The title of this post is taken from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Don't judge me just yet though; this isn't merely a rehashing of Dawkins' words, and I chose it for reasons which I hope will become more clear throughout the course of this post. Without any further delay, I will therefore proceed to the main body.
This may come as a surprise, but I try to avoid discussions on the topic of religion, as my position is difficult to offer concisely and summaries will often leave an impression which is both inaccurate and counter-productive. Even if this weren't so, I find that such discussions, except when handled on the most intimate of terms, soon devolve into impassioned arguments with little room to manoeuvre. Sometimes, this transition occurs before the debate can even properly begin, merely with the suggestion that someone wishes to raise an objection to your view (whatever that view is). Where I live, religions tend to be fairly moderate and so people are especially keen to avoid offence, as there is a sense of an uneasy peace between theists and atheists based on the agreement that each will keep out of the other's business, and this attitude is pervasive down to the individual level. This may in fact result in "discussions" which are anything but; lip-service paid to each side, concessions and admissions of understandings, the acknowledgement of the equal validity of opinion and so on. Such a conciliatory approach is often advantageous in debate, but when substance (especially in rebuttal) is forgone for such toothless tactics, what results is less an exchange of ideas and more an exchange of empty, meaningless words.
It seems we are stuck between extremes, then. Given the choice between happy but meaningless jibber-jabber and angry outbursts of almost absurd accusations, most people I know (myself included) tend towards the former, consciously or otherwise. Now, what does this have to do with agnosticism? I have had many discussions about personal beliefs with friends in the past and have noted that a large number have declared themselves to be agnostic when I asked them about their beliefs. It is my intention to show that such a response is in many respects a poor response (hence the title).
Before I launch into any sort of tirade, I think it is important to establish exactly what it is we are talking about. Firstly, I will clear the air by stating that there are a number of distinct types or forms of agnosticism, but the common characteristic between all of them is doubt. I think that if someone told you they were agnostic, they would either mean they were a strong agnostic or a weak agnostic (I take this from experience). If we were to write a simple children's book, a first guide to religions and religious ideas, perhaps, then the definition of weak agnosticism would read something like "we do not know there if there is a god, and so we will abstain from judgement" while strong agnosticism would read something like "we cannot know if there is a god, so judgement would be pointless". I personally find strong agnosticism to be a far more pointed and interesting belief, but alas it is not the subject of this post. This post is directed at the weak agnostics who identify themselves as such and importantly, nothing more.
Weak agnosticism (I will hereforth refer to it only as agnosticism) is in my opinion largely about being noncommittal. If you ask someone who defines themselves as such if they are an atheist and they say 'no' or even go on to rebuke atheists for their certainty, then they seem to be trying very difficult to not pick sides in the atheism vs. religion debate (if we could say there is such a thing). This is a response which I do not like and do not appreciate for two reasons.
Firstly, if I ask what you believe about God, or what your opinion is about the existence of God, then saying you're an agnostic is akin to saying you don't know. That's a fair answer, of course, if the question was about whether or not you know if God exists. But that's not the question. The question is about what you believe. If you give the strong agnostic response, that we cannot know, then that can actually lead to some interesting discussion, but if you're simply saying that you don't know then you're dodging the question.
Secondly, if you do not believe in a god, you are an atheist. That's the definition of what atheism is, the lack of belief in gods. A + theism. It literally does not make sense for you to say you don't believe in God but you're not an atheist. If you don't know and so you've decided to not subscribe to any religion or any belief in God, then you are an atheist. Any denial of this is either due to an honest miunderstanding of what atheism is or a deliberate evasion of the... let's say 'not entirely positive' connotations of the word 'atheism'. Ignorance is excusable if you make an effort to alleviate yourself of that position, but deliberate obfuscation of your beliefs is intellectually cowardly and I don't care for it in myself or others.
Now, having ranted as I wanted to, I should add an important caveat. I consider myself agnostic, although weak or strong I haven't decided. I think it's really the only reasonable position to take. I think any sort of gnostic position, theistic or otherwise, is very foolish for reasons I will address in a much longer, more detailed post on religion. But what I think is important is that gnostic vs. agnostic and theist vs. atheist are two very distinct questions which must be addressed separately, and conflating the two is a mistake. You can be an agnostic and an atheist, as I consider myself, and you can be an agnostic and a theist, but you can't be an agnostic and neither, and it is people who try to take up this position, or pass themselves off as taking this position, who bother me. After all, if we accept that at least at present such debates are always going to occur, then the least we can do is be rigorous enough to know what we're talking about and honest enough to reveal our opinions to each other with enough clarity to allow open discussion and criticism.
Addendum: I've been meaning to add something to this post for some time, although I'm not sure exactly what. At the time of posting, I felt there was something lacking to it, there was an incompleteness about it, if that makes sense. The explicit purpose of the post was to address the cowards who try to redefine their own language to avoid being labelled as something and in doing so label themselves as something else, but in doing so, some of my objections which could have applied more broadly to other types of agnostics (not mentioned) would equally have applied. Take, merely for instance, the case of the apathetic agnostic; someone without any interest in the question of divinity (or even someone who has not even considered the question at all). The categorisation is typically framed as I have done, in terms of agnosticism, and yet by definition such a person must be atheistic; they have no belief in God, for if they did they could not call themselves apathetic. The same cannot be said, of course, of the agnostic theist. Just as I have claimed that the agnostics I mentioned so far hold atheistic belief claims but agnostic knowledge claims without any contradiction, it is important to note that there are those with theistic belief claims and agnostic knowledge claims (something I may have previously alluded to). It is also worthy of note that not all beliefs fall neatly into theistic vs. atheistic, although they all seem to at least lean one way or the other - this is something that should factor into considerations as well.
