What’s Wrong with the World

Really? That doesn't even pretend to be original---it's microwaved Marxism with the economics clipped out and biology pasted in its place. I never really have found scientists and medical types, even the delightful or strikingly intelligent ones, to be terribly original or insightful on anything not involving numbers.

Exactly.

I've revised the post at one point to clarify that the discussions of Prof. Frost with Mark are from Lewis's That Hideous Strength.

Did you hear of that study where they put in bogus quasi-neuroscientific babble to see if people would find it more truthful?

"It is not the mere presence of verbiage about neuroscience that encourages people to think more favorably of an explanation. Rather, neuroscience information seems to have the specific effect of making bad explanations look significantly more satisfying than they would without neuroscience." -Deena Wiesberg

Call it "Potemkin Neuroscience." http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004578.html

Accordingly, my thesis here is that our repudiation of PAS and euthanasia is a moral intuition, without rational foundations.

Your moral intuitions are neural firings.

My moral views are not conditioned. They are Transcendently Right (though not derived from You Know Who). So it would be Wrong for you to truss up my family and slaughter them like pigs.

But if I want to truss up a patient and slaughter him like a pig, I'm just a free homo sapiens overcoming his biological programming.

This sort of thinking is going to be *so* useful for both the pro-torture and pro-abortion crowd.

Also for mass murderers and other morally different individuals.

Yep, and very useful to those who want to engage in organ conscription:

http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2008/10/call-for-organ-conscription-begins.html

All that "patient autonomy" stuff goes out the window when it becomes inconvenient.

This sort of thinking is going to be *so* useful for both the pro-torture and pro-abortion crowd.

I may be one very confused, or morally corrupt, person, but it seems to me that the equation of "the pro-torture and pro-abortion crowd" - particularly in light of the very recent WWWtW torture kerfuffle - is just uncalled for, for reasons that I would think are plain, as in self-evident, to most people.

It also seems to me that Lydia's attempt[s] to "get us to put aside our differences and unite against the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy" is [are] _ever so laudable_ - and undermined by Mark Shea's torture crusade.

Hopefully, Lydia, or Dr. Beckwith, or Zippy Catholic, will be kind enough to explain the errors of my ways to me?

I won't have the thread hijacked to a discussion of torture, so let's set that aside, okay?

Accordingly, my thesis here is that our repudiation of PAS and euthanasia is a moral intuition, without rational foundations.

Are we supposed to ignore our moral sentiments? It seems to me that someone without such sentiments is a sociopath. I suppose we are all supposed to be emotionless computing machines.

I won't have the thread hijacked to a discussion of torture, so let's set that aside, okay?

That's exactly the point I was trying [and obviously failed] to make....

I think your ongoing agenda is the vast ring-wing conspiracy's - and the country's -
only hope.

Lydia:

Keying off Kurt's remarks about "emotionless computing machines", this whole line of reasoning from the good doctor reminds me both of Chesterton's observation about madness (that it is the loss of everything except reason) and of Vox Day's interesting characterization of the average internet atheist as a "social autist". It's, I think, cruel (to people afflicted with autism), but it does capture a real insight that there just seems to be something *wrong* at an affective and emotional level, with so many people who would describe themselves proudly as rationalist materialist atheists. Somebody who could write what you have quoted above seems like the sort of person who just can't get a date, has no friends, and probably has a hard time comprehending jokes and ordinary social banter.

Somebody who could write what you have quoted above seems like the sort of person who just can't get a date, has no friends, and probably has a hard time comprehending jokes and ordinary social banter.

Would it be fair to say that like a person who lacks the intelligence to "see" certain mathematical truths, the sociopath lacks the sentiment to "see" certain moral truths? Someone who simply cannot "see" that it is wrong to murder is probably not functioning correctly.

How can we balance the claim that morality is nothing but an emotive expression with the claim that morality must be based on reason alone, completely devoid of all emotion? What does the natural law have to say about emotion and reason regarding morality? I hope my questions are understandable.

there just seems to be something *wrong* at an affective and emotional level, with so many people who would describe themselves proudly as rationalist materialist atheists

Which reminds me....

Nine years ago Peter Berkowitz penned a really insightful essay entitled Other People's Mothers: The utilitarian horrors of Peter Singer. Berkowitz notes:

... Singer provides a cautionary example about the professional expertise in practical ethics. ... Singer ... has hired, at considerable expense, health care workers to tend to his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease.... [T[his otherwise common act of filial piety ... flagrantly violates the son's own moral theory.

After all, Singer's mother has lost her ability to reason, remember, and recognize others. She has ceased to be a person in her son's technical sense of the term.... Although he strenuously denies that from the ethical point of view we ought to treat friends and family differently, Singer's actions seem to proclaim that what is right and what is rigorous applies only to other people's mothers.

