04 Sep 2025 - Clayton Atreus

Daily thoughts 1: I read a lot of Clayton Atreus' book Two Arms and a Head over the past few days. It's a tragic story of a man who became paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycle accident, fell into a depression, and took his life something like 20 months after the accident. The book is a diary of sorts, explaining what it's like to be paralyzed and why he decided to end his life. It's painful to read and I skipped or skimmed many parts, looking for the more philosophically substantive bits. Some curious takeaways:

 

1) The author himself somewhat hated the book. It seems that he knew on some level that the bitterness and ugliness contained in the book was a bad thing. But maybe he felt, or should have felt, that the ugliness of the book appropriately reflected the ugliness of being paralyzed, and the ugliness of the lies that disabled and non-disabled people tell about disability, lies that serve to comfort both the disabled (because the alternative, suicide, is unbearable) and to comfort the non-disabled (because seeing miserable people makes us miserable, so we're biased to delude ourselves into thinking that someone's miserable circumstances aren't all that bad after all). 

 

2) I agree with many of the frustrations of the author as it pertains to all the stupid platitudes folks say when it comes to the evils of the world. The simple fact is this: Basically no one wants to think about bad things, like death, old age, disease, the misery of others, etc., because thinking about such things makes us miserable and we really don't like being miserable. So of course people are naturally going to be quite thoughtless when it comes to issues surrounding evil, misery, and disability. So naturally that thoughtlessness is going to translate into stupid cliches and false beliefs when it comes to these things.

 

I very much understand and relate to frustrations in the vein of:

 

a) People around me have many, many false beliefs about something.

 

b) I'm certain these beliefs are false. It's actually quite easy to prove that these beliefs are false.

 

c) And yet, even if you set the record straight, it's probably not going to change any of these people's minds. They will probably just go on believing their false beliefs. Or, these folks would have changed their minds had they heard my words, but they will simply never hear my words.

 

3) The book is not sophisticated or well-researched, often making claims without much if any defense. Though the book appears to have been written in a short time span and by an author who is in as poor a mental state as one can be in. And the book is basically a suicide note, not exactly a proper research project. I have full confidence that the author could have written something sophisticated and well-researched had their circumstances hadn't been so unlucky. As it stands, the book has a ranting, venting tone about it, a tone the author himself acknowledges and explains.

 

4) With that said, I appreciate some features of the book: The author demonstrates intellectual virtue and engages in that kind of pleading when someone is desperate for others to see what they see. I very much understand and relate to that pleading.

 

5) If I were in the author's shoes, I probably too would end my life, and I agree with the author that probably 99% of people would, or at least would say they would, want to end their life too in similar circumstances, and yet this means there is a very strange kind of hypocrisy taking place when it comes to disability.

 

It is completely hypocritical for everyone to silently think to themselves "Of course I would take myself out in those horrible circumstances" while publicly saying "Of course disabled people should continue to live and take perspective and have a good and admirable attitude about the whole thing." 

 

When someone other than me is disabled, I am tempted to say "Chin up! Get over it! Stop wailing and whining and wallowing in self-pity. Show some strength and bravery and get on with your life and do the right thing!"

 

But if I were in that position, I would absolutely be wailing and whining and wallowing in self-pity, and I too would think (as Atreus seems to) that "strength" and "bravery" are stupid and meaningless if all they do is trick you into prolonging your torture. And I too would think (as Atreus seems to) that the real strength and bravery is in facing reality head-on, and facing death head-on, instead of burying your head in the sand and ignoring reality because you are too weak to face the truth, and ignoring death because you are too cowardly. So I very much appreciate the author discussing the relationship between virtue and suicide, because that really is, it seems to me, where the rubber meets the road. Everyone is certain that suicide and virtue come apart, but that's not necessarily true.

 

It seems that the default mentality of people is to say "Huh, that sucks for you. Anyway, for dinner today I think I'm gonna have..." 

 

And I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand this is, like the author says, callous, unloving, anti-empathetic, anti-sympathetic, and anti-compassionate. The moral failing is not at all on the disabled person who commits suicide; the moral failing is on the disabled and disabled "allies" who parrot shallow cliches and/or turn their faces away, because that's the easy thing to do. And it's easy to place the moral burden on the disabled person in despair ("Don't you know that suicide is selfish?" or "Don't you know that despair is a sin?"), because that distracts everyone from the fact that you are trying to absolve yourself from any responsibility with respect to the hurting person in front of you. Everyone tries to take the lazy way out; it's our default setting. That's the easier thing to do, and so trivially it will be the more common thing. The hard thing to do is to actually try to place yourself in someone else's shoes, to actually sympathize with them and feel their pain.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure exactly what the "outsiders", the living, healthy, normal people with ordinary luck, are supposed to do. Are they supposed to whine and wail and wallow in pity too alongside the despairing person? One of the reasons why the "outsiders" behave in the "callous" and "apathetic" way they do is because it's deeply painful to feel powerless and weak, and when we see someone in dire circumstances and there's nothing we can do, then all that's there for us is pain, powerlessness, and so on. It's not exactly loving to expect people to sit there with you and bask in their own powerlessness. And I'm not sure disabled people at all want people to wail or whine or wallow in pity. What good does that do? It's not like being pitied is a cure. On the contrary, pity adds insult to injury.

 

What makes matters worse is that a lot of people basically believe in karma. So if they see someone suffering, they jump to the conclusion that this person did something to deserve it. This is another self-serving lie that brings comfort to outsiders. If someone deserves their misery, then you are excused from the responsibility of empathizing with this person or caring about what they want.

 

I think what Atreus wants is something like this: A culture that is far more open to death as a solution to incurable misery. The author doesn't want people to shower him with pity or to bask in their own powerlessness for hours and hours. Instead, the author just wants to be seen and heard and understood, empathized with and genuinely listened to. That entails a culture that is more open to death as a solution to misery, because a culture that actually listens and actually cares, and throws out all the the hypocrisy, the lies, the cliches, the painfully obviously false beliefs, just would be a culture that offers death as a commonsense end-of-life care solution to miserable conditions. This is true both from the compassion angle and from the anti-hypocrisy angle. That is, if society were compassionate, loving, moral, understanding, empathetic, etc., then death would be offered as a commonsense solution, but even putting all of that aside, if society were just not completely hypocritical, then the same would be true.

 

6) However, the experience of reading the book convinced me that if you're going to do something like this, it's better to approach it in a different way. Like I said, even the author saw the ugliness of his own book. It's better to write something more beautiful; that's more likely to have an impact. Beautiful things are more marketable, attractive and more likely to spread by word of mouth. Again, I think there is value in letting the ugliness of your words match the ugliness of a situation, and I don't see how I can fault someone for having ugly thoughts about an ugly situation. It's all too understandable from my point of view. (Not that I believe in fault anyway.)

 

However...

 

I do think in those circumstances I would write quite differently.

 

And maybe I would write fiction that featured characters who could do all the things I wanted to do, and maybe I would live vicariously through those characters. But then again, maybe that kind of escapism is exactly the kind of reality-denying that I would want to champion against.

 

But I certainly would write in a loving way, with the reader in mind, wanting to give the reader something, if not entertaining or happy exactly, at least that gives some sense of positivity, hope, triumph, satisfaction, or catharsis, and has some readability to it.

