Filed under: Uncategorized
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Some Christians (especially those on the left) say they want to re-politicize Jesus. There is something deeply incoherent about this, for it is usually coupled with a commitment to non-violence. I think these folks are blind to the inherent violence of politics.
“Jesus is Lord and so Caesar isn’t.” OK. I’m not sure the NT has as much to say in support of this as some folks let on. But insofar as this is an accurate message, it is an anti-political message, right? Or it is meant to lower our confidence in political power, right?
I’m generally anti-war and I worry about violence underwritten by the state. But I don’t subscribe to a position of strict non-violence. And so it is NOT inconsistent for me to support coercive taxation to fund the social safely net. (If you don’t pay taxes you’re thrown in jail. Yes, this is violence! This is ‘the sword’!)
One problem with the political religious left is they fail to notice the social safety net is the fruit of Caesar’s sword. It is underwritten by violence.
(FYI – I am a non-violence person with respect to the activities of the ‘city within the city’ called the Church. If ‘Caesar’, inspired by the teachings of Jesus, decides to implement a social safety net, this doesn’t make him the Church. Notice that Jesus did NOT instruct his followers to take up the sword and coercively take money from the rich to fund the social safety net. Which is not to say that Caesar oughtn’t do this. And which is not to say Christians cannot participate in this as citizens of the city of man. Yes, I guess I’m a kind of ‘two-kingdoms’ person.)
Imagine a ‘rags to riches’ story of someone who, through hard work and determination, built up a large fortune. You might dare to say this person earned their vast wealth, in some sense. Certainly as compared to an heiress like Paris Hilton.
But the vast majority of the rich are not ‘rags to riches’ people, right? And even those who worked very hard for their money probably benefited from certain advantages of birth, right?
Is it fair the rich were born with these advantages? There is an obvious sense in which they didn’t merit these advantages–they were born with them!
Birth is unfair. I have great parents, and did nothing to deserve them. That I was born to them, and not to some pair of idiots, is not fair. Someone else was born to those idiots. There is nothing fair about this.
Should the government take it as its task to remedy this unfairness?
The some folks on the political left says yes, don’t they?
But doesn’t this amount to using the coercive power of the state to violently inaugurate the new heavens and the new earth? This project of ‘ultimate cosmic justice’ is a fundamentally religious project, isn’t it? (Just because God isn’t mentioned, doesn’t mean its not religious, right?) No project could be more ambitious, could it? It is aimed at the complete restructuring of humanity. It is aimed at the creation a new kind of humanity. It is predicated on the destruction of all natural human bonds, for these natural human bonds are ultimately unfair. Death and resurrection to new life, thanks to the government!!!
Is it right that rich parents get to pass their wealth on to their children?
If it is unfair that I was born to my parents, then the natural bond I have with them can be justly broken, right? After all, its creation was unfair in the first place.
But imagine the kind of violence that would be required to break this natural human bond. Only a totalitarian state could accomplish this kind of ultimate fairness, right? But the result wouldn’t be desirable, would it? It would be awful. Read 1984.
I believe in the welfare state and the social safety net and all the rest. I believe it makes sense for the rich to may more taxes. Those to whom much has been given, much will be required, right? But I do not believe that the government should take it as its task to establish ultimate fairness.
Why? Because the kind of power and violence that it would take to accomplish this is too dangerous. And the result would be the destruction of all culture and all the natural human bonds that make life worth living.
I think this makes me a kind of conservative, in some sense. I want to preserve organic human culture and natural human bonds. And I’m afraid of any government with the powers and ambitions to fundamentally restructure humanity.
Human life is unfair. But some projects aimed at establishing ultimate fairness would be worse.
Don’t some people on the left assume that social change means harnessing the power of the state to coercively enforce some sort of bureaucratically designed policy? Does everything need to have a political solution in this sense?
It is one thing to harm someone, but it is another thing to wrong them.
Imagine I parked my car in a parking spot that you wanted to park in. Because of me you have to walk an extra 100 meters.
In some sense I’ve harmed you. I’ve denied you some good. I’ve caused you suffering of some kind. Not major suffering, yet some sort of suffering in some sense.
But unless I butted in line (or something of the like), I didn’t wrong you. You had no right to the spot (unless maybe you saw it first).
The other day, I heard a debate on the radio about whether mobile phones were a human right. They are almost certainly a human good. Or the communication made possible by them is a human good. Or it is a means to various human goods.
But are you wronged if you don’t have a mobile phone? You might be denied some good. It might even harm you if you don’t have a mobile phone. But are you wronged if you don’t have one?
