How should we talk about belief in God? Part 2

Do you believe in God? That's a difficult question. I want the question to specify:

Model of God

Model of doxastic attitude

Degree of doxastic attitude

Allow for a modified logic for doxastic purposes:

P = P is under consideration.

~P = P is not under consideration.

+P = P has been considered and affirmed. The weight of the reason(s) I have for affirming P outweighs the weight of the reason(s) I have for rejecting P (if I have any reason for rejecting P).

~+P = P has been considered but has not been affirmed because (1) I don't understand P well enough to affirm it, only enough to consider it (i.e., partial consideration) or (2) I worry about certain objections to P or (3) I have counterbalanced reasons for affirming and rejecting P.

-P = P has been considered and rejected. The weight of the reason(s) I have for rejecting P outweighs the weight of the reason(s) I have for affirming P if I have any reason at all for affirming P.

~-P = P has been considered and not rejected.

G = God exists.

Theism = +G

Atheism = -G

Agnosticism = ~+G ^ ~-G

Innocence = ~G

We can translate agnosticism as simply 'G' (considered but not accepted and not rejected). The idea is that if G is really under consideration, then it will be considered and affirmed, considered and rejected, or considered and neither confirmed nor rejected. So:

Agnosticism = ~+G ^ ~-G = G.

 

Rocks and trees are not atheists or agnostics but are innocents (after Graham Oppy's designations). Babies are innocents too.

There is a difference between affirming or believing P and P's being actually true or false. An agnostic neither affirms the existence nor non-existence of God, but the agnostic does affirm that God either exists or does not, keeping with classical logic. The agnostic simply does not want to make any claims of knowledge or confidence over what is actually the case.

What is the nature of this 'affirming' or 'believing'?

Liz Jackson discusses the nature of belief and credence here: https://philpapers.org/archive/JACTRB-5.pdf

See also: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

Beliefs are things we have. Beliefs, like sentences, express propositions and are not the propositions themselves. Propositions are claims about reality and can therefore be true (match with reality) or false (not match with reality). Beliefs can be true or false because they represent true or false propositions, just like sentences. It sounds weird though to say "I have a sentence" when it sounds fine to say "I have a belief." Beliefs are more like mental states (sometimes conscious, usually unconscious) or mental dispositions that can be translated in terms of a sentence. (We say thoughts are propositional. But are thoughts grammatical, like sentences are? Or should we say thoughts are propositional, and we happen to express propositions in that which is grammatical, namely sentences?)

Propositions are like maps. A map of America is about America and is attempting to represent America accurately. A proposition is about reality and can more or less accurately describe reality. (Though, the non-propositional mental states of animals also represent reality, such as the spatial layout of a territory.)

In addition to belief, you can suspect that God exists, be willing to bet on God's existence, be convinced that God exists, or have some pragmatic notion like William James' leap or Jordan Peterson's 'I live as if God exists,' which suggests some degree of suspicion that God exists. As Jackson points out, when the stakes are higher, some philosophers think that this context changes the nature of belief. Because of how high the stakes are with respect to God, belief in God could be contextually quite different from belief in more mundane things.

After we settle on a doxastic model, I want further context of what it means to believe something, namely, whether this person has tested their belief or not.  

Recall that theism = +G. That means this person has considered the proposition that God exists and they believe in it. But what is the degree of this person's consideration? What makes up the story behind that belief?

'Two argument' theism = +G(2)

This means, if we consider every good argument against God to be worth -1 and every good argument for God to be +1 (a good argument in this context meaning that the argument makes no clear mistake such that a reasonable person could be moved by the argument) then the two argument theist has, in the end, two good arguments above the arguments against God.

You could believe there are four good arguments for God and two good arguments against God. Or you could believe there are exactly two good arguments for God and exactly zero good arguments against God. Both result in the score of +G(2).

We might want to acknowledge the total number of arguments for God that you have considered, to add weight to what you consider to be good.