This little addendum here doesn't wholly amend my anxieties about the post, but I think it demonstrates at least that there is a little more to the subject than I have explicitly stated, and I invite all of my few readers to take the topic one step further (although not necessarily in agreement with me, I would imagine would be the response!).
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
An Interesting Discussion
I'm currently studying a minor sequence in philosophy at university, and one of my current subjects (one week from completion, I might add) is on the topic of ethics (it's styled as an introduction to ethics, being a first year course). As a part of this course, we have a weekly hour of discussion in our tutorial group about the previous week's lectures. Naturally, such an open-ended discussion did not always conform to this expectation - on better days we would stray on to more recent lectures, on worse days we would talk about other philosophical areas of study such as metaphysics, and on a few occasions I found myself in a discussion (if it can be called that) which consisted of little more than a handful of forced comments on the topic at hand followed by an inane conversation about the latest developments in so-and-so's social life.
Now, as I mentioned, there were good days, and a couple of those were real crackers. The most recent of these saw myself and "the usuals" whom I normally sat with talking about that week's lectures, which were on abortion and infanticide. Out of the first awkward comments eventually came one person with an especially strong position; he was quite firmly against abortion, and he was happy to try and defend that position, a position he found at odds with the university's "very left-wing" philosophy department, which he noted was sadly like that of Melbourne and unlike that of several universities in the United States. If you had not guessed already, yes, it turns out he is a Christian, and I would guess something of a more conservative one at that. However, on this day and at this time, I didn't know any of that. All I knew was he was against abortion, and he had some reasons.
Now, I believe that if we're going to debate right and wrong, we should see all acts as morally acceptable until shown to be wrong. That's not to be taken as some overarching principle, more a guideline for tolerable behaviour. Some things I should think are prima facie wrong, and so would not enjoy much time in being considered acceptable (that's not to say that they were once fine and now are not, only that they were once seen as fine). My point here is that the burden of proof should lie with he who wants to say an action is wrong, not with who wants to say an action is right. This is just an opinion here, and I'll not offer justification for it (not any time soon, certainly) but since it really only applies to debates I don't see the need. I personally think it's a reasonable position to take. Had I been of lucid enough mind to recall this, I might have pressed this certain gentleman on his claim that by refuting arguments for abortion he has shown abortion is wrong - he would need to offer some sort of positive argument for his case.
Alas, I did not, and so our miniature debate, adjudicated by my friend Tyson, was less about abortion and more about this fellow's objections to Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous Violinist analogy. He seemed to be of the opinion (one that was never stated outright I should note) that because her analogy was invalid, his position was right. Clearly logically this does not follow, but I did not press him, as I mentioned, because I was perhaps too preoccupied with the debate we were having at the time. Now, I don't support Thomson necessarily, I find her ideas interesting but from as a virtue ethicist I'm not convinced by them. To paraphrase my tutor's comments on Singer (my tutor also being virtue-inclined), we're not even on the same wavelength.
I'll not describe our little argument in any detail because not only was it frustrating to participate in, the recollection surely capable of driving me to tears, the precise nature of his arguments are not the primary topic of this post. He had four points, three of which we properly debated. The final was not resolved in time, but I would say that with some assistance from my tutor (by the end I was exhausted) I had shown that at least two of them were severely flawed if not entirely refuted. But again, this is unimportant. After we touched on three of his Violinist counter-arguments, we got slightly sidetracked (as we are wont to do in these tutorials) and began talking about ethical perspectives - I demanded that he provide some justification other than 'most people would agree' or, if he didn't want to go into depth, his guarantee that he at least had some other justification, a demand which he refused. He then turned on me, and demanded I provide justifications for my beliefs. This was something of a non-sequitur, as I was not defending my own position but someone else's, and I let him know as much, along with protests that my own position was complicated.
Like a fool, however, the more he pressed, the more I relinquished and gave him the two-minute summary of the entirety of virtue ethical theory, something he was less than convinced by. He grilled me about details, extrapolating from my summary, ventured into meta-ethics, and generally caught me, tired and unprepared, by surprise. This was relieved by a rare interjection from one of the others in the group, who turned his questioning back on to him. His response, which is the main point of this topic, was a moment which Tyson later remarked to me as being a "dumbpiphany" (a reference to this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic (a webcomic we both enjoy)) and it started with the phrase, "Well, I'm coming from a Christian perspective, so...".
