Prof

That is the reply given by Christians so often in trying to defend the bible/slavery issue...and it is disingenuous.

You really have to do some reading as to what the life of most slaves was like throughout history, including the time of the bible. Slavery typically meant you were captured, often after war, and most slaves were treated inhumanely and viewed of course as the property of the slave owner.
Even in Rome, often pointed to as having one of the more "enlightened" systems of slavery, this was true. And even a freed slave did not have the rights of a Roman citizen.

It is undeniable that when you look at slavery in the ancient world that good, civilised people would condemn the practice and not allow it in society.

And your very holy book undermines this pretty-faced version of ancient slavery you want to present.

Riiiight.

You feel the bible has en enlightened view of how to treat one another? Yet...you know darned well you would not treat another person the way the bible condones treating slaves.

Tell me, do you think it's ok to hold people as property and to force circumcision on them? (Exodus)

Exodus Chapter 21 CLEARLY depicts and condones behaviour from a slave owner that a civilized person like yourself would NOT view as a good way to treat another human being. It says things like:

"Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for life."

Right there you have God condoning BUYING another human being and that in BUYING that human being will mean he has to serve you for six years at least. There is NOTHING like the contractual, equality that you would like to imply about slavery in there.

And the very issue of this passage, the conditions under which a slave is to be set "Free," is enough to undermine the ethics. Until six years the slave is NOT FREE...not free to leave...these are the conditions that a slave must serve BEFORE HE MAY BE FREE. I don't know about you, but I value the freedom to do as I wish, work for whomever I want, rather than be the chattel property of some slave owner.

And the passage depicts someone in a position over another person such that the Slave Owner can "give" a slave a wife (or not). Hardly consonant with what you and I would consider proper: don't you feel someone should be free to fall in love with and marry who they choose, and not be under the reign of a an owner who decides whether or not to "give" you a wife or not?

Further, it depicts the poor slaves wife and children as automatically BEING THE PROPERTY OF THE SLAVE OWNER. And that the husband can go free BUT NOT THE WIFE AND KIDS because they are the slave owners property: only the original slave can go after six years!

Now point me anywhere in society that you would actually condone that. You know it goes against any enlightened view of human interaction.

Oh, and since his wife and kids are the slave owners property, if the poor slave loves his kids and family so much he can't leave them (and the slave owner isn't letting them go!) he has to pledge allegiance to his master and serve him FOR LIFE. And the slave owner marks him as his property by boring a whole through his slaves ear!

And do you think THIS is an appropriate, moral way for one human to treat another?

We both know you would condemn anyone treating other people this way.
Yet you want to portray the slavery in the bible - PRACTICES CONDONED BY THE GOD OF THE BIBLE - as not so bad. (Actually, if God condones these practices they would have to be "good" by your lights).



And...so....?

You have been trying to soft-peddle the bible's view of slavery. As if the slavery it depicts - the treatment of slaves CONDONED BY GOD - isn't something morally condemnable.

And yet you can't get away from the passages that starkly portray otherwise.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, 21 but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. "

Yeah, sure, slavery wasn't too bad. Yet God said you can beat your slaves...in fact BEAT THEM TO ALMOST TO DEATH...so long as the slave lingeres alive and can get up after a couple of days. Why? Well, after all it's because, as God says, the slave is the owners property!

As a Christian you may have your cognitive strategies for looking away from, ignoring or rationalizing away the immorality in the bible...so you can cling to the belief it is a Good Book from a Good God. But you can't force others to ignore the text: You simply can not pull the wool over anyone's eyes about the immorality of slavery in the bible, and the immorality of what the God of the bible explicitly condones.


If Desire Utilitarianism is correct then God's desires DO matter, just as much...BUT NO MORE...than ours.

Prof.

Prof

Hi Antiplastic. Great questions as always. I only have so much time and this
portion seems to contain the crux of the issue:

And:

First I want to point out that the very fact you agree with the general assessment of what some call "Hypothetical imperatives" - an example being the vacation in Spain - is one reason I actually find the Desire Utilitarian system more compelling. (I don't want to get into an argument splitting hairs over Kant's notion of Hypothetical Imperatives vs ones I might tweak...so I'll stick to that nomenclenture for now).

The very fact that the reasoning underlying hypothetical imperatives ("Practical oughts") is in the main uncontroversial seems to me significant. Because the direct relationship of a desire in making sense of the ought statement, the way a desire is necessary for providing the reasons for action, seems to me to underline the link between desire and "ought" statements.