So let's say you have considered the following arguments for God:

1) WLC's Kalam

2) Josh Rasmussen's contingency argument

3) Josh Rasmussen's argument from consciousness

4) Argument from beauty

5) Argument from desire

6) Argument from history (evidence for Jesus' resurrection)

7) Argument from reason

8) Modal cosmological argument

9) Modal ontological argument

10) Argument from moral facts

11) Fine-tuning

12) The applicability of mathematics

13) Aquinas' Third Way

Etc

And arguments against God:

1) Argument from evil

2) Argument from ontological evil

3) Reverse ontological argument (which may or may not be independent from 2)

4) Divine hiddenness

It's complicated by the fact that it's not obvious which arguments are independent. A true analysis of the arguments for and against God would include an analysis of independence, combining dependent arguments into one for each group of dependent arguments.

You can either affirm, reject, or be agnostic to each of these arguments (assuming you have considered them all). Within your analysis of each argument that you accept or reject, you will have reasons to accept or reject the argument. In some cases, there will be conflicting reasons for accepting or rejecting an argument, such that you could be agnostic with respect to individual arguments.

For simplicity, let's say we have 17 independent arguments here, and you think 5 of the theist arguments are good while 1 of the atheist arguments are good. You believe in God. Then your score would be:

+G(5,1,17)

The 17 represents the total number of arguments for and against God you have considered. The first number is the number of those arguments that you think are favorable to God, and the second number is the number of those arguments that you think count against rational belief in God. So on this particular score, you have a mixed score with 5 good arguments for God and 1 good argument against God, and because your 'G' is a '+G' you must think the collective weight of those 5 is greater than the weight of the 1.

This is nice, because it gives far more context than the usual "Yes I believe in God" or "No I don't." We can see, along with the model of God and model of belief, far more specificity as to what it means for this person to believe, disbelieve, or withhold belief. Some scores are more 'impressive' or 'interesting' than others. Consider the hypothetical score:

G(0,0,100)

This person is agnostic, has investigated what they consider to be 100 independent arguments for and against God, and finds not a single argument to give any rational justification for belief in God or disbelief in God. Here's another interesting score:

-G(10,1,25)

This person is an atheist, has investigated 25 independent arguments for and against God, and thinks 10 arguments count in favor of God while only 1 argument counts against God. How could this be?

In this case, this atheist thinks there is only one good argument for atheism, say the problem of evil, but the problem of evil proves that God does not exist. The 10 arguments that count in favor of God help explain how it is that belief in God has been maintained by so many people across so many centuries, including many intellectuals. Those arguments give at least some rational justification for belief in God (or, as just articulated, they give some explanatory power as to how it is that past and current intellectuals could have been or could be convinced in God's existence).

Question: How can we represent the individual strength of arguments? It's misleading to count each argument as +1 or -1 as if each has the same strength. And yet, if you count one argument as +2, that will make it sound like you have two arguments when you have one strong argument.

I don't think this is a problem. You can easily infer whether someone thinks the arguments on one side or the other are strong by whether they have a +, a -, or neither by the 'G'. We shouldn't overcomplicate things, and this new system is already running the risk of overcomplicating things. In everyday life, I don't expect people to adopt a system like this anytime soon. It's much easier to just ask someone whether they believe in God and go from there. 

In fact, we may want to simplify to just one number, which is the number of good arguments that support your view (and for agnostics, the number of arguments they have seriously considered and remain unconvinced by).

But what do we mean by 'considered'? Do we mean that this person has some vague awareness of the argument? Or that they have written a Master's thesis on it? Or somewhere in between?

Something like this would be at least a good starting point: The argument is considered when you yourself feel confident enough to explain to someone why you think it succeeds, fails, or why you think it's unclear whether it succeeds or fails.

Next question: What counts as a good argument? This would be the next thing to model to give even more context as to what it means to believe in God.

How should we talk about belief in God? Part 1

Like I imagine how a lot of other people feel, I am not satisfied with typical designations like 'atheist', 'theist', and 'agnostic.' I feel like they leave too much out of the picture of a complicated issue.

In philosophy of religion, professional philosophers of religion usually define attitudes toward God's existence in the following way:

Atheist = Someone who believes there are no gods of any kind.

Theist = Someone who believes there is at least one god of some kind.

Agnostic = Someone who suspends judgment on whether there are any gods of any kind.

Paul Draper has some really good discussion over this topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/.