He didn't say much of substance after that, so I imagine his saying that was supposed to explain everything that needed to be explained. But what does that statement mean, exactly? Ok, he's a Christian, so what? So he's against abortion automatically? And everything he says is just an attempt to justify a belief he takes for granted as true? That doesn't seem very fair, but what else could it mean? He mentioned that Christians in philosophy courses aren't very open about it, as though this were a bad thing. Christians in science courses aren't very open about their Christianity either, because it's not relevant. Why should it be? There is a reason that ethics in analytic philosophy is secular, and that's because appeals to religion necessarily either reduce to arguments about God or tradition. Since the current consensus seems to be that we can never know if any god exists and it is something which must be taken on faith, that leaves the apologist in a difficult situation. Philosophy is about argument and rationality; if a rational person can't accept your position as being a reasonable one (though that person may not agree) then your position isn't worth consideration. I will tell you now that any argument which requires the person being persuaded or convinced to have faith that the argument is already valid is never ever going to be a good one, because it can only work on people who already agree with you. How can you expect anyone to take that position seriously?
Now, when I recounted this story to a friend of mine who was not present (telling it to someone who was would be quite boring for them, I imagine) his reaction to my shock at this supposed philosophical position was that I should be careful and hold in mind that he himself was Christian. I will tell you now that I have nothing against Christians in general, and I don't simply like ragging on a Christian philosophy student because I'm a big bad atheist and it gives me the jollies. The fact that he was Christian was irrelevant - the fact that he tried to use his religion to justify his stance was what shocked me, and the fact that he was blindly proud of what 'courage' it took to do that is what appalled me. It's not a question of religion and it's not even a question of attitude. The point is that, if look through the prism of reason vs. faith, that old dichotomy, modern philosophy falls firmly within the sphere of reason, and that is absolutely where it belongs. If "My god says so," or "My Holy Book instructs as such," become valid points of view ethically speaking, then literally any action could be considered completely justifiable. If so, then what is the point of ethics? If it is to be any good, it has to apply to more than one person or one group or one dogma; it must be able to apply to everyone.
Now, as I mentioned, there were good days, and a couple of those were real crackers. The most recent of these saw myself and "the usuals" whom I normally sat with talking about that week's lectures, which were on abortion and infanticide. Out of the first awkward comments eventually came one person with an especially strong position; he was quite firmly against abortion, and he was happy to try and defend that position, a position he found at odds with the university's "very left-wing" philosophy department, which he noted was sadly like that of Melbourne and unlike that of several universities in the United States. If you had not guessed already, yes, it turns out he is a Christian, and I would guess something of a more conservative one at that. However, on this day and at this time, I didn't know any of that. All I knew was he was against abortion, and he had some reasons.
Now, I believe that if we're going to debate right and wrong, we should see all acts as morally acceptable until shown to be wrong. That's not to be taken as some overarching principle, more a guideline for tolerable behaviour. Some things I should think are prima facie wrong, and so would not enjoy much time in being considered acceptable (that's not to say that they were once fine and now are not, only that they were once seen as fine). My point here is that the burden of proof should lie with he who wants to say an action is wrong, not with who wants to say an action is right. This is just an opinion here, and I'll not offer justification for it (not any time soon, certainly) but since it really only applies to debates I don't see the need. I personally think it's a reasonable position to take. Had I been of lucid enough mind to recall this, I might have pressed this certain gentleman on his claim that by refuting arguments for abortion he has shown abortion is wrong - he would need to offer some sort of positive argument for his case.
Alas, I did not, and so our miniature debate, adjudicated by my friend Tyson, was less about abortion and more about this fellow's objections to Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous Violinist analogy. He seemed to be of the opinion (one that was never stated outright I should note) that because her analogy was invalid, his position was right. Clearly logically this does not follow, but I did not press him, as I mentioned, because I was perhaps too preoccupied with the debate we were having at the time. Now, I don't support Thomson necessarily, I find her ideas interesting but from as a virtue ethicist I'm not convinced by them. To paraphrase my tutor's comments on Singer (my tutor also being virtue-inclined), we're not even on the same wavelength.
I'll not describe our little argument in any detail because not only was it frustrating to participate in, the recollection surely capable of driving me to tears, the precise nature of his arguments are not the primary topic of this post. He had four points, three of which we properly debated. The final was not resolved in time, but I would say that with some assistance from my tutor (by the end I was exhausted) I had shown that at least two of them were severely flawed if not entirely refuted. But again, this is unimportant. After we touched on three of his Violinist counter-arguments, we got slightly sidetracked (as we are wont to do in these tutorials) and began talking about ethical perspectives - I demanded that he provide some justification other than 'most people would agree' or, if he didn't want to go into depth, his guarantee that he at least had some other justification, a demand which he refused. He then turned on me, and demanded I provide justifications for my beliefs. This was something of a non-sequitur, as I was not defending my own position but someone else's, and I let him know as much, along with protests that my own position was complicated.
Like a fool, however, the more he pressed, the more I relinquished and gave him the two-minute summary of the entirety of virtue ethical theory, something he was less than convinced by. He grilled me about details, extrapolating from my summary, ventured into meta-ethics, and generally caught me, tired and unprepared, by surprise. This was relieved by a rare interjection from one of the others in the group, who turned his questioning back on to him. His response, which is the main point of this topic, was a moment which Tyson later remarked to me as being a "dumbpiphany" (a reference to this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic (a webcomic we both enjoy)) and it started with the phrase, "Well, I'm coming from a Christian perspective, so...".