The problem I find when I read most ethical theories is that many will condone this link for "Hypothetical imperatives," but then suddenly say "But of course that doesn't mean moral oughts have any such necessary link." And then they jettison the link of desires to "ought" and flail about trying to find SOME grounding for moral oughts somewhere else. And I find this is always that breakdown, when the moral theorist looses his footing and he seems to struggle.

Ought questions amount to questions of "What should I do?" They are by nature looking for reasons for action. This is the case whether we talk of "ought I buy X pair of running shoes" to "ought I steal that car or respect it as the owner's property?"

To me it makes senses that if a desire is necessary to makes sense of an ought when we are speaking of practical desires...why in the world would we presume this link, this logical underpinning, would suddenly vanish when it comes to any other "ought?"

It does not make sense to me that it would. And the very flailing about within moral philosophy (very sophisticated flailing, mind you) to find a ground for moral "oughts" seems to me to underline this insight.

So if we start with the soundness of "Hypothetical imperatives," in this case that "ought" is a question about reasons for actions, and those reasons only make sense in appeal to a desire, then there seems nothing logically stopping this trend to extending to any ought, including moral "oughts" which ask for reasons for action.

Now to the excellent question of making that step from "personal, "Hypothetical/practical imperatives "oughts" to how we "ought" to treat other people:

The answer, I would posit, combines what I'd already written in response to Elfman earlier: the nature of REASON. Since ought statements are asking about reasons-for-action, we are obviously looking to reason to answer the questions. And to use reason is to apply principles - principles that are hardy and "work" in answering similar questions in other possible circumstances. Hence reason, in it's appeal to principles, entails a universality. If you are being reasonable, you aren't just pulling premises out of your ass that only happen to apply to one particular possible case.

This is why, as I pointed out to Elfman, it is so difficult to actually JUSTIFY via REASON a system of pure selfishness. Every time you try you essentially, by the universality of principles, justify other people acting the same way. Even if you wanted to steal, you could not justify it logically without condoning it, logically, for others to steal from you. But you actually wouldn't think it IS the case other people ought to steal your stuff...the the
attempt at justification for your stealing breaks down. (So long as it's a purely selfish justification). You can certainly still steal for selfish reasons, but you can't justify it as the most reasonable attitude, for this reason.

So, back to DU. As Alonzo Fyfe puts it: " Desire utilitarianism not only compares states of affairs to desires (to see if the state of affairs would fulfill or thwart those desires), it looks at the desires themselves to determine if people generally have reason to inhibit or promote those desires."

It is generally uncontroversial in moral theory that "ought" implies "can."
So far as you can do something, so far as there is some choice, the question of "ought" can pertain.

And desires are not immutable. They can be influenced (the examples are so obvious and numerous I figure I don't have to even lay out all the examples). Hence it's possible to encourage one desire over another. And this possibility naturally brings with it "ought." The question can be asked "Ought one have X desire or not?" (Or "Ought X desire be encouraged, or discouraged").

We've seen that a DESIRE is necessary to make sense of the ought in previous "oughts" (hypothetical).
Only in the presence of, and relation to, a DESIRE do reasons-for-actions occur. (If there existed no desires...there would exist no reasons to do anything). If it is the case that we can't make sense of "ought" without a desire in other areas...I see no
reason why this necessary connection would vanish when asking another "ought" question - any ought question.

So in asking "ought I have X desire" I am asking "do I have reasons to hold or discourage having this desire?" Since desires provide the reasons for actions we must appeal to other desires: Does X desire fulfill other desires?
If it does, then it's a desire you ought to have. Your other desires provide REASONS for holding desire X.

How does this universalize beyond mere personal concerns, in the way morality is supposed to universalize? Again, that's where the universalizing nature of reason comes in.

The problem is that, once OTHER desires are introduced into the equation - when you interact with the desires of other people - universalizing selfish desires fails. It becomes virtually self-refuting.

Morality pertains when we must answer how to treat other beings with desires.

Say say you are asking "Ought I steal?" That is asking for reasons-for-actions (reasons to steal). You could say that the desire to steal my stuff is particularly strong. Doesn't that mean you "ought" to steal my stuff?
Well, if you say "Because I desire to steal your stuff, I ought to steal your stuff" that
automatically condones me stealing your stuff for the same reason. You've endorsed that reasoning principle: the presence of a desire to steal is reason to steal.

But, actually, you WOULDN'T condone my stealing your stuff. Even if I DESIRE to steal your stuff, you don't want me to steal it. You DESIRE to keep your own stuff and not have it stolen, so you don't endorse the principle you thought you would - at least not without the consequences of having your own desires thwarted by me. So it's self-defeating: the principle does not hold, because your own desire to keep your stuff refutes it and makes nonsense of the principle.

