that an object has no objective reflection of the spectrum of light independent of the two men"

      How do you know you're not the color blind one? Invoking God seems a little flimsy, because a) other cultures invoke God for the same reasons (extremist Muslims) and b) the "moral law" argument is one of the principle ways many people are convinced of God, so we can't explain our understanding of the moral law in terms of God anymore than we can explain the relationship of the length of a right triangle's sides by appealing to the Pythagorean theorem- we know the theorem is true because of the underlying observable reality, not the other way around.

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    3. ...I should also point out that I don't really know enough about these societies we're both beating up for encouraging infantcide to say what kind of moral culture they're living in. There's a lot of things that I would expect someone living in our culture to realize are morally wrong, even though the majority of our culture doesn't seem to want to admit it. It's entirely possible that many people in those cultures do recognize the evil of infantcide, and that those who partake of the practice are actively overriding their moral intuitions (or at least not looking at them very hard)

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  11. "In the end, I doubt that I'm somehow categorically morally better than these millions of people. If I was raised in such a society, I don't see how I can claim I wouldn't conform to it"

    You seem to have misplaced compassion here. You identify not with the victim, but with the victimizer in this scenario for fear of being judged yourself if you had been in that situation. And I can understand where you are coming from, as I recognize myself as a sinner. I constantly must remind myself to not judge others because I do not know what is going on in the hearts and minds and I too don’t want to be judged, but I can still call a spade a spade and recognize an evil act as such and do my best to avoid it myself. We can judge an act without judging the person. God himself does not judge harshly when people truly don’t understand what they are doing. I leave it to the mercy of God as to whether those who practice infanticide know/knew what they were doing was gravely wrong or not just as I leave all sins of others to the mercy of God. And if we can justify infanticide, then what about genocide? The Nuremburg trials could only happen if we agree that there is an objective moral order for all people or what right does one man have to apply his own personal morality to another?

    Sorry for the length of these posts on just one topic alone but it seems to be kind of central to our discussions!

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    1. "You seem to have misplaced compassion here"

      I don't think it's compassion. If they know what they're doing is wrong, they ought to be executed for it (while I hate reciprocity-based morality, I'm a huge fan of reciprocity in a justice system). What I'm concerned about is whether or not they know it's wrong- because it seems like they don't. And if they don't, then we need to be really careful about why we think it's wrong and they don't.

      "You identify not with the victim, but with the victimizer in this scenario for fear of being judged yourself if you had been in that situation"

      Again, I'm not so concerned with being judged. The best we can do is what we think is right. I can't really imagine a world- or an ethical system- in which I am obliged to do what I think is wrong. Even in the case of people who come to the Church and subjugate their own moral intuitions to those of the church, they're ultimately doing it because they think the Church is right.

      For example, lets suppose that some future society comes to see my actions as evil, and let's further suppose that they're right (according to this objective moral standard). I'm not so concerned with how they will view me and my actions- but I'm really concerned by the fact that I'm actively engaging in evil actions and I don't know it. The problem is that I can't correct this, even if it's true. And that seems like a huge problem for objective morality.

      "but I can still call a spade a spade and recognize an evil act as such and do my best to avoid it myself"

      I think this is the crux of my point. How do you know? These infantcide cultures would presumably say the exact same thing. If we're depending on divine revelation for our moral standard, that seems a pretty weak basis (particularly when one of the primary arguments for that divine revelation is how well it fits with the objective morality we observe)

      "The Nuremburg trials could only happen if we agree that there is an objective moral order for all people or what right does one man have to apply his own personal morality to another?"

      Well, we can certainly do this to disincentivize such behavior in the future. But if we're being honest, those trials seems like much more of a cathartic relief for the millions of persecuted than they do about objective morality. Punishing those people wouldn't undo what they had done, and it wouldn't bring anybody back. Whether or not they committed sins against an objective moral standard or not, they still caused immense suffering for millions of people, and any functioning justice system has to punish that, objective morality or no.

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  12. Well I am relieved to know that you think “certainly if anything is objectively wrong, it's infanticide”. Whew.

