Alexander Pruss's Blog

Intuitions on lying and deception

2008-08-21T10:41:00.003-05:00

My intuition that lying is significantly different from some other forms of deception is driven by an intuition I have about speech being special vis-à-vis the virtue of honesty.

Consider: "She told us she is going to go to Cracow, and she is an utterly honest person, so even though we are her enemies, we can rely on her going to some city named Cracow at least at some point in the future." This seems a reasonable thing to say.

But consider: "Her footprints at this intersection lead to Cracow. She is an utterly honest person, so she must be going to Cracow." That is surely mistaken reasoning. It is not a sign of dishonesty that one lays a false trail, unless one has promised (implicitly or explicitly) not to do so.

The tie with promises seems significant to me. An honest person only makes promises that she intends to keep.

Now, let us suppose that George prefaces every assertion with: "I promise that I will now only say something sincere." That would be dreadfully annoying (there are characters in fiction who do this kind of thing). Part of the reason for the annoyance is that it is quite unnecessary. The commitment to speak only sincerely is already there in the assertion that follows the preface.

As our Savior told us, our yeas should be yeas, and our nays, nays. Nothing more is needed, because our yeas and nays already include a commitment to speak sincerely. This commitment is part and parcel of making an assertion rather than musing out-loud, asking a question, making a promise, quoting a line of poetry, etc. Indeed, much or even all of what distinguishes an assertion from other speech acts is precisely this commitment to speak only the truth. (Actors on stage do not make assertions or promises.)

Granted, sometimes we emphatically do promise to speak the truth in some matter. I think that is not a sign that we ordinarily have no such commitment. Rather, the promise is a moral-gravity booster, in the way in which making an oath is a legal-gravity booster (if one speaks falsely under oath, one commits perjury, instead of merely hampering an investigation, etc.) One could similarly boost the moral gravity of ordinary promises by promising to keep the promise. To boost the moral gravity of an obligation is simply to bring it about that it would be a greater offense to go against the obligation.

If I am right that asserting p is normatively equivalent to promising to say only the truth or maybe to say only something one believes and then saying a sentence that expresses p, and if I am right that an honest person does not make promises she does not intend to keep, then an honest person does not lie. But various non-linguistic kinds of deceit involve no commitment, explicit or implicit, for the deceiver to be breaking, and hence under some circumstances will be compatible with honesty.

Deception and lying

2008-08-20T07:07:00.001-05:00

There is good reason to think lying is always wrong. Lying is wrong on Kantian grounds: it treats the other person as a tool to one's ends rather than as an autonomous rational being, and the practice of lying would undercut itself if universalized. Lying is wrong on natural law grounds: it is clearly a perversion of the nature of assertoric speech, using speech for the opposite of its natural end of communicating truth. Lying is malevolent, except perhaps in outré cases: in lying, we act to bring it about that the other has a false belief, and it is surely intrinsically bad to have a false belief. Lying is wrong on personalist grounds: in making an assertion one solicits the other's trust, but in deliberately speaking falsely, one betrays that trust in the act of soliciting it. And lying is wrong on theological grounds: God is truth, and the Book of Revelation lists liars among the damned.

On the other hand, even those who are willing to agree that lying is always wrong are unlikely to think there is anything wrong with sticking one's hat out on a stick so that one's enemy might shoot at it while one sneaks away. It is hard enough to protect the innocent against unjust aggressors without lying (and, alas, sometimes impossible). But to do so without any deceit is nigh impossible.

But some people—even very smart people—do in fact consider lying and deceit to be the same thing. After all, in both cases, it seems, one is trying to do the same thing, namely to induce a false belief, and if so, then the malevolence argument would make deceit be wrong for one of the reasons that lying is.

I once found this very puzzling. And then a colleague gave me the beginning of an answer. In cases of deceit, one is trying to get the other to do something, rather than trying to get the other to believe something. I think this story can be filled out in a way that makes for a neat distinction between deceit and all but perhaps outr´ cases of lying (more on those later). On the face of it, one might argue that if I stick out my hat, my intention is to bring it about that

my enemy will think I am under the hat, and will shoot, and the commotion will cover my escape.

It seems that the enemy's belief that I am under the hat is essential to the success of the plan.

But this argument is mistaken. What is essential is that the enemy should take herself to have evidence that I am under the hat. She does not have to believe that I am under the hat to shoot. She only needs to take herself to have more evidence for my being there than for my being in any other particular place. That is all that is needed to rationally justify her shooting under the hat. And her belief that she has this evidence is in fact a true belief—she indeed does have such evidence. Now, an epistemically less cautious enemy may actually form the belief that I am under the hat. But here I can apply double effect. She forms the false belief on the basis of the evidence. I intend her to have the evidence and to shoot. The evidence is sufficient to lead to her shooting. I do not have to intend her to form that false belief. I suppose things go better for me if she does, but I need only intend that

my enemy will take herself to have more evidence for me to be under the hat than anywhere else, and will shoot, and the commotion will cover my escape.

(A lot of these ideas developed in conversation with the aforementioned colleague. In fact it may be that there is very little that is mine here.)

The same can be said when I lay a false trail at a cross-roads when I am pursued by the enemy. I only intend what is needed for the accomplishment of my plan. Belief that I've taken road A, when I've taken road B, is not needed. All that's needed is that my enemy have strong evidence that I've taken road A, since having strong evidence that I've taken road A is sufficient to justify her following road A. There is no evil in her having such strong evidence. The evidence consists, after all, of a truth—the truth that there are footprints leading A-ward.

The principle of double effect can justify some cases of deception—I may foresee the other's forming a false belief, but I don't intend that belief formation, either as an end or as a means. And, typically, I don't even foresee that belief formation—I only foresee the possibility of it, since I do not know how epistemically cautious the other person will be. All that I intend is for the other person to have evidence for a false belief, and to act on that evidence.

Of course, in some cases of deceit, one is positively intending that the other have a false belief. For instance, a student plagiarist might desire not merely that her parents have evidence of her innocence, but that her parents positively believe her innocent. If she then manufactures evidence for her innocence with the intention that her parents believe her innocent, the above will be no excuse.

If this story is right, and if it is not to justify well-intentioned lies every bit as much as deceits, then there must be a crucial difference between how assertions function and how evidence functions. Assertions cannot simply be intended as yet another piece of evidence. For if they are, then in affirming a falsehood, we are not trying to induce any false belief in the other, but we are simply manufacturing misleading evidence. And, indeed, I do think assertions directly justify beliefs, in ways that are not merely evidential.

We can now go back to the reasons for believing lying to be wrong, and see if they apply to cases of deceit where one is not intending false belief but only misleading evidence. The Kantian "using" argument may not work (I used to think it would work, but I am not so clear on that). Maybe one is not circumventing the other's rationality, but only ensuring that the other act on unclear evidence. Nor is it clear that the practice of generating misleading evidence is not universalizable. Even if everybody who has good reason to deceive generates misleading evidence, there will be enough cases where non-misleading evidence is generated unconsciously that the evidence will still have some weight. Making footprints or putting a hat on a stick are not actions that have a natural end that is being circumvented here in the way in which lying circumvents the natural end of assertion. So the natural law argument against lying fails to show deception to be wrong. If the double effect considerations above are correct, the malevolence argument fails. The personalist argument also fails, because when we take something as evidence, rather than as testimony, trust in another person need not be involved. I do not trust persons to leave footprints leading to them—I have no right to feel betrayed if they leave footprints pointing in other directions. God is truth, but the cases of deceit that I have defended are not directly opposed to truth, since they do not involve an attempt to cause a false belief.