... "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult," he remarked to The New Yorker about the trials of his mother's illness. "Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it's your mother." ... [T]he ethicist's innocence, at this late date in his career, of the most elemental features of his subject matter boggles the mind.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more stunning rebuke to the ... academic discipline of practical ethics than that its most controversial and influential star, at the peak of his discipline, after an Oxford education, after twenty five years as a university professor, and after the publication of thousands of pages laying down clear cut rules on life-and-death issues, should reveal, only as the result of a reporter's prodding, and only in the battle with his own elderly mother's suffering, that he has just begun to appreciate that the moral life is complex.

Singer's astonishing epiphany seems to me to give real credence to your observation. The utilitarians' perspective reflects an unbridgeable gulf between the "I and my" and "others and theirs," a kind of [hypercreepy] moral solipsism.

Why doesn't she, Constantine A. Manthous, simply write that she believes in the destruction of useless mouths and the termination of lives unworthy of living?

Accordingly, my thesis here is that our repudiation of PAS and euthanasia is a moral intuition, without rational foundations.

That's a great line. Just fill in the blank with your favorite social issue:

Accordingly, my thesis here is that our repudiation of _____________ is a moral intuition, without rational foundations.

hunger
abortion
rape
murder
homosexuality
homelessness
theft
adultery
*religion*
*God*

as nauseum

Kind of reminds me of the Terminator. Physician, heal thyself.

Mark Shea:

but it does capture a real insight that there just seems to be something *wrong* at an affective and emotional level, with so many people who would describe themselves proudly as rationalist materialist atheists.

I haven't time to elaborate on this, but I think that there is a large unargued assumption in the quotation to the effect that something is either a moral intuition or is rational, but not both. This is obviously a false dichotomy.

Lydia writes:

"I suppose in Prof. Manthous's case, the inclination to view physician-assisted suicide as a good thing is a result of neurologic circuitry that has been finished by institutional indoctrination which fired his circuitry repeatedly throughout his intellectual development during, say, college and med school: 'The right to die is an expression of freedom and autonomy,' ad infinitum. In which case, why should we care tuppence about it? Why should he?"

Exactly.

Why does it never seem to occur to these guys to apply their own critical tools to their own moral presumptions?

It's a mystery to me. It really is.

Burton writes, "Exactly.

"Why does it never seem to occur to these guys to apply their own critical tools to their own moral presumptions?

"It's a mystery to me. It really is."

Excellent question. It deserves a post in itself. That said, I'll bite:

In my experience, philosophers who subscribe to all three members of the holy (or unholy) trinity--atheism, hard determinism, and utilitarianism--literally cannot understand how someone could disagree with them. They find these conclusions to be so obviously true, and so invulnerable, that they think people who don't agree have a mental block. (Note: I'm not saying that those who subscribe to only one or two of these think this way--if they don't believe at least one of them, then they're used to being met with incredulity, and so have some more empathy.)

Why do they find them so obviously true? Two reasons: (1) they're easy to apply. If you're a hard determinist and a utilitarian, you can easily find answers to all sorts of problems just be swallowing bullets. Utilitarianism is, of course, especially tempting. All these ethicists try to figure out how to apply the categorical imperative, or how to figure out really hard cases using their intuitions, or trying to figure out what God may want, or what the natural law dictates, whereas for the utilitarian it is (seems) deceptively easy. Same thing with atheism. It's easy to think of instances of evil that the theist might not have a ready answer to, especially if this theist isn't philosophically trained. Consequently, because it's so easy to defend these positions even against sophisticated people, it is easy to convince yourself that they're obviously right, especially if you don't have much life-experience. (2) It makes you feel superior. Everyone, especially the common man, is running around believing things you know to be delusional. You have a hidden insight into life for which you can powerfully argue, at least with rubes. Consequently, you are awesome.

Lydia,

I think that there is a large unargued assumption in the quotation to the effect that something is either a moral intuition or is rational, but not both.

Therein lies the problem; you commit here the very same sneeringly sinister sin so often notoriously committed by Herr Shea.

You've essentially begged the question by having already deemed something 'moral' (and, therefore, presupposed some pre-existing morality already and, thereby, forcing premature concession on the part of your detractors) whereas in the case of certain atheists (applying perhaps a cold, calculating & callous logic), entertaining the very thought of some preordained notion of 'morality' itself in man is fundamentally flawed (that, if given a more serious & scientific evaluation of the data, such a thing is quite actually non-existent); that this putative notion of 'morality' itself in many respects is much more the product of some human conditioning or, if you like, in all the uber-esquely delightful oratorical ornamentation, more likely a devised product of the strong to impose their will on the weak.

Various atheists have proposed it as being nothing more than an artifact (in the technical sense of that very term as is typically applied in scientific literature).