In popular circles, and online, usually you see self-described 'atheists' as describing themselves more like 'agnostic' above. Professional philosophers and lay folks use different definitions of 'atheism' in this way. (Ironically, I've seen many online atheists call it a mistake to define atheism in the way that professional philosophers define it.)

The problem with the above definitions is that someone could be agnostic with respect to one definition of 'God' while an atheist or theist with respect to another definition. So instead we might say:

Atheist = Someone who believes that God does not exist (with respect to some God G).

Theist = Someone who believes that God does exist (with respect to some God G).

Agnostic = Someone who suspends judgment on whether God exists (with respect to some God G).

So we have gone from a broad definition to a narrow one. Now it's a matter of defining G in terms of this or that model of God. Here are some models of God (not exhaustive):

1) The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the Prophets (Judaism)

2) The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, and Paul (Christianity)

3) The God of Muhammad (Islam)

4) Qualityless, non-dual Brahman (Advaita Vedanta Hinduism)

5) Qualified, dual Brahman (Dvaita Vedanta Hinduism)

6) That than which none greater can be conceived (Perfect being theology / the greatest conceivable being / the maximally great being / the greatest possible being / perfection instantiated)

7) Classical theism

8) Neo-Classical theism

9) Pantheism

10) Panentheism

11) Deism

12) Pagan gods (Odin, Zeus, etc.)

13) The Tao

14) Plotinus' The One

15) Plato's The Good

16) John Hick's The Real

17) Apophatic theology

18) Process theism

Anyone can be an atheist, theist, agnostic, or innocent with respect to any model of God. Assent to one model of God may rationally commit you to assent to another model, and same for the inverse (dissent of one commits you to dissent of another).

So when it comes to positions on God's existence, I want to know the following:

1) Which model of God is under consideration? ("Do you believe in God?" – Do I believe in what?)

2) Which model of belief or other doxastic attitude with respect to this God is under consideration? ("Do you believe in God?" – Do I what in God?)

3) How do we score degrees of that doxastic attitude, or give context to it? (Does this person believe in God with certainty? Do they have a considered, well-informed view on the topic? – "Do you believe in God?" – Yes, I believe in God, and the reason why is... Or, No, I don't believe in God, but I haven't thought much about the topic... Or, I'm certain that God doesn't exist because... etc.)

The privacy argument against pro-theism is bad

We do not value privacy to an infinite degree. To date, get married, and have kids is to give up an enormous amount of privacy to your significant other. There is a privacy-loneliness tradeoff that humans take, often with little hesitation.

In medical cases, we give up our privacy to our doctors and we feel great comfort when we are cared for. God is the perfect doctor with perfect bedside manner. If we're willing to give up our privacy to our doctors, all the more would we be willing to give up our privacy to God, whom we trust all the more and who all the more provides a sense of ease and comfort for those in his presence.

But even saying "giving up" our privacy doesn't do the situation justice. Is a parent giving up their time to be with their children, or their spouse? Sure, but what else is time for? Am I giving up my money to live my best life? What else is money for? To collect dust? Am I giving up space in my bed when I sleep in it at night, as if that space had some other purpose?

Even if it's a "trade" between privacy and being with God, it's the easiest trade we ever made. We want to be known, we want to be loved, we want to be understood, we want to be seen, we want to be a part of something greater than ourselves, and we want to feel as though we belong. All these things require giving up some degree of privacy.

God promises to make you feel all these things to their greatest degree. God knows you, God loves you, God understands you, God sees you, by being part of God you are part of something far greater than yourself, and God makes you feel as though you belong in this world and were created with a purpose in mind. Your existence, instead of being a mindless accident, is a mindful event full of reason.

The privacy argument vastly overestimates our value of privacy as if privacy is the single greatest good in all of life, which is clearly false. We happily give up privacy for greater goods.

The argument is even worse than that. If God exists, then there are no broadly gratuitous evils. Imagine you had the power to bring God into being and solve the problem of evil, or withhold God. Imagine telling a child whose mom is dying of cancer (assuming this is a broadly gratuitous evil), "Sorry, but whether you know it or not, your privacy is more important to you than your mom being healthy." Absurd. Obviously we would gladly give up the good of our privacy to be free from horrendous evils.