You are asking "ought I have the desire to steal," and you are failing to produce a GOOD REASON to steal, because the you would not actually endorse the universalization of that reasoning (and the very act of reasoning
that you ought to steal because you desire to do so DOES by necessity have to apply universally, if you are reasoning soundly).

So you have REASONS to discourage the desire to steal, both in yourself and in your neighbour, because the desire to steal has the tendency to thwart desires - yours and your neighbours. Instead it could be replaced by a desire - e.g. the desire to respect one another's property - that does not have the tendency of thwarting desires when universalized. In fact, cooperative/respectful desires have the tendency of FULFILLING more, other desires. Hence you have REASONS to promote the desire for cooperation/respect and REASONS to discourage the desire to steal.

To put things as clearly as I can manage:

There is no fundamental difference in making sense of "ought" questions: all ought questions appeal to desires (and states of affairs that would fulfill those desires) to answer whether one "ought" to do something.

Moral "oughts" are no different in this underlying logic - they are of the same fundamental nature as "hypothetical imperatives"
insofar as they must appeal to desires for justification. The only difference is in their categorization. Generally: moral "desires" are the category of desires we have reasons to promote universally - as opposed to those desires, for instance my desire to eat chilli-dogs, which are hypothetical/practical oughts that we do not have reasons to promote universally.

So the answer to any "ought" question is "does it fulfill the desire in question?"

If you asked: "Ought I use X saw to cut you up?" I'd say: "The answer depends on the desire in question?" Are you looking for the answer relative to a practical/hypothetical "ought" question, or a moral ought question?

If the desire in question was your personal, selfish desire to cut someone up with a saw, the answer would be "yes": if it were true that X saw were "such as to fulfill the desire in question" then it's the case "you ought to select saw X for the job."

But if the desire in question had to do with a desire that falls into the moral category: "Would it be moral to cut you up with this saw?" Or "Do we have reasons to promote the desire for cutting other people up with saws?"
Then the answer would be "No. It would not be moral to do so. We have reasons to discourage that desire, not promote it."

Hence cutting up someone with a saw would not fulfill the desire-to-act-morally. It is immoral (which equates to: a desire that has the tendency of thwarting desires, esp when universalized, hence we have reasons to discourage such desires).

Whew...

That was all typed pretty fast. My apologies if I haven't been clear somewhere. I look forward to any criticisms should they be forthcoming.

Cheers,

Prof.

Antiplastic

I don’t understand what’s “compelling” about it. As I said, I’m not aware of a single philosopher, ancient or modern, who has ever denied anything either of us have said about practical reasoning. It’s really just common pre-theoretical concepts and vocabulary.

If by “they jettison the link of desires to oughts” you mean they try to talk about moral truths without any reference to real human hopes and human aspirations, then of course this is doomed to fail. However it’s important not to beg the question against antirealism by pounding the table and insisting, “but there must be a ground for moral claims!”

But if by “they jettison the link of desires to oughts” you mean they try to provide reasons to act morally irrespective of a given agent’s subjective desire set, this just is the problem of moral objectivity, going back to the Parable of the Ring of Gyges. Since (as I maintain) you are equivocal on this issue, this sometimes seems like something you claim to have succeeded in doing, to the extent you seem to claim a reason to act in such a way as to thwart most or all of one’s own desires.

So could you clear this up? Does it or does it not make sense to say that some agent A could have a reason – a practical, ordinary, noncontroversial hypothetical imperative -- to act against the maximization of his own subjective desire set?

(If it helps to alleviate the feeling of shadowboxing, I can give you a target. My own answer is that it is contradictory on its face to say that someone has a rational obligation – an obligation in practical reason – to act against his own happiness. But I think that moral discourse is a separate language game which does not require the truth of any particular hypothetical imperative to function, and in fact does not require any sort of “grounding” at all.)

To reiterate, you can’t just beg the question by assuming, against the antirealists, that moral oughts can be “made sense of” or “grounded” through some metaphysical inquiry.

The logical gap is relatively straightforward: moral practice routinely, as a commonplace, puts demands on our behavior which run contrary to our subjective desire sets. Either the practice is wrong (or illusory), or the philosophical justification in terms of a reduction to hypothetical imperatives is wrong.

Sorry, but this is still where the equivocation comes in. You might not be able to justify to other people why you’re doing what you do, but it doesn’t follow that your behavior is irrational, or that you have any false beliefs about the universe. Because, on your own terms, it is perfectly true and valid to say that a person ought to <paradigm example of immoral act> when it fulfills his own desires. Per your own definition, he is acting reasonably and rationally if he acts immorally.

