In his novel Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach argues that by staying in this world, we consent to everything that happens to us, no matter how horrible.
Although expanded to include everything in life, it is a similar argument to the one that, by staying within the territory of a nation, you consent to its government and everything that government does.
Some of the same back-and-forth from that thread would work very well here. When I argued against the claim of consent to government by pointing out there is no better place to go, or that it's quite expensive to move to another nation or might not be legally or physically possible, or that consent doesn't work that way with anything else, the reply was, essentially, "That's your problem."
The reply Bach might make to objections to his idea of consent is the same. If you haven't stepped in front of a fast-moving freight train or eaten a bullet, you have chosen to be here. You know what can happen in this world, you've read the news about cancer, hurricanes, rape, genocide, and all of the other evils that can befall people here, and you've chosen to stay and take those risks. Therefore, you have consented to whatever happens to you.
There is no whining in Mr. Bach's world.
Well, at least, not justified whining. To put his argument in context, his idea of consent is the back edge of a double-edged sword. The front edge is absolute freedom: You are free to do anything you like, anything at all. The back edge is, by staying in this world, you consent to anything that is done to you, anything at all.
This may seem to be a pretty grim philosophy. To be fair to Bach, he assumes human nature is basically good and that by embracing this radical freedom we would create a better world. That doesn't change his argument about consent, though.
24 comments:
There's plenty of whining -- just no sympathy. :)
Advocacy of suicide has been compelling to many people who reject the world, philosophically speaking. I mean especially those who assert that there is a kind of fallacy involved in reading morality out of nature. This has been very common since the Enlightenment, but it turns on the idea that somehow you can reason a priori about moral issues without invoking nature. But the brain that interprets reason is itself a product of the world, i.e., of nature. Reasoning cannot be divorced from nature, and if it leads us into conflict with nature it would seem to be going wrong (as reason sometimes does). If it leads us to suicide, it would seem to have gone extremely wrong.
I am thinking about this today because of a talk I attended by an ecofeminist philosopher on foodways. She was taking the (somewhat rare) position among that wing of philosophy that Veganism wasn't the only possible moral answer. One reason was that every kind of animal not only requires food, but ultimately is food for other animals. It's a little weird to reason to moral principles that require us to divorce ourselves from a universal experience of that sort. How can it be wrong to eat when we are born into a world in which every animal eats and we ourselves will be eaten in turn? It's out of order with nature -- an objection obvious to "eco"-feminists, but not to Kantian ones.
They're only looking at one slice of the picture. The other side to "not dying" is "not killing". So if people refuse to kill Opinion A believers, they are consenting to Opinion A. The idea that "dying" is a good thing but "killing" is a bad thing, is the kind of Leftist zombie slime that only evil can claim makes for a better world.
No sympathy at all! :)
Bach doesn't advocate suicide. He just points out we are all free to leave any time.
I mean especially those who assert that there is a kind of fallacy involved in reading morality out of nature.
I'm not sure what you mean by "reading morality out". Is it, declaring there is no morality in nature, or that we read the book of nature to understand morality?
it turns on the idea that somehow you can reason a priori about moral issues without invoking nature. But the brain that interprets reason is itself a product of the world
I wonder if they consider the mind (as opposed to the brain) separate from nature, maybe some kind of dualism.
She was taking the (somewhat rare) position among that wing of philosophy that Veganism wasn't the only possible moral answer. One reason was that every kind of animal not only requires food, but ultimately is food for other animals.
This seems quite reasonable. It seems strange to me that it is a rare position, but the academy seems increasingly crazy to me.
The order in which people advocate things, determines the hidden agenda or priority. The propaganda line between the official printed lines.
For example, Leftist propaganda media often quoted daily casualties in Iraq first in their reports of "stuff", and then ended every other article about every other topic, with the daily casualties in Iraq as well. It was intentionally done in 2004 and on down.
Of course, if you pressed them on it, they would say they were just reporting all the news that is fit to print.
I'm not sure what you mean by "reading morality out". Is it, declaring there is no morality in nature, or that we read the book of nature to understand morality?
Sorry for being unclear. I mean that they object to the moral tradition of the ancients, such that we reason about morality from the world and the apparent nature of things. Hume's objection here is 'you can't get an ought from an is.'
It turns out, if you can get an 'ought' at all, it can only be from what is. If you aren't reasoning from what else is, you are still reasoning using something that is. You have no alternative but to get your oughts from what is.