Why do we want privacy? For safety and dignity. And yet with God we have maximal safety and dignity, and without God we lose all safety and dignity. With God we are kingly creatures participating in a Grand Story, eternally loved by the all-powerful, all-wise creator of the universe. Nothing could possibly be more dignifying than that! And speaking of safety, God guarantees our eternal safety in an afterlife. (I'm assuming a model of God that is logically incompatible with any fundamentally bad world, i.e. hell.)

If we knew God watched us, how would this affect our behavior? Perhaps it would give us a greater incentive to act rightly.

Let's be careful here. With the world as it actually is now, belief in God needn't give a greater degree of moral motivation nor the right kind of moral motivation. On the degree of moral motivation, rationality provides the motivation to be moral, and belief in God, in the actual world, will not necessarily make one more rational. (Given the reasons to doubt God's existence, if anything the opposite is the case.) On the right kind of moral motivation,  knowing God is watching doesn't help us by itself. We have to know what God is like and what he wants. If we have no idea, then a group of people might avoid a behavior, assuming that God disapproves of it, when it turns out that God wants that behavior.

Epistemically, in the actual world, we have the problem of evil and the problem of divine hiddenness. We don't know that God is watching us. If someone believes in God, they easily could come to false beliefs about what God wants, and so their belief that God is watching them could motivate them to act wrongly.

But in the counterfactual world where God really exists, I assume the problem of evil and divine Hiddenness would be solved and we would in fact know that God exists, that he is watching over us, and that we wouldn't have to guess as to what God is like or what he wants from us. With the epistemic problems dealt with, then it would be the case that belief that God is watching us would beneficially affect our behavior.

Although, this strikes me as a moot point, because such a God would just create us with better natures to begin with, so we wouldn't need God watching us to motivate our moral behavior. Our motivation would come from within.

Maybe we would feel embarrassed with God watching us at all times, even in private moments? Not at all. Christians who love God do not feel embarrassed by this at all, and if anything they feel the opposite. Again, do you feel embarrassed when a doctor takes care of you? For some people, the answer will be a simple and resounding yes. But when you're with a doctor who truly loves their work and finds all things medical fascinating, it's like your ailment becomes an object of interest rather than scrutiny. And if the doctor truly cares about his subjects and has great bedside manner, you won't be made to feel lesser in any way. God would also look upon us with perfect understanding, interest, and care. God would make us feel valued despite our limitations, and in fact it may very well be a key aspect of love to love something despite its limitations. Far from our limitations making us feel embarrassed, precluding us from feeling loved by God, it is exactly our limitations that highlight God's love for us!

Our vulnerability sets us up for deep pain when it's taken advantage of. But vulnerability is a double edged sword, where it also sets us up to feel loved in a thoroughgoing way. When someone makes you feel valued and comforted at your weakest moment, then you feel truly valued and at ease. In fact, it is exactly because of these sorts of effects that I would feel inclined to say vulnerability, or experiences of limitation, is one of those evils that can be justified because of the greater goods it enables, especially when that vulnerability never backfires, which, it goes without saying, never happens with God.

The misery argument against pro-theism

Should we want God to exist? If God would make the world better overall, then yes we should want God to exist. And I have reason to think God would make the world infinitely better.

There is only one good argument against pro-theism that I know of, which is a practical argument: Wanting impossible things will make you miserable, and wanting God is to want an impossible thing. So wanting God will make you miserable.

My response to this argument is that we find ourselves wanting impossible things all the time, and doing so is not only natural but can even show our virtue. When a loved one dies, we wish the loved one was not dead. It's impossible for the loved one to not be dead, but we have that desire anyway, and not only can we not be faulted for having such a desire, but if anything it would be callous for us to be indifferent.

When we experience loss, we naturally grieve that loss and wish against it. We must grieve to 1) express our emotion and not let it bottle up (the psychological / physiological demand), and 2) to demonstrate our good character (we appropriately recognize the value of what has been lost). Consider a mother who loses a child, but does not grieve. This would be very disturbing, and we would want to know why the mother isn't grieving. 

Obviously, one cannot force grief; it must come naturally, and we only grieve when we lose something precious to us.