He didn't say much of substance after that, so I imagine his saying that was supposed to explain everything that needed to be explained. But what does that statement mean, exactly? Ok, he's a Christian, so what? So he's against abortion automatically? And everything he says is just an attempt to justify a belief he takes for granted as true? That doesn't seem very fair, but what else could it mean? He mentioned that Christians in philosophy courses aren't very open about it, as though this were a bad thing. Christians in science courses aren't very open about their Christianity either, because it's not relevant. Why should it be? There is a reason that ethics in analytic philosophy is secular, and that's because appeals to religion necessarily either reduce to arguments about God or tradition. Since the current consensus seems to be that we can never know if any god exists and it is something which must be taken on faith, that leaves the apologist in a difficult situation. Philosophy is about argument and rationality; if a rational person can't accept your position as being a reasonable one (though that person may not agree) then your position isn't worth consideration. I will tell you now that any argument which requires the person being persuaded or convinced to have faith that the argument is already valid is never ever going to be a good one, because it can only work on people who already agree with you. How can you expect anyone to take that position seriously?
Now, when I recounted this story to a friend of mine who was not present (telling it to someone who was would be quite boring for them, I imagine) his reaction to my shock at this supposed philosophical position was that I should be careful and hold in mind that he himself was Christian. I will tell you now that I have nothing against Christians in general, and I don't simply like ragging on a Christian philosophy student because I'm a big bad atheist and it gives me the jollies. The fact that he was Christian was irrelevant - the fact that he tried to use his religion to justify his stance was what shocked me, and the fact that he was blindly proud of what 'courage' it took to do that is what appalled me. It's not a question of religion and it's not even a question of attitude. The point is that, if look through the prism of reason vs. faith, that old dichotomy, modern philosophy falls firmly within the sphere of reason, and that is absolutely where it belongs. If "My god says so," or "My Holy Book instructs as such," become valid points of view ethically speaking, then literally any action could be considered completely justifiable. If so, then what is the point of ethics? If it is to be any good, it has to apply to more than one person or one group or one dogma; it must be able to apply to everyone.
Atrological Musings
The following is my short piece for the second 2010 MASS3 (Monash Advanced Science and Science Scholars Society) Newsletter. I've decided to post the final version as it was published, and so I should say that means it has been edited for brevity and style by our editor, Kathleen. I've also decided to keep the title as it was published, as the typo was a source of great amusement to my friends who picked up on it (though I didn't choose the title so it wasn't my mistake). The newsletter can be found in full at https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0i-U4H-VWTUNzI2YTEyMGYtYTg1YS00MTJiLTllMGMtM2Y4ZmFiZDYyZDEy&sort=name&layout=list&pid=0B-E2bB-8tzNlYjM5ZGVkNjQtN2U0ZC00ZGNjLTk5MGItN2MzZDQ5Nzg4YjM4&cindex=1.
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I happened to be given a book of astrological predictions for Christmas last year (as a joke, of course, or at least I should hope so). The most suitable place I could think to put it was my toilet, but perhaps not (only) for the reason you’re thinking. I have the opportunity, just about every day now, to see what this particular astrologer thought was going to be happening to me on this day or week or month. Sometimes the predictions are very specific, and sometimes very vague, but they are almost all entirely wrong.
Over the course of April, I took particular note of the predictions and recorded their success rate, and found it to be a measly 19%, while the daily predictions in the mX scored at about 15%. These figures are not out of the ordinary and I have from experience found them to be representative of the accuracy of astrology on the whole
This should come as no surprise to anyone with basic reasoning skills, and I have no doubt that most MASS3 members would have heard all of this before. After all, ask any astrologer how astrology works and why there are so many distinct and incompatible species of it and you are unlikely to receive an answer much more plausible than an appeal to some mystical magic “force” and an accusation of misrepresentation or naive misunderstanding. So why preach to the choir, as it were?
But allow me to explain. I firmly believe that astrologers should have the right and privilege to write and publish as they please. However, when astrologers begin to advertise themselves as having abilities which they clearly do not and use these claims to fleece money from people, they have crossed the line. Quite frankly this could almost be considered fraud!
Unfortunately the majority of newspapers and television talk shows lend credibility to these people by paying them for the privilege of receiving prominent exposure and giving them free reign to spruik their rubbish.
It’s easy to say that anyone gullible enough to be taken in by something like astrology deserves to lose their money, and while I sympathise with that sentiment, I also think it is severely misguided. I am certain that some will disagree with me, but my understanding is that the purpose of science is the accrual of knowledge about the world and how it works. Knowledge without anyone knowing it is meaningless, and so the mission of the scientist is not only to discover new things about the Cosmos but also to help ensure that that knowledge is retained and used by and for mankind.
If we allow people to happily fall victim to the trappings of any form of pseudoscience or antiscience, astrological or otherwise, then we are failing in our mission, even if it might seem as though other people’s ignorance is not our problem. On the contrary, helping the public think scientifically on a day to day basis is both crucial and fundamental to why we do what we do.
It is for that reason that we should all take a more proactive approach towards educating the wider public and improving scientific literacy, not only in the schools, but in the government buildings, in the churches and in people’s homes. How far each of us wishes to personally take on this responsibility is a personal choice, of course, and I am by no means suggesting we must all become the next Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Perhaps though, we could do our bit next time someone tells us about star sign compatibilities, or the effect of the movement of Venus on our financial affairs. Such as calmly and politely explaining to them why they are full of shit.
