Masking Up and Getting Vaccinated: My Rights vs What's Right

The Rise of the Delta Variant

Earlier today I read an article by the by the chief of the Pathology and Laboratory Service for the Central Iowa VA Health Care System. Dr. Stacey Klutts. He is a health care expert, and his expertise is not just in medicine generally but in the very area of medicine that gives one a deep understanding of the virus, the vaccines, and the benefits of masks. He explains clearly why it is so, so important both to get vaccinated and to wear a mask as the Delta variant of the SARS-COV-19 virus surges across the country. He has no political agenda. He simply wants to help keep people alive and healthy.

In briefest terms, his point is this: the COVID vaccines offer robust protection against serious illness and death, but does not prevent the virus from getting an initial foothold on the surface of the throat mucosa. This means that a vaccinated person might be infectious for a couple of days (significantly shorter than the infectiousness of the unvaccinated), but is unlikely to get very sick (or sick at all) since the virus meets a primed immune system as it tries to spread beyond that initial infection point. Beyond this, his focus is on the Delta variant, which is many times more infectious than earlier strains--as infectious as the measles, meaning it is as infectious among humans as any disease we know. This Delta variant is sweeping through the south and heading north fast. He likens it to a tsunami, with vaccination as the high ground of safety. Getting as many people to safety as possible is critical--and mask use by everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated, helps disrupt the rate of spread enough that we can get more people to safety.

Individual vs Collective Decision-Making

The question is what we should do, individually and collectively, with this information. And here, I want to focus on the phrase "individually and collectively." The first question is about what is the right thing for me to do, what is the right thing for you to do, what is the right thing for all of us as individuals to do granted this information. The second question is about public policy--and questions about public policy are generally about what we as a society will require and what we will permit.

These are different questions. When we are talking about public policy, individual rights loom large and often clash with matters of public welfare. The aim of public policy is to promote the public welfare, but individual rights impose constraints on how we do so. But how much do they constrain? How important does the public good at issue have to be in order to justify a constraint on liberty? These are hard questions, and they are the questions that become front-and-center when our conversation turns to mask mandates and vaccination mandates: does the individual have a right to refuse to wear a mask or get a vaccine, or does the state have the authority, given the urgent public health needs during a pandemic, to require these things?

My purpose in this blog post is to set aside those collective questions altogether and focus on the individual question: "Given the medical information currently available and the situation we are currently facing, what ought you and I to do?" That individual question often gets obscured or lost amidst the debates over the collective, public-policy questions.

What I Have a Right to Do vs. What is Right for Me to Do

In most of my moral philosophy classes, at some point I have to talk about the distinction between what we have a right to do and what is the right thing for us to do. Suppose I'm planning to go to a philosophy conference but learn that my sister will die without getting a liver transplant, meaning she needs a piece of someone else's liver--someone who's compatible. Let's suppose I'm a compatible donor, and it will be very hard to find another in time to save her if I don't volunteer. But if I do volunteer, I'll miss my conference.

I have right to refuse, given that it's my body. But what is the right thing for me to do? That I have a right to refuse really just tells other people what to do. It tells them they can't make me go under the knife to save my sister's life. It means, probably, that it would be wrong for the government to legally require me to donate a piece of my liver to my sister. So, it probably follows that is it wrong for the state to implement public policies that in any way, even with certain constraints, require people to donate organs to dying relatives.  But that doesn't settle what I should do. Should I miss a conference to save my sister's life? Absolutely I should. Her life matters more than a philosophy conference.

Sometimes the question of what we have a right to do is clear, but the question of what's the right thing to do is muddy. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes--as in the case above--both questions are easy to answer: because it's my body I have a right to refuse even if it means my sister's death; and if I exercise that right by heading off to the conference and letting her die, I've done something seriously morally wrong. You'd be justified in thinking less of me. Doing that would, morally speaking, make me a pretty bad guy--even though I have a right to do it. Because the right thing for me to do in this case is clear as day: I should forego the conference and save her life. That's the right way for me to exercise my rights.

So let us assume that the information in the linked article is correct. There's excellent reason to do so. The author, Dr. Klutts, is an expert on precisely the matters at issue. He has studied all the evidence and explains it clearly. And he appears to have no reason to lie. Furthermore, what he's saying is endorsed by every competent physician whose expertise and character I trust--even if a few stray physicians in fields other than epidemiology and virology, whom I otherwise know nothing about, express a contrary view on YouTube videos. (I looked at one such video a few months ago and was able to google some of the claims as I was listening to uncover research studies that flat-out refute what she was saying and, in one case, makes it obvious that she was confused about some key distinctions--Thanks, Google Scholar!)

If you assume this, then the question of what we should do, what's the right thing to do, is pretty darned clear even if the question of what we have a right to do is a matter of major ongoing public debate. The question of whether the government can mandate vaccination and mask-wearing pits public health against individual liberty in ways that can make things muddy very quickly. But that doesn't mean that the question of what each of us should do is equally muddy.

The No-Brainer Moral Question

If the information contained in this article is correct, there isn't a lot of room for controversy about what the best choice is based on concern for your own health and the health of your loved ones, your neighbors, your fellow citizens, and the health care workers who are exhausted and, in many cases, at an emotional breaking point. Getting vaccinated promotes your own health and makes you less likely to infect others. Wearing a mask promotes your own health to some extent, and to a greater extent makes you less likely to infect others. The Delta variant is so transmissible that it will sweep through the unvaccinated population very quickly unless we slow it down with masks and other mitigating measures. Slowing it down gives us more time to get more people vaccinated--and the more people who are vaccinated and the slower the spread, the more likely it is that our healthcare system will be able to handle in the influx of seriously ill COVID patients.

In the light of this information and looking at things from the standpoint of consequences, masking and getting vaccinated are pretty clearly going to have better consequences than not. Of course, something might be immoral even though it has good consequences if doing it violates someone's rights. But my getting vaccinated doesn't violate others' rights. My wearing a mask doesn't violate others' rights. So if we're looking at the question of what I should do, the better consequences of masking and vaccinating win the day. The same is true if we look at things from the standpoint of the ethics of care: If I care about myself, about my loved ones, about the people in my community and the health care workers who treat them, I will want to show that by taking steps to make their lives better. Masking and vaccinating do that. 