Ought he or oughtn’t he? You get a contradiction because (as I maintain) you are equivocating between hypothetical and categorical claims.

Now, you have hit on an important point in universalizability that needs to be emphasized. I think that moral justification is a different language game from practical justification precisely because the former requires universalizability where the latter doesn’t. The fact that I don’t like someone’s behavior counts against whether I find it morally justified, but by definition it does not count against whether I find it practically justified. Therefore, the two language games are not the same.

Once again, just because something is “necessary” for some project to succeed does not mean that it exists.

Yes. Your other desires. Not anyone else’s.

See? Only two paragraphs ago you were talking about one’s own desires, but now you’re talking about other people’s desires. I continue to insist you’re equivocating.

But by definition you agree that the presence of a desire to steal is a necessary and sufficient condition for there to be a (defeasible) reason to steal!

I don’t want you to steal my stuff. But by definition, I cannot convict you of an error in practical reasoning if you do.

Correction: I have reasons to discourage everyone else from stealing.

Sorry, this is a bit incoherent. “The only difference between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives is that the latter are categorical”?

Again, “moral oughts give the same answers as practical oughts, except they don’t”? The answer is equivocal, because the terms are equivocal.

Joan of Bark

Hey Elfman, stop evading the essential point ...

God does not just allow suffering, He created it!

God created diseases and natural disasters, therefore He is a monster. You can't just keep pretending that all the bad things that happen to human beings are the result of free will.

Elfman

I am surprised that you think suffering is morally wrong. What do you base this on? Is suffering wrong because it violates some absolute moral law that is out there? (Which would necessitate asking where such a law comes from) Or is it just wrong because you dont like it? (Which would make it an opinion based on some personal construct such as "reason.")

Elfman

As a second point, I realized that I did not answer your question, so I will endeavor to, though I have no illusion that you will really "get it":
The general view is that the fall of man (adam's rebellion) caused God to punish all mankind. (Which on the surface seems unfair in itself, but that is a different point to be dealt with seperately) Part of that punishment was God withdrawing himself, in part, from His creation. He no longer walks in the garden. Also, in response to Adam's rebellion, the ground was cursed and now man would have to toil to make things grow, etc... All these things were a response to man's rebellion, not an arbitrary act of God wishing to hurt people for His own sake.
Now I do not know how much of natural evil is caused directly by the curse, or how much of it was the natural byproduct of God's withdrawing, or how much of it might just be part of a larger plan. But I think that all probably play a part. As God is the sustainer of His creation, as he withdraws, things start to fall apart. So in essence, some natural evil (floods, famine, etc...) are caused merely by the fact that God is not working to sustain His creation as closely as He may have once done, but instead lets it run its own course - which, like anything else apart from God, tends to not work out so well. Now I think there is evidence, scientifically, to catastrophic global events going back a long way (such as what killed the dinosaurs), so some of these "natural evils" may have been part of a bigger plan. I put "evils" in quotes because I disagree with the tenant that all suffering is "evil." Jesus suffered on the cross to pay for my sins, that was a beautiful and necessary thing to do, and it was totally part of God's plan. ANd yet I maintain that those who tortured and killed Jesus, unjustly, are responsible for their actions. (Side note: they may not be held responsible for their actions as Jesus prayed they would be forgiven.)
So, is suffering always "evil". No. So then I am not disturbed that God uses it in His plan, or causes it in the punishment of the wicked. I don't see any reason that God must cover the earth with pillows so that no one will ever skin a knee in order for Him to be a good God....especially in light of man's rebellion. This view is founded on some "omni-love" God that isn't biblical. In order for God to be just, he must punish the wicked. That, by its nature, involves suffering.
If God doesn't exist than suffering is just put into the fatalistic "oh well, guess bad things just happen" category because it has no meaning. There can be little learned from it. Understood in context, a Christian can say "yeah it sucks because the world is broken and not as it ought to be, but better days are coming!" One view provides hope, the other despair.

connick

So you despair at the notion that bad things simply happen?

Funny, I feel the opposite way. The notion that God created us, now considers us broken and wants us to worship him until he scoops us up in the end days seems fatalistic and sad to me. Accepting the notion that bad things are caused by natural means means that we can use natural means to prevent or reverse bad things, which I find uplifting and encouraging.