 

How much better would it be to have written something beautiful for people to enjoy and profit from at the same time? Sure, it's a creative and intellectual puzzle to write something that accomplishes 1) Exposing the stupidity and hypocrisy of the cliches and arguments surrounding disability and suicide; 2) Shows what's actually true about disability and suicide; and 3) Does so in a way that's winsome, engaging, entertaining, beautiful, readable, well-reasoned, etc. That's a deeply difficult puzzle to solve, but if the author is smart enough then he can pull it off. The author comes off as arrogant; he repeatedly boasts his intelligence, but the book isn't smart; beauty is smart, and the book, for the most part, is ugly.

 

Luke 6:45 (NRSVUE):

 

"The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks." 

 

I doubt hardly anyone would recommend this book, and it's hard for me to recommend it to anyone except those who research suicide or the problem of evil.

31 August 2025

Today:

• Continue Intellectual Virtue series, working on Intellectual Virtue #3: T. Ryan Byerly.

 Future:

• Intellectual Virtue #4: Josh Rasmussen
• Intellectual Virtue #5: Aristotle
• Intellectual Virtue #6 (19 parts): Zagzebski's book
• Intellectual Virtue #7 (15 parts): Philip Dow's book
• Intellectual Virtue #8: Gabriel Citron paper
• Intellectual Virtue #9? Misc papers

Speaking from truth vs speaking from power

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ti-3M04eW4 

 

When I claim to be a genuine truthseeker, and when I make truth claims like: There is no God, Christianity is false, there is no free will, morality works in such and such way, and so on, it's worth asking the question: What do I take myself to be doing when I make these kinds of truth claims?

A similar question: What do I take truth to be for?

Per the video above (52:50), Alasdair MacIntyre, a critic of postmodernism, says that, per postmodernism, whenever someone makes a truth claim they are always making a power claim (my paraphrase) – they are trying to influence people to gain power. MacIntyre says of postmodernism: "Any profession of truth is nothing more than a reflection of the political ideology of the person who is making it." The podcast hosts go on to push against this characterization of postmodernism. In any case, I want to consider the view, whether it's postmodern or not, that truth claims are always power claims.

 

I could say truth is worth pursuing for its own sake, and that's why I make truth claims. But I don't believe that truth or knowledge is intrinsically valuable. (Is visual knowledge about the gruesome details of certain crimes or medical emergencies valuable in and of itself? Not only is it not, but it's extrinsically disvaluable!)  

 

I think the ultimate pursuit is to be more happy and to be less miserable. Truth is only valuable insofar as it helps us become happier and less miserable.

 

That might sound like I advocate for "noble lies" – lies that make people happy and thus are worth telling. But that's not quite right.

 

I don't think people can deliberately believe falsehoods. If you know something is false or suspect that it's false, but choose to believe it anyway because it is a "noble lie", that would mean believing and not believing in something – a contradiction that our rationality blocks us from making. Contradictions bother us to the point that we reject them. The idea of believing something false bothers us to the point that we can't believe something we worry is false. We can't help but desire to believe what's true and to reject what's false.

 

The idea that I believe something false is a painful idea for me, so my happiness very much depends on my being convinced that I don't believe false things. That motivates me to reduce my false beliefs as far as I can, either by withdrawing beliefs and becoming more agnostic, or by investigating the truth of my beliefs until I can continue believing them confidently.

 

So even if my final goal is happiness, that does not mean I place happiness above truth. Being convinced that the truth is on our side is often a prerequisite for our happiness. So even if our ultimate goal is happiness, that doesn't mean we can set truth aside for the sake of happiness. Truth is still required to get there, so there is a genuine desire for truth. Put another way, if my ultimate goal is happiness, and truth is necessary to achieve that goal, then truth is part of my ultimate goal.

 

What about ugly truths that we don't want to accept or can't accept because they are too painful? That's the thing – if you desire truth to the point that the idea of holding false beliefs is painful to you to the point that you would rather face ugly truths than live in blissful ignorance, then the ugly truth / happiness dichotomy won't apply to you. Ugly truth is still the path for optimal happiness for the genuine truthseeker, even if ugly truth makes the genuine truthseeker miserable in its own right.

It's also true that power is needed for happiness. Perhaps the single greatest driver for misery is powerlessness. At the core of misery is a lack of freedom. Truth gives us understanding, which is itself a power, and this is one way truth leads to happiness.

So: truth -> understanding -> power -> freedom -> happiness.

That sounds like truth IS subordinate to power. The quest for truth just is a quest for power. So does that mean truth claims are power claims after all? No. We must translate the above key question to: Do I make truth claims not because I believe them myself but purely because of the effect making these claims will have?

The answer is no. My claims come from a place of curiosity and desire for understanding rather than a desire to influence.

An obvious proof of this: I have no influence. If I were trying to influence others, I don't think I'd be using a blog that gets zero views. The purpose of my writing is just personal improvement of my worldview and understanding, purely out of genuine curiosity and desire for truth.

 

There are different kinds of power, which is why "knowledge is power" is true in some ways and false in others.

 

Knowledge is power in the sense that by understanding your environment, you can manipulate it to suit your needs and fulfill your desires.

 

Knowledge is not power in the sense that when you speak truth to power, you can be destroyed for it. Whistleblowers can be sued and buried by legal fees by the corrupt company. Dietrich Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazis and was killed for it. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted and sent to prison, their knowledge of their innocence has no power at all.

 

So a better, more pointed question than Are your truth claims power claims? is: When you make claims, what kind of power are you after? 

 

If you are after powers related to social capital, manipulation, money, optics, political strategy, and things like that, then you are a power seeker, not a truth seeker. Politicians, pathological liars, and narcissists are known to occupy this psychological space.

 

If you are after powers related to understanding how the world works, then your truth claims are honest truth claims.

If someone asks me the question of what my intentions are when I make truth claims, what are they after? Are they asking from a place of power, or a place of curiosity? It seems obvious that they are asking from a place of curiosity, a place of a desire for knowledge and to understand what my intentions are. So the very internal state of the questioner proves that people can and do have this internal state of curiosity and desire for truth. It's not necessarily the case that every truth claim comes from a place of power or word games. Indeed, some brave individuals, like whistleblowers or martyrs, trade powers related to survival and comfort for powers related to truth, morality, duty, understanding, value, legacy, self-respect, and virtue.

 

It's a matter of what powers you are after, of which powers are essential to your happiness. For some of us, powers of understanding are essential to our happiness, to the point that we are willing to sacrifice powers of survival for them. There is, thus, something of a dichotomy between survival and truth.

 

This dichotomy appears in the conversation of natural selection. We are selected to be quite good at believing truths related to basic survival; of course we are: if we weren't we would be extinct. But the same survival pressures do not apply for more abstract and philosophical truths, and so it's basically a trivial truth that we are bad at discovering truths about metaphysical things. So you can have Scientologists, Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, etc., all surviving roughly equally well despite having radically different philosophical beliefs. Having true beliefs about morality, God, etc., need not grant any serious survival advantage, and having horrendously false beliefs about morality, God, etc., need not grant any serious survival disadvantage. Truth and survival very much come apart when it comes to more abstract truths.