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I happened to be given a book of astrological predictions for Christmas last year (as a joke, of course, or at least I should hope so). The most suitable place I could think to put it was my toilet, but perhaps not (only) for the reason you’re thinking. I have the opportunity, just about every day now, to see what this particular astrologer thought was going to be happening to me on this day or week or month. Sometimes the predictions are very specific, and sometimes very vague, but they are almost all entirely wrong.
Over the course of April, I took particular note of the predictions and recorded their success rate, and found it to be a measly 19%, while the daily predictions in the mX scored at about 15%. These figures are not out of the ordinary and I have from experience found them to be representative of the accuracy of astrology on the whole
This should come as no surprise to anyone with basic reasoning skills, and I have no doubt that most MASS3 members would have heard all of this before. After all, ask any astrologer how astrology works and why there are so many distinct and incompatible species of it and you are unlikely to receive an answer much more plausible than an appeal to some mystical magic “force” and an accusation of misrepresentation or naive misunderstanding. So why preach to the choir, as it were?
But allow me to explain. I firmly believe that astrologers should have the right and privilege to write and publish as they please. However, when astrologers begin to advertise themselves as having abilities which they clearly do not and use these claims to fleece money from people, they have crossed the line. Quite frankly this could almost be considered fraud!
Unfortunately the majority of newspapers and television talk shows lend credibility to these people by paying them for the privilege of receiving prominent exposure and giving them free reign to spruik their rubbish.
It’s easy to say that anyone gullible enough to be taken in by something like astrology deserves to lose their money, and while I sympathise with that sentiment, I also think it is severely misguided. I am certain that some will disagree with me, but my understanding is that the purpose of science is the accrual of knowledge about the world and how it works. Knowledge without anyone knowing it is meaningless, and so the mission of the scientist is not only to discover new things about the Cosmos but also to help ensure that that knowledge is retained and used by and for mankind.
If we allow people to happily fall victim to the trappings of any form of pseudoscience or antiscience, astrological or otherwise, then we are failing in our mission, even if it might seem as though other people’s ignorance is not our problem. On the contrary, helping the public think scientifically on a day to day basis is both crucial and fundamental to why we do what we do.
It is for that reason that we should all take a more proactive approach towards educating the wider public and improving scientific literacy, not only in the schools, but in the government buildings, in the churches and in people’s homes. How far each of us wishes to personally take on this responsibility is a personal choice, of course, and I am by no means suggesting we must all become the next Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Perhaps though, we could do our bit next time someone tells us about star sign compatibilities, or the effect of the movement of Venus on our financial affairs. Such as calmly and politely explaining to them why they are full of shit.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Virtue and the Phronimos
A question was posed to me recently, a question I will rephrase and in turn pose to all of you.
A man goes and volunteers at the soup kitchen for an evening, let's say. In doing so he not only acts with beneficence but also considers the interests and autonomy of others, helps to maximise (local) utility and respects his obligation towards minimally decent Samaritanism. It seems fair to say then that by ethical and intuitive moral standards, this person is doing the right thing. Consider this then: the man does this not out of his own free will, but is compelled by a friend or loved one (with a more attuned sense of social justice, perhaps) to volunteer to pay something back to society. The fact that he now performs the same act reluctantly makes no difference to the nature of the act itself; it is still, by all accounts, the right thing. But with this in mind, on this information, can we call him a 'good person'?
It should seem to me at least that, purely from the information above, it is difficult to answer yes in any meaningful way. This question might seem trivial, but it highlights a significant deficiency in the current major ethical systems of thought. Though consequentialist and deontological ethical systems require, and thence give guidance towards, 'right action', they do not in and of themselves contain any requirements for how one should feel. If the question is any illustration, it seems that our concept of what constitutes a good person is very much dependent on not only how we act but also how we feel and what motivates us.*
But what is the relevance of being a 'good person', particularly? Need we bother with such considerations, when right action could just as well be all we need to live moral lives? To answer this question, we must consider what it is exactly to be a moral person. One might be forgiven for thinking this is the springboard for some long, philosophical discussion. To the contrary, if one cannot reduce moral concepts to basic common sense thinking, even if that thinking is somewhat complicated, then your concepts become difficult, perhaps too difficult, to implement in real life, and a moral theory without practical application is all but worthless. So what does make being a good person so crucial to morality, what makes it as (if not more) important than simply doing the right thing?
There are a number of recourses we could make in answering this question, but I will start with one particluarly simple and pragmatic one. What is the difference between someone who characteristically does the 'right thing', but does so to appease the demands of others, and someone who acts in much the same way but voluntarily? How would we treat these two people in our relations with them, knowing this? Would it make a difference? I think it would. It would seem to me that if we took both of those people and placed them in a social vacuum, one could still be depended on to do the right thing while the other would be far more reluctant. In our interactions and relationships with people, we are constantly assessing their character to determine how and what our relationship with them should be, and to what limits we extend the bounds of our interactions. Needless to say, it is far easier (and more appropriate) to trust someone whose motivation comes from within than someone whose motivation comes from without. This is an important realisation that we will come to in a moment.