Here in Canada we pride ourselves on our universal healthcare system. Why should the rich get better care than the poor? I get that.
But why should the rich get better food and better exercise? Shouldn’t we have a universal food and exercise system?
If you don’t believe in two-tier healthcare, why do you believe in two-tier (or many-tier) food?
Because of this, I’m tempted to think that two-tier healthcare is good and proper.
One more reason: if I have 5 million dollars, and I’m dying, surely I have the right to do whatever I can to save myself, right? If I’m allowed to buy any number of luxuries with that money, how can I not be allowed to try to save my life?
None of this means I’m against the social safety net.
I think you have the right to do all you can to save yourself. But I can’t see how you can have a right to the very best healthcare. There is only so much money in our healthcare budget. And so, right now, Canadians aren’t getting the the very best healthcare money can buy. At most, Canadians get the best healthcare that our healthcare budget allows. Otherwise there wouldn’t be enough money to go around.
If we really have a right to the very best healthcare, then we in Canada are being wronged.
I’d say we aren’t being wronged, though we are probably being harmed.
Healthcare is undoubtedly a human good. And so a bad healthcare system is bad. (Our system is relatively good, I think.) We’d be a bad society if we had bad healthcare. And so there is some sense in which we ought to work towards the best healthcare we can.
But is healthcare a right?
Again, undoubtedly it is good. And it’s undoubtedly bad if we lack it. But does it count as a right?
What if harms become wrongs given the right context. That seems right. The very rich wrong (and not merely harm) the poor when they leave them in their suffering. And so, since our society is very rich, in our society healthcare is a right.
The main riff is OK. But the bridge and the chorus are weak. And there is something terribly unsexy about the way Bono sings “sexy boots”. That line alone ruins the song.
{Update: It is growing on me. The “sexy boots” line is still very unsexy. But the song is slowly growing on me. I initially hated the Vertigo single. I was dumbfounded by how shit it sounded when I heard it on the radio. But now I like it. I can only hope that the music video for Boots is better than the Vertigo video. That remains an irredeemable piece of shit.}
Filed under: Ethics
The meanness of bigotry lies in its denial of our ability to transcend our background, our genes, our culture or whatever. A good person is open to be surprised by this kind of transcendence.
The wrongness of expecting a woman to be a worse scientist than a man is not a mistake about genes or whatever. It would be wrong even if we had decisive proof that women, as a group, tend to have qualities which diminish their scientific abilities. It is good and proper to open to be surprised by an individual’s ability to transcends their background. This readiness to be surprised is a sign of excellence of character.
(BTW – I take it that we don’t have this kind of proof about women being generally inferior. But sexism would be wrong even if we did have it. So I’d say that sexism isn’t merely ignorant. It would be wrong even if based on knowledge. The right response is not to say “Here’s some evidence that men and women are equal in their abilities in every way.” That might be true. Or partly true. It might be false. But, in any case, it is mostly irrelevant. Which is to say that I agree with some of the goals of the egalitarians, even if I’m not an egalitarian in the technical sense.)
A potential hire came in to give a talk to my department. He outlined an externalist account of epistemic warrant, and then applied it to moral knowledge. Basically, you are entitled to hold some beliefs without having reasons for them. Prime examples: perceptual beliefs and moral beliefs.
The questions some of the faculty asked during question period were embarrassing, and betrayed their ignorance of both epistemic externalism and the responses moral realists have made to standard objections to moral realism.
First, the fact that you need to give reasons in order to explain why you are entitled to a belief does not mean that you need to have reasons to actually be entitled to the belief. You can be entitled even if you can’t explain why. These are the basics of the externalist position, folks. It might be wrong (it ain’t), but you sound silly when you confuse the giving of reasons to explain why you are entitled to a belief with the giving of reasons for the belief.
Second, one of the more famous professors in my department seemed to think that the very existence of Paul Bernardo is sufficient proof that moral realism is false.
After all, Bernardo denies that what he did was wrong. Therefore he obviously doesn’t know it was wrong, right?
Wait a minute!!! Think that one over for a second. Clearly you can deny what you know to be true. That’s obvious, isn’t it? Far better to think that Bernardo:
(i) knows it was wrong but simply doesn’t care
(ii) knows it was wrong but believes that he deserves special exemption
(iii) knows it was wrong but will say anything to get out of prison
(iv) has something wrong with his belief producing cognitive faculties
The first two are just the kinds of things you’d expect from a psychopath, right? Bernardo seems like a paradigm case of psychopathy, right?