 

The topic of power versus truth also appears when it comes to the deep difference between propaganda and philosophy:

 

Propaganda:

 

-Discourages asking 'why' questions, ignores 'why' questions, and even treats 'why' questions with hostility, judgment, and punishment;

 

-Commands you to believe something or attempts to deceive or manipulate you into believing something, something that empowers whoever administers the propaganda. Just as deception needn't be all that conscious or deliberate of an act, neither does spreading propaganda.

 

Philosophy:

 

-Encourages asking 'why' questions, takes 'why' questions seriously, and offers praise to those who ask questions;

 

-Gives you the tools to discover the truth for yourself rather than relying on the word of authorities. 

 

This is one of the reasons why philosophy is a good and necessary thing.

Notable quotes: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

"This world is full of wonders." -Lune

"Yet everywhere we go, we walk with death." -Maelle

Brian Cutter on the badness of pain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p41Ir-_9E-k

1:44:30 - 1:45:46

"I guess my thought with the normativity challenge is it seems to me more plausible that basic normative principles are fundamental simpliciter. Why is pain bad? Why does having a seeming that p justify the belief that p? This feels to me like a rock-bottom fact. Why is it wrong for me to press this button? Well, 'cause it would cause Joe an electric shock. Why is it wrong to cause Joe an electric shock? Well, 'cause it would cause him lots of pain. Why is it wrong to cause lots of pain? Well, because pain is bad. Why is pain bad? I feel like this is a plausible stopping point – we've hit bedrock. We know explanation needs to end somewhere – this seems like roughly the place it's gonna end. Maybe you can go like one or two layers deeper, but something normative seems to be – like these basic bedrock principles like the badness of pain or the justificatory power of experiences and so on – these seem to be bedrock principles that when you ask why they hold, the only thing to say is: that's just how it is, we've hit bedrock, explanation ends somewhere and it ends here."

Why I don't believe in subjectivism

Part 1: Travis Talks is right about some things

 

The Substack Travis Talks made a post titled "Objections to Subjectivism Are Terrible" (https://travistalks.substack.com/p/objections-to-subjectivism-are-terrible). In this post are many important takeaways that I agree with, including:

• If someone says something horrible like: "The Holocaust was good", it's important to distinguish between the subjective proposition "I approve of the Holocaust" (which is a true statement for a Nazi) versus the objective proposition "The Holocaust was good in such a way that if someone doesn't find the Holocaust to be good then they are mistaken" (which is a false statement). Failing to make this distinction can lead to 'normative entanglement' (see: https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/normative-entanglement-a-new-name-for-an-old-rhetorical-trick).
• Agent Relativism vs Appraiser Relativism: The former view says that what is in fact right or wrong is relative to individual standards. The latter view says that when a person says "x is wrong", they just mean "I disapprove x." So we can say that agent relativism is normative (about what is in fact morally right or wrong) while appraiser relativism is descriptive (about what people in fact mean when they make moral claims).

As the post shows, many objections to subjectivism trade on failures to understand distinctions such as these.

 

Note: My metaethical views are very much in progress; this is an exercise to help work out my thoughts. Currently, I don't accept the existence of categorical imperatives or irreducible normative properties, but I do accept objective value facts (facts about what is good, bad, better, valuable, worthless, etc.) and the objective descriptive truth of some 'should' and 'ought' claims. So I'm currently convinced of some form of descriptive moral realism while unconvinced of prescriptive moral realism. My lack of an acceptance of irreducible normative properties is something I have in common with subjectivists, and it may turn out that what I say here is compatible with some form of subjectivism or, like the objections responded to in the Substack post, trades on misunderstandings on what subjectivists are actually committed to. One of the core issues of this discussion, one I will be revisiting in future posts, is what it means to make a judgment, how our experiences relate to judgments, and what it means for the truth of a claim to be dependent or independent of judgment.

 

Part 2: Why I don't believe in subjectivism

 

This leads into an important quote from the Substack post:

 

"Subjectivism is not in the business of telling you what sorts of things are right or wrong. It's in the business of telling you what people are doing when they say things are right or wrong."

 

And what are people doing when they claim that an action is morally right or wrong, per subjectivism? They are voicing personal disapproval, and, key point here: They are not voicing a recognition of the stance-independent rightness or wrongness of an action.

 

And that's my key point: I am voicing a recognition of the stance-independent rightness or wrongness of an action when I make a moral claim.

 

Even if some people (or even if most people, or even if all other people besides me) mean "I disapprove of x" when they say "x is wrong", I am an exception to this description. That's not what I mean when I say "x is wrong."

 

Here is what I take to be a non-subjective, objective, judgment-independent, stance-independent (these are all synonyms) claim:

 

(S) Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson.

 

(W) Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong (incorrect, not right, mistaken, evil).

 

(Free will stuff: Is Armstrong blameworthy in the sense that she is liable for just deserts in the form of retributive punishment? I believe not, because I reject the notion of free will. Is Armstrong morally blameworthy in the sense that I can conclude that Armstrong qua experiencer is bad or evil? I don't think it makes any sense to view a person as a subject of experiences in evaluative terms. Is Armstrong critically blameworthy in the sense that what she has [in terms of virtue, reasoning, wisdom, reasons for actions, etc.] is of poor quality? Yes; it does make sense to view the accidental properties of persons in evaluative terms [e.g. my athleticism is an accidental property of me and it's entirely warranted to view its quality as, uh, non-Olympic, to put it nicely]. Is Armstrong qua experiencer unlucky to have these things in poor quality? Yes.)

 

When philosophers talk about tortured babies or murder, I bet that they usually aren't trying to imagine what these things look like. To make things a bit easier to imagine for us, here are a few details of the Wilson murder: 

• Armstrong apparently killed Wilson out of jealousy. 
• Wilson was shot twice in the head and once in the chest.  
• Prosecutor Rick Jones says Wilson screamed in terror before being shot, based on surveillance footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15DY0NcfyLM).
• Caitlin Cash, friend of Moriah Wilson, said the following in her victim impact statement: "So many people in this room have lost so much. I'm angry. At you. At the utter tragic nature. At the senselessness. At not being able to hear Mo's voice again. I feel deep sadness for the road ahead" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go186wdXS04).
• Moriah Wilson's mother said the following: "I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter. It was very selfish and cowardly. That violent act on May 11th. It was cowardly because you never chose to face her woman to woman in a civil conversation. She would have listened. She was an amazing listener. She would have cared about your feelings."
• A KVUE article describes how Moriah Wilson's brother (Matt Wilson) broke into tears when he took the stand and was asked to speak about his sister (https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/kaitin-armstrong-trial-closing-arguments/269-7d7750ae-13e7-477e-a740-8ee80c09c796). Per that article, Matt Wilson said: "My sister had her life taken from her for no reason at all. She'll never ride a bike again, she'll never get married, never buy a home, have kids, never meet someone she loves ... I and my parents will never be able to see that happen and have her enjoy that life and build that life."
• After Armstrong was sentenced to 90 years in prison, Moriah Wilson's father said the following to the press (https://www.courttv.com/title/mo-wilsons-dad-there-really-are-no-winners-here/): "There really are no winners here. This is not a time for celebration, but a time for prayer. A time to pray for our family, our friends, the Armstrong family, and their friends. This sad story is a perfect example of why integrity and honesty are crucial in our personal relationships, and how dishonesty can often lead to unintended consequences. Selfish manipulation, jealousy, and hatred never lead to positive outcomes. Violence is never a good way to solve personal issues. In fact, violence doesn't solve anything. It only leads to more suffering."