    “So if what we consider "objective" morality is actually mostly socially inculcated, then we need to take a serious look at what we mean by "objective".”

    I’m going to focus on this one statement to try and define what we mean by objective otherwise we’ll just keep going around in circles I fear and all the other points may hinge on this one. This is from Merriam-webster.com that most closely matches what I mean by objective:

    a : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

    Objective means by definition reality that is not influenced by perception. So millions or even billions of people practicing infanticide does not make one iota of difference to whether it is objectively evil. Unless you can give me a case where a baby girl is starved, beaten, drowned, etc, and find it morally good or even neutral, then you haven’t proven the case against it being objectively wrong. And let’s say there are two men, one holds that killing female infants is good and necessary and the other thinks it immoral, would you not say that one holds the more correct and therefore the morally superior belief?

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    1. The central point I'm trying to make is that I think it doesn't matter if morality is objective if we have no way of accessing it. I agree that the objectiveness or non-objectiveness of morality is not contingent on our subjective experience of it, but the whole reason you want to claim objective morality in the first place is to say "objective morality exists, therefore something must be causing it". How do we arrive at the conclusion "objective morality exists" in the first place? Generally, we look around us and say "Hey, it seems like killing babies is objectively wrong."

      But we now have clear counterexamples that some people don't think killing babies is wrong! It may be the case that they are just wildly mistaken, but even so, it seems like we've lost our basis for belief in objective morality. We believed in objective morality because we thought we had a clear understanding of something that was objectively immoral. Since we now have empirical evidence that humans are capable of wildly misreading, misinterpreting, or misunderstanding this hypothetical objective morality, our subjective experience no longer counts as very good evidence for this objective morality.

      I guess I'm trying to say that the only basis we have for the objective morality hypothesis is that everybody seems to agree on the parts of morality we're most sure of. But if that turns out that NOT everybody agrees (and it seems like we've hit that point), then on what basis are we still claiming objective morality? Certainly it might still be true, but why should we actually think it is? If it is true, shouldn't we expect it to be obvious to everyone in the same way its obvious to us?

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    2. “but the whole reason you want to claim objective morality in the first place is to say "objective morality exists, therefore something must be causing it"”

      I don’t actually remember saying this. What I am trying to agree on is if objective morality is a legitimate fact about reality or not regardless of any implications about religion.

      “ It may be the case that they are just wildly mistaken, but even so, it seems like we've lost our basis for belief in objective morality.”

      I’m confused as to what you believe here. On the one hand you say things like “I'm not saying that infantcide isn't an objective moral wrong” and “ If they know what they're doing is wrong, they ought to be executed for it “. But on the other hand you say “subjective experience no longer counts as very good evidence for this objective morality” and “it doesn't matter if morality is objective if we have no way of accessing it. If you are uncertain as to whether your beliefs are correct, how can you be willing to put a man to death for them?

      "But we now have clear counterexamples that some people don't think killing babies is wrong!"

      Our consciences are not magic. They are molded and informed by our reasoning ability and our upbringing. What if a child is brought up by a man who is a thief and the child grows up thinking stealing is not wrong, that still doesn't make it right. If we’ve been told a lie often enough, we may even believe them. Unless you can prove to me that killing baby girls is not objectively wrong, then what does appealing to those who deny, ignore, or have been lied to about that fact prove?

      A recent article came out in an ethics journal concluding that killing newborns was no different than abortions.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/29/medical-ethicists-propose-after-birth-abortion-law_n_1309985.html

      Those authors are not living in a land with infanticide as the norm and I’m sure they do not consider themselves moral monsters. They came to their conclusions through reasoning. The article just proves that faulty reasoning can lead to faulty conclusions and real moral evils, no matter how well meaning they may be and no matter when or where one lives. If you cannot believe that our reasoning can give us the truth regarding morality, then how do you believe that by our reasoning, we can know anything?

      I think the real question here for me is what is your starting premise? If you don’t think each and every person has a duty to love others and therefore not kill infants, then we are starting from two very different premises and never the two shall meet with or without religion.