The prof accused these alternative explanations of being ad hoc. Bullshit. Give me one reason to think that my denying something entails that I don’t know it. That’s not even plausible.
Anyway, I can absolutely guarantee that this fellow won’t be offered a job. I’ve never seen such a hostile question period. The department hated him. But for the sloppiest of reasons. Idiots.
Groundhog Day might be the finest American film ever. There, I said it.
If you don’t agree, you’re spiritually dull. Probably.
It’s a true spiritual classic. There’s more moral guidance to be found in this tale than in a thousand ethics courses. Which, now that I think about it, is not saying much.
You oughta watch it. Make sure you make it past the first half, which seems like a typical Bill Murray comedy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Don’t give up — what makes the movie special is the second half.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Suppose you think that deep surprises are impossible.
But what if, in the future, you are deeply surprised by the existence of a deep surprise?
It is logically impossible to know ahead of time (in any non-risky way) about a deep surprise. So it is logically impossible to know (in any non-risky way) that deep surprises are impossible.
Maybe there are no (and will be no) deep surprises. But you won’t be able to know this (in any non-risky way) ahead of time.
Even if there are no (and will be no) deep surprises, all knowing will still be rooted in faith. For it will be logically impossible to know this (in any non-risky way).
I’m taking faith to be a matter of stepping out and committing yourself in the face of risk. That’s what it is, right? Faith is utterly mundane, and it lies at the root of all knowing. There is nothing religious about it.
That’s why talk of ‘faith communities’ is non-sense. The idea that, if you don’t belong to a religious community, then you don’t live by faith, is laughable. It is obviously wrong, if you stop and think about it, isn’t it?
Filed under: Favourite Song Right Now
Filed under: Epistemology
The are at least two kinds of surprise.
Sometimes you feel surprised even though you saw it coming. Say you’ve smoked for 20 years and have been diagnosed with cancer. You’d feel shocked and surprised, right? But you know that smoking causes lung cancer. It is no surprise that a smoker would get lung cancer, right? But you feel surprised.
But there is a deeper kind of surprise. By definition, if you are surprised in this deeper sense, then you didn’t see it coming. You didn’t anticipate the surprise. This is a surprise in the full and proper sense, not merely a felt surprise.
Can we ever be non-culpably surprised in this full sense? Or are we always blameworthy for our surprises?
What if we do our very best (epistemically), but we still fail to anticipate something? That would count as surprise in the full and proper sense that I’m interested in. We’d be truly and non-culpably surprised.
But does this ever happen?
It seems to me that it does.
But if it does ever happen, then that changes everything.
For, logically, you can never anticipate this kind of deep surprise.
So, this year, will we be surprised to find out that the moon is made of cheese?
Logically, we can never know for sure. Because, even if we will be surprised, we won’t be able to anticipate it.
The fact that we do not anticipate a surprise does not count as evidence that we won’t be surprised. In fact, our inability to anticipate a surprise is a necessary precondition for being surprised in the deeper, non-culpable sense.
If deep surprises ever happen, then all knowledge is rooted in faith/commitment.
For you’ll never know beforehand if you’ll be surprised. And so you’ll always have to reach out and trust that you won’t be surprised. You’ll have to reach out and commit yourself to a future in which you are not surprised.
The reason why folks instinctually believe that “empire” and all things “imperial” are bad is that they grew up watching Star Wars.
We feel bad about American cultural imperialism. I do, anyway. But kids in Iran want jeans and rock n’ roll, whether we like it or not, right?
Since I’m a conservative of sorts, I’m saddened by the loss of local cultures.
Or am I?
Anyway, when folks like Shane Claiborne speak in hushed tones about “the abandoned places of empire”, aren’t the kids shuttering with thoughts of the Emperor? Aren’t their little hearts burning with the hopes of joining the Rebel Alliance and blowing up the Death Star?
BOOOOOO!!!
Filed under: Culture, Ethics | Tags: logic, spock, star trek, utilitarianism
So I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the other day. It’s arguably the best of the movies, but that’s not an argument I’d defend. Strangely, I’m rather partial to Star Trek V. Anyway, in Star Trek II, Spock says something like
Logic clearly demands that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
I’m quoting from memory, but I’m sure that’s nearly word for word. This idea plays a central role in the climax of the story. Spock sacrifices himself (‘the one’) to save the crew of the Enterprise (‘the many’) from certain death. With his last dying breaths, Spock explains his actions to Kirk by referring back to what he said earlier about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few.