It's one thing to talk about murder in the abstract. It's another to talk about Kaitlin Armstrong murdering Moriah Wilson and the horror, tragedy, and thoughtlessness of the event, and the permanent damage done to the families and communities involved.  

 

Do I personally disapprove of Armstrong's killing of Wilson? Yes, and if you were to ask me why, I would give an answer beyond "I don't like it" or "It goes against my values", and there would be a further answer to the question of why I give that answer rather than another. But more on that later. First, when I say "Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong", do I merely mean to say that "I personally disapprove of Armstrong's killing of Wilson"? 

 

Not at all. Instead, I mean to say that "Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson fails to further [goal]."

 

We can substitute [goal] with something like "the goal of maximizing flourishing."

 

This is why when I make a claim of the pattern "x is wrong", I am not making an internal, subjective claim about my values or feelings. I am making an external, objective claim about how an action fails to further a goal.

 

It's almost certainly the case that Armstrong had a goal of living well, of not going to prison (she tried to evade capture multiple times), of not facing the kind of social backlash one faces when one becomes a murderer, and so on. In that case, by killing Moriah, Armstrong failed at her own goals.

 

So <Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson> = <Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals of living well, not going to prison, increasing one's virtue, building a good reputation and legacy for oneself, etc.>

 

And if Armstrong had empathetic goals (which Armstrong did not have), then killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goal of maximizing the flourishing of Wilson and her family and friends, as well as that of Armstrong's own family and friends. If you understand the goodness of Moriah Wilson's (etc.) would-be flourishing, then you will have such an empathetic goal. If these empathetic goals were required to achieve Armstrong's more fundamental goals (say, the goal of not experiencing the judgment and shame of being on trial for murder), then Armstrong should have had these empathetic goals. In my view, 'should' picks out the action that best furthers a goal or is necessary to further a goal. So I'm not committing myself to some mysterious, irreducible normative property; I see 'should' statements as being descriptively true or false, describing which actions are best or necessary at furthering or achieving a goal.

 

So the killing of Moriah Wilson fails to maximize flourishing, and that is a true statement about the world and not just about myself or my personal feelings. It's true irrespective of anyone's judgment of its truth. When I say "the murder of Moriah Wilson fails to maximize flourishing", I am not saying "Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson? Yuck!", like the emotivist would claim, nor am I merely saying "While killing Moriah Wilson was truly good for Armstrong, at least in the moment if not in the aftermath, I personally disapprove of Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson and I view the act as murder." Rather, I am saying "Just as the world works such that, for example, light travels faster than sound, the world works such that Armstrong's killing of Moriah Wilson was bad, wrong, mistaken, incorrect – a failure."

 

The goals related to flourishing are so typical and obvious that we often assume that people have them. Indeed, if someone did not have the goal of living well, not going to prison, avoiding suffering, and so on, that would be hard to believe. Certainly, I have these goals, so if I were to murder someone in a similar fashion as Armstrong did, I would be failing my goals.

 

So there is a risk of goal-projection here: When someone says that a person ought not have done something, they may be projecting their own goals onto whoever is the subject of their moral criticism. Maybe Armstrong's goal was purely "kill Moriah." Relative to the goal of killing Moriah, Armstrong should kill Moriah. But how does the goal of killing Moriah relate to Armstrong's more fundamental goals? If the goal of killing Moriah fails to further a more fundamental goal, then the goal of killing Moriah is not a goal worth pursuing. Succeeding in that goal would be to fail in a more important one.

 

So we must distinguish which goals we are talking about: 

 

(1) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further Armstrong's goals (immediate and/or ultimate).

 

(2) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further my goals related to flourishing and I am projecting my goals onto Armstrong.

 

(3) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals Armstrong would have were she to have the goals a typical person has.

 

(4) Killing Moriah Wilson fails to further the goals Armstrong would have were she to have the goals a wise person would have in her situation.

 

When I make the claim:

 

(S) Kaitlin Armstrong should not have killed Moriah Wilson.

 

Is (1), (2), (3), or (4) the correct interpretation of what I mean?

 

In terms of immediate vs ultimate goals, certainly Armstrong had an immediate goal of killing Wilson, and killing Wilson successfully furthered (achieved) that goal. But given Armstrong's more ultimate goal of not going to prison (etc.), killing Wilson failed with respect to that (those) goal(s).

 

With 'ultimate goal' specified for 1, it's possible for all four interpretations to be correct at the same time. All four can be objectively true.

 

Interpretation (2) by itself does not secure the truth of S; if (2) is the only correct interpretation of S when I utter S, then S is false and, to preserve its truth, must be changed to:

 

(S2) I should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson).

 

So to argue that S is true is to argue that (1), (3), or (4) is true. 

 

But now reconsider:

 

(W) Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong (incorrect, not right, mistaken, evil).

 

What is the wrong-maker here? One option is that the wrong-maker is the failure to further a goal in one of the above senses. But I can't make sense of an objective notion of 'wrong' in any way other than the same wrongness as when someone holds a false belief.  

  

So a better option is that the wrong-maker is the false belief behind Armstrong's action, or any false belief that Armstrong is committed to in virtue of performing the action. What is Armstrong's held or committed false belief behind her choice to kill Wilson? A number of possibilities: 

 

"This is worth doing"

"The goodness of this action outweighs its badness"

"This action maximizes flourishing"

"This will make the world a better place" 

"This will make me happy in the long-term"

"This will make me happier than I would be otherwise" 

"This will further my ultimate goals"

"I won't regret this"

 

If Armstrong's ultimate goal is in fact: "Kill Moriah Wilson", then interpretation (1) is false. But a) It seems impossible for that to be Armstrong's ultimate goal, and b) Even if it were Armstrong's ultimate goal, the truth of interpretations (2)–(4) is preserved.

 

But it seems to me that the problem with interpretation (2) can be extended to interpretations (3) and (4). That is, to preserve the truth of (3) and (4), we'd need to similarly change them, respectively, to:

 

(S3) A typical person should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson).

 

(S4) A wise person should not kill Moriah Wilson (within the same or similar context in which Armstrong killed Wilson). 

 

If this is right, then for S to be true, interpretation (1) needs to be true. While it's impossible to know what Armstrong believed at the time of the murder, it seems nearly certain that she believed in false beliefs or was committed to false beliefs at the time as noted above, and it's the wrongness of these false beliefs that grounds the wrongness of the action. So even if interpretations (2)–(4) fail to secure the truth of S, interpretation (1) is easily defended.

 

Someone might wonder what difference there might be in claiming that Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was wrong versus Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was evil.

 

My answer is that 'evil' in this context just means 'wrong' (mistaken, incorrect, holding false beliefs or being committed to false beliefs) within a moral context—a context of consequences, intentions, and virtues—where the happiness, pain, flourishing, and suffering of experiencers is at stake. We especially associate 'evil' with someone's intentions and character; so Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson was evil = Kaitlin Armstrong killing Moriah Wilson in the context in which she did betrays Armstrong's vicious character and intentions.