And yet, while we must grieve, we cannot grieve forever. One can feel guilty for "moving on" too quickly; one can feel as though the greater the grief, the greater the love, and thus if I am to prove my love I must grieve for a great while. But this isn't the case. The badness of death is tricky, because it depends on what the dead have been deprived of. Depending on the circumstances of the dead, when they were alive, they might not have been deprived of much. A sickly child who has only a life of illness and pain to look forward to doesn't lose much by dying. An elderly parent who has only a cold hospital room to look forward to doesn't lose much by dying. And one might reasonably feel that given that our world is not a good world, or at least not a fundamentally good world, for existential reasons it's always the case that the dead aren't being deprived of a whole lot. By being dead, all existential problems (and all other problems besides, with the only conditional exception of deprivation) have been solved. Given the potential goodness of death for these reasons, one's grief might be cut short, and depending on one's own depression, might even turn into envy.

But in ordinary circumstances, grief is what follows loss, and the problem of how to grieve and for how long emerges. This leads to the paradox of grieving: I must grieve forever to recognize the permanence of the loss, and yet I must not grieve forever so I can live my life. Overstaying in grief fails to maximize flourishing, and no loved one would want that of you. But how does one stop grieving and move on without callously pushing aside the loved one as if they never existed?

The answer, like with any paradox, is balance. You don't grieve so much that your grief gets in the way of your ability to live. But you don't bury your feelings or pretend like the loved one never existed either. You grieve for a time, and that's the time to let out your feelings, and then when it feels right you let go. There is some compartmentalization here: in you, at all times, is your love, hidden away. Then, after some time has passed, you can bring that hidden love back to the surface and grieve again. And again, you move on.

I suggest that the death of God should be treated like the death of a loved one. You grieve, you move on, and you grieve, and you move on, and this cycle repeats until the end. You do this by ear, not by ritual. If you don't feel like grieving, then you don't. But when you do feel like grieving, you do, and you do not suppress it. Grief is human, and humans have a way of finding the balance of things, and the right balance for one person is different for another.

You might want to say God is too different. When someone "loses" God they really gain the truth that there was no God in the first place. But this fails to appreciate just how real God is for those who believe, and just how deeply emotional that relationship is. If you ask those who had such a relationship with God and lost faith, I think you’ll find losing God very much analogous to losing a best friend, a fiance, a spouse, or, if I may, a heavenly father. (I note there are those who feel silly for ever believing in God in the first place. But did they have the kind of perceived deep connection with God and deep belief in God that I have in mind?)

It's true that strictly speaking God isn't lost, as God was never really there. Instead, it's more like losing your optimism in the world. The world was fundamentally good, and now it's not; the world is infinitely worse than I thought it was. You can reasonably ask: How on earth does one "grieve" infinite disappointment such as this? This isn't a normal kind of loss.

You can rejoice in the discovery of truth and the shedding of false beliefs. You can be infinitely grateful that the world is infinitely better than a fundamentally bad world. The world is fundamentally neutral, and that feels, yes, overwhelmingly disappointing, but, weirdly, it feels fair. It kind of feels right. From day one, how did life treat you? How does life treat anyone? Peasants wish they were kings, and kings, paranoid of the Sword of Damocles hanging over their bed, wish they were peasants. If something is too good to be true, it always is. That's why life has taught you since day one, hasn't it? To discover that the world isn't fundamentally bad is an incredible sigh of relief, and given how bad things can get, it can almost feel too good to be true that the world isn't fundamentally bad!

You can ask how we know the world isn't fundamentally bad. It's true that I guess I can't have absolute certainty that my soul won't survive my death and attach to some nearby rock and remain there in silent agony for billions of years. But if testimonies of near death experience mean anything (and I don't really think they do), there is no risk of this. More importantly, consciousness, by all accounts, is an incredibly expensive thing. You need very particular organs, brains, in a very particular state to maintain consciousness. Even with brains and even with the right state, we lose consciousness very easily, like in sleep or anesthesia. This nearly guarantees that death is the end of consciousness, which means a fundamentally bad life – a life of eternal conscious torment – is impossible.