When our focus is on the question of what is the right thing for individuals to do, rather than what the law can rightly mandate, there's little room for moral argument. It is one of those no-brainer cases where it's hard to come up with an argument against masking and getting the vaccine. 

My Plea

So here is my plea: Please don't let the controversies about the morality of health care mandates get in the way of seeing what's the best choice for each of us to make as individuals. I understand why people are concerned about legal mandates to get vaccines (and, to a lesser extent, mask mandates), even though I also believe that there is a legal place for public health-related mandates. But that's a debate about what people have a right to do or not do and what the government has a right to require. The question of what's the right thing for you and me to do is a different question. And while there is some variability in answers based on individual life circumstances (I know someone for whom mask-wearing triggers tachycardia), for most of us the question of what's right to do in this situation is far less muddy that the question of rights and government authority, at least when we think clearly enough to separate out the two questions.

So if you think the government shouldn't mandate masks or vaccines, by all means make that case in the public sphere (and be prepared to engage honestly with arguments for the opposing views). But don't confuse that argument with the question of what is the right thing for you and me to do.

In other words, it makes perfect sense to wear your masks, get your vaccine, defend the right of your neighbors to refuse to do likewise...while arguing that the right thing for them to do, the right way for them to exercise their rights, is to follow your example and get vaccinated and wear masks.

And whatever you do, please, please don't do something that hurts you and your loved ones and your neighbors and your community and the health care workers we all depends on just as a way to assert your right to do it. We have a right to do things we shouldn't do. But in making decisions, it's the "shouldn't do" part that defines our moral character.

Should Roy Moore Withdraw?

Should Roy Moore withdraw from the Senate race in favor of another Republican candidate?

There are different ways to approach this question. You could approach it as a moral question. Or you could approach it as purely a question of political expediency.

I think the question of political expediency is easily answered but far less important. If you're a Republican, then even if you care only about retaining the Republican majority in the Senate and nothing about the moral character of office-holders (hopefully that isn't true of my Republican friends), the answer would seem to be this: you should hope that Moore withdraws and try to convince him to do so. Democrats who care nothing about moral integrity (hopefully not the case for my Democratic friends) would likewise hope that he stays in the race.

The reason for this is pretty clear. In Alabama, the Republican nominee for a Senate seat would ordinarily be a lock to win. But now we have this growing body of allegations from both women and people in Moore's home town, all painting Moore as someone with a history (while he was an adult professional in his 30s) of sexual pursuit of teenager girls as young as 14. One allegation, if true, would be a clear case of sexual assault. This situation means that if Moore does not withdraw, a seat that is usually reliably Republican has become vulnerable. And so Republicans who care only about party victory should call for Moore to withdraw, and Democrats who care only about party victory should sit back and hope he stays in the race while the scandal grows.

But what should people who care about basic decency, regardless of politics, recommend? Here, there are two questions that seem relevant. First, how bad is it for a man in his 30s to chase after girls as young as 14, and what does it say about that person more broadly? I'm not going to explore this question because I find the answer obvious: it's very bad and says nothing good. This is why I've stopped watching Kevin Spacey, whatever his acting skills. 14 year olds are children.

The second question has to do with when we should believe a charge of this magnitude when it is leveled against someone. More precisely, when can I legitimately act on such a belief? Here, it matters what kind of action we're talking about. There's a big difference between locking someone away based on a belief, and withdrawing political support or urging someone to withdraw from a political race.

The question of whether to support a political candidate is a different question than that of whether to convict someone of a crime. We don't want to lock away innocent people, and so in a courtroom we should presume innocence until guilt is proved. But we don't want to risk having seriously morally compromised people wielding enormous political power, which is why "innocent until proven guilty" is surely too high a standard of evidence for decisions about who to support for political office.

Accusations are of course easy to make, and so uncorroborated accusations may be insufficient reason to withdraw support from a candidate. But when there are enough allegations whose verifiable details have been confirmed, all mutually reinforcing each other, to make a claim of this sort *credible*, that strikes me as enough to warrant withdrawing political support.

Of course, so much hinges on our trust in the journalistic integrity of those who report these allegations and the investigation into them. Here, it makes a difference to me that the story was broken by a venerable newspaper that, whatever its political biases, is known for having the highest standards in terms of gathering evidence and assessing the credibility of sources before going to print. The Washington Post (like every news outlet) may be influenced by political bias when it comes to choosing which stories to focus on, but when they report on a story their reputation for following journalistic standards is high.

Are there skeletons in other political closets that haven't been exposed and are just as bad? Probably. But we cannot ignore a skeleton that has fallen out of a closet because of hypothetical skeletons that might be hiding in other closets.

So: I think Moore is now a vulnerable candidate whose continued candidacy might actually give a Democrat an unprecedented chance of a win in Alabama. But I think Democrats should ignore this and join calls for Moore to step aside in favor of another Republican candidate even though this means closing a political "opportunity." And I think Republicans should call for him to step aside for a reason far more important than politics: because it's the right thing to do.

Meta-Ethics and Moral Arguments for God

I haven't talked much on this blog about moral arguments for the existence of God, at least not explicitly. In a way this is a bit odd, because my first book can be viewed as offering one kind of moral argument--not for the existence of God, but for the legitimacy of having faith in God's existence.

Moral arguments for God's existence, or for religious faith, fall right at the intersection of my main philosophical interests. In this post, I want to consider one such intersection: The need for moral arguments for God to engage with the diverse range of ideas that fall under the heading of what is called "meta-ethics."

Off and on I've posted things on this blog pertaining to what is called "meta-ethics," although I've tended to eschew that term. The field of meta-ethics is perhaps best understood in terms of the questions it asks, which in turn are best understood as question about the answers to lower-level ethical questions. Such lower-level questions are usually categorized as either "applied" or "normative." Applied ethics asks questions like the following: "Is it always wrong for a person to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?" Normative ethics, meanwhile, asks more general-level questions about the nature of morality, such as,"Are there some things that are wrong regardless of the consequences, or is the moral status of an action always a function of its outcomes?"