 

Part 3: Clarifying thoughts around goals and 'should' statements

 

When a typical person says "X person should not have done Y", it's not clear what interpretation they would point out as their intended meaning. For all I know, most people don't care about what a person's actual ultimate goals are and instead care mainly about what a person's ultimate goal would be if that person were smart, well-informed, empathetic, and had true beliefs about the goodness and badness of things. So something like interpretation (4) might be a more popular interpretation. The problem with landing on interpretation (1) as I have is that the truth of "X person should not have done Y" literally depends on that person's actual ultimate goals. So consider:

 

(H) Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews.

 

If Hitler's ultimate goal required systematically killing millions of Jews, then H is false under interpretation (1). It's plausible that Hitler's ultimate goals were something like "maximize flourishing for humanity", in which case H is true under interpretation (1). But let's explore what happens when interpretation (1) is false.

 

When it comes to the truth of 'should' statements we have to keep goal-relativity in mind, and while 'should' statements depend on goals, we can argue that some goals are better than others. Even if H is false relative to Hitler's goals, Hitler's goals were themselves insane and evil. So H can be reinterpreted as:

 

(H*) Hitler should not have had goals that required the systematic killing of millions of Jews. 

 

Again, because 'should' statements only make sense in the context of some goal, H* can only be true if there is some more fundamental goal of which the subgoal of systematic killing of millions of Jews fails to further, but that might not apply in Hitler's case. So we have to reinterpret farther:

 

(Hm) Hitler's goals were based on misunderstandings about race, about human flourishing, about the goodness and badness of things, and so on. 

 

(H**) Imagine Hitler had goals that were not based on these misunderstandings. Relative to these goals, Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews.

 

But not only should Hitler not systematically kill millions of Jews relative to goals not based on misunderstandings, Hitler could not have done so if he had had different goals. Given that Hitler did in fact kill millions of Jews, Hitler did in fact have at least immediate goals that required the killing of millions of Jews. H** has us imagine a counterfactual (Hitler having different goals than he did) the truth of which is not relevant to the truth of H (as the truth of H depends on Hitler's actual goals under interpretation (1)).

 

I agree that the word 'should' is often interpreted as approval. So if I say "Hitler should have systematically killed millions of Jews", it sounds like I'm saying "I approve of Hitler systematically killing millions of Jews." But that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is "Killing millions of Jews furthered Hitler's ultimate goals, and not killing millions of Jews would have failed to further Hitler's ultimate goals." But I would also say "I do not approve of Hitler's ultimate goals" and that "Hitler's ultimate goals were based on misunderstandings."

 

So (H) Hitler should not have systematically killed millions of Jews is not necessarily true in the sense that systematically killing millions of Jews failed to further Hitler's ultimate goals, but is true in the sense that (Hm) Hitler's goals were based on misunderstandings about race, about human flourishing, about the goodness and badness of things, and so on and that systematically killing millions of Jews fails to further the goals of a person whose goals are not based on such misunderstandings.

 

So when it comes to:

 

(Hw) Hitler was wrong to systematically kill millions of Jews.

 

Hitler wasn't necessarily wrong in the sense of holding or being committed to false beliefs relative to how systematically killing millions of Jews will further his ultimate goals, but Hitler was wrong in the sense of holding or being committed to false beliefs when it comes to the goals themselves. The wrongness of the beliefs, either held or committed to, that ground Hitler's goals grounds the wrongness of the actions taken to further those goals.

 

Part 4: Intrinsic goods ⟶ Value facts ⟶ Descriptive moral realism

 

Quoting the Substack post: "To my mind realists have a very strange psychology. It’s as if they don’t intrinsically disvalue suffering itself - rather they only instrumentally disvalue it insofar as it’s out of accord with the stance-independent moral facts."

 

This is a curious thing to say, because I would think that it's the intrinsic badness of pain and intrinsic goodness of happiness that provides an argument for axiological realism—the view that there are objective value facts—which in turn provides an argument for some kind of moral realism (not necessarily a "categorical imperative / irreducible normative property" kind of moral realism, which I don't accept, but a descriptive kind of moral realism where moral facts are grounded in value facts, which are themselves descriptive).

 

(It's also a curious thing to say because it sounds like the author is saying that realists who "only instrumentally disvalue pain insofar as it's out of accord with stance-independent moral facts" are making an objective mistake about value. So are there objective mistakes about value? If yes, then isn't that an objective value fact?) 

 

Consider what Sharon Rawlette says (The Feeling of Value, Dudley & White, 2016):

 

"Pain is the most frequently cited example of something that is objectively, intrinsically bad. The badness of torture . . . is probably the moral value the most easily agreed upon and the most frequently appealed to in arguments for the self-evidence of certain moral truths. There is something about the experience of pain that convinces many people of moral realism. . . . I believe that part of the usual phenomenology of pain is an instantiation of the phenomenal quality of undesirability—of badness—and that instantiation of this quality is bad no matter what judgments anyone makes about it. Experience of this quality is what I believe leads many people to assert with such confidence that pain is objectively bad." (75)

 

She then goes on to defend the idea that there is a quale of badness. Shockingly, some philosophers attack the notion of intrinsic badness. But I won't go into that here. Because the topic at hand is subjectivism, a subjectivist can agree that there really is a quale of badness, but will want to say that it is only subjectively true that pain is intrinsically bad. Indeed, they might say that the notion of intrinsicality used here necessarily includes the notion of subjectivity. How could pain be objectively bad?

 

Rawlette helps us untangle what it means to say something is objectively bad:

 

"On my view, moral facts are not mind-independent. They are quite dependent on whether people are in the mental states of pleasure or pain. . . . However, on my view and on these other realist views, facts about the goodness of pleasure and the badness of pain . . . are judgment-independent. These views say . . . pain is pro-tanto bad, and . . . this badness . . . exists independently of whether anyone judges it to be there." (15)

 

So the subjectivist is right that my pain is subjective in the sense that my pain depends on my subjectivity; my pain depends on my mind. More generally, goodness and badness depends on minds. But whether an instance of pleasure or pain has the qualities it does, that doesn't depend on anyone's judgment, not even on the judgment of the subject of that pleasure or pain. Experiences are pre-judgment; indeed, where could our judgments come from, or be based on, if not our experiences? The truth of the statement "Chocolate tastes good" is judgment-dependent (put another way: its truth is relative), but the experience of chocolate tasting good is not judgment-dependent (and the truth that such an experience took place and had the qualities it had is absolute and not relative).

 

Case in point, even if animals are not capable of the kinds of evaluative judgments that we humans make, the pain of animals still has the quality that it does, including the quality of badness.

 

Part 5: Truthseeker objection to anti-realism and the problem of undergenerated reasons

 

Quoting the Substack post: "I find the idea that my goals must somehow be ordained by the universe in order to act on them profoundly bizarre."

 

When I hear this, alarm bells go off in my head. I'm sensitive to any anti-truth sentiments; being a genuine truthseeker, in my mind, comes first above all things in philosophy.

 

A (perhaps not-so-charitable) interpretation of this might be:

 

"I find the idea that I ought to act according to what's true profoundly bizarre."

 

Or:

 

"I find the idea that I ought to be bothered by the fact that my actions are based on false beliefs profoundly bizarre."