So there is something oddly beautiful, I think, in the infinite fairness or neutrality of this arrangement. But for those of us who once upon a time truly believed in heaven, we will have to, occasionally, grieve our loss of faith. We have no choice. We simply recognize the infinite loss.

We grieve, and we move on.

Stream of consciousness: The psychology of the philosopher

I was raised in a Christian environment where the most important thing is going to heaven when you die, and to get to heaven you must believe rightly.

Romans 10:9 - "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

If I can trade 80 years of misery for an infinite number of years of happiness, that's a good deal. That's an infinitely good deal. So for the Christian, happiness in this life doesn't matter at all. And if death means I go to heaven, then why would I care about my survival? So for the Christian, survival and happiness do not matter. The only thing that matters is your salvation and your relationship with God. You live to maintain your salvation (suicide entails damnation for most Christians) and to live for God's purpose for you and to fulfill God's commands. Basically, you want to look as good as possible come judgment day.

Practically speaking, living as if a perfect being is judging your actions is a pretty good heuristic for living a life you can be proud of. Prayer as a form of 'moral introspection' is incredibly powerful and helpful as a tool of personal growth. Problems arise though when this introspection leads to self-deception (God wants me to do the thing that I happen to also want to do) or moral arrogance (pro-choice folks are pro-baby-murder because my tradition says so and I'm committed to my tradition).

While Christians try to separate themselves from the ways of the world, finding value in the virtue of being different, Christians ironically fall into all the same psychological traps of tribalism as everyone else. As biological creatures, of course Christians have an innate interest in survival. Survival requires integration into a power structure, which almost always involves integration into a social structure. As such, social success means survival for Christians. Christianity itself becomes a matter of social success. (This is clearly true of pastors who make their money from working at a church.)

So Christians rightly believe that happiness, survival, and social success can come apart from truth, and so they distance themselves from "the world" and the happiness, survival, and social success they may get from being "in the world." But ironically they just end up creating their own world. If "the world" is wrong, they are stuck in their wrong beliefs, because they depend on those beliefs for their survival. But if Christianity is wrong, Christians are stuck in their wrong beliefs for the same reason.

Being epistemically stuck is a severe intellectual vice. You can tell whether you are epistemically stuck by asking the question: If you were wrong, how would you discover this? If you say, "I cannot discover this," then you are stuck. You are not stuck (or less likely to be stuck) if your answer is: If I were wrong, I would discover this by 1) Being intellectually virtuous (especially, being willing to be wrong), 2) Reading opposing viewpoints and honestly and seriously engaging in them, 3) Talking to people who think differently than I do and keeping an open mind to what they have to say.

This is why someone's material reality can have a massive impact on their worldview. In fact, I would consider material independence to be an intellectual virtue. Anything that reduces bias is an intellectual virtue, and material independence reduces bias. If your survival doesn't depend on a particular worldview, then you won't be biased to hold onto that worldview. (If giving up a worldview entails that someone would die, then don't be surprised when they never give up that worldview even when it's false.)

Christians do not engage in opposing viewpoints. They assume they are right and carry on.

While I lost the Christianity, I kept the feeling that figuring out what I believe and why is what matters most. It's true that what happens after I die is of infinite importance, because it lasts forever. So I agree with the Christian that my happiness, success, and survival for 80 years is nothing compared to my happiness, success, and survival for an infinite number of years. So the question of whether Christianity is true is of infinite importance to me. And if Christianity is not true, then it's infinitely important to me to have certainty, or as close to certainty as possible, that this is the case. Basically, I should either do everything in my power to get into heaven when I die or to prove that heaven isn't real (or to prove that a fully rational person will, in the end, not believe in heaven). This covers my existential bases, as either I get into heaven, which is infinitely good, or I prove that there was never an infinite good in the first place (and thus, if I miss out on anything, I only miss out on finite goods).

Philosophy involves reading on your own, writing on your own, thinking on your own, and generally separating yourself from those systems that threaten your intellectual virtue. The Christian separates themselves from "the world," and the philosopher separates themselves from everything. (As mentioned though, philosophy at its best is collaborative, and it's this collaboration that's essential to preventing us from becoming epistemically stuck. However, while reading involves engaging in someone else's ideas, and is in that sense socially interactive, it's still a private practice free from the tribalistic mechanisms that emerge from social groups.)