Final comment: Twice I mentioned that there could be outré cases of lying where there is no intention of causing false belief. These would be cases where one does not expect to be believed. There could, for instance, be cases where one knows that the other person is expecting one to lie, and so one says something false, in order to lead the other to true belief. I don't know if this is really a betrayal of trust since there is no trust. I don't know if people would count this as lying—it doesn't, for instance, meet the Catholic Catechism's definition of lying as a false assertion intended to deceive. But if one wishes to count this as a case of lying, it is a form of lying that may be significantly morally different from the others.

Spock

2008-08-19T09:07:00.001-05:00

Spock's "logic" has a theoretical and practical component. The practical component appears to be a utilitarianism to some extent constrained by deontological rules, in particular the duty not to kill the innocent and the duty to be faithful to commitments expressly undertaken, such as to the Federation. The other characters criticize him for lack of "emotion". In the theoretical context, this largely refers to the inability to predict the behavior of others (and occasionally maybe of self) due to a lack of emotional imagination (I am sceptical whether emotional imagination is needed to predict the behavior of others, and I think a psychopath could be very effective at predicting others' behavior). In the practical context, this seems to refer to a failure (and not a total one, since he is part human) to be moved by certain kinds of reasons, in particular reasons of friendship that go beyond commitments expressly undertaken.

Utilitarianism's deceptive simplicity

2008-08-18T10:27:00.001-05:00

What I have always found most attractive about utilitarianism is its elegant simplicity. What according to the utilitarian is the obligatory thing to do? That which maximizes the good. What is the good? The total welfare of all beings capable of having a welfare. Thus, facts about duty can either be fully characterized in terms of welfare (normative utilitarianism) or will reduce to facts about welfare (metaethical utilitarianism). Moreover, we might further give a full characterization of welfare as pleasure and the absence of pain or as the fulfillment of desire, thereby either fully characterizing facts about welfare in terms of prima facie non-normative facts, or maybe even reducing facts about welfare to these apparently non-normative facts. Thus, utilitarianism gives a characterization (necessary and sufficient conditions) for duty in terms of apparently non-normative facts, and maybe even reduces moral normativity to non-normative facts. This is a lovely theory, though false.

But this illusion of having given a description of all of obligation in non-normative terms is deceptive. There are two ways of putting the problem. One is to invoke uncertainty and the other is to invoke ubiquitous indeterminism (UI) and anti-Molinism (AM). I'll start with the second. According to anti-Molinism, there is no fact of the matter about what would result from a non-actual action when the action is connected to its consequences through an indeterministic chain of causes. Thus, if Frank doesn't take an aspirin, and if aspirin takings are connected indeterministically to headache reliefs, there is no fact of the matter about whether Frank's headache would be relieved by an aspirin. And according to ubiquitous indeterminism, all physical chains of causes are indeterministic. The most common interpretations of quantum mechanics give us reason to believe ubiquitous indeterminism, while libertarianism gives us reason to believe in practically ubiquitous indeterminism (because human beings might intervene in just about any chain of causes.

Of course, this means that given UI and AM, duty cannot simply be equated with the maximization of the good. A more complex formula is needed, and this, I think, introduces a significant degree of freedom into the theory—namely, how we handle the objective probabilities. This, in turn, makes the resulting theory significantly more complex and less elegant.

But, perhaps, it will be retorted that there is a canonical formula, namely maximizing the expected value of each action. This, however, is only of many formulae that could be chosen. Another is maximizing the worst possible outcome (maximin). Yet another is maximizing the best possible outcome (maximax). And there are lots of other formulae available. For instance, for any positive number p, we might say that we should maximize is E[|U|^p sgn U] (sgn x = 1 if x>0 and = -1 if x<0) or maybe E[(pi/2+arctan(U))], where U is utility.

But perhaps maximizing the expected value is the simplest of all plausible formula (maximax is implausible, and minimax is trivialized by the kind of ubiquitous indeterminism we have, which ensures that each action has basically the same set of possible utility outcomes, but with different probabilities). However, maximizing expected value leads to implausibilities even greater than in standard deterministic utilitarianism. It is implausible enough that one should kill one innocent person to save two or three innocent lives. But that one should kill one innocent person for a 51 percent chance of saving two innocent lives or for a 34 percent chance of saving three (which the expected value rule will imply in the case where the future happinesses of all the persons are equal) is quite implausible. Or suppose that there are a hundred people, each of whom is facing an independent 50 percent chance of death. By killing one innocent person, you can reduce the danger of death for each of these hundred people to 48.5 percent. Then, you should do that, according to expected value maximization utilitarianism.

Or let's try a different sort of example. Suppose action A has a 51 percent chance of doubling the total future happiness of the human race (assume this happiness is positive), and a 49 percent chance of painlessly destroying the whole of the human race. Then (at least on the hedonistic version—desire satisfaction would require some more careful considerations), according to expected value maximization utilitarianism, you should do A. But clearly A is an irresponsible action.

There may be ways of avoiding such paradoxes. But any way of avoiding such paradoxes will be far from the elegant simplicity of utilitarianism.

Exactly the same problems come up in a deterministic or Molinist case in situations of uncertainty (and we are always in situations of uncertainty). We need an action-guiding concept of obligation that works in such situations. Whether we call this "subjective obligation" or "obligation" simpliciter, it is needed. And to handle this, we will lose the elegant simplicity of utilitarianism. Consider for instance the following case. Suppose action A is 99% likely in light of the evidence to increase the happiness of the human race by two percent, and has a one percent chance of destroying the human race. Then, you might actually justifiedly believe, maybe even know, that A will increase the happiness of the human race, since 99% likelihood may be enough for belief. But plainly you shouldn't do A in this case. Hence a justified belief that an action would maximize utility, and maybe even knowledge, is not enough.

More on Molinism and stochastic processes

2008-08-15T13:51:00.005-05:00

In earlier posts and comments, here and on prosblogion, Mike Almeida and I have been discussing problems with Molinism and stochastic processes.

Here's a way to put a variant of the problem (this may well duplicate some of Mike's ideas). Let C be the following set of circumstances: a fair indeterministic coin is tossed, with a machine set up so that if the coin landed heads, then laws of nature specify that the machine would cause all creatures in existence suffer excruciating and undeserved pain for eternity.

We can now do two different calculations. Let G be the claim that omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good God necessarily exists. On the one hand, P(Heads|C)=1/2 (because the coin is fair). On the other hand, P(Heads|C and G) is less than 1/2. For such a God would be unlikely to allow C to be actualized unless he knew that the counterfactual C→tails is true. He might of course be planning to miraculously intervene after the machine activates, and so P(Heads|C and G) is non-zero but it seems to be part of divine providential goodness to avoid having to intervene miraculously, but surely P(Heads|C and G) is less than 1/2.

But now we actually have a contradiction. For the probabilities in question seem to be objective probabilities, and when we're talking of objective probabilities, P(G)=1, since G is a necessary truth. Hence, 1/2 > P(Heads|C and G)=P(Heads|C)=1/2. In other words, 1/2 > 1/2, which is absurd.

Therefore, we must reject one of the two probability claims. In particular, it seems, we need to reject P(Heads|C)=1/2. But this means that given theism, we cannot consider the probabilities that come from empirical study to be the genuine objective probabilities governing the events. Granted, in the case above, we were talking of a catastrophic case. But presumably even if the consequences of heads are somewhat bad, P(Heads|C and G) will still be somewhat less than 1/2.

Magic, science and the supernatural

2008-08-13T10:37:00.001-05:00

We take for granted that magic involves the supernatural and science does not. At the same time, we believe that there is no such thing as magic. Hence, we believe that magical claims are somehow different from merely false but scientific claims, such as that phlogiston makes things burnable. I want to argue that this belief is questionable.

Consider three different claims:

Dancing a certain kind of dance typically causes rain.
Shooting UV light into clouds typically causes rain.
Shooting silver iodide into clouds typically causes rain.

Claim (1) certainly seems magical. Claim (3) is not a magical claim, because, I shall assume, it is true, and there is no magic. I shall assume that claims (1) and (2) are false.