The thing is, Bobcat, that something very much like the genetic fallacy is just so glaring in the quotation from the article that one would think it would be hard for the author not to see it. And the genetic fallacy is so easy to apply to oneself that one should be wary of putting it front and center. Philosophers are usually more clever at concealing that sort of thing. My suspicion is that his unselfconscious blatancy here, which makes him sound so much like something out of a novel, may be partly a result of the fact that he is a doctor rather than a philosopher.

In a similar vein to Marjorie's request, could I ask that Aristocles not hijack the thread with another "I despise Shea" fest? He's entitled to his feelings, but it's not germane here. If Ari disagrees with Lydia, then let him do so without attributing to her some non-existent "sneer" much less irrelevantly linking it to me. Her point is quite substantive.

Honestly, I found Ari's comment to be so convoluted that I couldn't figure out whom he was trying to insult. I _think_ he was being facetious and thereby agreeing with me about Manthous's article, but I couldn't be sure. So I ignored it.

Shea,

Must everything be about you?

Obviously, you seem to think so since what I actually said in my above comments went completely over your head, perhaps due to the utter immensity of your vanity.

Lydia's point inevitably fails precisely due to the fact that she, in the aforementioned comments, had already presupposed the very notion of 'morality', which said scientists disregard.

Although, I am not so surprised that you would not think so given it's the very same fallacy you so happen to notoriously employ.

To be substantive, she has to confront the actual substance of the arguments put forward by the athiests.

To simply say that anything and everything can be represented by neurological firings and that the scientists basically do not see the significance of morality as a much necessary system for discerning right action does not cut it.

More importantly, she seems to be of the rather seemingly specious opinion that absent the kind of 'morality' she and yourself would have others indoctrinated, man cannot -- and, indeed, does not have the capacity for -- reason to act accordingly; that is, unless one so doggedly subscribes to this purportedly necessary & underlying presupposition of 'morality', man cannot himself act accordingly and, even further, simply act so stupidly since they happen to adhere to the opinion that such things happen to be the product of various neural activity.

Should this indeed be the case, if adhering to/acknowledging such a pre-existing notion of morality be found necessarily capital in providing the very foundation of why one must (and, in fact, in the very absence thereof, cannot) act rightly, then one wonders why in light of humanity's past, it would virtually appear that right conduct has been more often observed in the athiests as opposed to the Christians?

Lydia:

Yes. I couldn't actually parse anything after the sentence slamming you for being like me. That's more or less why I asked that we not go off on that tangent. It was the only bit of the post I could understand and I was afraid that others similarly baffled by the impenetrable syntax of the main paragraph would just focus on the bit they could understand and head off on an irrelevent tear about me. For my part, I can't see anything in what you wrote that was sneering, sinister or sinful.

Shea,

Must everything be about you?

No. That's why I asked that you not drag your dislike of me into the conversation as a completely irrelevant stick to beat Lydia with.

Ari, my point in the main post (which others seem to have gotten) is that Manthous is astonishingly un-self-aware in thinking that he can dismiss _others'_ moral beliefs as mere neural firings (or merely the result of neural firings) while holding his _own_ moral beliefs as being above such considerations. The genetic fallacy is a universal solvent. Manthous, like all of us, has to have _some_ grounds for acting. And there is nothing sacred about his desire to hold up his own notion of patient autonomy that makes it immune from the "that's just a result of your conditioning" accusation he levels at those who oppose doctor-assisted suicide. *He doesn't have an argument*. And in fact, as Smith points out, Manthous ignores the _actual_ arguments that have been made against PAS while pretending to be superior for being "rational."

Lydia:

I don't think Ari is being facetious or agreeing with you. I'm not very sure what he is saying, but my *guess* is that he is berating you for assuming that you are moral and the good doctor is not, or perhaps for assuming that your conception of morality is real and the good doctor's is not, or something like that. But that just a guess. I'm mostly going on tone, which sounds genuinely peeved with you and not as though he agrees with you.

I honestly can't decode the language he is using. Maybe somebody else can.

[T]here is room in this formulation for both nature and nurture to determine our moral selves. Our inherited neurologic circuitry is a template that is "finished" by institutional indoctrination which fires that circuitry repetitively throughout our development (e.g., "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not kill," ad infinitum). It both feels right and, when fully indoctrinated, is programmed into the fully moral individual.

Academicspeak for "if it feels good, do it." Only an "intellectual" would go through such pains to justify their perversions and perverse moral system.

Lydia,

I guess my question are essentially of this nature:

Must one subscribe to 'morality' in order to argue for their position that seem to, as far as we Christians are concerned, lie on the plane of such 'morality'?

This seems to be, amongst other things, a problem of perhaps nomenclature.

You see, since there isn't some sort of neutral word (and I don't mean "politically-correct" speak, but a word that would more justifiably express the athiest position) that would some act in place of the term "moral".

