Getting to Ought From Is

[Dr. Shades]

Last week I was in Asheville, NC doing some work for some people I unfortunately can’t talk about due to an NDA (that’s “Non-Disclosure Statement” for Mr. Shades), . . .

Huh, and here I thought the "A" stood for "Agreement." I've learned something new today!

[huckelberry]

Christians make up about 63% of the US Population, yet make up about 68% of prison populations in the US.

Conversely, atheists make up about 3.1% of the US population, yet make up about 0.1% of prison populations in the US.

Curious that the people who purportedly have no basis with which to have morals seem to be better at having morals.

I think a person has to be a bit slow witted to think only religious people have a bases for morality and make moral decisions. I have heard some religious people make the proposal, evidencing a slowed wit on their part. Perhaps that slower wit results in getting caught doing witless crimes more frequently.

[huckelberry]

Mr. Shears, your general idea about ought makes sense to me. I was not remembering a fuss about the issue so asked google. It sounded like the original problem was whether conditions existing are the pattern of how things should be, natural law. I notice that is the idea Physics Guy picked up.

I have not followed what Peterson has been arguing. Does he actually claim we must have an ultimate lawgiver in order to be clear about morals or to have them at all? The alternative to that you pointed out, adding basic value assumptions, make more sense to me. I am puzzled about fitting ultimate lawgiver into Mormon ideas. I remember the idea that there were eternal laws which God has to follow in order to be God. (Sounds a bit close to is determining ought.)

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Last week I was in Asheville, NC doing some work for some people I unfortunately can’t talk about due to an NDA (that’s “Non-Disclosure Statement” for Mr. Shades), . . .

Huh, and here I thought the "A" stood for "Agreement." I've learned something new today!

You sure did!

- Doc

[Billy Shears]

I think two different "ought from is" issues can be confused.

One is just the point that the way things are isn't necessarily the way things should be. People really do sometimes argue that something must be okay, and doesn't need to be changed—or even should be defended—because it's somehow part of the natural order of things, or is what God intended, or something. Black people being slaves and women not getting votes have been defended that way. Nobody really thinks that every aspect of how things happen to be now must be right, though. If you take somebody's wallet, they'll find the resulting situation of you having their wallet to be wrong even though it's how things are. So you can point out to people that maybe slavery or lack of voting rights or anything else could be more like that transferred wallet than like the tilt of the Earth, a problem to be fixed rather than a condition to accept. What is may not be what ought to be.

The other issue is the philosophical problem of whether one can ever or in general deduce an imperative statement from indicative statements. This is a broader and more difficult issue than the wallet-versus-Earth issue, but it's also more abstract. Fewer people are going to care about this one.

The two issues have some overlap but they're different. If you somehow found a reliable logic for deducing obligations from facts, you'd still have to figure out how to apply it correctly in order to conclude that you have an obligation to return that stolen wallet but not to re-tilt the Earth. And you can motivate people to change things that have been that way for a long time, without having to invent general empirical ethics.

Hi Physics Guy,

Thank you for the comments. The second issue you list is the one that we were discussing at Sic Et Non. You articulated the issue perfectly: you can’t logically deduce a normative statement from a descriptive statement.

Daniel Peterson and likeminded thinkers take this a step further. In a SEN post that was liked by DCP and eight others, a commenter articulated their position well:

No one denies you can be good without God, merely that you don't actually have an objective foundation for being good or even what good is. 99% of atheists in the west merely borrow Christian ethics as their own. You might believe that adultery is wrong but you don't have an objective basis for declaring it so if all reality consists of is atoms in motion.

Reviewing the conversation, I still like my response to that comment:

Let's look at a modern example of morality that is extremely relevant to the world today. Every year, millions of mothers and fathers do something to their innocent babies in awful wickedness. I'm speaking about, of course, infant baptism. "Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent." (See Moroni 8:10-21).

Could you explain to me how religion gives people an objective foundation for knowing that "the baptism of littler children is an evil abomination"? And given that belief in God gives people an objective basis for morality, how come they can't agree among themselves about this particular awful wickedness?

[Gadianton]

I think a person has to be a bit slow witted to think only religious people have a bases for morality and make moral decisions

Dan thinks non-believers also have the same God-given moral sense believers have, and can be moral and make moral decisions, they just don't realize the source of it.

I have not followed what Peterson has been arguing. Does he actually claim we must have an ultimate lawgiver in order to be clear about morals or to have them at all?

Depends on what post. He never carefully puts his position together and just offers sound-bites and quips. His position(s) about morality aren't coherent or consistent at all.

Sure, he very often states that God is necessary, otherwise "all is permitted", morality can't be grounded in our mere "tastes and preferences." For instance, finding killing revolting doesn't make it wrong. Eggplant is also revolting, but it isn't wrong. But then, on other days, he takes the opposite position of extreme hedonism. This often occurs in discussions with folks like Gemli, who deny an afterlife. Our lives are meaningless if we don't have an eternity of consumption ahead of us. And he's specifically told Gemli that an afterlife we'll do "more of the things" we enjoy in this life. Presumably he means socializing, travelling, and eating out, as this is generally the context. He's forever in this contradiction between meaning/value as satiating our tastes and preferences for eternity, the denial of which makes life meaningless, and meaning/value as the airy command of a higher power that can't be rooted in our tastes.