The idea seems to be that his actions were not the result of compassion or a kind of heroic commitment to the good of others even to the point of death. No. He was merely acting according to cold, dispassionate reason. But, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how cold, dispassionate reason can get you there. I can’t see how how logic teaches us what Spock seems to think it does.
Logic demands that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Maybe it works like this:
(1) Utility (i.e. happiness) can measured, and the total utility of a community can be summed.
(2) A good world is to be had by raising this sum.
(3) A good person is committed to advancing the goodness of the world.
(4) Attending to the needs of the many will raise the sum. Attending to the needs of the few at the expense of the many will reduce this sum.
(5) So all good people will act such that the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few.
(1) seems false. (2) then topples with (1). (3) is not a dictate of reason, at least in the cold dispassionate sense of reason that Spock subscribes to. (4), as a kind of formal calculation, seems right. (But there are technical reasons why it’s wrong. The argument against it is called the utility monster argument. Look it up if you like.) (5) is irrelevant. Cold dispassionate reason doesn’t tell me to be a good person, and so it doesn’t tell me to act such that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It might tell me to choose according to my rational self-interest. Maybe. But self-sacrifice in the manor of Spock clearly ain’t in my rational self-interest. (Unless Spock was rewarded in the afterlife for his moral heroism.)
Actually, isn’t it true that the needs of the many don’t outweigh the needs of the few? At least sometimes they don’t, right? What about minority rights? If you are against Bush using torture, then — as Ricky Ricardo used to say — you got some ‘splaining to do.
Anyway, Spock wasn’t being the grand-champion of cold logic by sacrificing himself, was he? I don’t see how you can get there from here.
76 Reasonable Questions
to ask about any technology
by Jacques Ellul
“Your scientists were so obsessed with whether or not they could, they never stopped to ask whether nor not they should.”
Jeff Goldbloom’s character from Jurrasic Park.
Question: Is it anti-science to ask what limits should placed upon the practices and projects of scientists?
Another question: What if the corporate world and the world of science are the same world? What then?
One more question: What if the new cutting edge of freedom is the freedom to happily submit to constraint?
There is a kind of freedom that amounts to a rusty cage in dark corner. The mature realize they need to be free from this kind of freedom.
It is widely held that personal bias is a bad thing, at least epistemically (i.e. when it comes to knowing).
People value loyalty when it comes to friends and family. This seems a bit like personal bias (or maybe it involves personal bias). But we recognize that this kind of loyalty can go wrong (even if it does not always go wrong).
What is it to be biased? When is it wrong? Is it wrong when it comes to knowing? Always?
Maybe bias in knowing works like this: You are biased towards A if you assign more weight to the evidence for A than it seems to you that it has.
But there is deeper kind of bias on top of this. This deeper bias works like this: The evidence for A seems to be weightier than it actually is.
If you are biased in the first way, you decided to be biased. If you are biased in the second way, you won’t even be aware of it.
I’d say that it is exceedingly difficult to sort out the one from the other in daily life. For what begins as the first can morph into the second. You decide to think of your favourite sport team as better than they seem to you. You decide to oversell their good qualities and undersell the their bad qualities. But, after a while, this makes things seem different. You no longer decide to oversell their good qualities. Instead, the team starts to seem that good to you.
Also, who would admit (even to themselves) that they were biased in the first sense? No, you’ll convince yourself that you were biased in the second sense. You’ll feel that you were biased in the second sense. It will seem that way. Except maybe in moments of special moral clarity.
Anyway, all this assumes that epistemic bias amounts to misjudging the weights of evidence for propositions. Is that accurate?
What if you’re considering whether you can jump across a canyon, and it seems to you that you can’t make it? If your life depends on it, isn’t it good and proper to try to convince yourself that you can make it? Won’t bias here save your life? Won’t it help you successfully navigate life? Won’t it furnish you with the knowledge that you really can make it across, even though it seems that you can’t? I’d say that this is an example of bias furnishing us with knowledge, not merely true belief. (Others would say that that you merely reached out in faith and just happened to be right. I’d say, yes, you did do this, but by doing this you achieved knowledge and made contact with the world. Or you probably did. More information is needed to make a full judgment.)
Also, science is inherently conservative and biased. (I don’t mean for this to be a criticism.) Maybe ‘loyal’ is a better word than ‘biased’. Research programs only get off the ground because a groups of researchers are committed to certain paradigm theories in the face of anomalies. Science wouldn’t work if people always tried to build theories from the ground up. They work within unquestioned assumptions so they they can dial in on very specific things to question and test. Doubts can only have meaningful content in the context of belief. You might say that this is non-biased loyalty, and so it doesn’t count as bias. But you can be sure that sometimes it amounts to the second kind of bias. Also, despite what scientists have to say about it, the decision of what research projects are undertaken cannot be made without reference to our needs and wants.