Meta-ethics steps back, looks at the answers to such lower-level questions, and asks about the nature of these answers. When you say that deliberately terminating a pregnancy is always wrong, are you asserting something of pregnancy-terminations that you take to be true of them, namely that they always have the property of wrongness? If so, what kind of property, exactly, is "wrongness"? And if not, what are you doing when you say these words?

When I say that the end does not always justify the means, am I asserting a fact which is either true or false apart from how I feel? Or am I simply expressing, say, a general-level feeling about actions that prioritize ends over means? Or am I, perhaps, simply voicing my personal commitment never to let consideration of ends trump consideration of means? If I'm asserting a fact, is it morel like a mathematical fact ("2+2=4"), an empirical one ("There are two beers in the fridge"), or a socially constructed one ("Barack Obama is President of the United States")? Or are moral facts unlike any of these?

When I've wandered into meta-ethics on this blog, it has generally been in relation to the question of whether moral claims are "objective" or "subjective." This is a classic way of attempting to get at one of the most crucial meta-ethical questions: Does a moral judgment have a truth value that is independent of the preferences/attitudes/beliefs of the individual making the judgment?

Although I haven't explicitly pursued the connection here, these meta-ethical questions have bearing on issues in the philosophy of religion. More precisely, there's one especially widespread kind of moral argument for God's existence whose soundness depends on some very precise answers to a number of questions in meta-ethics. The species of argument I have in mind has something like the following form:

1. Moral claims have an objective truth value, and some moral claims are true (they're not all false).
2. In order for moral claims to have this sort of objective truth value, theism must be true (or at least metaphysical naturalism must be false).
3. Therefore, theism is true (or metaphysical naturalism is false).

(Clarifying note: What is premise 1 saying? Here's a rough elaboration: A moral claim attributes a property of a certain kind--what we might call a normative property, such as "right" and "good"-- to such things as persons, actions, character traits, and states of affairs. Premise 1 is saying, first, that some of these attributions are correct and others incorrect; and second, that what makes the correct attributions correct is something apart from anyone's (individual or group's) actual approval or disapproval, acceptance or rejection, of that which is being called good or right, etc.)

Typically, the case for the first premise of such an argument rests on an appeal to basic moral intuitions. We are invited to consider a moral claim such as "Torturing children for fun is immoral." We are invited to think about what it would mean for such a claim to be treated as lacking in objective truth. If the implications of such thought experiments are deeply counter-intuitive, it follows that we intuitively accept the first premise. Once this is established, an effort is made to defend the second premise--that is, to show that in order to remain true to our intuitions--in order to underwrite the meta-ethical position we intuitively embrace--we must suppose there is a God. How this is done will vary greatly according to the version of the argument being considered.

A weaker form of this strategy of argument would hold that theism does a better job of making sense of our moral intuitions than does any form of naturalism; hence, theism is the best way (at least given our current understanding of matters) to underwrite those intuitions.

One crucial weakness of any such strategy of argument is this: Even if it works, the reasoning can work in both directions. As one of my friends from graduate school once quipped, "One person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens." (I won't explain the terms. Google them if you care.) In a nutshell, if you agree that given your intutions premise 1 should be accepted, and you accept 2, you actually have two choices: accept theism or reject your intuitions. And there are some who find theism so implausible (or naturalism so obvious) that they are more than ready to take the second option.

But this is hardly the only way to resist the conclusion of a moral argument along these lines. In fact, there are meta-ethicists who question whether our intutitions really speak as strongly in favor of premise 1 as defenders of this sort of argument suppose. Furthermore, there are meta-ethicists who deny premise 2, having offered quite sophisticated defenses of naturalistic accounts of objective moral truth

Put simply, both premises 1 and 2 make meta-ethical claims that can be and have been challenged in the philosophical literature.

Let's start with the first premise. I have formulated this premise so that it would be true if either of two important meta-ethical positions is correct: (i) moral realism and (ii) objectivist versions of constructivism. Moral realism is, roughly, the view that there are moral facts "out there" whose truth is independent of what any individual or group, even an "ideal" one, does or would think/feel/endorse. Objectivist versions of constructivism hold, roughly, that moral truth is determined by the judgments that would be made by a person or community under certain ideal conditions--for example, under the condition that the individual were being perfectly rationally consistent in the presence of complete knowledge of all relavant facts. In other words, what makes some moral claim true is that the moral claim would be endorsed by the ideally-situated person or group (not by what anyone actually endorses--actual endorsements are correct or incorrect based on their correspondence to this ideal). This view is to be distinguished from subjective and relativistic versions of constructivism. Subjectivism holds that a moral claim is true if it correctly reports the actual contingent thoughts/feelings/attitudes of the individual making the report. Relativism holds that a moral claim is true if it correctly describes that actual agreements reached by a given group, such as a culture or society.

The reason I've formulated premise 1 so that it encompasses both (i) and (ii) is simply this: In my judgment the intuitive case for objectivity in ethics (assuming it is convincing) would be satisfied by either of these theoretic approaches. This is not to say that I think both approaches can be philosophically developed or worked out with equal success. It is one thing to say that our intuitions would be satisfied if there were a moral truth "out there." It is something else to give a plausible account of what such moral truth would be like. It is one thing to say that our intuitions would be satisfied if there were some idealized perspective from which these intuitions would be reliably endorsed. It is something else to attempt to describe such a perspective and show that it would actually underwrite our moral intuitions.

In any event, what the first premise rules out are those meta-ethical views that deny that there are objective moral truths. These are: (a) noncognitivist theories (which hold that moral utterances don't have any truth value at all, since they don't assert anything but, instead, merely express attitudes or plans or some such); (b) subjective or relativistic versions of constructivism (sketched out above); and (c) "error theory" (which holds, in effect, that moral claims do have an objective truth value, but that all moral claims are objectively false in the way that all claims about the properties of non-existent things, like unicorns, are objectively false).

Premise 1 of the argument above effectively rejects each of these theories. But there are, of course, sophisticated meta-ethicists who have rigorously defended these alternative meta-ethical views, even in the face of the intuitive challenge. Simon Blackburn, for example, has been an importand defender of (a). Another, with whom I had dinner a couple of weeks ago, is Allan Gibbard. Gilbert Harman has defended (b). And John Mackie has defended (c). These philosophers have endeavored to account for the intuitions that seem to support an objectivist meta-ethical stance either by explaining the intuitions away or by showing that there remains a way to preserve the intuitions (perhaps in a modified form) within these alternative meta-ethical frameworks.