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    3. "I don’t actually remember saying this."

      Fair enough, sorry to put words in your mouth. This is my impression of religion in general, but not something you've said explicitly.

      "What I am trying to agree on is if objective morality is a legitimate fact about reality or not regardless of any implications about religion."

      I appreciate the sentiment here, but I think the question is undecidable outside of a meta-ethical framework. Since our only possible experience of the moral law would be subjective, we can't say one way or another if the standard itself is objective, unless there's another truth (like a particular religion) that we are sure of that necessitates objective morality

      "I’m confused as to what you believe here."

      That's probably because I'm legitimately not sure :) Or maybe more accurately, I think subjective morality is probably true, but I want objective morality to be true.

      "If you are uncertain as to whether your beliefs are correct, how can you be willing to put a man to death for them?"

      Pretty easily, actually, for a couple of reasons. First, if I'm not sure of my own beliefs, I'm even less sure of everybody else's. If I decide I can't support punishing someone because I'm not 100% sure of the underlying metaphysics of their actions and my own beliefs, I would have to refuse to punish anyone for anything ever. Second, the question being posed is whether he thinks/knows its wrong. If he knows its wrong, then he is liable for his actions (whether by an appeal to an objective moral law or a subjective social contract, it doesn't really matter in terms of his culpability). Third, punishment is a disincentive. However, disincentivizing arbitrary behavior doesn't actually help society. All that means is that you could be punished for doing anything at any time without warning (because you didn't realize it was "wrong"). What we as a society want to do (in a purely pragmatic sense) is disincentivize wrong behavior (again, whether its wrong by an objective moral standard or by a subjective social construct doesn't really matter in this context). We need to train people that doing things categorized as "wrong" leads to punishment (whether objectively wrong or subjectively agreed upon wrong). Fourth, this is why I'm a huge fan of reciprocity- even if we are wrong about the moral badness of murder, all we're doing is replying in kind to the original perpetrator. If murder is really bad, he gets punished really harshly. If murder is not really bad, he gets punished pretty leniently. By implementing reciprocity, we protect ourselves from accidentally punishing a relatively benign misbehavior too harshly, and from accidentally not punishing a severe misbehavior harshly enough. We punish the behavior with itself, so the punishment necessarily fits the crime.

      So the short answer here is that it doesn't seem to matter which system is true- objective morality or subjective morality- the man who commits infanticide knowing it's wrong is culpable in pretty much any moral system and should get the same punishment in pretty much any moral system.

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    4. "Our consciences are not magic."

      A claim of an accessible objective morality sounds a lot like a claim that our consciences magically know what's right and whats wrong.

      "Unless you can prove to me that killing baby girls is not objectively wrong, then what does appealing to those who deny, ignore, or have been lied to about that fact prove"

      I'm not sure what it would mean to "prove" something is not objectively wrong. I'm also not sure what it would mean to "prove" something is objectively wrong. And I'm not sure I agree that the burden of proof is on the subjective moralist.

      "If you cannot believe that our reasoning can give us the truth regarding morality, then how do you believe that by our reasoning, we can know anything? "

      well, first, it's not clear that "morality" is a thing about which anything can be known. That presupposes objective morality.

      Second, I don't think I (or anybody) actually argues this, even moral relativists. Reason can and should tell us how to behave. It's just a question of whether or not it's a purely pragmatic reason (rational self-interest, a la objectivism) or reason in conjunction with some objective standard of behavior that we ought to uphold (most religions), or some weird combination of self-interest and a subjective standard (most forms of atheism)

      "I think the real question here for me is what is your starting premise? If you don’t think each and every person has a duty to love others and therefore not kill infants, then we are starting from two very different premises and never the two shall meet with or without religion."