At the bottom of it all, you should only ever believe something because it seems to you that it is so. You can never escape this baseline “it seems so”. You might think that “knowing it is so” is a very different thing from “it seeming so”, and much to be preferred. It may be more than “it seems so”, but it is not less. You can be more or less confident in your “it seems so”. But there is always a risk that you are biased in the second sense.
You can be non-culpably biased in the second sense. Every impulse of epistemic action is issued under the risk of bias in the second sense.
They say that we’re capable of almost anything (morally speaking) given the right set of circumstances.
Given the right circumstances, you could have been the moral lecher cheering on Hitler, satisfied that those rotten Jews had it coming to them. Thank the Lord you are not in that place.
Have everything and everyone you love destroyed, and have your basic nutritional needs denied for a week, and then test out your moral convictions. You’ll be reduced to a savage beast, capable of moral horrors. Thank the Lord you are not in that place. Pray that you never find yourself there.
Just as moral monstrosity can be a matter of bad luck, so also moral heroism can be a matter of good luck. Some of our great moral heros just happened to be the right people, at the right time and in the right place, didn’t they?
Someday you might be confronted with an opportunity to do a great act of moral heroism. Will you be ready?
Maybe you’ll put yourself on the line, saving a life and making the 6 o’clock news. Maybe you’ll do a great deed in secret. Maybe it will be a tiny decision with great–though unknown–ramifications. Will you choose rightly in your ‘moment of truth’?
Pray to the Lord that you’ll be ready.
So much lies beyond your control. You didn’t decide where you were born. You didn’t decide the historical circumstances that would unfold before you. So much is left to divine providence.
But right now you are faced with the onslaught of a thousand tiny decisions. In and through these decisions you will shape yourself into the kind of person you are becoming. When engaging in moral self-examination, the key questions are “who am I becoming?” and “what kind of person should I become?”
In and through these daily decisions, in cooperation with divine grace, you have a small role to play in fashioning yourself into the right kind of person.
So pray, both for moral luck and for the courage and wisdom to fashion yourself into a good person who is ready to rise up to meet the history that unfolds before you.
This is the key ethical task which has been set before us. The key ethical questions are “who’s a good person?” and “how can I be a good person?”
These questions are basically ignored by our philosophers. Instead, they are obsessed with abstract and artificial moral puzzles and debates over what kind of language moral language is. But you can’t answer those questions without first, at least implicitly, answering “who’s a good person?” and “how can I be a good person?”
Debates over the various modern ethical systems/theories (utilitarianism, et al.) are, in this sense, massively wrongheaded.
If you want guidance on how to live a good life, look elsewhere. The closest thing to guidance you’ll find here is some sort of Walt Disney silliness about “following your heart” or “being true to yourself”. The problem is that there is no fully formed “self” for us to be “true to”. And “following your heart” is hopelessly vague advice. (What can this really mean? Following my appetites? Really? You can’t be serious.)
The moral life can’t possibly be a matter of “being true to ourselves”. Like it or not, we are burdened with the responsibility of fashioning ourselves. The ethical question is “who shall I become?” We are not ready made. We are constantly becoming the people we incrementally decide to become.
Filed under: Uncategorized
To call Lewis and Luther ‘brothers in Christ’ is something I treasure dearly. It’s hard to describe how profoundly I relate to each of these quotes.
For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
C.S. Lewis
I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling – alas! Praying little, grieving little for the Church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh. It comes to this: I should be afire in the spirit; in reality I am afire in the flesh, with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me… For the last eight days I have written nothing, nor prayed nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, party from another vexatious handicap… I really cannot stand it any longer;… Pray for me, I beg you, for in my seclusion here I am submerged in sins.
Martin Luther
If you repeat the words ‘happy birthday’ over and over again, they’ll loose their meaning and become mere vocal sounds. (Try it.) They’ll no longer function as signs but become mere sounds. (And not merely because you start to mumble.)
When someone walks up to you and says ‘happy birthday’, you do not focus on the sounds but on the meaning signified by them. You attend to the meaning from the sounds. But you could attend to the sounds and loose the message, if you wanted to.
When you see a tree, you attend from the changes in your eyes to the tree. But, unlike with words, you cannot attend to the changes in your eyes. (Except by cheating with a mirror.) That’s part of the mystery of being embodied.
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