This remains a highly unpopular position, especially among those influenced by Modernism (which, I remind you, is a term that philosophers use chiefly to refer to ideas that are rooted in 18th century thought -- but that includes many of our own ideas as Americans, or as Kantians, or as those descended from Hegel to include Marxists, feminists, and all 'critical studies' fields).
Aha. I always took Hume to mean you can't get ought just from is. Or, just because it is doesn't mean it ought to be. So, I thought Kierkegaard's leap of faith to morality was a good answer.
However, it's highly likely I don't really understand any of this very well.
And, let me guess: Aristotle argues from nature to ethics?
From nature to everything. The word we call "physics" is from the ancient Greek word for "nature." For Aristotle, nature explains motion. Thus it explains physics. But it also explains ethics, and politics. It also explains metaphysics, the 'things after nature,' or perhaps, 'the things beyond nature.'
So Hume's idea was really revolutionary, then. And that's a good point that our minds and reason are things that exist.
I'm about a third of the way through "Aristotle for Everybody" and it seems the next third of the book is about this sort of thing. I look forward to reading it.
Yes, Hume was a revolutionary thinker. Kant's metaphysical model, from the Critique of Pure Reason, is really in response to Hume's criticisms of human understanding. Hume was also at the forefront of the Enlightenment's liberation of itself from religion.
... liberation of itself from religion.
Or enslavement to nihilism. Whichever.
There's a philosophical argument I've been thinking about that's related to this topic, but now I need to reconsider.
I'll put it here later -- suddenly have to run.
Here it goes. I'm writing quickly, so I'm just asserting, but I'm well aware there may be a hundred hidden flaws here.
I've noticed that SJW types will discount religious morality because it is not based in reason and science, but then impose their own moral values as if they are perfectly scientific and rational.
However, you cannot base morality on science or reason. They are only methods. You have to begin with something prior to science and reason and then you can use them to work from there. So, the SJWs' own values are no more based in science and reason than the religious values they claim we should keep to ourselves.
They try to hide this by talking about justice instead of using the language of morality, but that's silly. Justice is nothing but morality.
A good example of this is an argument I've run into several times. I've known Christian women who will say they are personally pro-life, but you cannot (or should not) legislate morality, so when it comes to the law, they are pro-choice. Well, that's all legislation is: legally enforced morality. Laws against murder, theft, rape, kidnapping, etc., are all morality legislated.
I'm interested in any thoughts you have on that. Gotta run again.
Morality involves value judgments, and the relative importance of various values can never be settled by "science".
I consider myself a Christian woman (not a devout one, but one who believes in God and personally believes that abortion takes a human life). I don't say "you can't legislate morality" - that's just dumb. Moral judgments underpin all law. Anyone who says that hasn't paid their attention bill :p
What keeps me - politically - in the so-called pro-choice camp is that very tiny difference between contraception (preventing an egg and sperm from joining in the first place, keeping a fertilized egg from implanting (IUDs), killing off sperm (spermicide)) and abortion of a very young fetus (morning after pill, 1st trimester abortion) that looks NOTHING like a human being yet.
From an intellectual standpoint, the Catholic teaching on this is the ONLY one that is consistent. And yet the vast majority of Catholics don't live by it. I know firsthand what an unplanned pregnancy can do to a woman's life (and a man's, but far less often and with far less certainty). In my own life, I made a choice that I would make again today.
That doesn't make that choice easier or less costly. It worked out for me. It doesn't work out for a great many women, and I'm not willing to gloss over that fact.
It is my opinion that a great many men are more than a bit cavalier about this whole "forcing women to go through with pregnancy" bit. Be honest here - if you criminalize abortion (even in the first trimester), that's what you're supporting. By and large, I don't see men advocating that they be held to a strict, no mistakes policy wrt to fathering children. Jeez - they complain about having to pay child support to children fathered when they were married!
I don't even know where to start with that mind set. FWIW, not talking about anyone in the Hall, but this viewpoint is distressingly common. "I'm not getting the benefits (sex) any more, so why should I support my own offspring".
Wow. Just wow.
So while I believe that abortion is both a sin and a wrongful act, I don't necessarily believe that in a nation that is largely non-religious and even atheist, "sin" alone should determine which acts are criminal and which are not.