But now here is the puzzle. Why is (1) supposed to be a supernatural claim (being on the face of it a claim of magic), while (2) is not?

There is, after all, another way of looking at this. We simply have three cause-and-effect claims, two of them false, and each claim is just as much a "scientific kind of claim" as the others. Observe, for instance, that each of the claims is just as much subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation as the others. Each of the claims posits a causal relationship between physical events.

Suggestion 1: Claim (1) is supernatural because it is presumed to be believed on non-scientific grounds, while (2) and (3) are presumed to be believed on scientific grounds.

Response: that a claim is believed on non-scientific grounds does not make it a supernatural claim. If Francine hallucinates Apollo telling her that the structure of benzene is a ring, the object of her belief about benzene is still a quite natural fact. Nor will talking about esoteric traditions be relevant, since purely natural scientific facts can be and in fact are passed through esoteric traditions (think of trade secrets through the ages up to the present). It is a variant of the genetic fallacy to think that a claim has a particular content because it comes from a particular source.

Suggestion 2: The person who believes (1) has a causal story connecting the dance to the rain by means of supernatural entities, while those who believe (2) or (3) either have no story as to the connection between the shooting of UV or silver iodide into clouds (they might simply have noticed, respectively, a spurious or genuine correlation) or else their story involves natural entities.

Response: One problem with this solution is the assumption that the culture that believes in a particular magical action, say a magical dance, needs to have a theory as to how the action produces its effect. But the culture need not have any kind of theory. They may simply believe that dancing a waltz causes rain to come, and that rain causes corn to sprout. We would not say that the second part of this belief involves the supernatural, and why should we say that the first part does? It is not uncommon for scientists to have no explanation for an effect, and so if the culture believes (1) but has no explanation for it, that does not suffice to make the claim supernatural.

Perhaps, though, the difference is that the scientist thinks there is a further explanation, and that this explanation is natural. But this is not characteristic of all science. A scientist may believe that a certain law, such as the law of gravitation, is basic and lacks any further explanation. Or a scientist may be agnostic on whether the law has any further explanation.

If I am right, then either magical claims need not involve the supernatural, or else what seem to be paradigmatic cases of magical claims are not always magical claims (claims such as that a dance causes rain, that a spell causes blindness, etc.).

Let us go a bit further, though, and consider the case where the proponent of (1) does have a further explanation. Do we have to conclude that then the claim is supernatural? Not at all—it surely depends on what that further explanation is. If the further explanation is that the dance stirs up the air, and the stirred up air stirs up the clouds, promoting condensation, then plainly the explanation is not magical. But let us take a more magical explanation. Maybe the idea is that the dance exudes a power that goes upward and pulls the clouds in. Again, though, this need not be a supernatural claim.

What if the claim sounds even more supernatural? Perhaps the people believe that the clouds are intelligent and respond to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. But why should that be a magical claim? Suppose Patrick believes that his goldfish is intelligent and responds to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. He need not thereby be attributing any supernatural qualities to the goldfish. In fact, we can go a bit further. Patrick either believes this of all goldfish or of just some. In the latter case, it may well be that he thinks these goldfish are special, supernaturally gifted, etc. But if he believes all goldfish are intelligent and respond to appropriately made requests, he most likely (though not necessarily) thinks that it is a natural feature of goldfish to be intelligent. Since the members of the culture I described probably believe all clouds, or all clouds of some specific type (maybe they think you need to be more wispy to be intelligent?), to be intelligent, they seem to be ascribing a natural property to the clouds.

But suppose that the folk have a story involving intermediate causes that are powerful beings like demons. Maybe the dance somehow binds demons to do their will, and the demons fly up to the sky and wring rain out of clouds. If that is so, we have more hope of thinking that the explanation involves the supernatural—but only if we have some reason to think that the demons which the folk believe in are supernatural (it would not be a supernatural explanation if the folk falsely believed vultures to be intelligent and to fly up to the clouds and wring rain out of them in response to a dance). If the folk believe they can bind the demons through dances, then they are likely to believe that causes within the realm of nature (a dance) affect the demons. Moreover, it seems likely that they think there are rules that govern demonic behavior, and the magician, by knowing these rules, is able to get the requisite results. But demons like that, manipulable demons, sound like are part of the natural realm, interacting with the natural realm in lawlike ways. What reason do we have for thinking that the laws that are alleged to bind their behavior should be thought of as supernatural laws as opposed to natural laws? Sure, some of these laws apply to the demons but don't affect birds, bees and mountains, and some of the laws that apply to birds, bees and mountains don't apply to demons. But there is nothing absurd about the idea of natural laws that govern only particles of a certain type—e.g., charged particles, or particles of dark matter.

So even fairly elaborate alleged explanations of (1) involving entities like demons or intelligent clouds do not render (1) supernatural.

Suggestion 3: Intelligence is supernatural, and explanations involving intelligent beings like demons are thus supernatural.

Response: If so, then we have to admit that at least one of the sciences—psychology—deals with the supernatural, and the distinction between the supernatural and the scientific falls apart. This suggestion seems a non-starter.

Suggestion 4: It would require a violation of a law of nature for dances to cause rain, and hence the mechanism behind (1) must be taken to be supernatural.

Response: I think something like this suggestion may be what is going on in our minds when we assume that (1) involves the supernatural. But I think here we have a serious confusion. Claim (1) is in fact false. Now if we found out that (1) is true, we might be tempted to posit a supernatural explanation for it. But that is beside the point. Consider claim (2) which is just as much contrary to the laws of nature as (1) is (I assume). We do not consider (2) to be supernatural because it is contrary to the laws of nature. Rather, we consider it to be false.

Final comments: I think (and this is by no means original) that one of the characteristics of magic is a lawlikeness. You do this, and that results. This lawlikeness of magic makes for a prima facie claim that claims of magic are not at all supernaturalistic. We read them as supernaturalistic simply because they violate the laws of nature we believe in, but they need not violate the laws of nature that the believers in magic believe in.

This shows a crucial difference between magic and monotheistic beliefs in miracles, creation, answers to prayer, etc. The monotheist (typically—there are some unfortunate exceptions) believes God acts freely. He creates as he chooses, not because he is bound to by some necessitating law. He is supernatural because he has a freedom to act that transcends nature. At the same time, the miracles are not forced on him by anything like a law of nature, in the way that someone might believe a dance forces a demon to cause rain. The more personal freedom, including freedom to act not in accord with the laws of nature, we attribute to the deity, the less magical the belief becomes.

Granted, on traditional monotheistic views, God must keep his promises. Thus, there is a kind of law that is binding on him. But it is a moral law, binding on him because of his perfect goodness, and in light of promises freely and knowingly undertaken.

If anything, then, typical magical beliefs are closer to scientific beliefs about nature than to monotheistic beliefs about divine action.

Molinist evolutionary theory

2008-08-13T07:07:00.001-05:00

Molinist evolutionary theory (MET) holds that evolutionary theory is correct and based on genuinely random processes. Nonetheless, according to MET, these processes are guided by God. For each random transition (e.g., a random mutation, recombination or selection event) has associated with it a subjunctive conditional of the form "if circumstances C were to occur, then transition T would occur". God non-trivially knows the truth values of all such conditionals, and created the world so as to ensure a sequence of circumstances C that, given the conditionals he knew, would result in a sequence of transitions that fits with his plan.

I have argued elsewhere (a version of this has appeared in Philosophia Christi) that this story undercuts the statistical explanations that evolution needs. Here I want to point out a second issue. We know the probabilities of outcomes of processes in nature essentially by looking at frequencies of outcomes[note 1]. But, almost surely[note 2], a Molinist God can get any sequence of outcomes he wants by tweaking the circumstances appropriately. If a coin is to be flipped a million times, a Molinist God can make them all come out heads not by intervening in the flips, but by ensuring that the conditions C in which the flips happen are such as to make true appropriate conditionals of the form "C→heads".

