Posted on 10/06/2007 2:38:18 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Ladies and Gentlemen and All Interested Parties...This is in regards to the previously advertised debate announced here previously.
The audio transcripts of the debate are now available here
The debate featured Professor Richard Dawkins, Fellow of the Royal Society and Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and Dr. John Lennox (MA, MA, Ph.D., D.Phil., D.Sc.), Reader in Mathematics and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, Green College, University of Oxford.
Dawkins, voted by Europe's Prospect Magazine as one of the world's most important intellectuals, is regarded by many as the spokesman for the "New Atheism." BBC has labeled him "Darwin's Rottweiler." He has written numerous best-sellers, most notable among them, his recent book, The God Delusion. TGD has been on The New York Times List of Best-Sellers for over thirty weeks. It is a no-holds-barred assault on religious faith generally, and Christianity specifically. According to Dawkins, one can deduce atheism from scientific study; indeed, he argues that it is the only viable choice.
Lennox, a popular Christian apologist and scientist, travels widely speaking on the interface between science and religion. Like Dawkins, he has dedicated his career to science, but he has arrived at very different conclusions. "It is the very nature of science that leads me to belief in God," he says. Lennox possesses doctorates from Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Wales. He has written a response to the notion that Science has exposed the Bible as obscurantist in a book titled God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?. The book will be published this fall.
Actually Coyoteman, my analysis was based on classical philosophy, mainly Plato and Aristotle, not "religion." Do you object to that too?
It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view. But then, edsheppa has not really told us, so far as I know, what his view actually is. So we are left guessing, and faced with the temptation to "characterize" his position for him -- as he has recently done for me, in the process coming up with a caricature, a straw man, to beat. I have seen his conclusion (i.e., that I understand myself to be in possession of "The Truth," etc.); what I have not seen is his evidence.
bb, I think you and xins have deftly illustrated the fallacy of the Euthyphro Dilemma. The reason I cited the two Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles is that I found them to be useful surveys of the some of the controversies and difficulties with accounting for morality.
edsheppa has identified generally with the Moral Naturalism position, hence my link to the article on that category.
The problem as I see it with moral naturalism is that it cannot arrive a reductive analysis of morality without relying on an evaluative premise, which is the very thing it's supposed to be explaining in the first place:
Non-naturalism comes with two distinctive burdens: (i) accounting for how the realm of moral properties fits in with familiar natural properties and (ii) explaining how it is that we are able to learn anything about these moral properties. Naturalism, in contrast, avoids these metaphysical and epistemological burdens.Despite its advantages, naturalism has difficultly capturing well what people take to be the true nature of morality. In saying something is good or right or virtuous we seem to be saying something more than, or at least different from, what we would be saying in describing it as having certain natural features. Correspondingly, no amount of empirical investigation seems by itself, without some moral assumption(s) in play, sufficient to settle a moral question.
[snip]
Among morality's distinctive features, all agree, is its apparently intimate connection to action. In making moral judgments, for instance, we seem to be making a claim that, if true, establishes that someone or other has a reason to act or be a certain way. This marks an important difference between moral claims and claims concerning, say, color. The claim that something is red is, even if true, only contingently connected to whether anyone has any reason at all to act or be a certain way. Whereas if a certain thing is morally good it seems that everyone necessarily has at least some reason (perhaps overrideable or defeasible, but still some reason) to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it — at least if they recognize that it is good. Moreover, many have thought, to judge sincerely that something is good (whether or not one is right) is to have some motivation (again, perhaps overrideable or defeasible, but still some motivation) to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it.
If one is able to beat throught the thick undergrowth in the article on Moral Naturalism, the futility of trying to account for morally evaluative conclusions without first presupposing an evaluative premise(which is what naturalism denies) can be clearly seen. When naturalists are asked to account for morality (at least anything worthy of the name) they invariabley end up positing some sort of prior moral rule, or smuggle in some evaluative premise or conclusion. They can't help it.
Cordially,
Then I am reminded of the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the blessed joy attending his reunion with his Father. And once again realize that all things, here on earth and in heaven, work to God's good purpose -- He who constantly maintains the highest standard of good for each and all of His creatures, though perhaps in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine....
It was in my first post on this thread, #56. And further it was in my reply to you in #121. And you replied to that post.
It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view.
See #173 where I say
Yes, my view is in the broad category of ethical thought that article describes.
"What is signified by the term, 'innate?'"
I have in mind the standard meaning. Unlike some I try very hard to use words that way to avoid confusion.
adjective: not established by conditioning or learningAs to what it "signifies," here is an example. There were a couple of recent studies about "fairness." One compared human to chimp behaviors in the Ultimatum Game. The game has two playing roles, Proposer and Responder. A certain amount of money is in available. The Proposer proposes a division of the money between the players and the Reponder can accept the division or reject it so that neither player gets anything.
adjective: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development
When people play this game, the Proposer generally offers much more to the Responder than you might "rationally" expect. IIRC, it is often an even split and offers less than 20% to the Reponder are generally rejected.
Some researchers cleverly arranged for chimps to play this game. Unlike human players, the chimp Proposers offered the least non-zero amount possible (e.g. nine grapes for me and one for you) and the chimp Responders generally accepted these very unequal distributions.
The other study compared how identical and fraternal twins played the game. Identical twins were very much more alike in the proposed and accepted divisions than the fraternal twins.
So the evidence is that fairness has a very strong genetic component and, further, people have it and chimps don't. This is the kind of innate human value I'm speaking of.