 

I worry that anti-realist views imply that an omniscient, perfectly rational person who acts purely according to the facts can commit atrocities, say, a mass shooting. I'm convinced that an omniscient, perfectly rational person who acts purely according to the facts cannot commit a mass shooting. (Call this the "truthseeker objection" to anti-realism, an objection I have yet to see a good response to.)

 

This brings me back to the question of why I disapprove of Armstrong's murder of Wilson. As I understand it, this gets to the "undergeneration of reasons" objection to moral anti-realism (see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-internal-external/#UndArg – strictly speaking this relates to internal vs external reasons, though reasons themselves relate to realism vs anti-realism).

 

Consider a bus driver who drives children to an elementary school each morning during the school semester. The bus driver is aware that there is a cliff near the school, and that if the driver wanted, they could, one morning, drive the bus off the cliff and kill themselves and all the children inside.

 

Nearly all bus drivers nearly all the time would not choose to do this given the chance. Question: Why not? Why wouldn't I drive the bus off the cliff killing myself and dozens of children in the process given the chance?

 

Explanation 1: Evolution. Evolution selects for pro-survival, pro-social behaviors and attitudes, and that explains why I have the pro-survival and pro-social behavior of not driving the bus off a cliff.

 

Explanation 2: Social programming. I have been raised by loving parents and a healthy social and psychological environment, instilling within me a strong sense of empathy, compassion, and a desire to do the right thing. Maybe I've been indoctrinated to believe that evil people go to hell when they die, or that only good people go to heaven when they die. So out of fear of hell, or desire for heaven, or out of empathy and compassion, or a desire to make my parents proud or what have you, any of these things can explain why I wouldn't drive the bus off the cliff.

 

As far as I can tell (an anti-realist can correct me if I'm mistaken), anti-realists take it for granted that something like explanation 1 or 2 (or both) must be true and that's all there is to say about why people do what they do. This undergenerates reasons. There's another explanation, one that I introspect and see to be true in my case (and perhaps true in addition to aspects of explanations 1 and/or 2):

 

Explanation 3: Sight. I see how goodness and badness work. I see how death is a depriving evil, depriving the one who dies from future good experiences. I see how my death would deprive me from future good experiences, and how the deaths of the children would deprive them of future good experiences. I see how I don't know what the future of these children holds, or how much they will suffer or flourish, and so I cannot assume that these deaths would save more than deprive. I see how flourishing works like a web, and how our actions reverberate like ripples in a pond, and how the deaths of these children would tear apart their families and their communities, and would even bring a touch of despair to strangers who hear the story. I understand the intrinsic badness of pain, and the sheer pain of loss, grief, and lost optimism that would occur for the surviving families, leaving wounds that would never truly heal. I understand the goodness of flourishing and the badness of suffering, and by this understanding I have the goal to maximize goodness and minimize suffering. I understand how driving the bus off the cliff would fail to further this goal, and by this I understand why it's true that I ought not drive the bus off the cliff, and I understand why denying this truth is to say something false; its truth is not relative and does not depend on anyone's judgment.

 

This might lead to an argument in favor of external reasons, with an external reason being a theoretical answer to a 'why' question that would answer the question in a true and relevant way grounded in truths external to one's own feelings.

 

Given the 'why' question "Why don't you drive the bus off a cliff?", I could answer "Because I don't feel like it", and while that answer might be true and relevant, it wouldn't be grounded in truths external to my feelings. But the answer given under Explanation 3 is grounded in truths external to my feelings: truths about the goodness and badness of things and about what experiences certain people would have under different circumstances.

 

If an anti-realist says "There are no external reasons", and by that they mean "If someone is asked 'Why don't you drive the bus off a cliff', they will not be able to give a true and relevant answer grounded in truths external to personal feelings", then the anti-realist says something false. I can, and just did, give a true and relevant answer grounded in truths external to my personal feelings to that question.

 

In conclusion, when I say "X action is wrong", I am not primarily making a claim about my own personal preferences, values, likes, dislikes, opinions, or feelings. I am claiming to recognize the truth of the goodness and badness of the actions involved, whether and how an action furthers a goal, and the truth of the falsity of the beliefs that ground the actions and goals involved. These truths remain true regardless of anyone's judgment. It is from this recognition that my disapproval originates, and I can introspect and see that this recognition is part of, and even primary to, the explanation as to why I disapprove of the actions I conclude to be wrong. Explanations of my disapproval that don't include my recognition of external truths undergenerate reasons for my disapproval.

Intellectual Virtue #2 - Michael Huemer on Intellectual Virtue

Michael Huemer, Knowledge, Reality, and Value, 2021. 

 

"What is it to think rationally? It is, in a certain sense, to think correctly. It is, for example, to accept the conclusions that one has good reason to accept, to avoid contradicting oneself, to avoid invalid deductive inferences or uncogent non-deductive inferences, to avoid reasoning circularly, and so on. . . . I don't mean necessarily having true beliefs . . . it is possible to be fully rational but mistaken, and also possible to be highly irrational yet luckily arrive at the truth." (25)  

 

"This shows that one can think rationally yet be wrong, and one can think irrationally yet be right. This can happen, but of course it usually does not. One way of characterizing rational beliefs is to say that they are the beliefs that are likely to be true, given the experiences and information available to you at the time. . . . Notice, by the way, that what is rational to believe is, as we say, 'relative to an observer': In other words, believing p could be rational for one person but not for another. This is because people might have different experiences and information available to them." (26)

 

"People sometimes wonder: Why should we be rational? . . . Given my account of rationality above, this question is not really sensible. It is like the question, 'Why are cats so feline?' or 'What color was George Washington's white horse?': If you understand what the question means, you don't need to ask it. To ask why one should be rational is to request a reason for being rational. But this is, in effect, to ask for a reason for responding to reasons – for example, a reason for believing what one has most reason to believe. If p is the rational thing for you to believe, then, by definition, it makes sense for you to believe that – because that's what we meant by calling it 'rational'. Once you have granted that p is rational, you've already granted that you have sufficient reason to believe p, so you don't need an additional reason 'to believe the rational things'." (27)

 

I can put it this way: Why should we be rational? ⟶ Why should we justify our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we give reasons for our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we give good answers to theoretical 'why' questions about our beliefs and behaviors? ⟶ Why should we demand good answers to 'why' questions? ⟶ Why should we ask why?

 

By asking this question you are demanding a good answer to a why question while simultaneously questioning that demand. That's self-refuting. If you accept the act of asking 'why' questions, then it doesn't make sense to question that act, and if you don't accept the act, then it doesn't make sense to perform it.

 

"If you understand what the question means, you don't need to ask it." By asking a 'why' question, any 'why' question, you demonstrate an understanding of the need for explanation in terms of one's beliefs and behaviors. If you understand the need for explanation in terms of one's beliefs and behaviors, then you understand the need to be rational.

 

Though you might wonder what is the goal of rationality, or what goal does rationality further. That answer is easy: the goal is to arrive at true beliefs and to avoid false beliefs. As Huemer puts it: "So when someone asks, 'Why be rational?', perhaps they are asking: Why aim at having true beliefs?" (27) So we might put the question of why be rational as: I am seeking the truth about why should we seek truth. Whatever reason you have for seeking the truth about why should we seek truth, that same reason answers the question.

 

Huemer gives two reasons for seeking truth: First, your goals require you to have true beliefs. And second, it is immoral to think irrationally. I agree with these, though I might understand the idea of 'immorality' differently than how Huemer understands it. 