I'm not a Catholic. I'm not willing to live in a country where my government comes into my bedroom and tells a married couple they can't use birth control. I didn't want 15 children: I wanted 3 or 4. My husband wanted 2. He won, because I didn't think it was fair to ask him to support 2 children he didn't want.
It makes no never-mind to me whether the govt intruding into my private affairs is the state I live in, or the federal government. And given what I believe is the all-too-thin line between early, 1st trimester abortions and many forms of birth control... well, let's just say I believe this isn't as simple as some people believe it is.
I'm tired, so this isn't a bullet proof argument. But it's offered for whatever it may be worth in the way of explanation. People of good faith can disagree without being monsters or idiots.
Cass, thank you for your thoughts on this. I only brought up abortion because that specific argument, "You can't / shouldn't legislate morality," is one I've heard recently in my social circles, so it was on my mind.
One quick note, more tomorrow probably.
So while I believe that abortion is both a sin and a wrongful act, I don't necessarily believe that in a nation that is largely non-religious and even atheist, "sin" alone should determine which acts are criminal and which are not.
And yet, so many other sins have been. Theft, for example, is a sin that we have criminalized. Granted we live in a largely non-religious nation, should we decriminalize it?
No, the word "alone" isn't going to save your argument. Criminal law is nothing but legislated morality, whether that morality is expressed as "sin," "justice," "rights," or plain old "fairness;" it's all just morality applied to real life. Atheists and non-religious folks can argue for their morals to be enacted into law, whatever they call it, just the same as anyone else. However, the fact that they aren't getting their moral values from religion does not make them any better in any way. An atheist arguing for justice is no different from a Catholic arguing against sin.
My own pro-life position is not particularly religious. I think we have a new human being at conception, and that new human being is one of us. He or she was created with all the same rights that you or I have. So, I'm advocating that the law should protect life, liberty, and property, not punish sin.
That said, I agree that we can disagree in good faith. This is a really hard issue, in part because the consequences are very serious, but in part because I don't think anyone who's had real life experiences with the issue (like both of us have) can help but have strong emotions about it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you as a person and as an intellect, and I have no doubt you have considered your position well and argue in good faith. Please do not take anything I post on this topic as implying anything else.
I think you need to wrestle with Kant's arguments before you dispose of reason as a source of morality. Kant thinks it can be (indeed, Kant thinks that applied reason -- what he calls 'practical reason' -- is how we do most morality right). He argues in the Groundwork that you can know something is wrong simply because it creates logical contradictions if universalized as a principle. On a version of your mother's admonition to think about what the world would be like if everybody did that, he says that if a principle leads to contradictions if universalized it is obviously immoral.
It's a very complex argument that I can't give fairly here. Since you're already reading Aristotle, finish that first. We'll get to Kant.
As for the argument you're starting with Cass, you might both wish to read The Enforcement of Morals by Lord Patrick Devlin. He was a British Law Lord in the 20th century, a time when Britain was abandoning the legal enforcement of moral laws in the wake of accepting freedom of conscience. Thus, they accepted that people could disagree on religious concerns. Thus, they couldn't mandate views by law just because the Church of England said it was sinful.
What are the consequences of that?, Devlin wondered. And then, having worked some of them out, he began to ask: Is there anything besides religion that we can introduce as a substitute, so that we can continue to ground moral laws?
His answers are highly unpopular with liberal/progressives, especially those devoted to expanding the range of legal sexual options. But I find him a very thoughtful writer, and a principled one.
Theft harms everyone, not just God and not just religious people.
Things get outlawed all the time simply because they're harmful, or because they allow one person to infringe the rights of another. So I stand by my "just sin" not being enough.
By definition, a sin is a violation of divine (God-given) law. So in a pluralistic nation populated by people of *different* religions (and even people of the same religion who don't agree on what does and does not violate God's laws), I think it makes no sense to make "sin" the foundation of criminality.
It's hard to find a Christian church that doesn't consider porn sinful. Should we criminalize porn on that basis? Should we outlaw coveting your neighbor's house, wife, or domesticated animals (his ass? :p) How about failing to honor your parents? How about taking the Lord's name in vain (I'd be locked away for life).
I don't argue those things are right either, but I don't think they should be criminalized.
Let's face it, folks, so far, God has not come down and laid all of this out in a definitive fashion. Clerics and philosophers have been arguing the finer points of sin for centuries. The "religion", so to speak, isn't "settled" in any sense that the majority of Americans would agree with.