No. It is you who adds it because you cannot accept an account which is purely descriptive. That's why in a prior post I said that whole "open question" issue was nonsense.
I will try to be as explicit as possible. It is a category mistake for you to ask if the utilitarian principle I proposed being acted upon by rationality+culture+innate values is good in the context of this naturalistic account of morality. It is not a category mistake to ask if it is true. Of course in my (other) view that is a mistake of another kind, but it wouldn't be a mistake to ask if it can be falsified.
I don't think it's morality per se that is innate but rather more fundamental values and feelings. Rational analysis operates upon that to, e.g., combine innate senses of fairness and empathy into the Golden Rule. These invented rules are then ingrained as culture. The combined effect is what we call morality.
I recall reading that chimps and other apes will, just like people, go to console another in distress. But I wonder if any researcher has tried to see if a chimp unable to give comfort will urge a third chimp to do it.
adjective: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development
Here's another:
adjective: possessed at birth; inborn; possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent. [American Heritage Dictionary]
In this last, the main point is that something that is innate is essential to the nature or make-up of the person or thing in question. That is to say, it is not something acquired later on or, as a philospher might say, it is not an "accident" pertaining to the person or thing in question. "Innate" is distinguished from both "congenital" -- which is applied principally to physical characteristics, especially to defects acquired during fetal development -- and "heredity"-- which refers to what is genetically transmitted to the person or thing in question.
But if innate stands for something that is neither congenital nor hereditary, to what can it possibly refer? I submit that natural science has no method to determine this. And so if a scientist wants to speak of that which is "innate," and then found a moral theory on it, he is completely free to do so; but then he would not be speaking as a scientist, but as a philosopher. And if the scientist in question is a scientific materialist, a/k/a a metaphysical naturalist, he has no way to speak of "essence," or an "essential characteristic," which is the principle meaning I take from the word "innate."
I am not aware of any explanation given by science that could account for any building up of configurations of non-living material particles or building blocks that lead to an "essence" (or life for that matter) in the manner that word is used in philosophy. In philosophy, "essence" and "nature" are closely cognate.
I'm not saying you aren't free to be a philosopher and speculate about moral theory if you want to. I'm just asking you to recognize that if you are doing that, your speculation cannot be deduced from the premises of methodological or metaphysical naturalism, i.e., scientific materialism.
In short, you are producing a "just-so story" that isn't even systematically founded on your own doctrine. And this is why I find your moral theory unpersuasive, to say the least.
Utimately, you want to derive your moral theory from science. But as Jerry Fodor writes, "Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it couldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are. There couldn’t be a science of the human condition."
Mankind historically has left that sort of thing up to philosophy and theology.
Even comprehending the "open question" issue is beyond my present intellectual capabilities, so I'm not that interested in it. But the reason that I cannot accept an account of morality that is purely descriptive is that morality is prescriptive, not merely descriptive. It prescribes how we ought to act in the future, which an account of brute natural facts can never reach or address. There is no value neutral argument for an evaluative conclusion. You can never infer any ethical conclusion from any set of entirely non ethical premises. In order to get to an evaluative conclusion you have to presuppose it, but that's the very thing you're supposed to be explaining.
It is a category mistake for you to ask if the utilitarian principle I proposed being acted upon by rationality+culture+innate values is good in the context of this naturalistic account of morality...
If I were asking about the color 'red' it would indeed be a category mistake to evaluate it in terms of good or evil. But how is saying something is good or right or virtuous a category mistake when discussing morality? Your position is that good and right or virtuous can be thoroughly described in terms of nature features. Please explain how it is then that when speaking of morality we seem to be saying something different from or more than what we are referring to when we speak of a color. How is any brute natural fact connected to whether anyone ought to act or be a certain way?
I also observe that you smuggle in an evaluative premise with, "...+innate values", but values, for example, "good" and "evil" is what you're supposed to be explaining in the first place empirically, by natural facts. You know, chemistry and physics and the like.
Cordially,
Perhaps the cat should be charged with murder for murdering the mouse.
Cordially,
Your post is an exercise in sophistry and doesn’t deserve a response. If however you should stick to what I said I meant by the word innate, maybe I’ll look at the next one.
It's too bad you can't expand your thinking, get outside that rotating frame of reference. The explanations are so mich simpler in an inertial one.
Thanks for pointing me to those two posts. I was hoping to be elightened but I think Betty and xzins haven't addressed the point of the dilemma. Not hard to do, I admit, given the opacity of the prose.
The dilemma basically asks, is God-based goodness arbitrary. Betty and xzins have argued only one side, namely that, based on their conception of God, He must not have been constrained in his choice of good. But they have neglected the conslusion on the other side of the dilemma, namely that if God exercised free will to choose what is good, then goodness is arbitrary. If unconstrained, He could instead have chosen the exact opposite of what he did choose so that hating your neighbor is good and loving him is bad.
That's not to say their conclusion is wrong, it's just that folks find the idea that goodness is arbitrarily chosen unsettling. But then, folks also don't like it the other way either, hence the dilemma.
I’m not familiar with the dilemma, but off the top of my head, I’d say we must begin with revelation to solve such a question.
What has been revealed is that “God is good.”
Now that we know the conclusion, I can begin looking for a “how we got there.”
I used to like the answers in the back of my math books for just that reason. I could then go figure out how to get there.
:>)
Neither absolute moral law nor objective truth can be discerned by looking at a narrow section of the whole.
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