However, it is quite arguable to suggest that one can derive motivation internally from the consideration of the interests of others using purely consequential or deontological principles. So this is only part of the story. Perhaps we should consider a new scenario to further probe the issue. I have adapted this example from my recent ethics lecture, and so credit is due to the School rather than myself. Consider your sick friend, who is staying in hospital. It seems that by any account you should go and visit them, as you have the time and ability to do so and it would surely mean much to your friend to put in the effort. But why, morally speaking, should we go? Appealing purely to consequences or a sense of rational obligation seem not only forced, but also somewhat cold. Though we might be impartial in our ethics, can we still call ourselves a 'good friend' if we go to visit only because it increases the net utility of the world than acting otherwise, or if we have an obligation to be minimally decent to each other? And can we justify seeing our friend rather than someone else in the hospital by merely appealing to a greater increase in utility or a set of duties and obligations and still seem a 'good friend'? Surely not. Thus we can see that unless a person acts with feeling, or perhaps acts out of feeling, we cannot truly call them a good friend, and if not a good friend, then even more surely not a good person.
Why be a good friend though? Why be a good person? These questions we still not have properly addressed. Our response relates back to the answer to our earlier question. The good person characteristically acts in a manner which is good. That it is a matter of character is important, because character is wholly internalised. Except in situations where it is impossible, the characteristically good person does good. Not because of obligations, not because it will be 'better' overall, but because it is in their character. Good deeds are not enough to be good, one must be able to be counted on to do those deeds, no matter what. Without the ability to do good out of character alone, one is not only dependent on circumstances to determine action (circumstances whose whole nature it may be impossible to know) but cannot be trusted to act as a friend, in the case of the situation above, or as a good doctor, a good engineer, a good businessman; or, in other words, a good person.
Please excuse my repetition in the paragraph above, but what I have repeated I have done to be both clear and definite, because the concept is an important one that must be understood if we are to continue.
So we have established, I hope, that it is important to be characteristically good and not do good out of purely impartial means (a full address of impartiality and morality will have to come in another blog post, I'm afraid, but I trust you are able to keep up so far by filling in the gaps). Having done so, we must next define exactly what "good" and "good person" and "good character" mean within this context. It is surely not enough to use vulgar definitions; when we speak of a good doctor, we really mean a good person who happens to be a doctor, not a person who happens to be good at the practice of medicine. Where then do we get our most basic definition, that of 'good'? Without it we cannot make any justified moral judgements at all, we can only appeal to gut feeling. While this feeling is important, it is no basis for a system of morals. It is simply too unreliable and susceptible to immoral suggestion, as I'm sure we have all found from personal experience.
Lacking the ability, or perhaps believing it impossible, to appeal to impartial means of determining what is 'good', perhaps the best place to start off is the so-called 'good person' we have already rudimentally identified. After all, what other recourse do we have? This may seem like an invalid appraoch, and indeed it is most certainly contrary to our usual method of determining moral values - it is generally thought we must have the values before we make the judgements. Why must this be so, though? If we can all agree that some people are 'good' while others are not, and we can agree at least to some extent on what characteristics those people possess, as I believe we can, then it does not seem like there is any reason we cannot derive our definitions from these examples. And even if we cannot, surely there is no harm in trying and seeing where it leads us.
Unfortunately, and I know this will be a disappointment, it is not within the scope of this essay to determine the nature of these characteristics, which I will from here on refer to as virtues. I will surely write a far more detailed on the virtues alone at a later date, as it is definitely the sort of concept that merits its own discussion. This is only an introduction to the concept, and if I have sold it to you with what I have said so far about how we come to find the virtues, then I'm sure you will be happy to wait to find out more about them.
That is not the end of our story, though. We have established so far, I hope, that there is merit in the case for virtue ethics. I mentioned earlier, however, that any ethical system is useless if it does not have any applicability. It might seem as though from what I have written so far that while virtue ethics seems appealing, it is too open to flexibility and personal opinion on how we should act, and does not offer sufficient moral guidance. After all, if we accept that we define what is good (virtue) in relation to the people who possess it, how can we possibly come to any sort of moral decision of our own if we accept that we are not wholly virtuous people?
This is where I can introduce the concept of the phronimos, a moral expert. According to Aristotle, the phronimos embodied phronesis, or practical wisdom - not the sort of old-hermit-giving-obscure-and-metaphorical lessons wisdom, but the sort of wisdom in knowing about the world and how we should act within it. "What should I do?" "Think about this, this and this. Do you see now?" That sort of useful wisdom about everyday life. [[In my philosophy, the phronimos can be considered someone on the way to becoming a sophos, or sage - someone who is truly wise and fully understands the world, and so has achieved eudaimonia (this is a term I will discuss in more depth at a later time). This will be pertinent to later discussions, but is not strictly relevant now.]] So what does the phronimos have to do with moral guidance? I certainly do not consider myself a phronimos, so how does it relate to me? The answer should be apparent from my brief attempt to give an example of practical wisdom. You are uncertain in how to act, so what should you do? Ask someone whom you would consider to be a phronimos. Someone whom you think embodies a certain virtue or virtues, and who can be relied upon for useful moral advice. This is where our guidance can come from.