Given the existence of a Molinist God, one might expect, or so Mike Almeida has argued, observed frequencies that do not match the probabilities involved in the processes. In fact, this might even give rise to an interesting prediction: given a Molinist God, we might expect the more needy to be disproportionately represented among lottery winners, since it seems not unlikely that God would want to choose initial conditions to favor them. If this line of reasoning is right, then given the existence of a Molinist God, the frequencies we observe should not reflect the probabilities of the underlying physical processes. But if so, then our knowledge of the probabilities of the underlying physical processes is undercut. And this is surely a problem for MET, not because it falsifies evolutionary theory, but because it undercuts it epistemically, making it impossible for us to know the probabilistic claims on which evolutionary theory is based.

Suppose, on the other hand, our Molinist rejects the Almeida argument, and holds that even given a Molinist God, the observed frequencies will match the probabilities of the underlying physical processes, perhaps because God would want them to match in order to be a self-effacing creator, or to let us engage correctly in inductive reasoning. In that case, the following is still true. The observed frequencies are not directly evidence for the probabilities of the underlying physical processes. They are only indirectly evidence given some assumptions about how one expects God to act.

Here is another way to put this. On the Molinist view, there is a defeater to our knowledge of probabilities on the basis of frequencies: the frequencies come from God's decision as to the antecedents of conditionals. A controversial thesis about how God chooses to act, if substantiated, would provide a defeater for this defeater. This makes knowledge of probabilities of physical processes rather more roundabout than we think it is. Moreover, I am not clear whether on this view an atheist can know any claims about these probabilities, since God's contingent decision to make the frequencies match the probabilities seems to play a central role.

Is Intelligent Design a scientific theory?

2008-08-12T07:07:00.001-05:00

Intelligent Design (ID) can be thought of as having two parts: a negative part that claims that evolutionary explanations of various biological features of the world are unsatisfactory, and a positive part that says that these features are best explained by positing intelligent agency.

Is Intelligent Design a scientific theory? Not really, if only for the simple reason that the positive side has not been worked out with a sufficient level of detail to merit the term "scientific theory". If a corpse is found with a certain set of wounds, and scientific examination makes it very unlikely that the wounds were inflicted by non-agential processes because the wounds spell out a word, the conclusion "An agent did this" is a fine one for a forensic scientist to draw. But this conclusion, while scientific, does not seem to merit the term "scientific theory". Nor is the issue that this is an isolated case. If lots of corpses with such wounds were found, the claim that each of them is the result of intelligent agency is still not a scientific theory. I think one important reason for this is that there is a serious lack of detail here. Likewise, it would not count as a scientific theory to say that the deaths were the result of "natural causes", with no further specification of the cause. (The lack of detail is related to the accusation of unfalsifiability; obviously, the less detail is given, the harder it is to falsify a view.)

Now, individual proponents of ID might give more detail than the mere claim that agency is behind the biological processes. Thus, they may specify how many agents were involved (e.g., one), where the agents intervened (e.g., at boundaries between species, or maybe of some higher taxa) and how they intervened (e.g., by miraculously causing mutations). Once more detail is given, they have more hope that the claim will become a scientific theory.

But even if individual proponents of ID give more detail, it will still not be correct to say that ID is a scientific theory. Rather, ID will at best be a family of disparate scientific theories. Merely rejecting evolution and holding to agency is not sufficiently contentful to unify the family into a single theory, just as George who thinks the butler did it, Patricia who thinks aliens did it, and Hercule who thinks it was suicide do not hold a single theory, even though they all agree that the death was the result of agential design rather than an accident.

This is important vis-à-vis one political consideration. Some folks would like to have ID taught in school as a theory alternative to evolution (interestingly, I have been told that the Discovery Institute does not take this position). But if ID is not actually a single scientific theory, then it is not parallel to evolution. For neo-Darwinian evolution is much more of a unified theory, although of course individual evolutionary scientists hold to variants of it. Now, one particular positive theory falling under the ID might perhaps be an alternative (whether good or bad) to evolutionary theory. But no one particular positive ID theory has sufficient acceptance even in the ID community as far as I know.

At the same time, the claim that ID is not a scientific theory is compatible with ID being science, just as a particular conclusion of a forensic scientist may not have sufficient detail to count as a scientific theory, but may nonetheless be a scientific conclusion. For, science is more than just the production of scientific theories. (For instance, the criticism of scientific theories is also a scientific practice.)

Is Intelligent Design theologically shallow?

2008-08-11T07:07:00.001-05:00

Occasionally, one hears Intelligent Design (ID) accused of being theologically shallow. Now, no doubt, many of the advocates of ID are theologically shallow, as are many of the opponents of ID. But the question is whether there is anything theologically shallow about holding ID to be true. As far as I can tell, ID is something like the following two-part thesis:

(a) Some of the biological features of organisms are designed by non-human intelligent agency; and (b) this fact can be known on the basis of biological study of these features (together with the application of mathematical, conceptual and/or other tools).

The reason for the "non-human" qualifier is that otherwise (a) would be uninterestingly satisfied by artificially selected features in domesticated animals.

What, then, is theologically shallow about ID? Part (a) has always been accepted by Jewish and Christian theists, and does not appear at all shallow—indeed, it is connected with a depth of reflection on providential divine involvement in the world, creation, the problem of evil, and so on. Unless the claim is the implausible one that Judaism and Christianity are at root theologically shallow, the theological problem would seem to have to be not with part (a), but with part (b).

Now, if one has a strongly anti-rational theological stance, one might think that any attempt to argue to a conclusion about divine activity on the basis of empirical data is reflective of a shallow rationalism. If so, then one will think that (b) is indicative of a theological shallowness. But I do not think (b) is indicative of a theological shallowness. In fact, it seems to me to be a deeper view to say with Aquinas that God is both an unfathomable mystery and yet his existence and the fact of his creating the world can be known on the basis of observed data. (I am not saying Aquinas advocated ID—he did not—but he did think that we could get to the existence of God, and to some facts about God's creative activity, on the basis of philosophical reflection on things we have observed.) Maybe there is something particularly shallow in holding that science should be a part of one of the routes to knowledge about God's creative activity, but I do not see it. Indeed, it seems to me to be a rather deep view to think that God is imaged in our world in all kinds of ways, and since science tells us about our world, it is relevant to knowing about God.

Perhaps, though, it is not the bare statement of ID that is theologically shallow, but what is shallow is something else. Two options come to mind. One is that the motivations of ID proponents are shallow. Perhaps, ID proponents think that the only way to justify belief in God is through scientific data. That is, indeed, a shallow view. Or maybe they think that only by positing scientifically discernible divine involvement can one save the doctrine that God designed human beings. That might be a shallow view, unless there are some deep arguments behind it. But it does not seem to me to be right to call a view shallow just because the proponents of it are motivated by another view which is shallow.

The second option is that what is shallow is not so much the two-part claim of ID, but the way that ID proponents flesh out the claim, e.g., by asserting that there is evidence of miraculous divine interventions. Again, even if this fleshing out were shallow, it would not follow that ID itself is a shallow doctrine, but that it is fleshed out in a shallow way.

But I want to consider the latter criticism a bit further. Why would it be shallow to say that God created some organisms through miraculous interventions? Now, if one thinks that all claims of miraculous interventions are theologically shallow, one will say this. But that is a sweeping generalization that seems hard to justify. There does not appear to be anything particularly shallow to the idea that God's ways of manifesting his love in creation are not bounded by the laws of nature. Now, it might be shallow to claim that God could not do such-and-such non-miraculously. But it does not seem shallow to claim that he could do such-and-such miraculously, nor that he did. Granted, this view may be unattractive to those like Leibniz who think a good designer always makes something that runs just fine without him. But is denying this standoffish view of divine activity shallow? If anything, positing a world where God sometimes works in and through natural causes, and sometimes beyond them, seems to lead to a richer view.