Philosophy is a strange activity, one that most humans do not engage in on any serious level. This makes perfect sense, as humans engage in those activities that do impart survival and social success, and survival and social success have little to no connection (and even a reversed connection) to the practice of philosophy. 

Again, if I consider what matters to not be the things of this life, but rather what comes next, then it makes sense that I would disregard the things of this life. It's exactly this disregard for survival and social success in pursuit of truth that makes philosophers strange, even inhuman. And yet, as I noted in a previous post, Aristotle said that our rationality is what makes us so distinctly human. And it's this inhuman-human paradox that makes philosophy a superhuman activity.

Four Problems with Kant's Ethics

In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant says the following:

"Understanding, wit, judgment, and whatever else the talents of the mind may be called, or confidence, resolve, and persistency of intent, as qualities of temperament, are no doubt in many respects good and desirable; but they can also be extremely evil and harmful if the will that is to make use of these gifts of nature . . . is not good." (393)

My first problem with Kant's ethics is that he provides no analysis of good and evil.

My second problem is that here he calls these virtues good and desirable. But good in what way? Good on what basis? An obvious answer is that virtues are good because of their good consequences.

Consider what Kant says here:

"To be beneficent where one can is one's duty, and besides there are many souls so attuned to compassion that, even without another motivating ground of vanity, or self-interest, they find an inner gratification in spreading joy around them, and can relish the contentment of others, in so far as it is their work. But I assert that in such a case an action of this kind – however much it conforms with duty, however amiable it may be – still has no true moral worth, but stands on the same footing as other inclinations, e.g. the inclination to honor, which if it fortunately lights upon what is in fact in the general interest and in conformity with duty, and hence honorable, deserves praise and encouragement, but not high esteem; for the maxim lacks moral content, namely to do such actions not from inclination, but from duty."

For some context, Kant says we perform actions out of three possible motivations: from duty (respect for law), from immediate inclination (feeling or desire), or from a means to an end.

Kant gives the example of a shopkeeper, which we can adapt to show these three motivations:

1) The shopkeeper who does the right thing, treating his customers fairly, purely for the sake of business. This is doing the right thing but for a reason that's not morally praiseworthy.

2) The shopkeeper who does the right thing because he wills the good of the customer and he delights in their flourishing. That sounds like having a good will, and Kant would say from the outside it's indiscernible from having a good will, but technically this motivation is without any moral value on Kant's view. The reason why is because in this case the shopkeeper is doing what comes naturally to them; they are acting on inclination or desire. They happen to desire something good. But had this person desired differently, they would have acted differently, and so there is no guarantee they would have done the right thing. There is nothing praiseworthy in doing what it was you wanted to do in the first place. (Obviously, this is not true. Clearly there is something praiseworthy about having a good desire, because what kind of a person has good desires? A good person.)

3) The shopkeeper who does the right thing not out of a means to an end or out of inclination, but out of respect for law. He does the right thing for the right reason, which is what it means to have a good will. Doing the right thing because it profits you, or because it satisfies a desire or staves off a discomfort is doing the right thing for a selfish reason (which can be evil or morally neutral). It's only when you do the right thing out of duty that you do something morally praiseworthy.

In all three cases, the shopkeeper acts in conformity with duty, but only in the third case does he act from duty, and it's only this action that has any moral value whatsoever.

So if all that is true, then again, on what basis is it true that "an action of this kind . . . deserves praise and encouragement, but not high esteem . . ." It sounds like Kant is saying these good actions deserve moral praise, and yet deserve no moral praise. Which is it? If the only source of moral value is a good will, and virtues, happiness, and good inclinations all come apart from a good will, then in what way are these things morally good? Would Kant say something can be good and yet not morally good? But in what way is a good action good if not morally good?

Again, it seems obvious to me that actions from good inclinations (but not respect for law) are good because of their good consequences.

So Kant,

1) Fails to analyze good and evil;

2) Calls virtues, happiness, and actions from good inclinations good and deserving of praise, and yet has no basis to call these good.