We will not always have a phronimos at our disposal, however, and in fact these people can be difficult to come across sometimes. What then? Well, try to do what you think they would tell you to do. You don't know what that is? Then just do something. You may make a mistake, but this is to be expected. What made you think you could always do the right thing in the first place? If you made no mistakes you would have no need for advice in the first place! But mimicry is not enough. You have to be able to learn from the phronimos and learn from your own mistakes. Only by increasing your understanding can you yourself become wise, and that is why active moral consideration is important. You can't forever act on moral autopilot if you hope to ever become a good person, because remember what we discussed earlier - it is one thing to do good, it is another thing to be good.
Clearly, the case for virtue does not end here. There are many more points and issues on the topic, positives and negatives, which must be proven and refuted if we are to take virtue theory seriously. What are the virtues? How can what is virtuous in a doctor be considered good while what is virtuous in a thief be considered bad? And how exactly does emotion relate to moral consideration? This essay has only been introductory, and was not intended to address these issues, but if they strike you as interesting, you can await my future posts on virtue ethics (if you are particularly patient) or you can research the topic yourself, and if you like I can point you in the right direction. For the moment, however, it seems that we are done.
*I am concerned that I here have conflated emotion, motivation and action. It is my opinion that we should try to keep these separate. I am not trying to say that feeling should necessarily provoke certain action - emotion is a reaction to a situation, and that means it entails judgement, judgement which can be right or wrong. Therefore we cannot derive right action from emotion nor can we associate certain actions with certain emotions. The two are not (or I should say, should not) be closely linked. My point here was to point out that emotion is a separate but important part of moral consideration in addition to right action, something which impartial theories do not account for.
A man goes and volunteers at the soup kitchen for an evening, let's say. In doing so he not only acts with beneficence but also considers the interests and autonomy of others, helps to maximise (local) utility and respects his obligation towards minimally decent Samaritanism. It seems fair to say then that by ethical and intuitive moral standards, this person is doing the right thing. Consider this then: the man does this not out of his own free will, but is compelled by a friend or loved one (with a more attuned sense of social justice, perhaps) to volunteer to pay something back to society. The fact that he now performs the same act reluctantly makes no difference to the nature of the act itself; it is still, by all accounts, the right thing. But with this in mind, on this information, can we call him a 'good person'?
It should seem to me at least that, purely from the information above, it is difficult to answer yes in any meaningful way. This question might seem trivial, but it highlights a significant deficiency in the current major ethical systems of thought. Though consequentialist and deontological ethical systems require, and thence give guidance towards, 'right action', they do not in and of themselves contain any requirements for how one should feel. If the question is any illustration, it seems that our concept of what constitutes a good person is very much dependent on not only how we act but also how we feel and what motivates us.*
But what is the relevance of being a 'good person', particularly? Need we bother with such considerations, when right action could just as well be all we need to live moral lives? To answer this question, we must consider what it is exactly to be a moral person. One might be forgiven for thinking this is the springboard for some long, philosophical discussion. To the contrary, if one cannot reduce moral concepts to basic common sense thinking, even if that thinking is somewhat complicated, then your concepts become difficult, perhaps too difficult, to implement in real life, and a moral theory without practical application is all but worthless. So what does make being a good person so crucial to morality, what makes it as (if not more) important than simply doing the right thing?
There are a number of recourses we could make in answering this question, but I will start with one particluarly simple and pragmatic one. What is the difference between someone who characteristically does the 'right thing', but does so to appease the demands of others, and someone who acts in much the same way but voluntarily? How would we treat these two people in our relations with them, knowing this? Would it make a difference? I think it would. It would seem to me that if we took both of those people and placed them in a social vacuum, one could still be depended on to do the right thing while the other would be far more reluctant. In our interactions and relationships with people, we are constantly assessing their character to determine how and what our relationship with them should be, and to what limits we extend the bounds of our interactions. Needless to say, it is far easier (and more appropriate) to trust someone whose motivation comes from within than someone whose motivation comes from without. This is an important realisation that we will come to in a moment.
However, it is quite arguable to suggest that one can derive motivation internally from the consideration of the interests of others using purely consequential or deontological principles. So this is only part of the story. Perhaps we should consider a new scenario to further probe the issue. I have adapted this example from my recent ethics lecture, and so credit is due to the School rather than myself. Consider your sick friend, who is staying in hospital. It seems that by any account you should go and visit them, as you have the time and ability to do so and it would surely mean much to your friend to put in the effort. But why, morally speaking, should we go? Appealing purely to consequences or a sense of rational obligation seem not only forced, but also somewhat cold. Though we might be impartial in our ethics, can we still call ourselves a 'good friend' if we go to visit only because it increases the net utility of the world than acting otherwise, or if we have an obligation to be minimally decent to each other? And can we justify seeing our friend rather than someone else in the hospital by merely appealing to a greater increase in utility or a set of duties and obligations and still seem a 'good friend'? Surely not. Thus we can see that unless a person acts with feeling, or perhaps acts out of feeling, we cannot truly call them a good friend, and if not a good friend, then even more surely not a good person.
Why be a good friend though? Why be a good person? These questions we still not have properly addressed. Our response relates back to the answer to our earlier question. The good person characteristically acts in a manner which is good. That it is a matter of character is important, because character is wholly internalised. Except in situations where it is impossible, the characteristically good person does good. Not because of obligations, not because it will be 'better' overall, but because it is in their character. Good deeds are not enough to be good, one must be able to be counted on to do those deeds, no matter what. Without the ability to do good out of character alone, one is not only dependent on circumstances to determine action (circumstances whose whole nature it may be impossible to know) but cannot be trusted to act as a friend, in the case of the situation above, or as a good doctor, a good engineer, a good businessman; or, in other words, a good person.