None of this is an argument for ID. In an earlier post, I have argued that at least the Dembskian variety of ID fails, and I do not know any variety of ID to succeed. But it is important not to criticize views on spurious grounds, such as the accusations of theological shallowness.

In any case, I am not even sure that p's being is "deep" is any evidence for p, or that p's being "shallow" is any evidence against p.

Thick ends

2008-08-08T10:16:00.001-05:00

In an earlier post, I offered the hypothesis that an action's end already includes the means under some description, perhaps specific or perhaps general. If this hypothesis is right, then we get an interesting simplification of moral evaluation. Traditionally, deontologists have had to evaluate both the end and its means. But if the means are built into the end, then one of the steps in moral evaluation is removed.

How might one do this? Well, one might say that regardless of what E is, the end "E by any means" is the wrong end to pursue. Why? Because the specified means include morally illegitimate means. If this is right, then a virtuous person only wills ends like "E by any legitimate means" or "E by means of morally licit training" or "E by means of pressing the seventh button on the left when this is permissible".

This has some interesting consequences. Suppose that x is a virtuous agent who erroneously believes that a particular means m to E is morally licit. Then, x being virtuous wills "E by the licit means m" or something like that, and hence when x executes m to gain E, she fails to achieve her end, since her end is not just E but "E by the licit means m". Hence, we can say something about what goes wrong when someone in good conscience does wrong, or at least does wrong in this way: she fails to achieve what she was trying to achieve.

In such cases, we get a different way of answering a puzzle that Cardinal Ratzinger raises: Why not count as fortunate people who in good conscience act wrongly? Aren't they lucky that their conscience leads them astray, since as a result they are non-culpable in their wrongdoing? (Ratzinger's solution was that errors of conscience are preceded by earlier sins that led to the errors.) The solution is that, at least in cases of inappropriate means, the virtuous person who in erring conscience does wrong is one who fails to achieve her ends, though she may erroneously think she succeeds. But a failure to achieve one's ends is surely an unfortunate thing, and hence we cannot count this person entirely lucky. True, it is better to fail innocently than to clearheadedly do wrong and be culpable, but it is clearly better yet to do clearheadedly succeed at doing right.

If one can extend the theory to include the circumstances in the ends, we achieve a further theoretical simplification.

Of course, as in all simplifications, one runs the risk of losing some important distinctions when one does these things.

A theory about counterpossibles

2008-08-07T07:07:00.001-05:00

I suspect that non-trivial per impossibile counterfactuals, true subjunctive conditionals of the form "p→q", where p is impossible and the conditional is not simply said to be true on account of the falsity of p, are in a way like poetry: They tell us things that are hard to express in more ordinary language and that, moreover, have a deeper resonance with us, and are more plausible, when put poetically.

But we can, I think, give a sufficient condition for the truth of a counterpossible: if the material conditional "if p, then q" is true in virtue of a fact explanatorily prior to or independent of not-p, then p→q holds. This condition seems to me to also hold in the case of ordinary counterfactuals. Thus, the laws of nature are explanatorily prior to or independent of ordinary non-nomic facts. Thus, if it is a law of nature that if something is a raven, then it is black, we can say that if there were a raven in this room, it would be black, because the conditional "if something is a raven, then it is black"[note 1] is explanatorily prior to or independent of the absence of ravens from this room.

In particular, when the consequent of the material conditional is true and explanatorily prior to or independent of the antecedent, the subjunctive conditional holds trivially. For instance: "Were God not to have commanded respect to parents, there would (still) be a duty to respect parents." Here, the corresponding material conditional holds in virtue of the consequent's holding, and the consequent is (or so the asserter of the conditional claims) independent of or explanatorily prior to God's commanding respect to parents.

I don't know if the condition I have given is necessary for a conditional's truth. But at least sometimes, I think, we use a per impossibile counterfactual precisely to express a claim about explanatory priority or independence.

Here is a seemingly different sufficient condition for the subjunctive conditional p→q. If the material conditional "if p, then q" is more strongly necessary than not-p, then p→q holds. The idea of grades of necessity is perhaps best introduced by example: nomic necessity is stronger than practical necessity; metaphysical necessity is stronger than nomic necessity; narrowly logical (or conceptual?) necessity is stronger than metaphysical necessity.

We can combine the two conditions. Suppose that the material conditional "if p, then q" follows with a necessity of grade n₁ from some fact F, and this fact F is (a) explanatorily prior to or independent of not-p, and (b) the truth of not-p is not necessary with a necessity of grade n₁, then the subjunctive p→q holds. I don't know if this is a necessary condition for a subjunctive to hold. Maybe it is.

Divine command metaethics

2008-08-06T07:07:00.001-05:00

Divine command metaethics (DCM) says that

the obligatory is defined as what God commands.

(Variants on which the obligatory is defined as what God wills can be handled in the same way.) The following question now seems to me to be quite important. How does the word "God" function in DCM?

Option 1: "God" is a proper name of a particular individual. Then, DCM licenses the following surprising per impossibile counterfactual:

If the cosmos were created by an essentially omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, perfectly good, loving, unique, infinite, and necessarily existing (I will abbreviate such a list as "omni-omni") creator other than God, then there would be no duty to obey this creator.

This counterfactual is surprising, because it makes very puzzling why it is that we have a duty to obey God, even though we would have no duty to obey an omni-omni creator other than God. The answer cannot be grounded in any of the attributes of God, since (per impossibile) the omni-omni creator other than God would have all of the same attributes.

In other words, a DCM where "God" is a proper name is implausible.

Option 2: "God" is a definite description. Presumably, then, it is a description such that it is a conceptual truth that any omni-omni creator is God. (If not, just throw enough attributes into the "omni-omni" list to make that be true.) But if so, then the DCM claim is basically that the obligatory is what is commanded by a being who satisfies D, where D is some part of the "omni-omni creator" description. If so, then we have a problem identified in an excellent paper by MacIntyre: Exactly which attributes are a part of D? This problem is not unanswerable, perhaps, but it is very difficult.

Means-end reasoning

2008-08-05T10:31:00.001-05:00

It is very plausible, and rarely disputed except by way of minor qualification (e.g., adding a knowledge condition), that:

If one has a reason to pursue an end e, and m is a means to e, then one has a reason to pursue m.

(Of course, the reason to pursue m may not be an all-things-considered reason.) Now here is a philosophical puzzle. Why is (1) true? How does the fact that I have reason to pursue e give me reason to pursue m, just because if I achieve m, I will also achieve e?

Maybe (1) as it stands is false. After all, there is reason to eliminate educationally useless courses at a university. One means to doing this is to shut down the university. But does that mean that one has even a prima facie reason to shut down a university just because there are some educationally useless courses there? Speaking more generally, suppose there are two incompatible means, m₁ and m₂, each of which is a means to e. It is plausible that this gives me a reason for the disjunctive pursuit of m₁ or m₂, but why should it give me a reason for pursuing m₁?

I think (1) can still be held up in the light of the above criticisms, but perhaps what these criticism push one to is accepting:

If one has a reason to pursue an end e, and there are some means to e, then one has reason to pursue at least one of the means to e.

If m₁ and m₂ are the only means to e, then one has reason to pursue at least one of m₁ and m₂, but perhaps one does not have reason to pursue specifically m₁ (or specifically m₂). However, pursuing m₁ (or m₂) satisfies the disjunctive reason.[note 1]

Oddly enough, I think (2) can still be questioned. Suppose you are capable of achieving e directly, in addition to an indirect way. For instance, let's say that e is having one's arm be raised. Well, one can do this directly—one just raises one's arm.[note 2] But one can also bring it about that one's arm is raised by building a Rube Goldberg contraption that raises one's arm. Does one's reason to have one's arm be raised give one reason to build the contraption? I think it is rather plausible that it does not. And if not, then (2) is problematic in the same way that (1) was. Perhaps a clearer way to see this is to imagine a being like God who can act directly.