For example (and perhaps a poorly articulated one), it would be like not having the term 'Trinity' to more accurately describe what we mean by "Three Persons In One" where, in its place, certain secular folks would outright apply, for lack of a better term, polytheist.

Within the realm of the kind of scientific thought so prevalent these days and even depicted here in your entry, when one such as these would appear to be, in our own view & perception, acting rightly to certain moral prescriptions we know and are familiar, the term "moral" does not actually precisely describe the sort of thing that motivated the act.

Now, I don't think that if a person happens to believe (as doggedly as Christians concerning morality) in the notion that we are simply the sum of our neural activity, that this somehow automatically disqualifies them from advocating their position (or somehow becomes self-defeating) that remotely touches upon the realm of what we ourselves consider the seemingly strictly 'moral' expanse. I believe we happen to think the latter due to our very notion of it that is exactly given to such a notion.

Ari, you need to take a writing course. I _think_ you're asking whether the fact that a person believes that all his moral positions are no more than neural firings disqualifies him from having correct moral beliefs. The answer is no, it doesn't. However, it does disqualify him from _believing_ that he has correct moral beliefs. But my point in the main post is that Dr. Manthous is attempting to dismiss his opponents' position on the grounds that it is merely irrational neural firings, while not realizing that if this move can be used against them, it can be used against him, as well. Therefore, he would do better to try _engaging_ his opponents' views rather than dismissing them in this silly, sophomoric, and pseudo-scientific way. I trust I make myself clear.

Lydia,

Ari, you need to take a writing course. I _think_ you're asking whether the fact that a person believes that all his moral positions are no more than neural firings disqualifies him from having correct moral beliefs.

Thanks very much for producing a better articulation of what I myself was attempting to express.

(Also, I'd appreciate it if somebody kindly remove the above comment that attempted to draw a parallel between my person and apparantly somebody from a pornographic website called JAO, to which they even had the gall to link.)

Just FYI, JAO is short for "JimmyAkin.org". It's about as far as you can get from a porn site. Apparently, you reminded the reader of somebody who commented under the handle "Esau".

I removed the comment both because it was irrelevant and because I didn't want to go clicking around the Internet to sites I might regret going to. We now return to our regular programing.

So doeas somebody want to send the good doctor a copy of The Abolition of Man?

It strikes me to wonder what sort of arguments the Dr. _would_ consider to be rational. For example, if he considers consequential arguments to be rational, there are _boatloads_ of consequential arguments about the dangers physician-assisted suicide, from the undermining of the medical profession to the inevitable move to euthanize people who do not want to die or cannot express a wish, including infants (as in Belgium and the Netherlands). As Smith points out, all of this has been discussed at great length by Smith himself, Rita Marker, and many others.

If that is not the sort of thing Manthous regards as rational, then what would count? And if it is just a basic premise for him that people must have assistance in committing suicide and must not be stopped from committing suicide, then how can he criticize his opponents?

Lydia,

I removed the comment both because it was irrelevant and because I didn't want to go clicking around the Internet to sites I might regret going to.

To be fair, I wasn't able to visit the site myself; when I attempted to, our firm's IT error message popped up informing me that my access to the site was blocked due to it having been categorized under the "Pornography" category. I guess I should thank God for small favors.

It strikes me to wonder what sort of arguments the Dr. _would_ consider to be rational.

I still don't know if whether because the guy does not subscribe to the idea of morality itself, that he actually cautioned his peers against being victims to the play of emotions that typically plague man; that any of these things would actually make any potential argument put forward by him in that regard to become completely null and void.

That is, if the man should happen to believe in such things as being mere products of neural activity; perhaps he should simply demonstrate to folks what sort of neural activity would constitute right reason as opposed to that which is not.

As with genes wherein a certain sequence determines man's excellence in phenotype, maybe he should attempt to provide similar explanation here but with regards to certain kinds of neural activities that would be principally indicative of excellence in thought and right reason as opposed to that which verges on inferiority.

I want to know what sort of argument he is looking for from his opponents--from those who oppose physician-assisted suicide--and is implying (without doing any literature survey, which is irresponsible) they do not have.

Based on the seemingly stern warning he gave to his peer, I would take it that the doctor became immediately suspicious of it due to the very nature of the argument and how it seemed to him (I suppose) to reflect a moral system view of thought, a view which he (and others of that breed) find utterly offensive, if not, unquestionably inferior -- reflective of a more primitive species of man that tended to be given to such myth/supersition.

I would think that the sort of arguments he would be more willing to entertain from his peers -- from even the most vehement of opponents -- would be the kind that would ultimately argue outside the bounds of such seemingly primitive thought.

I guess you might say that where the Scholastics considered "Argument from Authority" as being the weakest form of argument; in his case, for him, the weakest form of argument is the "Argument from Morality" (or anything that would seem to argue from a moral standpoint).