As to the second premise, there are some sophisticated moral realists who, in recent years, have attempted to stake out a version of moral realism that is thoroughly naturalistic (David Brink and Richard Boyd are good examples). Furthermore, there are a range of sophisticated theories--most of them inspired by Kant--that purport to provide an objective foundation for moral truth that is "constructivist" in the technical sense and which makes no appeal to God in the course of offering that foundation (John Rawls, Alan Gewirth, and Christine Korsgaard offer examplars of such approaches). In general, constructivist accounts of morality, whether objective or subjective or relative, are consistent with naturalism (even thought at least some constructivist theories may also be consistent with theism or other forms of supernaturalism). As such, there are a wide range of theories that would need to be discredited in order for the second premise of the above argument to remain anything more than controversial.

In short, moral arguments for the existence of God that have anything like the above structure need to tackle the entire range of meta-ethical literature. It's not enough that they be able to show how moral objectivity could be defended on theistic assumptions. They also need to show (a) that naturalistic forms of moral realism don't work as well as the favored theistic theory; (b) that objective forms of constructivism don't work as well; (c) that contrary to claims made by some noncognitivists, subjective constructivists, etc., these theories really do fly in the face of our moral intuitions; and (d) if one must choose between one's moral intuitions and a metaphysical naturalism, there is good reason to jettison the latter.

This is quite a project, to say the least. It's unlikely that even with a hefty book one could adequately pursue each elements of it (Robert Merrihew Adams has gamely attempted something along these lines with his Finite and Infinite Goods; but while I regard that books as a great intellectual achievement, it is hardly the final word on the subject--as is evidenced by the rich exchange, following the book's publication, between Adams and the naturalistic moral realist Richard Boyd).

So, even if I were inclined to defend this sort of moral argument for God's existence, I wouldn't be inclined to do so in a blog post. And the fact is, I'm not sure what to think about this moral argument. I'd love to find a version of it that convinces me when I put on my critical philosopher's hat, but I haven't yet.

There are, however, other kinds of moral arguments. Some I find myself more drawn to than others.

In fact, one way to read Is God a Delusion? would be to treat it as an extended defense of a moral argument, not for God's existence as such, but for the decision to have faith in the existence of God. Here's how I'd formally reconstruct the argument along these lines that is nascent in the book:

1. Some things are objectively morally good.
2. If naturalism were true, then reality at a fundamental level would be indifferent to what is objectively morally good (the basic constituents of and principles governing reality would, given naturalism, neither embody such goodness themselves nor reliably promote its expression or preserve/perpetuate that which expresses it).
3. There is a worldview, opposed to naturalism, according to which reality at a fundamental level would not be indifferent to what is objectively morally good but, on the contrary, would embody such goodness, promote its expression, and preserve/perpetuate that which expresses it. A worldview of this sort is what unites theists who regard God as a proper object of devotion, trust, and worship (as opposed to fear and fawning subservience), and so can be described as the worldview of theistic religion (as opposed to theistic superstition, following Plutarch's distinction).
4. Both naturalism and the worldview of theistic religion are compatible with reason and our overall body of experience, even though both exceed what reason and evidence can establish.
5. Given the definition of theistic religion offered in (3), it would be objectively morally good if the worldview of theistic religion were true.
6. Living as if the worldview of theistic religion were true is a morally benign choice--that is, doing this would not produce outcomes or behaviors that are objectively morally bad, but would produce outcomes or behaviors that are objectively morally good.
7. Faith in one important sense of the word involves the decision to live as if a worldview is true based on the hope that it is true, and this decision is reasonable and moral if (a) the worldview is compatible with reason and experience even if not uniquely supported by it; (b) it would be objectively morally good were the worldview true (hence making the worldview a suitable object of hope); and (c) living as if it were true is morally benign.
8. Hence, faith in the worldview of theistic religion is reasonable and moral.

Framed in this way, it's obvious that my overarching line of argument in Is God a Delusion? depends on a meta-ethical premise, one which I never explicitly defend. But notice that this premise--roughly, that there are objective moral goods--would be true were any form of moral realism or objective constructivism correct. In other words, this argument does not depend on discrediting naturalistic forms of moral realism and every version of objective constructivism. It does, however, suppose that noncognitivism, error theory, and subjective and relativist forms of constructivism are mistaken.

In short, a unifying argument in Is God a Delusion? presupposes a meta-ethical position, but a far broader one than the more narrow moral argument requires.

There are other moral arguments for God's existence, and I suspect that each such argument probably depends for its soundness on some kind of meta-ethical position being correct. If so, then criticisms and defenses of moral arguments for God, to be complete, will inevitably have to consider work being done in meta-ethics.

Moral One-Upmanship, Psychological Health, and Avoiding Hypocrisy

I just finished reading two blog posts back-to-back. The first, by Sarah Hippolitus on Secular Perspectives, focused on "The Psychological Harms of Traditional Christian Belief." The second, by my friend Arni Zachariassen, made an impassioned case against opportunistic moral one-upmanship in the debate between atheists and theists.

After I'd finished reading the post on Secular Perspectives, I found myself immediately wanting to write a series of blog posts addressing each of her six main claims about how Christian teachings damage psychological health--arguing, in effect, that for each of the teachings she brings under the crosshairs, much hinges on how the teaching is understood or interpreted. Her claims strike me as identifying dangers realized to greater or lesser degrees in some Christian communities--but not as identifying problems that are endemic to every expression of the Christian faith.

And in terms of the issue of psychological health, she completely ignores the empirical research that positively correlates religiosity (including its Christian forms) with happiness, at least in societies under stress and especially insofar as religiosity is linked to increases in religious experiences. There is little evidence, by contrast, to suggest that religiosity in general has a negative effect on happiness (in prosperous societies, the religious and non-religious seem to be comparably happy with their lives). In failing to consider such evidence, she also fails to ask crucial questions. Given here reasons for thinking that the specific doctrines she targets, interpreted as she interprets them, shouldn't be expected to promote psychological health--and given that these reasons seem quite compelling in the abstract--mightn't we conclude either that most Christians don't interpret these teachings in the way Hippolitus does, or that there are compensating psychological benefits to Christian belief and practice?