3) But the problems do not stop there. My third problem is that Kant says an action from an inclination has no moral value even if that inclination is good. But I think this is clearly false, again because a good person is the kind of person to have good inclinations.

4) My fourth problem is the problem of inclination itself and how it relates to respect for the law. Respect for the law is supposed to be a special inclination, but what makes it an exception to the rule? Doing something to satisfy a desire apparently has no moral value, unless that desire happens to be to do the right thing, to do your duty. But it seems to me impossible to avoid the idea that all human motivation is ultimately grounded in the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain. Even the person who acts with the special inclination of respect for the law, and does the right thing for the right reason, must have the desire to maximize their happiness, and acting from duty does this either in the delight of one's identity as a good person (the happiness of self-admiration), or in the avoidance of the discomfort of conscience.

Wouldn't Kant have to say, to maintain his position, that the person who acts from duty does so without any feeling whatsoever of the avoidance of the discomfort of thinking of oneself as a moral failure? I think that it's psychologically impossible for humans to act in any other way except to satisfy inclinations. (When we act against an inclination, really we are just servicing an opposing and yet stronger inclination.) It seems obvious to me that even the person acting from duty is acting to satisfy an inclination.

But if that's right, then there's nothing morally wrong with acting to satisfy an inclination as long as it's a praiseworthy inclination, and if my objection 3 goes through then we must admit of morally praiseworthy inclinations anyway. The other option would be to say that all actions are inherently selfish (trying to pursue happiness or avoid discomfort) and thus have no moral value. But that's clearly a mistake, because what kind of inclination a person has clearly says something about their character. The better the inclination, the better the character. If it would bother you to not do the right thing, then good! That shows that you are the right kind of person. In fact, it is exactly this inclination of feeling bothered by wrongness that we point to as one of the prime indicators of a good character.

More problems are to come, and if given the chance I will show just how completely and deeply my moral system departs from Kant's.

Oliver Crisp on Closer to Truth - A sin against an infinite being is an infinite sin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_El29ogZdV8

Why think our actions have this kind of connection where the magnitude of the evil depends on the kind of creature you're sinning against? Is killing a baby not as bad as killing its parent because the baby is a lesser creature and the parent is a greater creature? 

And yet if anything our intuitions say preying on the powerless is the greater evil. So far from sinning against a greater being resulting in a greater sin, we might think sinning against a lesser being involves the added evil of abusing one's power or of taking advantage of someone's weakness.

Also, people, when they sin, wrong someone here on Earth. Their intentions of harm are directed at other humans or animals (or at themselves). So how is God meant to be wronged by these evils that aren't directed at him? God certainly can take offense to them, but why would murdering someone count as wronging God such that now the murder is infinitely bad? And what are the boundaries? Is shoplifting infinitely evil? Telling a lie so you don’t hurt someone’s feelings?

If God is infinitely offended by our sin, then doesn't that make God infinitely sensitive? Where's God's strength? If God is impassable, then God can’t be offended at all. If it’s a matter of accruing some kind of moral debt, then for the metaphor to make any sense, God is in full control to wipe away that debt. (Why  would human sins brought about by the very limitations God stuck them with accrue a debt in the first place, I have no idea.) If it’s a matter of justice, then it’s a kind of justice I cannot make sense of. (If God wants justice, all he has to do is attach survival structures to virtue and truth. You might say this violates free will, but it doesn’t violate free will any more than free will is already violated, and even if it does at some point we have to ask whether free will is worth the cost.)

Why would God be so offended by something so little? If someone sins out of ignorance, then God understands the origins of that sin. So God knows how not personal that sin is. Why would God take such offense from something that's not personal?

Imagine if someone were to bump into me aggressively on the street and knock me to the ground, and say "Move idiot!" as he walks past. I could choose to be horribly offended by this, or I could guess that there's something wrong with this person and move on and shrug it off. It would be a failure of mine to care too much about why this person did what they did, or to take it personally when there is no reason to.

God, as the greatest possible being, should be very good at shrugging things off. But like Kuhn suggests, a God who takes everything way too personally is petulant. It looks quite silly for such a begrudging God to create creatures who he knows will do nothing but commit crimes of infinite magnitude.

Does it sound loving for a God to put us at such massive risk?