Please excuse my repetition in the paragraph above, but what I have repeated I have done to be both clear and definite, because the concept is an important one that must be understood if we are to continue.
So we have established, I hope, that it is important to be characteristically good and not do good out of purely impartial means (a full address of impartiality and morality will have to come in another blog post, I'm afraid, but I trust you are able to keep up so far by filling in the gaps). Having done so, we must next define exactly what "good" and "good person" and "good character" mean within this context. It is surely not enough to use vulgar definitions; when we speak of a good doctor, we really mean a good person who happens to be a doctor, not a person who happens to be good at the practice of medicine. Where then do we get our most basic definition, that of 'good'? Without it we cannot make any justified moral judgements at all, we can only appeal to gut feeling. While this feeling is important, it is no basis for a system of morals. It is simply too unreliable and susceptible to immoral suggestion, as I'm sure we have all found from personal experience.
Lacking the ability, or perhaps believing it impossible, to appeal to impartial means of determining what is 'good', perhaps the best place to start off is the so-called 'good person' we have already rudimentally identified. After all, what other recourse do we have? This may seem like an invalid appraoch, and indeed it is most certainly contrary to our usual method of determining moral values - it is generally thought we must have the values before we make the judgements. Why must this be so, though? If we can all agree that some people are 'good' while others are not, and we can agree at least to some extent on what characteristics those people possess, as I believe we can, then it does not seem like there is any reason we cannot derive our definitions from these examples. And even if we cannot, surely there is no harm in trying and seeing where it leads us.
Unfortunately, and I know this will be a disappointment, it is not within the scope of this essay to determine the nature of these characteristics, which I will from here on refer to as virtues. I will surely write a far more detailed on the virtues alone at a later date, as it is definitely the sort of concept that merits its own discussion. This is only an introduction to the concept, and if I have sold it to you with what I have said so far about how we come to find the virtues, then I'm sure you will be happy to wait to find out more about them.
That is not the end of our story, though. We have established so far, I hope, that there is merit in the case for virtue ethics. I mentioned earlier, however, that any ethical system is useless if it does not have any applicability. It might seem as though from what I have written so far that while virtue ethics seems appealing, it is too open to flexibility and personal opinion on how we should act, and does not offer sufficient moral guidance. After all, if we accept that we define what is good (virtue) in relation to the people who possess it, how can we possibly come to any sort of moral decision of our own if we accept that we are not wholly virtuous people?
This is where I can introduce the concept of the phronimos, a moral expert. According to Aristotle, the phronimos embodied phronesis, or practical wisdom - not the sort of old-hermit-giving-obscure-and-metaphorical lessons wisdom, but the sort of wisdom in knowing about the world and how we should act within it. "What should I do?" "Think about this, this and this. Do you see now?" That sort of useful wisdom about everyday life. [[In my philosophy, the phronimos can be considered someone on the way to becoming a sophos, or sage - someone who is truly wise and fully understands the world, and so has achieved eudaimonia (this is a term I will discuss in more depth at a later time). This will be pertinent to later discussions, but is not strictly relevant now.]] So what does the phronimos have to do with moral guidance? I certainly do not consider myself a phronimos, so how does it relate to me? The answer should be apparent from my brief attempt to give an example of practical wisdom. You are uncertain in how to act, so what should you do? Ask someone whom you would consider to be a phronimos. Someone whom you think embodies a certain virtue or virtues, and who can be relied upon for useful moral advice. This is where our guidance can come from.
We will not always have a phronimos at our disposal, however, and in fact these people can be difficult to come across sometimes. What then? Well, try to do what you think they would tell you to do. You don't know what that is? Then just do something. You may make a mistake, but this is to be expected. What made you think you could always do the right thing in the first place? If you made no mistakes you would have no need for advice in the first place! But mimicry is not enough. You have to be able to learn from the phronimos and learn from your own mistakes. Only by increasing your understanding can you yourself become wise, and that is why active moral consideration is important. You can't forever act on moral autopilot if you hope to ever become a good person, because remember what we discussed earlier - it is one thing to do good, it is another thing to be good.
Clearly, the case for virtue does not end here. There are many more points and issues on the topic, positives and negatives, which must be proven and refuted if we are to take virtue theory seriously. What are the virtues? How can what is virtuous in a doctor be considered good while what is virtuous in a thief be considered bad? And how exactly does emotion relate to moral consideration? This essay has only been introductory, and was not intended to address these issues, but if they strike you as interesting, you can await my future posts on virtue ethics (if you are particularly patient) or you can research the topic yourself, and if you like I can point you in the right direction. For the moment, however, it seems that we are done.
*I am concerned that I here have conflated emotion, motivation and action. It is my opinion that we should try to keep these separate. I am not trying to say that feeling should necessarily provoke certain action - emotion is a reaction to a situation, and that means it entails judgement, judgement which can be right or wrong. Therefore we cannot derive right action from emotion nor can we associate certain actions with certain emotions. The two are not (or I should say, should not) be closely linked. My point here was to point out that emotion is a separate but important part of moral consideration in addition to right action, something which impartial theories do not account for.
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