In other words, I found myself inspired to devote weeks of time and effort demostrating that her treatment is oversimplified and ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater...something that anyone with any kind of rich understanding of Christianity already knows.

And then I read Arni's post. His post begins with what must have been a rather shocking doscovery: an internet acquaintance of his had been arrested on child pornography and child rape charges--and had confessed to at least some of these crimes. The acquaintance, as it happened, was not merely an atheist but "a bit of an atheist activist." What Arni notes is how easily and readily this latter fact might have been invoked as an opportunity for what he calls "moral one-upmanship" in the contemporary God debates. One gets the sense that, at least for a moment, Arni was tempted to do exactly this.

But the reality, as he points out, is that theists and atheists alike have been guilty of horrific offenses against their fellow human beings, and blaming someone's atheism or religion for their moral failings really doesn't capture the truth about the human condition, in which the temptation to do awful things is ubiquitous, and neither belief in God not belief in a naturalistic worldview has any special claim on making us better or worse. More significantly, Arni saw that using this horror as an opportunity for theistic one-upmanship "would represent precisely that curving in on oneself that Christian theology describes in the doctrine of sin. Because as much as I’d love to score some argumentative points and feel good about myself in all my moral superiority, doing so would be a betrayal of what morality is really about."

And what is morality about? "Morality is something you do, first and foremost. Only later is it something you talk about." Arni's point is not about moral theorizing. He is not saying that one shouldn't consider and push arguments concerning the greater adequacy of theistic (or naturalistic) accounts of morality. He finds theistic accounts of our moral experience more satisfactory, and is ready and willing to explain why.

But there is a difference between saying that a theistic worldview does a better job of accounting for morality than atheistic ones, and saying that theists are more moral than atheists. One might believe that God accounts for goodness, but it doesn't follow from this that one cannot be good without believing in God. What Arni is asking for is not the end to debates about the possibility of adequately grounding moral concepts in naturalistic worldviews. That isn't what "moral one-upmanship" is about. Moral one-upmanship occurs when a theist or atheist says, "We're morally better than you are! Nya, nya!"

Morality in the first instance is something we do. When we use moral standards more for judging others than for guiding our own behavior, we have taken the first step towards abandoning morality. And this is precisely what we do when we engage in moral one-upmanship.

So what does all of this have to do with Hippolitus's essay? It seems to me pretty clear that in secular circles, the concept of psychological health has come to occupy much of the same normative space historically occupied by moral language. Psychological health is a central action-guiding value, both in terms of self-development and in terms of the treatment of others. Now I don't make this point in order to criticize it. I think that psychological health is a very important value, one that should play an important action-guiding role. Although I don't think it can stand alone as a foundation for morality, my purpose here is not to attack secular moral theory but simply to note that there is a presumptive moral theory at work in secular circles, even when it is not named as such. Practically speaking, psychological health serves as a basis for utilitarian-style moral decision-making.

Seen in this light, Hippolitus's essay amounts to an exercize in just the sort of moral one-upmanship that Arni is criticizing. She is focused on attributing moral failings to Christians--arguing that their teachings undermine psychological health--rather than looking inward to explore how secular humanists can become morally better themselves.

But as soon as I say this I find myself confronting the specter of hypocrisy. If moral one-upmanship is itself a kind of "sin," then am I not simply focusing here on the sins of secular humanists like Hippolitus and ignoring my own? But then again, how can any of us avoid talking about the failings of others? Sometimes, at least, it seems that showing a proper respect for oneself demands that one point out the unfairness of what others are doing.

And here, then, is the lesson: It isn't that we should never point out the moral failings of others. After all, sometimes outsiders are in a better position to notice our moral failings than we are. If we want to work on being moral, we need the perspective that others can provide. And often, those who are best able to provide it are outsiders. As such, not only should I invite others to tell me when they think I've fallen short in some morally significant way (hopefully in a charitable spirit aimed at helping to lift me up morally, rather than for the sake of knocking me down), but I should also return the favor (again, in a constructive spirit, recognizing that I could be mistaken in my judgment about them).

The crucial point is that all this external criticism has got to aim at motivating internal self-reflection and growth. Thus, criticism must be offered in a spirit that is likely to promote such self-refection and growth rather than promoting defensiveness; criticism should be received with an eye towards self-refection and growth even when it is delivered in a manner likely to produce defensiveness; and the criticism of others should always be subordinate to personal self-reflection and growth. This last point means not only that we should care more about our own moral condition than that of others, but that we should treat the moral condition of others as a kind of mirror. When I see someone commit a certain kind of wrong, I should ask myself, "When do I do that?"

It's not that we shouldn't criticize others. Rather, it's that all such criticism should be part of moving beyond oneself into a more communal standpoint in which the criticism serves the function of collective development. I criticize you in order to help you grow, and at the same time look inward to see how and where I might need a similar kind of growth.

If this is what we should be doing--and I think it is--then the defensive response to Hippolitus that I originally envisioned should be viewed with suspicion. Of course, there has to be a place for pointing out that attacks and criticisms are misguided. But again, this cannot be our priority. And, having already devoted a book to responding defensively (in a sense) to new atheist attacks on religion, it might be that a series of posts doing the same sort thing in response to a comparatively obscure blog post is a misdirection of my priorities.

In this case, at least, I might be better served using that obscure blog post as a mirror, or looking for that within Hippolitus's critique that isn't just confusion or overgeneralization--something that might just apply to my own brand of Christianity, or something that is a danger I might fall prey to if I don't remain vigilant.

Roger Sullivan on the Place of Moral Sentiments in Kant

My friend and co-author, John, just pointed me to some helpful passages from Roger Sullivan's Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory. These passages offer at least a partial response to the recurring challenge that, because Kant takes morality to be grounded in what reason demands apart from our inclinations, the portrait of the moral life that emerges is a coldly inhuman one--something fit for Vulcans, perhaps, but which calls us to subordinate all our desires and sentiments to this unfeeling duty.