 

I'd add that we might seek truth for simple reasons surrounding pain and pleasure: We might simply feel curious to know what the truth is about something we find interesting, and experience a satisfaction in finding the answer, or experience relief from the frustration of not knowing. We naturally seek explanations to understand the world, and so it's no surprise we would seek explanations to understand why people believe and behave as they do.

 

Continuing:

 

"Intellectual virtues are character traits that help us form beliefs well, particularly traits that tend to help you get to the truth and avoid error in normal circumstances. Rationality is the master intellectual virtue, the one that subsumes all the others. (So if you are rational, you are intellectually virtuous, and vice versa.) But there is another intellectual virtue that is also extremely important, so much so that it also deserves a section of its own in this chapter. The virtue is objectivity. Objectivity, like all other intellectual virtues, is part of rationality. The character trait of objectivity is a disposition to resist bias, and hence to base one's beliefs on the objective facts. The main failures of objectivity are cases where your beliefs are overly influenced by your personal interests, emotions, or desires, or by how the phenomenon in the world is related to you, as opposed to how the external world is independent of you." (32)

 

". . . we often think of those we are arguing with as opponents, but we really shouldn't do so. We should think of them as fellow truth-seekers. . . ." (33)

 

"Objectivity is not to be confused with neutrality . . . I am not recommending that you refuse to take a side on controversial issues. It is generally false that both sides are equally good, and you should not refuse to evaluate issues. What I am recommending is that, if you take a side, you nevertheless treat the other side fairly, even while defending your side. I am recommending that you treat intellectual debate as a mutual truth-seeking enterprise, rather than as a personal contest." (34)

 

"As a rational thinker, you want your beliefs to be true, so you should welcome the opportunity to discover if your own current view is wrong; then you can eliminate a mistaken belief and move closer to the truth. If you are afraid to confront the strongest opposing views, represented in the fairest way possible, that means that you suspect that your own beliefs are not up to the challenge, which means you already suspect that your beliefs are false." (34) 

 

"The main thing human beings need, to make progress on debates in philosophy (and religion, and politics), is more objectivity. The human mind is not really designed for discovering abstract, philosophical truths. Our natural tendency is to try to advance our own interests or the interests of the group we identify with, and we tend to treat intellectual issues as a proxy battleground for that endeavor. Again, we don't expressly decide to do this; we do it automatically unless we are making a concerted, conscious effort not to. And naturally, when we do this, we form all sorts of false beliefs, because reality does not adjust itself to whatever is convenient for our particular social faction." (35)

 

"All the paradigm forms of prejudice are, centrally and obviously, failures to be objective." (38)

 

Huemer gives tips on becoming more objective. Paraphrasing:

 

1) Acknowledge your bias;

 

2) Diversify your sources of information;

 

3) Think of reasons why your own views might be wrong.

 

Huemer points out a curious paradox – the paradox of bias and knowledge. The most biased folks tend to be the most knowledgeable. A scientist is biased in favor of the view that science is really important, but that scientist is also knowledgeable about science. The solution is to not throw out biased views automatically, as that would require throwing out well-informed views. Instead, diversify your exposure to well-informed-yet-biased views to get a more balanced picture of the options available and the arguments for and against each option.

 

I'm not sure I'd consider rationality to be the mother virtue of intellectual virtues. Defining rationality as "thinking well" makes rationality sound no different from intelligence. Though I suppose I actually would consider intelligence to be a fundamentally important trait for increasing the probability that one arrives at true beliefs and avoids false ones. But 1) intelligence needn't lead to the kinds of truths we are concerned with in this context, which are philosophical truths, and 2) Intelligence (the breadth and depth of one's mental powers) is probably considered a capacity or ability rather than a virtue. I'm not sure the distinction matters; as far as I'm concerned, any characteristic that makes it more likely for a person to arrive at true philosophical beliefs and avoid false ones is an intellectual virtue, which would include intelligence as a virtue.

 

Regardless, I would think of "passion for truth" or "love of truth" or "hunger for truth" or "curiosity" or "desire to believe what's true" as being the mother virtue of the intellectual virtues. Only someone who cares about truth will care about whether they possess all the other virtues that lead to truth, and indeed it may be a person's passion for truth that explains how it's even possible for that person to come to possess other intellectual virtues.

 

In light of what I say in this post: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/02/what-is-virtue-what-does-it-mean-to-be.html

 

I might do the taxonomy like so:

 

Intelligence = the breadth and depth of one's mental powers.

 

Wisdom = the mental power to be able to see (i.e. understand) the golden mean between two vices; the ability to recognize what is virtuous and vicious. (The idea being that it's impossible to understand without acting according to that understanding, assuming you have the power to act; in other words, wisdom immediately leads to virtue; it's impossible to be wise and not virtuous.)

 

Virtue = the golden mean between two vices; a virtuous action is the action a virtuous person would perform, an action that achieves the optimal balance between two extreme actions; a virtue is a character trait that describes what kind of a person you are, namely how you are  disposed to behave in a manner corresponding to the virtue in question. For example, bravery is a character trait that describes a person as brave, meaning that they are disposed to act bravely rather than recklessly (vice 1) or cowardly (vice 2).

 

['Person' here is understood in terms of your accidental properties. That is, virtues and vices are technically things you have; you are not identical to your virtues and vices.] 

 

There are different options for understanding what it means to act bravely. Aristotle would say that the brave man feels the right amount of fear. A reckless man feels too little fear than what he ought; a coward feels too much fear, while a brave man feels the right amount of fear. We might call this an emotion-based view of virtue.

 

An issue with this view is that there are cases where the right amount of fear you ought to feel is little to none. But it doesn't sound right to say a man acted bravely when he felt little to no fear; rather, such a man is fearless, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the situation.

 

A second option would be to say that a brave man is one who feels potentially a great deal of fear but overcomes that fear through strength. This is especially important when you consider people with anxiety disorders. When you have an anxiety disorder, you experience an unreasonable amount of fear. But it doesn't sound right to say that people with anxiety are automatically cowards just because they are predisposed to feel more fear than they ought. If the amygdalae in your brain are physically unusual, through mutation or a neurodevelopmental disorder (like autism), then it's not your fault that you feel too much fear; your brain literally causes you to feel that way. People with anxiety can learn to manage it and can, at least on occasion, overcome the overwhelming amount of fear their anxiety causes them to feel. So people with anxiety disorders are positioned to exemplify all the more bravery, because they have more opportunities to do so, because anxiety makes you nervous even in ordinary situations and because the amount of fear they feel is greater than normal.

 

We might call this a strength-based view of virtue.

 

Maybe the emotion view is correct for some virtues, while the strength view is correct for others. For example, in the case of bravery, the strength view is correct; the brave person has the strength to do the right thing despite their fear; a coward fails to overcome their fear while a reckless person too easily overcomes their fear, failing to be cautious. But in the case of confidence, feeling too much confidence is arrogance while feeling too little is insecurity.

 

An issue with the strength view may be that there's no such thing as having too much strength, so a vice of excess strength doesn't really make sense. For example, you might argue that it's exactly the emotion of arrogance that allows a person to overcome their fear too easily. So the emotion view can't be avoided.