[Billy Shears]

Mr. Shears, your general idea about ought makes sense to me. I was not remembering a fuss about the issue so asked google. It sounded like the original problem was whether conditions existing are the pattern of how things should be, natural law. I notice that is the idea Physics Guy picked up.

I have not followed what Peterson has been arguing. Does he actually claim we must have an ultimate lawgiver in order to be clear about morals or to have them at all? The alternative to that you pointed out, adding basic value assumptions, make more sense to me. I am puzzled about fitting ultimate lawgiver into Mormon ideas. I remember the idea that there were eternal laws which God has to follow in order to be God. (Sounds a bit close to is determining ought.)

No, that isn’t really his point. Peterson would agree that torturing babies is objectively evil, regardless of whether or not God commands it or forbids it. He clearly doesn’t argue that murder is wrong because God says thou shalt not murder. Rather, he argues that God says thou shalt not murder because murder is wrong.

Of course that raises the question of why is murder wrong? From what I recall him saying over the years, he’s never articulated that. But he does seem convinced that good and evil are metaphysically real things. They are in his paradigm, at least. But in a natural paradigm, he insists that nothing matters. He thinks the following questions are a slam dunk for him: "How do you derive morality from atoms and the void? Or, perhaps, how can "ought-statements" be derived from "is-statements”?"

[Billy Shears]

As I recall, the conversation on SEN from two months that started this took place on a blog post that was already several days old, and it didn’t get the attention that it perhaps deserved. Here is the link:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... dence.html

If you’ll indulge me, here are some of the highlights. One commentator responded to my post about the wickedness of infant baptism by saying:

the mothers and fathers that bring their infant children to be baptized are very likely not "in the gall of bitterness". They obviously care for their children and are acting as they have been taught in their faith tradition....

I responded:

I think you are exactly right on this point, and that this view is held by virtually all Latter-day Saints.

....but, this view also flatly contradicts the direct and clear meaning of your own scriptures. My point is that you used secular reasoning, not scriptures or revelation, to determine that this particular passage shouldn't be taken at face value.

TLD has been arguing that people who don't believe in God have no moral basis and need to arbitrarily rely on the religion of others to have a moral foundation. I think he has that exactly backwards: moral religious people (as opposed to wicked religious people--let me know if you'd like some examples), rely on reason to figure out which scriptures and revelations to believe and which ones to rationalize and ignore. Atheists can go straight to reason for morality without the distraction of rationalizing away what the alleged word of God actually says.

Peterson said, "That would be fun to watch. Do you have any examples? I would like to see a rationally-derived ethical system that isn't based on unreasoned postulates.”

I responded:

You seem to be implying here that if a rational argument rests on unreasoned postulates, it isn't rational. Perhaps you have studied logic more than I have, but I've been under the impression since my first course in geometry that everything that is rational is ultimately based on unreasoned postulates.

In any event, Singer argues that ethics is not based on religion, ethics is not relative to the society in which you live, and ethics is not merely a matter of subjective taste or opinion. If you are interested in going straight to reason for morality, Singer's book is available on Amazon or at your local library.

[Billy Shears]

I think a person has to be a bit slow witted to think only religious people have a bases for morality and make moral decisions

Dan thinks non-believers also have the same God-given moral sense believers have, and can be moral and make moral decisions, they just don't realize the source of it.

I have not followed what Peterson has been arguing. Does he actually claim we must have an ultimate lawgiver in order to be clear about morals or to have them at all?

Depends on what post. He never carefully puts his position together and just offers sound-bites and quips. His position(s) about morality aren't coherent or consistent at all.

That is quite frustrating. He pretty consistently refuses to actually engage me in the conversation.

When I explained the assumptions I make for my basis in morality, I asked him what his assumptions were and why he thinks his assumptions are “solid”. Rather than explaining to me what his basis of morality actually is, he said: "You're guessing. I suggest that you give up the attempt.” He then responded again saying, "The issue here is being grievously misframed and misrepresented, which allows it to be completely misunderstood. Read the discussion of what he calls the "Tao" in C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man.”

It’s an interesting comment. I took some time to respectfully articulate my basis of morality and with the intent of listening, asked him what his basis was. In his mind, that is grievously misframing, misrepresenting, and misunderstanding the real issue.

I’ll admit I haven’t read The Abolition of Man. But it’s interesting that I really put myself out there trying to summarize and defend Sam Harris’s system of ethics, but he was unwilling to do the same for C.S. Lewis’s.

[Billy Shears]

And yet, I was still troubled. How could someone so infused with the written word still be so goddamn stupid? And abruptly, an unexpected quantum leap in a predetermined system governed by stochastic processes, a paradigm-shifting revelation emerged, “He doesn’t actually read! And when he does read, it’s absolute retarded garbage by people like Schwartz!”

"He was, in a way, widely read.”

Those are the words Carl Sagan used to describe a driver who took him to a conference and wanted to ask some questions about science.

He wanted to talk about frozen extraterrestrials languishing in an Air Force base near San Antonio, “channeling” (a way to hear what’s on the minds of dead people—not much, it turns out), crystals, the prophecies of Nostradamus, astrology, the shroud of Turin … He introduced each portentous subject with buoyant enthusiasm. Each time I had to disappoint him:

“The evidence is crummy,” I kept saying. “There’s a much simpler explanation.”