      I think I start one step back from this. It needs to be demonstrated that humans have such a thing as "duty" to begin with. if we can establish that, then I very quickly get to the same point as you. But if we really and truly are just biomechanical machines, then "duty" is a meaningless word, and behavior, moral or otherwise, is arbitrary

      This is why I hate atheism as a world view, because I keep necessarily ending up at nihilism. But it's not clear to me that there's any compelling (likely-to-be-true) alternative

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    5. “if I'm not sure of my own beliefs, I'm even less sure of everybody else's. If I decide I can't support punishing someone because I'm not 100% sure of the underlying metaphysics of their actions and my own beliefs, I would have to refuse to punish anyone for anything ever.”

      Exactly.

      “What we as a society want to do (in a purely pragmatic sense) is disincentivize wrong behavior (again, whether its wrong by an objective moral standard or by a subjective social construct doesn't really matter in this context). We need to train people that doing things categorized as "wrong" leads to punishment (whether objectively wrong or subjectively agreed upon wrong). “

      I have a huge problem with this line of thinking. If we work off of an objective moral order then all laws become subject to that moral order and can be deemed just or unjust. But under a subjective moral order, the “subjective social construct” then becomes an absolute unto itself. I am disincentivized to do “wrong” behavior because society has said so. In that case, everything Hitler and Stalin did was done legally. If you say “they still caused immense suffering for millions of people”, then you are appealing to an absolute standard that says that making humans suffer is bad. And to bring it a little closer to home, not long ago homosexual acts were criminalized. You and I happen to agree that this was bad law. However, under the subjective moral order, law defines the good, and the good little sheep just need to go along with it.

      “Fourth, this is why I'm a huge fan of reciprocity- even if we are wrong about the moral badness of murder, all we're doing is replying in kind to the original perpetrator. “

      Do you believe in mercy, repentence, or rehabilitation?

      “So the short answer here is that it doesn't seem to matter which system is true- objective morality or subjective morality- the man who commits infanticide knowing it's wrong is culpable in pretty much any moral system and should get the same punishment in pretty much any moral system.”

      This implies that morality is solely society based and not individual based. What about my stuck on a desert island scenario? Do you have a right to beat a dog there if no one is around to stop you? Morality seems to get reduced to what you can get away with.

      “a claim that our consciences magically know what's right and whats wrong.”

      From the CCC:
      Alone among all animate beings, man can boast of having been counted worthy to receive a law from God: as an animal endowed with reason, capable of understanding and discernment, he is to govern his conduct by using his freedom and reason, in obedience to the One who has entrusted everything to him.3

      I don’t see how using our reason and freedom equates with “magically” knowing right and wrong.

      “I'm not sure what it would mean to "prove" something is not objectively wrong.”

      Baby girls are innocent human beings
      Humans should not kill other innocent human beings

      Which of the above two statements is false?


      “But if we really and truly are just biomechanical machines, then "duty" is a meaningless word, and behavior, moral or otherwise, is arbitrary”

      So what do you feel is your own moral system based on? You must base your belief in equal rights for all on some underlying philosophy. How would you describe it?

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    6. Sorry, I realize that you weren't referencing that Catechism quote when you said "a claim...wrong", but were probably working off something like the law being "written on our hearts" but Catholic theology is never quite that simple.

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    7. "But under a subjective moral order, the “subjective social construct” then becomes an absolute unto itself. I am disincentivized to do “wrong” behavior because society has said so. In that case, everything Hitler and Stalin did was done legally"

      Well, this seems to be true in practice, regardless of whether or not morality is objective. We can say after the fact that these societies were "wrong", but they didn't think so at the time. In particular, if our view of this hypothetical objective moral standard is obstructed to the point of us not even being able to agree if killing babies is wrong, then in practice, we're just adhering to our subjective understanding of this objective moral law. It doesn't seem like having an underlying objectivity to the moral law helps us out of the problem you're raising unless we can be sure we have an accurate view of that standard to begin with.

      "If you say “they still caused immense suffering for millions of people”, then you are appealing to an absolute standard that says that making humans suffer is bad"

      Well, you're appealing to a standard. Just for the sake of argument, if we believe something is bad subjectively, why aren't we allowed to act like it's bad? Even if we acknowledge that our belief is subjective, can't we still say that something is wrong? Why can't we still appeal to all the same standards- "it's bad because human suffering is bad"- even admitting they're subjective? We think it's wrong, and that makes it wrong. Why is that unacceptable?