Oh, and please do respond to my previous post, #103.:wave:

Hedshaker

Be under no illusion, we "get it" all right :huh:

Adam and Eve (the latter created from a spare rib), a magic tree, a talking snake, a curse on the whole of mankind for disobeying a vengeful god..... sounds like another creation myth (one among many) to me. Yet here we are in 21st century and some people still think it's real. That bit we don't get........

A Unknown poster somewhere in net land.......

Prof

I like this one - a nugget from a poster (on this forum?) that I saved long ago.
A lot of Christians "trust in God's plan." Yet looking at God's track record of planning, one hardly can have trust in anything The Big Guy attempts to do:


"Let's review God's track record. He creates a host of angels, and 1/3 of them rebel, including the best one of the lot. Then he makes the earth and populates it with people (well, two anyway), and calls it "good", but the next thing you know they rebel. So he tries to fix that with his Godly wisdom, but it gets to the point where he says he repents for having ever made those pesky humans, and thus drowns the lot of them, save Noah and his family that he thinks are righteous (Noah's righteousness was, of course, called into question not long after the flood). Later he selects a Chosen People, and gives them a Law, but they continuously rebel, messing up several Godly attempts he makes to set them right. So then he has to go to Plan B, er, Plan C, or is it D, E, F.....??? A new way of choosing people and setting up a Church, the body of Christ. What happens? He gets thousands of different sects, each interpreting his "plan" differently, and about half of them thinking the other half are doomed to Hell.



You think God knows what he's doing? Nothing he's recorded to have done has worked out "right" (like he planned), unless you think he planned for everything to get all screwed up over and over again, and for the majority of his human creations to end up in Hell. And with this track record you think God's promised solution is gonna work out for us, or for him, the way he's "planned" it?"



Prof.

Elfman

Prof (and others):
I dont really agree entirely with this, but as I am still working things out in my head, I would be interested in your responses to this from William Lane Craig's website...he is answering a letter from someone working on the issue....the guys starts by mentioning that he thinks the idea of morality should be grounded in God's nature, yet he has been challenged that this merely brings up the question as to why God's nature is good. So he comes up with this:

"
(1) God is, by definition, a maximally great being.
(2) This entails His being metaphysically necessary and morally perfect.
(3) Therefore, by (2), God exists in all possible worlds.
(4) But, if moral values are objective, moral perfection represents (or
at least tends towards) a unique, maximal set of moral values.
(5) So, by (1), (3) & (4), it follows that God has the same moral
character in every possible world.
(6) Therefore God’s nature is good neither because of the way He
happens to be nor because of His fitness with reference to an external
standard of goodness.
—which answers the reformulated dilemma.

James



Dr. Craig responds:

I think your intuitions are right on target, James! The argument you give just needs some adjustment.

When the atheist says, “Is God’s nature good because of the way God happens to be, or is it good because it matches up to some external standard of goodness?”, the second horn of the dilemma represents nothing new—it’s the same as the second horn in the original dilemma, namely, that God approves something because it’s good, and we’ve already rejected that. So the question is whether we’re stuck on the first horn of the dilemma. Well, if by “happens to be” the atheist means that God’s moral character is a contingent property of God, that is to say, a property God could have lacked, then the obvious answer is, “No.” God’s moral character is essential to Him; that’s why we said it was part of His nature. To say that some property is essential to God is to say that there is no possible world in which God could have existed and lacked that property. God didn’t just happen by accident to be loving, kind, just, and so forth. He is that way essentially.

You needn’t worry about “what it means to say this, since unless we have a concept of the Good outside of God, this doesn’t seem to amount to much.” For this is to confuse moral ontology with moral semantics. Our concern is with moral ontology, that is to say, the foundation in reality of moral values. Our concern is not with moral semantics, that is to say, the meaning of moral terms. The theist is quite ready to say that we have a clear understanding of moral vocabulary like “good,” “evil,” right,” and so on, without reference to God. Thus, it is informative to learn that “God is essentially good.” Too often opponents of the moral argument launch misguided attacks upon it by confusing moral ontology with either moral semantics or, even more often, moral epistemology (how we come to know the Good).

If it be asked why God is the paradigm and standard of moral goodness, then I think premise (1) of your argument gives the answer: God is the greatest conceivable being, and it is greater to be the paradigm of goodness than to conform to it. Your premise (2) is also true, which is why God can serve as the foundation of necessary moral truths, i.e., moral truths which hold in every possible world. I’m not sure what you mean by premise (4); but I think it’s dispensable. All you need to say is that moral values (or at least many of them) are not contingent, but hold in every possible world. Then God will ground these values in every possible world. That seems to me to settle the issue. "


Thanks