The truth is more subtle than this. Kant does not take the moral life to be one in which emotions and sentiments of every sort have no place and are at best a distraction. Rather, he distinguishes between two species of feelings and desires: those that are "pathological" (by which he does not mean what modern psychologists mean by "pathological" but rather something more like "desires we just happen to have because of heredity and environment, because of our physical natures and the way that external forces interact with them"), and those that are moral. It is the former that Kant finds suspect. Here is what Sullivan says:

However similar they may be to merely pathological feelings and desires in other respects, moral sentiments are radically different in one critical respect: They do not have their origin in empirical sources outside our own reason so that we passively feel them. Rather, they are the subjective effect of our prior recognition of the objective and absolute binding force of the moral law. It is just because they are caused by reason alone that they can be moral feelings.

Kant makes the contrast between the two this way: our desires are merely pathological when we “represent something to ourselves as good, if and because we desire it,” whereas when we experience moral desires, “we desire something because we represent it to ourselves as good” on the basis of a prior judgment of the moral law inside us. Morality does not obligate us because we first find ourselves interested in it; rather, we find we are interested in doing our duty because we first recognize that it is our duty.

A foundational moral sentiment is reverence/respect for the moral law itself. And it is clear that Kant thinks such reverence or respect motivates us--and our acts have moral worth if and only if this is our motive. But this raises the natural question, "Isn't someone who obeys the moral law out of respect for the moral law really just following a hypothetical imperative, that is, an imperative that is contingent on the sentiments you happen to have?" In other words, isn't respect for the moral law just another "inclination" among others, so that whether you are motivated to act on the moral law is going to depend on what your inclinations happen to be? Here is how Sullivan addresses this issue:

The only incentive that can motivate us to adopt and act on the motive of duty, Kant writes, is the reverence or respect we feel for the moral law. This is not a feeling we need to try to “will” ourselves to have, for it arises irresistibly from our unavoidable recognition of the moral law. In fact, it is because we all inevitably experience respect for the moral law that we can be said to have a “predisposition” to be morally good. Moreover it is an incentive of such “herculean strength” that it enables us to offset the influence of all the “vice-breeding inclinations”. Because it follows from our recognition of the Law of Autonomy, it is the only motive that can give our actions genuine moral worth.

For us, then, respect for the moral law is the subjectively necessary side of our consciousness of duty. As an emotion, respect resembles fear in that we recognize that the moral law may rightfully demand the denial of self-love; it is also like love in that we recognize that this law originates in our own reason and is something we impose on ourselves. Finally, it is like nonmoral emotions in that it is a feeling that gives us an “impulse to activity” on which to act. But it is not just a feeling of attraction or of aversion, for it is not just a feeling like sympathy or empathy or love, all of which can be understood in naturalistic terms.

So important a role does respect have that, in his third “proposition” about the human good will in the Groundwork, Kant defines duty as “the necessity to act out of reverence for the law”. In his defense of human moral agency in the third chapter of that work, he again discusses moral interest, to try to ensure that his readers do not interpret their moral agency as pathologically caused. As we saw in the last section, moral sentiments must not be invoked as causal explanations for any part of our moral life. Regardless of how an empirical psychologist might interpret respect, from the moral point of view it represents a ground that is not explicable in naturalistic terms. Because acting from duty means acting out of reverence for the moral law, that law remains the ultimate objective motive of moral actions.

There are several questions we can ask about this: First, does Sullivan get Kant right? Second, if so, are moral sentiments as described here distinct enough from "pathological" inclinations to provide an answer to how morality, not inclination, can be said to be our motive when we act morally? Third, even if we separate out moral sentiments from inclinations and concede that it is only the latter which are irrelevant to moral life and at best a distraction, is that enough to free Kant from the original challenge that the moral life is in some sense coldly dehumanizing?

With respect to the last question, the following anecdote from Kant's life, related by Sullivan, may be worth reflecting on:

An incident occurred about a week before his death that has often been used to illustrate how Kant guided his relationships with others by the disinterested interest of moral respect, which he nonetheless called the “courtesy of the heart.”  Desperately weak, mentally unable to concentrate, and virtually blind, Kant insisted on rising and remaining standing until his doctor had seated himself.  With great effort Kant then remarked that at least “the sense of humanity has not yet a abandoned me”.

Robert Merrihew Adams on the Primacy of Pretheoretical Ethical Beliefs

My graduate seminar has started looking at sections of Robert Merrihew Adams' book, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics; and this afternoon (over coffee, of course) I was reading a passage from Chapter 2 of that book which speaks to several recurring themes on this blog. So I thought I'd quote the passage here and ask what people think.

First, a bit of context. The passage occurs at the conclusion of a section in which Adams defends the work of the metaethical naturalist, Richard Boyd, against a particular line of attack. Boyd seeks to develop a naturalistic account of moral realism (the view, roughly, that there are objective moral truths, that in calling X good or bad, right or wrong, one can be saying something that is true of X). Although Adams ultimately rejects naturalistic moral realism in favor of supernaturalism, he is unimpressed by those who challenge it on the grounds that ethical propositions are inadequately subject to empirical testing to qualify as objectively true or false.

In the lead-up to the passage, Adams spends some time defending the pursuit of "reflexive equilibrium," that is, the task of developing our theoretic understanding of things through a kind of dialectic between our strongest and most confident pretheoretical beliefs and the the theories we build from them--a dialectic that gravitates towards a state of optimal mutual support. "No cognitive enterprise," Adams insists, "can get off the ground without initial reliance on many confident, pretheoretical beliefs; and a large proportion of those beliefs remain more deeply entrenched than the theoretical superstructure erected on them." As an example, he notes our strong, pretheoretical belief that when you drop a rock, it falls towards the earth. And he notes that "a development of physical theory that would advise us to give that up completely would almost certainly discredit itself rather than the pretheoretical belief."