      "However, under the subjective moral order, law defines the good, and the good little sheep just need to go along with it"

      I actually strongly disagree with you here. Subjective morality provides a much better incentive to work for progress than objective morality does. If you believe the Church is correct on all moral matters, and morality is unchanging, then you sort of by definition have to play the "good little sheep and just go along with it". There's no sense fighting for moral progress if morality is already known perfectly. If you think morality is subjective, however, then you have a great reason to work for changing morality for the better- just like millions of people are trying to do with gay marriage.

      "Do you believe in mercy, repentence, or rehabilitation?"

      In a personal sense, sure, but not really in a legal sense (neither does our legal system). Rehabilitation is a viable sentence because it's better for society. I'm not sure what a legal system would look like that dispensed mercy instead of justice. Doesn't seem like it would work very well. Do you think our legal system should embrace mercy and repentance?

      "What about my stuck on a desert island scenario? Do you have a right to beat a dog there if no one is around to stop you?"

      Would you say that a baboon has a right to beat other baboons? That's really the same question, from the subjective moralists' perspective. If there's no moral culpability, then talking about "rights" doesn't make sense. If there is moral culpability- it the man is aware of a moral standard and that beating a dog goes against it- then he still doesn't have that right.

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    8. "Morality seems to get reduced to what you can get away with."

      This is my biggest complaint with most formulations of atheistic morality I've heard. The other formulations (virtue ethics, etc.) don't seem to me to fit with an atheistic world view

      "I don’t see how using our reason and freedom equates with “magically” knowing right and wrong."

      I think the "counted worthy to receive a law from God" part is the part that sounds like magic. If reason is enough to arrive at objective morality, then why exactly do we need to appeal to God to explain it?

      "Baby girls are innocent human beings
      Humans should not kill other innocent human beings
      Which of the above two statements is false?"

      Actually, both. If "Innocent" doesn't really have a meaning, then premise one is wrong. If you don't assume an objective moral standard, then it's hard to rule out premise two as being false. My point is, I agree with your two premises, but this kind of proof depends on an objective moral standard (which we are capable of accurately understanding)

      "So what do you feel is your own moral system based on? You must base your belief in equal rights for all on some underlying philosophy. How would you describe it?"

      Yikes. My own moral system is very much a work in progress. That said, my moral system could best be described as emphasizing personal freedom, empathy, and justice (not always in that order). As I've said before, once you arrive at the conclusion "humans matter", it seems pretty straightforward to me to bootstrap a moral system based on these three imperitives.

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    9. “We can say after the fact that these societies were "wrong", but they didn't think so at the time. “

      So belief equals truth in the subjective moral worldview right?

      "Well, you're appealing to a standard. Just for the sake of argument, if we believe something is bad subjectively, why aren't we allowed to act like it's bad?"

      Because you have to admit that your subjective standard and their subjective standard are just different opinions, neither being more "right" than the other.

      “ We think it's wrong, and that makes it wrong. Why is that unacceptable?”

      You can say you think it’s wrong, but you can’t say it’s wrong for anyone else is the problem. You can say that freedom of speech should be given to all Americans, but you can’t think the Chinese government needs to change their ways, because they don’t think it’s not wrong so it’s not wrong, and their opinion is as good as yours. And if some people think two men getting married is wrong, would you have to agree that they are right if belief equals truth when it comes to morality?

      “There's no sense fighting for moral progress if morality is already known perfectly.”

      If morality was already known perfectly then why would you fight against it? Wouldn’t that by definition mean you are fighting for immorality? Governments are often far from perfect so I am not saying we cannot fight against them just that it wouldn’t make sense to fight a perfect moral law.

      Also, how do you invoke “progress” when by definition, subjective morality cannot say what is truly good and bad, or right and wrong. By your own admission, the infanticide and pederasty of the ancient Romans is not objectively bad, just a different subjective view held. So to fight for change in laws is only that, change, not progress. One must have a shared goal with antiquity and with posterity to make any real “progress” otherwise morality is just a thing merely in flux neither getting "better" or "worse".