But something of (2) can survive. Let us say that m is a necessary means to e provided that e cannot be achieved but through m. The "cannot" can have different amounts of modal force, but I am not going to worry about this. Then:

If m is a necessary means to e, and one has reason to pursue e, then one has reason to pursue m.

We get (2) out of (3) in those cases where e cannot be achieved directly, since then the disjunction of all means is a necessary means (here I think of a means as the whole intermediate process from action to end; one needs to be more precise in general, but not for the purposes of this post).

But whether what we accept is (1), (2) or (3), the question of why it is true remains. Here is one approach to a solution. Sometimes one has reason to pursue something solely by a particular means. Thus, ideals of sportsmanship give the Olympic runner reason to win by means of training and hard work, and give her no reason to win by means of drugs, disabling opponents, vel caetera, since a victory achieved by such means would not be a victory that satisfies the reasons of sportsmanship. (On the other hand, reasons of financial gain give one reason to win by any means possible that does not preclude the financial gain.) If this is right, then sometimes a reason to pursue an end includes in itself a specification of the appropriate means.

But we can simplify this. Rather than talking of the reason as including a specification of the ends, we can include the means in the end. Sportsmanship thus gives one reason to achieve victory by means of training and hard work.

Now what if we say that the means is always included in the end? Then some ends are of the form victory by any means or directly, others are of the form victory by any means, or directly, as long as this is compatible with one's survival, and so on. And then, I think, the mystery about why reason to pursue the end gives a reason to pursue the means is somewhat dispelled. If the end one has reason to pursue always carries a specification of how that end is to be achieved, then it seems plausible that doing anything that falls under that specification is doing something one has reason to do, or at least is doing something that satisfies a reason one has.

Sharp cutoffs in the moral life

2008-08-04T09:20:00.001-05:00

Ted Sider apparently has an argument (I reporting second-hand) that there is a continuum in the degree of sinfulness, but there is no continuum in the heaven-hell welfare spectrum, since there is a sharp jump in welfare as one moves from an eternity of suffering to an eternity of joy. Therefore, he concludes, divine judgment cannot be just if the outcomes are heaven or hell.

Now one way to answer this is to say that there really are sharp cutoffs in the moral life, such as that between those in a state of mortal sin and those not in a state of mortal sin. The cutoffs would not be defined by some kind of a moral arithmetic[note 1], but by a qualitative fact about the state of the person's will. Thus, Aquinas defines the state of mortal sin in terms of the lack of charity. Now, charity is a fairly sharply defined state of friendship with God (which state is always the fruit of grace). The mortal sinner lacks charity entirely, though the charity will be restored in repentance and forgiveness. Now, there might be a continuum in the degree of charity, say from zero to a hundred, but the difference between zero charity and even the tiniest bit of charity is deeply significant. Even a tiny bit of charity makes one fit for eternity with God (but the more charity there is, the more blissful that eternity will be). But a complete lack of charity makes one fit for damnation.

Is it plausible that there should be such sharp cutoffs in the moral life? Well, what led me to this reflection was watching the excellent 1953 film Pickup on South Street. The central character, Candy (Jean Peters), is a woman who has lived somewhat on the wrong side of the law, and is now trying to leave that life behind, but has one last task of greyish legality. However, she finds that she is enmeshed in a situation of Soviet espionage. And then it becomes clear that she sees a yawning gulf between mere crime and treason, and she assumes, perhaps wrongly, that other people living on the wrong side of the law see it this way, too. It is one thing, in her mind to be a pickpocket (though she is not one herself), and quite a different to work for the Reds. The film makes it plausible that there is indeed a sharp cutoff between other crimes and treason. It's almost as if treason were an allegory for mortal sin. See the film—it is really good. (If you have Netflix, it's available from their Watch Instantly section—that's how I watched it.)

Contextualism: An argument in search of a conclusion

2008-08-01T07:07:00.001-05:00

"You know you are a moderately competent art history graduate student. You are visiting a 15th century Italian church Professor Takayama, the world's foremost expert in Fra Angelico. You see a painting that you think is quite definitely not by Fra Angelico. Professor Takayama points to it and says: 'I am quite certain this is by Fra Angelico.' You conclude, on the authority of the great Takayama, that the painting must indeed be by Fra Angelico. Then Professor Takayama turns to you and asks: 'Do you agree?' You respond, quite honestly: 'Yes, quite certainly.'"

Bioethics without God

2008-07-31T07:07:00.001-05:00

It is considered in bad taste to bring God into contemporary bioethics discussions. Why? Well, one reason is that if one does so, one's argument will be irrelevant to atheists and agnostics. But note that in the American public, the percentage of people who accept the existence of God is significantly greater than the percentage who are Kantians, or utilitarians, or virtue ethicists, etc. Thus, say, an argument in favor of cloning based mainly on the premise that God exists (I don't know of any such argument off-hand) will be relevant to a much greater percentage of people than an argument for the same conclusion based on Kantianism. Moreover, while among academics there are significantly more atheists and agnostics, it still may be that the claim that God exists is at least as widespread as a belief in Kantianism, or in utilitarianism, or in virtue ethics.

Another reason it's in bad taste is that it allegedly brings faith into what should be a reasoned discussion. But this presupposes that the existence of God cannot be argued for rationally, a claim that is false (clearly false if we use as our standard of rationality the level of compellingness of arguments in applied ethics). Now one might with greater plausibility claim that no argument for the existence of God will be compelling to all, or even to a majority, of intellectuals. But it is in perfectly good taste to give serious bioethics arguments based on premises that are not compelling to the majority of intellectuals. Thus, one can give Kantian, utilitarian or virtue ethics arguments.

A third, though very pragmatic (but so is the first), reason is contingencies involving legal issues about church and state in the U.S., and cultural hangups connected with this. For better or worse, it is likely that the Supreme Court would see a law grounded in the existence of God, even if the law included a preamble giving a very powerful rational argument for the existence of God, as violating the separation of church and state.

I have theistic friends whom I respect highly and who try very hard to avoid making use of the existence of God in their work in applied ethics. While I think such work is very important both intellectually and practically, I also think there is a danger of distortion in bioethics if one confines oneself to working in this way. When one does have to do non-theistic work in bioethics, one should think of it as a way of tying one hand behind one's back, because that's what the rules of the game call for, not because that's what is appropriate to the enterprise of truth-seeking. For when we are talking about appropriate treatment of the beginning and end of life, it is plausible that the question of the relation between life and God is highly relevant. Some people think that the way science can explain all kinds of facts without invoking God is an argument against the existence of God. That's a bad argument. But if ethics, especially the ethics that deals with the beginning and end of life, could do without God, that should be quite surprising to a theist.

In the above, I talked of mere theism. I have a strong suspicion that, at least in our fallen state, more than mere theism is relevant. John Paul II somewhere said that we can only understand man through Christ. If that's right, then non-Christian bioethics is doomed to incompleteness. And incompleteness in a philosophical enterprise runs the danger of leading to distortion, through onesidedness.

Chesterton, the Internet, the family and arranged marriage

2008-07-30T09:35:00.006-05:00

There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan. But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge. - G. K. Chesterton, Heretics, Chapter XIV

Thus the very thing that gives joy to many, including me, about the Internet, the availability of specialized, congenial social groups, is what is wrong with the Internet, according to the Chesterton. Chapter XIV of Heretics is an argument in favor of the moral importance of social groups--such as the family--whose membership we do not choose. It is, thus, an argument in favor of random associations. For in such groups we must simply bear with people--and, oh, how much sometimes there to be borne--whom we would not have chosen to be with, and this broadens the mind, pulling us out of complacency.