But, Adams points out, we have evaluative and normative beliefs that we hold to with just as much pretheoretical confidence as that stones fall when you drop them. He uses the example of the wickedness of torturing children.  Adams then notes the universal and justified respect that modern people have for science and its methods--a respect that has led many theorists to attempt to extend its empirical methods beyond the sphere of science. "But it is important," he continues, "to distinguish between the successes of modern physical sciences, which are great and uncontroversial, and the successes of modern empiricist, science-inspired epistemology, which are arguably much less impresive, and certainly much more controversial." The passage I want to share here continues from this point, as follows:

If a pretheoretical ethical belief held confidently by all of us were irreconcilable with well-established principles of physics, that would be a sever problem for ethical theory; and if there were too many such cases, it could certainly call into question the acceptability of the method of reflective equilibrium in ethics. But if initial reliance on confident pretheoretical ethical beliefs fails to conform with an epistemology of exclusive reliance on inference to best explanation, or with some other empiricist epistemology, that is a much less serious problem. Nor do we need an elaborate theory to justify going with pretheoretical belief rather than empiricist epistemology, if such a choice is forced upon us...

Adams then turns from epistemology to metaphysics, making a similar point with relation to physicalism:

(Physicalism) is not a theory in physics, nor more generally a result established by modern physical science. It is rather a metapysical theory. inspired by enthusiasm for science. It holds, roughly, that all the facts there are can in principle be described in the vocabulary, and explained by the laws, of modern physics, in some ideal development thereof. It is obvious that such a theory is issuing large promissory notes to be paid by future developments, and hence is highly speculative. It is attended by much-debated and, I believe, grave and unresolved difficulties. Given the strength of our confidence in many pretheoretical evaluative and normative beliefs, and the pervasiveness of their role in our thinking, I believe that physicalism has much more need to be found compatible with them than they have to be found compatible with it. This is not an argument against physicalism; that's business for another occasion. It is rather an argument for not allowing physicalist worries to undermine ethical beliefs.

Thoughts?

My Upcoming Graduate Seminar on Religion and Morality

This coming semester I will be leading a graduate seminar on a topic that is presumably of interest to readers of this blog. Although I will not link my blog to the seminar in the way that I did with my philosophy of religion course last term, I anticipate that many of my blog posts over the coming months will be inspired by the seminar readings and discussions.

The title of seminar is "Does Morality Depend on Religion?"--a title that offers an enormous range of options, and which was selected more for its pithiness than for its analytic precision. However, since the seminar is supposed to satisfy a graduate requirement in ethical theory, that narrows the focus considerably. In effect, the course will need to devote attention to critically reflecting on ethical theories--a requirement that led me to refine the pithy title question into a more precise course objective. Here's how I describe the focus and aim of the course in the syllabus I just finished composing:

In this seminar, we will consider the following broad question: In the effort to offer an adequate theoretic understanding of value, morality, and moral agency, does a broadly theistic ontology provide resources for offering a more satisfying account than can be offered on the assumption of a naturalistic ontology?


This question is both narrower and broader than the question posed as the title of the course. It is narrower in that it asks whether a theistic ontology enables more adequate theories of morality and value than could otherwise be constructed, rather than asking if “religion” in some vague sense does so. It is broader in that, insofar as it asks whether the adoption of a theistic worldview makes possible a better account of morality than could otherwise be provided, it may admit of an affirmative answer even if we aren’t convinced by arguments to the effect that an adequate account of morality is impossible given atheism.

In order to pursue this broader question, we need to do far more than is possible in a single semester. However, one of the things we need to consider is what resources for ethical theory are actually provided by a theistic ontology. To begin addressing this question, it helps to consider the merits of various attempts to construct an account of ethics within a theistic context. Looking critically at three fairly recent attempts of this kind will be a primary focus of the course. Specifically, we will examine attempts made by Robert Adams in Finite and Infinite Goods, Linda Zagzebski in Divine Motivation Theory, and John Hare in The Moral Gap. The first two are different comprehensive efforts to construct theistic moral theories—that is, holistic understandings of the nature and foundations of value and obligation that appeal to God in a fundamental way. The third focuses more on a specific problem for ethics famously emphasized by Kant: the supposed gap between what morality properly understood requires of us and the psychological limits of human moral agents. Hare argues both that this gap needs to be closed for any account of morality to make sense, and that the theistic strategy for closing the gap is more satisfying than other strategies.

To frame our critical reflection on these attempts to make sense of morality in theistic terms, we will start the course with a concise and forceful recent defense of the view that morality and value can be adequately accounted for without positing some form of theism—specifically, a defense of this view provided by Erik Wielenberg in his recent book, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe.

This blog seems like a fitting place for some points of elaboration in relation to this course description. Specifically, why narrow the focus as I do, and why broaden it as I do? Of course, given the nature of graduate seminars, this narrowing and broadening has at best a tentative character. Since I won't be lecturing much at all, and since seminar participants will be leading discussions over the readings, the focus question serves more as a starting point and a basis for creating an initial reading list, as opposed to determing what, exactly, will be covered in the class. Still, my reasons for focusing and expanding the title as I do warrant some elaboration.

On the first issue--why focus on God rather than religion more broadly?--I was in large measure motivated by two considerations. First, there's the matter of relevance to contemporary debates in the West. In the ongoing "God Debates," (which, by the way, is the name of my friend John Shook's new book), morality is often invoked in defense of theism--but these invocations aren't usually very well thought-out. The so-called "Karamazov's Thesis"--that without God, anything goes--is treated as almost axiomatic by many conservative theists (a propensity that helps to explain both the importance and success of a popular-level book like Greg Epstein's Good Without God).

Second, there's the matter of available philosophical literature. It is not hard to find carefully developed book-length philosophical discussions of moral theories that explicitly invoke theism as part of the theoretical groundwork for making sense of morality--or, as the case may be, rigorous philosophical attempts to show that the existence of God is not a "necessary postulate" for morality.  Finding comparable works that seek to ground morality in a religious worldview that is not explicitly theistic is substantially more difficult. If anyone knows of good options in this regard that are still in print, let me know. (Peter Byrne's book, The Moral Interpretation of Religion, moves in this direction from a theistic starting point--but it is now a "print on demand" book, and the book store strongly discouraged me from assigning it).

As for the broadening of the focus question for the course, there are (again) two main reasons for doing so. First, it seems to me that the broader question is more philosophically open and hence more fruitful. Suppose one asks, "Do you need eggs to make chocolate chip cookies?" Even if the answer is no, there remains much that's worth considering about the egg/cookie relationship. How do eggs affect the consistency of the cookies relative to egg alternatives? What about flavor? These interesting and important issues might be overlooked if the focus is on the narrow "do you need eggs" question.