      “Do you think our legal system should embrace mercy and repentance?”

      I meant it mostly on a personal level. The Church (and I) believe that corporeal punishment should only be used as a last resort as to allow a person to repent and because of wrongful convictions. Our legal system already allows sentences to be shortened, stays of execution, first offenses less punished than multiple offenses, etc. so I think mercy (perhaps leniency) is already a part of it.

      "it the man is aware of a moral standard and that beating a dog goes against it- then he still doesn't have that right."

      But what standard are you talking about here? If a man believes that dropping rocks into a lake is a grave evil, but does so gleefully, is he really guilty of a grave evil because he thought it wrong? While a man who kills a baby and doesn’t think it wrong is not guilty of a grave evil because by his own definition he has a right to?

      “I think the "counted worthy to receive a law from God" part is the part that sounds like magic.”
      You have said previously that you think if an objective law existed that it would imply a supernatural explanation, but now when you see a statement saying that the law comes from God, that it implies “magic” and is unnecessary. The law here mentioned is the objective moral law and the statement goes on to say that we can discern the law through our reason.

      Sorry to keep going on and on about this but I can't seem to stop!

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    10. "So belief equals truth in the subjective moral worldview right"

      This seems like an oversimplification. Subjective morality isn't a denial that anything is true, just a denial that moral truths stand alone. It is still objectively true, even in a subjective moral system, that certain actions lead to uneccessary suffering of conscious beings. It's only the most basic level (the assertion that uneccessary suffering is bad) that can't be proven. It seems like the big difference is that the objective moralist takes this base level as axiomatic truth, and the subjective moralist takes it as preference.

      "Because you have to admit that your subjective standard and their subjective standard are just different opinions, neither being more "right" than the other."

      But they are opinions about what it means to be right. I guess I'm not seeing a huge difference between the objective moralist who claims "I believe my idea of morality more accuratley conforms to a real objective standard than your view" and the subjective moralist who says "I believe my idea of morality is better than yours, and I will attempt to enforce it as such". They're both making normative claims about reality which are based on subjective experience- one just happens to think there's some greater fundamental truth underlying his experiences and the other does not

      "You can say that freedom of speech should be given to all Americans, but you can’t think the Chinese government needs to change their ways, because they don’t think it’s not wrong so it’s not wrong, and their opinion is as good as yours"

      I don't know if I agree here. I'm not saying "depriving someone of the freedom of speech is wrong for me". I'm saying "I think depriving someone of the freedom of speech is wrong, period". If we're not allowed to act based on what we think is right and wrong, then the objective moralist is in no better a situation than the subjective moralist, because he can't get out of the trap that his view of objective morality isn't perfect. He can't hold someone else to any standard becasue he can't be sure that the standard he's using is the right one (unless he's claiming to have perfect access to the objective moral standard). My point is, we all have to do this anyways. I'm not so sure that adding objectivity to morality is at all helpful in trying to force others to conform to our moral standards.

      "If morality was already known perfectly then why would you fight against it? Wouldn’t that by definition mean you are fighting for immorality?"

      I suppose it depends what you mean by morality. I'm super nervous about agreeing not to fight against something no matter what it says. But if morality is objective, and it was perfectly known, understood, and applied, then yes, the very definition of morality probably implies that it's better than the alternative. But honestly, that feels to me like saying "would you always do good if you knew what was good?" Well, yes... but only until my idea of good differed from whatever I was being told was "good". Then I'd need to think real hard about how much I trusted who was telling me what was good (not that I always do what I think is "good"...)

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    11. "Also, how do you invoke “progress” when by definition, subjective morality cannot say what is truly good and bad, or right and wrong"

      Well, it depends what you mean by "good" and "bad". Those don't seem to me like things in and of themselves. Things aren't just "good", they're "good because ____". You can still say we've made progress, provided you have some definition for good. Since personal freedom is something I value, I claim that our society has made a great deal of progress in the last hundred years. Many fundamentalist Christians disagree with me, and think we need to revert back to much more stringent laws to enforce traditional ethics (no premarital sex, no divorce, no homosexuality, no gender equality, etc). They deny that we've made progress at all. So our idea of "progress" is sort of inherently relative to our standard, regardless of whether we claim the standard is objective or not.