I have earlier argued that there is nothing wrong with arranged marriage. But Chesterton lets one go further. The very thing that people object to about arranged marriage, that it does not let one choose someone congenial to oneself, is its value. A marital selection based on congeniality lets each minimize the amount of required change and growth. But an arranged marriage, where a match in religious views is ensured by the parents, but otherwise personality characteristics may be wildly different forces one to broaden one's mind, at least in contexts that do not allow an easy way for the spouses to separate (of course, it is important to allow separation in extreme cases, such as abuse, even if remarriage is wrong).

This advantage is not very great, because the closeness of association in marriage is such that even in a love match, the negative, self-congratulatory effects of congeniality are mitigated by the myriad of differences, and sometimes annoying similarities, that one had no way of knowing about, and that make for growth as a person. Moreover, marriage itself changes a person, and so what one knew about the other prior to marriage will in part be irrelevant, thereby making a love match somewhat more like an arranged marriage.

This is not, of course, a blanket endorsement of marrying people who are utterly different from one. Congeniality in itself may not be so valuable, but if one is going to marry, one should marry someone with a modicum of virtue and moral sensitivity. Moreover, one should already have developed some virtue and moral sensitivity oneself to be mature enough for marriage. So there is a similarity in the fact of the possession of virtue, valuable not because of the similarity but because of the virtue, that it is good to have. Moreover, it's probably not a good idea to marry someone who is so far uncongenial to one as to impede moral growth, by changing love to disgust. And so on. At the same time, the evidence that a practice of love matches is better than a practice of arranged marriage at avoiding these problems is weak.

Finally, it must be reemphasized that the above defense of arranged marriage only works in contexts where it is not easy to separate from one's spouse, or where at least there are significant costs of such separation, such as a lifetime of sexual abstinence (as in the case of Christian marriage, where it is permissible for spouses to separate in circumstances of abuse and maybe even adultery, but they remain married in fact if not in law, and hence cannot marry anyone else). Chesterton talks of how scary it would be to be snowed in one's street. What is scary about it is that one would be forced to socialize with people one had not chosen for oneself. But it is essential that there be an element of forcing here--that one be stuck in marriage.

The above considerations give a powerful response to the following sophomoric argument: "If a couple really loved each other and were really compatible, they wouldn't need marriage. They would just live together, and their love and compatibility, rather than legal ties, would keep them together." Moral transformation hurts. Patients whose are not anesthetized need to be restrained for operations. If the couple is always compatible and their congenial love is sufficient, without commitment, to keep them together, then it is very unlikely that the members of the couple are being morally transformed by their closeness. Thus, leaving aside the case of the already morally perfect (and they might as well be celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God), a couple is either not going to be transformed significantly by a life-long relationship or else there will be strains that require one to be held down, to be snowed in.

Let me end by noting that perhaps the most serious problem with arranged marriage is that, I think, it tends to be found in cultures where there is a strong pressure to marry. It is important that the marriage commitment be undertaken freely. This is compatible with the parents' choosing the marriage partner, or giving one a short list, as long as one is free to reject them all, free to remain celibate.

Faith and works, and Pelagianism

2008-07-28T08:16:00.002-05:00

I think sometimes, especially in popular discussion, the debate over Pelagianism is seen as the "faith versus works" debate. But that is incorrect. These are two separate, and almost orthogonal debates. The question of Pelagianism is whether

one can be saved by one's own efforts without grace

or whether

grace is necessary for salvation.

Pelagius thought it would be really hard to be saved without grace, but it could in principle be done. The faith versus works question is whether the human state that salvation is somehow based around and that ensures salvation (at least should one die in that state) is

faith

love or morally good actions.

There are four polar views possible:

	(1)	(2)
(3)	salvation is based on faith, and one can get attain this faith by one's own efforts without grace	salvation is based on faith, and faith requires grace
(4)	salvation is based on love or morally good actions, and one can attain this love or do these actions by one's own efforts without grace	salvation is based on love or morally good actions, and one needs grace to have love or do the actions

The position stereotypically ascribed to Protestants is, of course, the upper right corner, and the position stereotypically ascribed to Catholics is, of course, the lower left corner.

But note that it is quite possible to be a Pelagian and believe in sola fide: this is the upper left corner in the table. For instance, one might think that faith is an intellectual assent, and believe that one can come to this assent on the basis of apologetic arguments. Likewise, someone can believe that salvation is solely by works, and yet be in no way Pelagian, if she believes that these works are of such a nature that they cannot be done save by grace: this is the lower right corner.

Why is there an idea that there is a link between the two questions? Well, one line of thought takes "works" in a very thin sense, as bodily movements (placing a sandwich before a homeless person, etc.), without considering intentions and motivations. If so, then it seems quite likely that we could, by our own efforts, do whatever "works" would be specified as needed for salvation. But that is a magical view of salvation, and not really held by any serious thinker. Even those Catholic and Orthodox theologians who lay a greater emphasis on works than on faith understand the works in the light of intentions and motivations. But once one understands that a part of doing the right works is having the right intentions and motivations, the inference from salvation by works to Pelagianism fails—for it may well require grace to do have the right intentions and motivations.

The relative independence of the two questions should, I think, help to clarify our thinking on the issues.

I think the really interesting theological and philosophical questions here is to figure out (a) how faith and love are interconnected so that (3) and (4) are both true, and (b) see how there is a deeper form of (2) that ties together grace and our own efforts.

A puzzle about freedom and the law

2008-07-26T06:07:00.001-05:00

I am no legal or political theorist, but here is a fun little puzzle, not unlikely old hat to everybody who knows anything about these things.

Suppose you want to gamble (as far as I know a morally permissible activity within due limits—if you disagree, substitute something else, like scratching one's back in public), and I (say, as a legislator) enact a law prohibiting you from gambling, without any good reason behind it except a gut feeling that gambling is a bit icky. It seems plausible that I have acted wrongly. I should not prohibit you from an activity because I have a gut feeling that it is a bit icky. But why have I acted wrongly?

An obvious thing to say is that I have take away some of your autonomy or freedom. But what autonomy or freedom have I taken away? (I will use the terms somewhat interchangeably, but the issues may be subtly different in the two cases.) Intuitively, I have taken away your freedom to choose whether to gamble or not, or else the freedom to choose to gamble. But not quite. For you can still gamble even if gambling is illegal. So it seems that what I've taken away is your freedom to choose whether to legally gamble or not, or else the freedom to gamble legally.

Indeed, you no longer have these freedoms, since it is now impossible for you to gamble legally (assuming you have no ability to legalize gambling). So you've lost a freedom. But you've also gained a freedom. For now you are free to choose whether to gamble illegally or not, and free to choose to gamble illegally. You've lost your autonomy vis-à-vis the decision whether to gamble legally, but you've gained autonomy vis-à-vis the decision whether to gamble illegally. You lose one and you gain one. So it seems that you are not the loser in respect of autonomy, and hence you can't complain.

But, perhaps, you will say that now if you gamble, you are liable to be punished by law, or at least by your conscience (if you think you should obey the law). Yes—now you have a new freedom, to choose to gamble and be punished or not to do either. You've lost the freedom to gamble without punishment, and have gained the freedom to gamble and be punished.

Perhaps, though, the problem is that without a sufficiently good reason (and "feels a bit icky" is not a good reason), I have no right to deprive you of a freedom even if you get a new freedom in exchange. When we talk of autonomy, we should not be consequentialists who simply try to maximize the sum total of human autonomy. Just as it is wrong to kill one innocent person while saving another, so, too, it is wrong for me without sufficient reason to deprive you of one freedom even while giving you another. But while there is much to this lesson, I am not sure this is the right lesson to draw from the story. For consider the opposite case. Suppose that gambling is illegal. I now completely legalize it. By doing so, I take away the autonomy of your choice whether to engage in illegal gambling. So I've taken away one of your freedoms, and given you another in exchange. It looks now like legalizing and illegalizing have the same kind of effect on total freedom—each takes one freedom away and gives another. If I say that it is wrong with insufficient reason to take away a freedom even if I give you another, then in a situation where gambling is illegal and nobody has any good considerations for or against gambling, I should keep it illegal. But I am not sure that's right. Should one keep a restrictive law that has no rational justification? That doesn't seem right.

