I?m going to assume that the video is not of you, but of someone else you felt was relevant. You know, that?s almost like cheating since I?m going to have to hash out a full response and all you needed was a YouTube link.
All kidding aside, this may be a rather long post given I?m responding to a 30 minute video and the topic is complex. Also, right up front note I?m not a Christian apologist and thus have no particular interest in defending the Bible. Keep in mind that when I speak of God I do so hypothetically. I speak of the implications of ethical monotheism.
I?ll start at the end with the question of God and the is/ought gap. In order to explain this, I?m going to need to quickly cover the concept of function. As in ?The heart?s function is to pump blood throughout the body.? Function is basically a variant of an ought statement. The heart ought to be pumping blood and thus can be evaluated in terms of that function. Function is entirely subjective and does not exist as a property in the object itself. It would be just as empirically and logically consistent to claim the heart?s function was to create a thumping sound.
He makes the mistake of anthropomorphizing God and assumes that the relationship between God and objective reality is like our own. However, it?s nothing alike at all. We don?t create but rather shape and modify already existing elements. We have no direct knowledge of objective reality and thus there?s a sharp break between objective and subjective. God created the universe completely and thus for him, there is no distinction between subjective and objective. Everything, even our own subjective experience, is part of his subjective experience. This means that when God ascribes function to something, it has that function in what to us is objective reality.
That is not to say the existence of God requires pantheism. Rather, the relationship between reality and its creator is very different than our relationship with that reality. Since God?s will would account for all that exists, it makes no sense to speak of them as distinct in the normal fashion. Put simply, when asked to justify any ought statement, or its derivatives, God can simply state that he created it thus.
What follows is the problem of evil coming back in a big way. For the god I am describing, any event in the universe occurs either because he caused it or because he explicitly allowed it to occur. If God predetermined all things, then ought questions become meaningless. The words are the same, but the meaning behind them evaporates. If God allows free will, it does validate the notion of ought but does little for the problem of evil. I will not get into it, but just know that he is right in that God can not solve the problem of morality unproblematically.
Now I?m sure someone would be disappointed if I didn?t poke holes in the moral philosophy presented. So, I?ve got my stick of reason and away I poke. His argument is slippery thanks to the use of some loose wording. The most egregious is ?necessary?. Necessary can refer to events in a causal chain, but that?s irrelevant in any ought statement. The version that is relevant is basically just an ought that overrides another ought. So saying that we ought not do x unless necessary is equivalent to saying we ought not do x unless we ought to do x. Why this renders any moral statement so loose as to allow any action should be obvious.
He talks of rational oughts. I?ve never heard it referred to this way, but I feel I should elaborate on what he?s talking about. Consider this simple statement: If you wish to shave you ought acquire a razor and possibly some shaving lotion. Now contrast: If you wish to light babies on fire you ought acquire an ignition source and possibly some fuel to get the ball rolling. His so called rational oughts cannot distinguish these two statements. Thus all they are is statements to the effect that if you wish to do x you should do y. But actually, you need another ought to make it work. After all, it does not necessarily follow that if you wish to do x you should follow any particular method, or any method at all. Thus this supposed means of determining what you ought to do can do no such thing until after you already decide what you ought to do.
This brings us back to the beginning where he opens by claiming we need to define what right and wrong are. Actually, he flops between that, and the statement that we need to define what makes something right. These are quite different. If that?s hard to see, imagine the colour blue. We could define what makes an object blue in terms of spectrum of reflected light, but that would do nothing to define what blue itself is to someone who was colourblind. This is why it is folly to try and define what something like right or good is. To do so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Consider a man who was totally blind to right and wrong. You could tell him that certain things and actions are right, but that would not reveal to him what right was. It would merely tell him we attach the word to the given objects and actions just as telling the colourblind man that the sky is blue would tell him nothing of what blue itself is.
Now the obvious answer as what makes something right is that it is good. This reveals nothing useful of course and he is right in basically saying so. (He used ought but it?s the same thing.) However, that is the problem right there. Unlike a colour, there is no objective property that correlates to right that we have access to. That?s the is/ought problem in a nutshell. He bridges this with pure assertion. He simply asserts that certain elements make something right. He then goes off on a red herring about definition that is both completely correct and utterly irrelevant. We are not debating what the word right is attached to, but what the concept underlying the word actually amounts to. He goes on to back up this assertion with an appeal to popularity and to might makes right. I find the second to be especially ironic.
So what we end up with is a very loose moral system in which an action is right if it promotes heath, happiness, and community wellbeing and doesn?t cause suffering and death unless it is right to do so. Uh huh. That?s nice and all, but it lets in just about anything. Pol Pot could, and probably would, claim that his actions were meant to promote community wellbeing and any suffering and death was purely necessary. I?m sure that my fellows on the board will agree with me that some actions are morally unacceptable regardless of any claims of necessity. If you don?t draw the line, someone will sooner or later use the vagueness of necessary to justify anything. That?s not hypothetical but exactly what the past genocides of the 20th century started with.
In the end, all we have is the basic sense that some things are good and some are evil. If someone hits me I think it is wrong?not because of some rational consideration of unnecessary suffering but simply because it?s obviously wrong in the same way my bottle of Windex imitation is obviously blue. If evolution by natural selection is all there is to us, then my sense of wrong has no backing whatsoever. Appealing to the notion that everyone agrees with me hardly proves otherwise. If there is a god, one that created the universe and me, then I can at least suppose that sense was a gift from him and thus he is my backing. I might be imperfect and thus my perception of wrong is imperfect. Yet I can strive to see more clearly and I can believe that we today have done so and thus are right in banishing slavery, and are better for it. Alas, while I believe God could exist, I do not believe I have that knowledge. So I have to fall back on the much weaker position that while I cannot provide any impregnable argument of reason and logic to back it up, nonetheless there are moral truths and we are better for not slaughtering our own people, or making slaves of them.
?Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.? ? William Pitt.
10-09-2010, 11:53 AM
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