      "So to fight for change in laws is only that, change, not progress"

      Fair enough. But change towards something I value seems like a fair definition of progress to me. It's not that I can't give good reasons for valuing what I value (I think I can, for the most part), it's just that I can't have much of an argument with someone starting out from different basic assumptions of value than me. And that's true whether I'm an objective moralist or a subjective moralist.

      "If a man believes that dropping rocks into a lake is a grave evil, but does so gleefully, is he really guilty of a grave evil because he thought it wrong?"

      Yes. Absolutely. I'm 100% convinced on this. Whatever we mean by "evil", it is satisfied by someone knowingly and intentionally committing an act that they think is evil, even if they're wrong about it's consequences. It's still evil for the same reason attempted murder is still a crime.

      "While a man who kills a baby and doesn’t think it wrong is not guilty of a grave evil because by his own definition he has a right to?"

      I hate to keep saying this, but it depends what you mean by "guilty". He still did it, so obviously he's "guilty" in that sense. But is he morally culpable? If it turned out that each blade of grass was a being with a level of conciousness, intelligence, and emotion comparable to a human, would that make you a mass murderer for going on a picnic? Technically, yes- but you can't be held morally accountable for something you legitimately didn't have the faintest clue was wrong

      "You have said previously that you think if an objective law existed that it would imply a supernatural explanation, but now when you see a statement saying that the law comes from God, that it implies “magic” and is unnecessary."

      Yes, I am inclined to think that an objective moral law would imply a supernatural explanation. But "magic" and "supernatural explanation" are synonyms (at least in my head). I'm not trying to be disparaging to religion, so I'm sorry if it's coming across that way. You originally said "Our consciences are not magic"- my point is that, if our consciences are indeed pointing to an objective moral standard, they sort of should be magic. The fact that they don't seem to work all that well seems to me to be evidence against objective morality.

      "Sorry to keep going on and on about this but I can't seem to stop!"

      I think that's mostly my fault. I was taught my whole life that subjective morality is nonsensical, and I'm really just now examining the implications of a fully fledged subjective morality. I suspect I've been spinning both of us in circles with sneakily contradictory answers. Sorry :/

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  13. > If God is not real, I would not expect guilt to exist. As social animals, it makes sense that we would need something to curtail our selfish desires in favor of what benefits society. But guilt seems to be a horrible mechanism to accomplish this. It's an after-the-fact disappointment in our own behavior, but it's not very good at stopping us from doing the bad behavior in the first place (at least it's not for me. Perhaps others have had a different experience).

    Guilt - the gift no one appreciates: http://lesswrong.com/lw/51f/guilt_another_gift_nobody_wants/

    Why do you want to feel guilt *afterwards* rather than before? Because if you always felt guilt before, you'd not seize opportunities and so you'd never learn what opportunities are profitable to exploit... Guilt is the mechanism whereby you are punished for getting caught.

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    1. Really interesting article, thanks for the link gwern.

      I'm still not sold on guild being a reasonable prediction of naturalism for three reasons-

      1. Guilt only works as a beneficial strategy if everybody is on board with it. If one individual develops guilt, it will be useless to him unless and until the rest of his tribe understands what he's doing
      2. The explanation given presupposes that we're all capable of recognizing guilt as a signal of innocence. That's certainly not the case on a conscious level (this explanation of guilt never even occurred to me before reading the article), so that seems like a lot of confidence we're putting in the rationality (and mathematical ability) or our subconscious.
      3. Subjectively, I want someone to feel guilt because they did something wrong, not because they got caught. The whole concept of "you should cheat if the payout is good enough and the risk of getting caught is small enough" is evolutionary advantageous, but it's not moral (at least in my conception of morality)

      All that said, it's quite possible that I "just don't understand all the ramifications of my model".

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