So it doesn't seem that considerations of autonomy are the right way to think about what goes wrong when one makes an activity illegal without sufficient reason. Is there a better way? I think so. To make something illegal is for the state to exercise a certain authority. To make something legal is for the state to cease to exercise a certain authority. As long as the state holds people to a rule, the state is exercising authority in respect of that rule. To release people from that rule is not to exercise an authority, but to cease to exercise that authority. Hence there is an asymmetry in making something legal versus making it illegal: to make something legal is for the state to cease to act in a certain way, while to make something illegal is for the state to begin to act in a certain way. If so, then we would expect an asymmetry in justification—actions in general require stronger justification than non-actions—and hence it is easier to justify the state's making something previously illegal be legal than the other way around. Of course this asymmetry is an anti-consequentialist one—it is an asymmetry similar to that between contraception and abstinence, or between killing and not preventing death.

Amateur astronomy update

2008-07-25T23:27:00.003-05:00

Last night, I found an OK observing site a five minute drive from home. There are some sodium lights 100-200 yards away, but they are bearable. I also found the tube of my Odyssey 8 sits nicely on the front seat of the car, secured with a seatbelt, as if it were a person. Log for last night: M28, M25, M22, M21, M8, M54, NGC6652, M69, NGC6997. And, of course, Jupiter, but that goes without saying.

Sola Scriptura and ecumenism

2008-07-25T06:07:00.001-05:00

I am Catholic and I don't believe Sola Scriptura. But here I want to engage in some friendly theologizing, trying to figure out what would be the best thing for me to say about Sola Scriptura were I evangelical. The main difficulty for Sola Scriptura is the standard self-defeat argument. Evangelicals typically take Sola Scriptura to be an important Christian doctrine, important enough that one can base theological arguments on it (e.g., arguing against some Catholic or Orthodox belief on the grounds that that belief is not found in Scripture). But let us take Sola Scriptura to be the claim that all true, Christian doctrines are found explicitly or implicitly in Scripture. Then, we have a self-defeat argument against Sola Scriptura: it is proposed as a true, Christian doctrine, but it is nowhere found explicitly or implicitly in Scripture, and hence by its own claim is not a true, Christian doctrine.

The fact that Sola Scriptura is not found in Scripture might be disputed. A standard proof-text for Sola Scriptura is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 which says that Scripture is inspired by God and has as its purpose that one might be "thoroughly equipped for every good work" (NIV; one may also query points in the translation). But of course the opponent of Sola Scriptura does not need to deny that all Scripture is inspired by God. Moreover, the claim that Scripture exists to equip us for every good work does not entail that Scripture is all that is needed to equip us thoroughly for every good work. After all, plainly, lots of other things are needed—air, food, water, intellectual skills, and, above all, God's grace. And even if Scripture were sufficient to equip us for every good work, it would not follow that Scripture contains all true, Christian doctrine. Finally, it is very unlikely that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 contains Sola Scriptura, since the "Scriptures" referred to are the ones Timothy learned "from infancy" (v. 15), and hence are the Old Testament. And the Old Testament surely does not contain all true, Christian doctrines. In fact, when this text was penned, Scripture was not yet completed, and there were surely Christian doctrines not yet in Scripture (such as the Christian doctrines taught in the next chapter of 2 Timothy!).

Nor is it likely that Sola Scriptura would be found in Scripture, since at the points at which most of the New Testament was being written, there was much reliance on apostolic preaching, or on reports of apostolic preaching.

So, what can an evangelical say in defense of Sola Scriptura given the self-defeat argument? One suggestion is to limit the scope of what is claimed. Thus, instead of claiming that Scripture contains all Christian doctrine, one instead claims that Scripture contains all the Christian doctrine that is necessary for salvation. A problem with this more limited claim is that it makes Sola Scriptura a not very interesting doctrine on standard evangelical views of what is necessary for salvation, namely faith that Jesus Christ is Lord. On such views, one can seemingly replace the claim that Scripture is sufficient for salvation with the stronger claim that some collection of three or four verses is sufficient for salvation. And surely one doesn't want Sola Scriptura to simply follow from the sufficiency of three or four verses.

I want to suggest that a better answer to the self-defeat argument is to say that the argument does not show that Sola Scriptura is false. Rather, the self-defeat argument only shows that Sola Scriptura is not a true, Christian doctrine, i.e., that it is either not true, or not a Christian doctrine, or neither. The evangelical can opt for saying that while Sola Scriptura is true, it is not a Christian doctrine. After all, many true claims, even claims about Scripture, are not Christian doctrine. For instance, it is true that Scripture has been translated into Swahili, or that most Bibles are printed in mostly black ink, but these facts are not Christian doctrines. This solution is not original to me—I heard it from a Protestant friend, I think.

Now this way of taking Sola Scriptura has a pleasant ecumenical consequence. It is not appropriate for an evangelical to consider a Catholic or Orthodox Christian to be unorthodox for denying Sola Scriptura. For only the denial of a Christian doctrine can make a Christian unorthodox, and Sola Scriptura is not a Christian doctrine. This reduces the division between evangelicals and Catholics and the Orthodox, though division remains on the other side (Catholics believe that the denial of Sola Scripture is a true, Christian doctrine, and there is no parallel self-defeat argument against their belief here).

Moreover, one might query the epistemological basis of affirming Sola Scriptura once one no longer takes it to be a Christian doctrine. After all, if it is not a Christian doctrine, then one cannot know it one the basis of public divine revelation. One might claim to believe Sola Scriptura on the basis of a private revelation (an angel whispering the doctrine to one), but that is unlikely to convince many others. Could one, perhaps, know Sola Scriptura empirically or maybe by a careful application of a priori reason? I doubt it. Surely one cannot know it empirically. Nor does it seem at all a candidate for a priori knowledge. Maybe one might think there is some way to combine empirical and a priori reasoning with divine revelation to get Sola Scriptura, but I doubt this.

If Sola Scriptura is not a matter of faith (since it's not a Christian doctrine), and cannot be known to be true, I think what would be most reasonable for an evangelical, short of chucking Sola Scriptura altogether, would be to take Sola Scriptura to either be a negative first person claim—"I am not aware of any source of true, Christian doctrine other than Scripture"—or as a working hypothesis.

What is interesting is that in both cases there should be an in-principle openness to the possibility of other loci of divine revelation, such as the Tradition that Catholics and the Orthodox refer to. Adopting either the "negative first person claim" or the "working hypothesis" view of Sola Scriptura would, thus, move ecumenical dialog forward. One might, of course, think this is a minus, but I don't.

Naming and taming

2008-07-23T07:07:00.001-05:00

After having jumped into amateur astronomy, the sky has lost some of its aweful majesty to me. It's beautiful, but not aweful. I think this has something to do with the way that by having names to attach to objects and having ways of classifying them, there is a way in which we have tamed them. That beautiful glow over there—that's "just" the Lagoon Nebula. There is a way in which this is deceptive. We encompass a whole galaxy in a word, completely ignorant of the billions of fascinating lives that, for all we know, are unfolding there. But there is also a way in which the galaxy itself, leaving aside any life in it (I think it would be strange to talk of a dog, much less a human, as "part of the Milky Way Galaxy"), really is not aweful. It is a creature of God, and in itself not as wondrous as a human being with reason and volition.

I think the above gives me reason to be even more sympathetic to the Thomistic doctrine that God is not a member of any of the genera, and the early Christian insistence on God not having a name.