Second, I think that our epistemic situation is such that we are better served by the broader question. With the diversity of moral theories out there, and the ongoing philosophical debates surrounding them, it seems to me that the best we can often do in relation to rival moral theories is note that theories of this kind have certain advantages over theories of that kind (and potentially vice versa). If we want to support one set of moral intuitions, we might conclude after a fair bit of philosophical reflection that Kantian ethics does a better job than does utilitarianism. But with respect to some other consideration, utilitarianism may be preferable. Such reflection might lead us to pursue a synthesis of the theories which preserves a feature of the Kantian theory precisely because we've concluded that this feature is what is responsible for the theory's capacity to account for the intuitions it accounts for.

This kind of piecemeal process is what I think leads to progress in moral philosophy. And asking whether theism offers any distinct advantages for moral theory--and if so, what they are--is part of just this kind of process.

Morality, Religion, Bifurcating Ideologies...and Sam Harris's New Book

Earlier this week, in my philosophy of religion class, I offered a brief review of the questions and controversies surrounding the relationship between morality and religion--a topic that I wanted to touch on in class but (as I was making the difficult decisions one has to make when designing a course) decided not to spend extensive time on.

Because theists so often argue that one cannot have morality without God--or at least that one cannot have any kind of objective morality which can provide normative guidance across interpersonal and cultural divides--it makes sense for atheist thinkers, especially those who believe in an objective morality, to attempt to establish a secular foundation for objectively binding moral standards. Thus, it is no surprise that Sam Harris, the "original" new atheist, would turn his attention to this task.

A few months back I offered my reflection on Sam Harris's efforts to pursue this task in a TED talk. Now Harris has released a book on the topic, The Moral Landscape, developing his claim that science can offer an objective foundation for ethics. Just today, Michael Ruse--a philosopher I greatly respect and author of numerous works in the philosophy of science, (including Darwinism and its Discontents and his most recent book, Science and Spirituality)--offers his take (down) of that book in Religion Dispatches.

Many of the points Ruse makes are similar to those I raised in relation to Harris's TED talk--but Ruse is quicker to highlight Harris's deeper agenda, which is (yet again) to trash religion and people of faith. "To say that religion is a bit of an obsession for Harris," Ruse comments, "is rather like saying Hitler had a bit of a thing about the Jews." Ruse is himself an atheist who wrangles repeatedly with creationists and ID theorists, but he's what William Rowe (the atheist philosopher of religion) would dub a "friendly atheist"--that is, his attitude is one of skeptical but respectful critical engagement with people of faith. I think, like me, Ruse is greatly troubled by the kind of bifurcating ideology--the us/them divide and the villifacion on those on the other side of it--that characterizes so much of the contemporary debate about theism and religious faith.

Often, the issue of morality is invoked by religious fundamentalists to villify atheists: There can be no morality without God, they argue; and hence, atheists must be amoral. The reasoning here is terrible, of course. Even if you think that the existence of objective moral truths in some fashion or another depends on the existence of a God, it hardly follows that atheists can't be deeply moral. Suppose there is ongoing uncertainty about the underlying physics that explains the force of gravity--and suppose that in a debate about this underlying physics, one side in the debate has the right answer. It doesn't follow that those on the other side of the debate don't believe in gravity (let alone that they behave as if it doesn't apply to them).

Ruse, in his review of Harris's new book, seems to worry that Harris is taking a page out of the religious fundamentalist's book--trying to argue, in effect, that religious people can't be genuinely moral because they misconceive the foundations of morality. In fact, Ruse seems to be concerned that pursuing this kind of villification of religious believers is a basic driving purpose behind Harris's book.

How else do we explain Harris's utterly gratuitous 15-page attack on Francis Collins, the head of the NIH who also happens to be Christian--an attack that seems entirely out of place in a book that's supposed to be about the foundations of morality? As one reads his review, one can almost see Ruse blinking in astonishment. If your purpose is to explain the foundations of morality in terms of scientific facts, why ignore G.E. Moore's arguments that this cannot be done (in terms of what Moore calls the naturalistic fallacy) while devoting more than a dozen pages to trashing a scientist who has, buy all accounts (except, perhaps, the accounts of those religious conservatives who want to ban stem cell research) led the NIH with distinction?

In fact, as I argued when Harris first called Collins unfit to lead the NIH in the pages of the New York Times (simply because of Collins' Christian faith), there is a very disturbing similarity between Harris's denunciation of Collins and traditional religious denunciation of heretics. Now, it seems, Harris wants to go further: Belief in God not only disqualifies one from being fit to lead an organization such as the NIH; it fundamentally compromises one's ability to lead a moral life.

To be fair, I have yet to read Harris's book and I am going simply off of Ruse's review. Perhaps Harris's argument is not quite so hostile to religion as all of that. But, of course, having read his other books I'm prone to think Ruse's characterization is right. And if it is, then Harris is once again recreating atheism in religious fundamentalism's image--this time by taking the fundamentalist argument that atheists can't be moral and inverting it to apply to religious believers.

I think the issue of how morality and religion intersect is an important one. But I think it is crucial that we explore this and related issues without the sort of hostile us/them thinking that puts those with different ideas into a morally disabled "out-group."  This is not to say there is no truth to the notion that certain ways of thinking can have morally pernicious effects. After all, I just argued in my most recent Religion Dispatches article that allegiance to a doctrine of biblical inerrancy can threaten our capacity for empathy and compassion. But there's a difference between focusing on specific ways of thinking (making a concrete case that their implications are damaging and inviting critical response), and pursuing an agenda of ideological disqualification in which an entire group of diverse human beings is cast beyond the pale--be it Muslims, or Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, or atheists. If any way of thinking has morally pernicious effects, this surely does.

Is Harris guilty of this? I'll decide for sure once I've read his book. But whatever is the case with Harris, let us agree that neither theists nor atheists have a corner on being moral, and neither theists nor atheists have a unique claim on harboring ideas with questionable implications for our prospects of living the most virtuous life we are capable of. In the struggle to understand what it means to live a good life--and the place of religious faith and respect for science in that struggle--bifurcating ideologies only impede progress.