Cass already knows what I think about abortion, after many discussions, but for the record there is one argument that doesn't strike me as important: "...a very young fetus (morning after pill, 1st trimester abortion) that looks NOTHING like a human being yet."
That it does or doesn't look like a human being doesn't change the fact that it plainly is a human being. It's a living being. It has a genetic code. That code is human. It is taking matter from the world, including that shared by its mother, and putting into an order we have no other way of describing except to say that it is a human order.
Presumably it doesn't look like anything when it's small enough that we can't see it, or when it is only a few cells. But they are human cells, and it is a human life, from the moment that it is performing the activity of taking matter from the world and putting it into a human order.
Things get outlawed all the time simply because they're harmful, or because they allow one person to infringe the rights of another. So I stand by my "just sin" not being enough.
What's wrong with being harmful, or infringing another's rights? Are you suggesting that it's immoral to hurt people or infringe their rights? If so, then it's not simply because they're harmful, but because they are harmful and we think harming others is morally wrong. And, again, an atheist's morality is no more inherently neutral or universal than a rabbi's.
By definition, a sin is a violation of divine (God-given) law. So in a pluralistic nation populated by people of *different* religions (and even people of the same religion who don't agree on what does and does not violate God's laws), I think it makes no sense to make "sin" the foundation of criminality.
I never said we should make it the foundation. I said it's no different than other subjective concepts like justice or individual rights when advocating for laws. We all have different ideas of what is moral, and whether your idea is God's law, justice, fairness, rights, or whatever, you want morality to be legislated.
As has been pointed out to me repeatedly here, we are apparently all in this big social compact thingie, and sometimes we don't like the decisions others force on us, but that's life in the USA. Or so I've been told. So, if the anti-sin crowd gets the votes and passes the law, and it's constitutional, then it's OK, right? Just like when the SJWs pass some silly law based on social justice.
One of my main points back in the "consent of the governed" thread, which got lost in the disagreements over consent, was that, since we don't all agree, we should push each other around as little as we can while maintaining a reasonable society. So if you're asking me what moral principle I think society should be organized around, it wouldn't be sin, it would be that principle of minimum force necessary.
Until everyone comes to their senses and recognizes the inherent superiority of my argument, however, we're all free to believe what we want and advocate for laws we consider right and proper (i.e., moral), whatever that happens to mean for each individual.
Heh. Now there's a classic example of self-refutation! If everyone recognized the inherent superiority or my argument, they would understand that we're all free to believe what we want and advocate for laws we want. They just wouldn't advocate for very many.
This is why I am neither a professional philosopher nor a professional comedian.
I think you need to wrestle with Kant's arguments before you dispose of reason as a source of morality.
Well, it's quite possible that in Philosopherese I'm not actually saying what I think I'm saying, or that what I'm saying is so much in error that it's silly.
That said, I think once you have a starting point, reason is very, very useful, but reason cannot give you a starting point. I think Kant already had to care a great deal about morality to do his work on it, so there was something that preceded his use of reason, something that he started with that was not arrived at through reason.
I also think you have to already have certain underlying values in order to choose reason as your method.
There is something nonrational that is the starting point. There are one or more underlying assumptions about what is valuable and what is good or right before you even begin reasoning toward morality.
Or, it's late and I'm getting delirious. It's probably Zika.
Well, have a beer. It's not quite Lent yet.
More simply, what I'm trying to say to Cass is, first, all law is morality. Then, there are a limited number of sources for morality, and none of them are more applicable in a pluralistic society than the rest.
To the question, why do you think X is moral/immoral, you can say:
My religion says so.
My philosophy says so. (I think this is where atheists often are.)
Authority X says so.
or
I say so.
Cass, you've said "God says so" isn't a good basis for law in a pluralistic nation, but "Kant says so" is no better. Nor is "My mother / the president / Groucho Marx says so" or "I say so."
So I don't see why people shouldn't advocate for laws based on their religious beliefs. Everyone else does the equivalent, arguing for laws based on their philosophy, authority, or pure self-interest, none of which are better than religion.
Grim, I've never belonged to a church that did lent. (Celebrated lent? That doesn't sound right ...) In fact, I haven't officially belonged to any church for a couple of decades.
I'm thinking about observing it this year with some friends who do, though, and a beer sure does sound good right now. It's been a long 48 hours.
I really shouldn't post when I'm that tired. I thought I was being a bit sarcastic and funny, but probably came off as just being an ass.
My apologies if that's the case.
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