 

So a third option might be a hybrid view on which vices of deficiency are deficiencies of strength, while vices of excess are excesses of emotion.

 

But you could argue that there are situations where a deficiency of emotion is a failure to appreciate the magnitude of a situation. Righteous indignation is an appropriate kind of anger in reaction to injustice. Failing to feel anger in the face of injustice is apathy or callousness.

 

Besides, you might argue that even in the case of bravery, where one has sufficient strength to overcome their fear, that there is an appropriate level of emotion, something like determination, that allows one to overcome their fear. So bravery might be something like "feeling appropriate levels of determination to the point of overcoming feelings of fear", cowardice = "a deficiency of determination to the point of being overwhelmed by fear" or "feeling overly concerned with one's own survival at the expense of the greater good", recklessness = "arrogance or ignorance in the face of threat, leading to a lack of caution." This satisfies the intuition that in order to count as brave, fear must be present. 

 

A note on dispositions: You can take a probabilistic view of dispositions or a determining view. The probabilistic view says that if someone is disposed to do x, then generally they will do x, but it's not a guarantee. The determining view says that if someone is disposed to do x, then they will do x given the chance. 

 

I lean toward the determining view for the following reason: if someone does something cowardly, then it sounds strange to describe that person as brave because "they generally do the brave thing but didn't this time." The person is a de facto coward with respect to that situation. When someone is brave in some cases and not others, that's not because dispositions are probabilistic, but because there are many types of bravery and someone can possess some braveries while lacking others.

 

Given a consequentialist view, the badness of vice is grounded in the bad consequences of vices, and the goodness of virtue is grounded in the good consequences of having virtue.

 

Rationality, as a character trait, could refer to a number of things:

 

Rationality(1): The mental power related to formal reasoning, such as the ability to understand logical operators, to see whether an argument is valid or invalid, and to spot contradictions.

 

Rationality(2): The mental power related to informal reasoning, such as the ability to understand the importance of intellectual virtue, the importance of steelmanning rather than strawmanning, the ability to understand which fallacies matter and why and when, how to be a good discussant, and so on.

 

Rationality(3): The character trait that constitutes the disposition of having good reasons for one's beliefs and behaviors (in other words, the disposition of giving good answers to 'why' questions about your beliefs and behaviors). Basically, reasonableness. Also: The ability to tell which reasons are in fact good ones; not believing things on the basis of bad reasons; being "responsive to reasons."

 

Rationality(4): Being rational as opposed to emotional, meaning feeling the right degree of emotion. Given the emotion view of virtue, this just means to be virtuous, or disposed to feel the right emotion to the right degree. Basically, levelheadedness. (Which translates into choosing the balanced action – it is by feeling the right emotion to the right degree that the right action is chosen. But with virtue, as an expression of wisdom, there's also a sense of understanding the consequences of various actions and being disposed to choosing the action with optimal consequences. So we might say it is by understanding that one feels the right emotion to the right degree.)

 

You can probably collapse all of these into a unified sense of rationality:

 

Rationality(U): The mental power related to understanding the principles of formal and informal reasoning and to analyzing arguments. This power, when combined with sufficient opportunities of education and reflection, generates the disposition of giving good answers to questions about why you believe and behave as you do.

This leaves out Rationality(4), but that is captured better by the notion of being virtuous anyway.

 

Test: Let's imagine the following:

 

A Christian refuses to read atheist books because he is afraid of finding out that he is wrong about views he wants to be right about.

 

This is a clear-cut case of intellectual cowardice. Question: What makes it cowardly?

 

A) The Christian feels too much fear. Really, he shouldn't be afraid at all of having his views challenged, and instead should be eager to have his beliefs corrected.

 

B) The right thing to do is to subject your beliefs to challenges. That's the only way to find out if they withstand scrutiny. If your goal is to believe what's true and avoid believing what's false, then you must do this. What's cowardly is not feeling the fear of losing your most cherished beliefs, which is a perfectly understandable feeling, but rather allowing that fear to prevent you from doing what's right – failing to overcome that fear with the determination to do the right thing.

 

On one hand, it makes sense to say that the virtuous person is the one who feels the ideal kinds and levels of emotions. It would be impressive for a Christian to fearlessly engage with atheist material with the understanding that he will grow closer to the truth either way. So is fearlessness the real virtue here?

 

And yet, there are many explanations why a Christian would be scared of the idea that Christianity is not true.

 

1) All past attempts to convert people are retroactively misguided, embarrassing, and harmful;

 

2) You have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

3) Your parents / community have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

4) Your heroes, such as pastors and missionaries, have been massively mistaken all this time;

 

5) Concluding that Christianity is false means losing your place in the church and losing your sense of community, requiring you to go alone or to find a new community (who may or may not accept you, and it's not like they will accept you because it's "what Jesus would do");

 

6) Losing family members and potentially being disowned by parents;

 

7) Facing the reality that death is the permanent end of you, losing the sense that life is this grand, eternal adventure – coming to view life as infinitely less meaningful than before;

 

8) Losing the belief that you as an eternal being are a being of infinite worth – coming to the view that your value is very limited;

 

9) Facing the reality that there is no God who loves you, further removing a significant source of validation and sense of self-worth;

 

10) Removing all future experiences of feeling God's presence in prayer and feeling loved by God;

 

11) Removing the sense of purpose of going forth to create disciples of every nation;

 

12) Feeling pressured by time now that you only have one life to live;

 

13) Losing the sense of safety that comes with believing that there is a loving God watching over you and your family, potentially becoming much more anxious and distrusting of life, losing the ability to embrace life as this fundamentally safe thing and instead living with a greater sense of dread, fear, and paranoia;

 

14) Losing the sense that life is ultimately fair and just as God will perfectly judge everyone in the end and set the record straight – instead, life is made out to be brutally unfair and all sorts of injustices will never be set straight ever – this is especially true for innocent victims of disease and murder;

 

15) Losing the belief that evils will be redeemed and made meaningful – instead, evils are left gratuitous;

 

16) Losing the hope that you will one day see your loved ones again in heaven;

 

17) Losing the sentiment that this world is worth fighting for;

 

18) Losing the belief that you must be as good a person as possible because this life is a test by God, and any evils committed will be acknowledged by God later – instead, evil people straight up get away with their evil in many cases and are indeed often advantaged by it;

 

19) Losing the belief that life is ultimately full of a deep spiritual reality, and that life is a grand story – instead, life is profoundly shallow, empty, and boring, nothing more than particles smashing together in extremely complex, but ultimately meaningless, ways.

 

20) Losing all basis by which to live one's life, feeling lost and confused;

 

21) Losing all sense of one's identity and place in the world (no longer made in God's image or a Child of God or regenerated by the Holy Spirit). 

 

The thought of losing all of this is understandably terrifying. So it's not remotely fair to expect a Christian to not feel any fear whatsoever over the thought that Christianity is false. But it is fair to call out a Christian for not overcoming that fear and doing the right thing as a truthseeker and engaging in opposition material. 

 

It seems like to understand what makes something a virtue we must first understand what makes a virtue good and what makes a vice bad, and thus we must understand what grounds the success of a virtue and what grounds the failure of a vice. Virtues are related to hitting some kind of mark, but what mark is that exactly?

 

We can keep these questions in mind as we go through this series on intellectual virtue.