Quote from: Hastur T. FannonExcept that a mature religion doesn't make falsifiable truth claims of that sort and we're back to "the Way that can be spoken of is not the true Way"

What do you mean by 'mature religion'?
Because you can really, really make CoE, Catholic and other relatively moderate believers start to squirm by talking about Genesis and so on. If there are no claims to be made, if there is no intervention, no participation, then the deity might as well not exist in any case.

Quote from: AkrasiaThis is an invalid argument.  You're committing the fallacy of 'affirming the consequent'.

If p, then q  (If moral principles are not rational, then they will not motivate the psychopath)
q  (they don't motivate the psychopath
Therefore p (therefore moral principles are not rational)

There are other possible explanations for why moral principles don't motivate the psychopath aside from the fact that they are not 'rationally justifiable'.

The issue is not whether the moral principles will motivate a particular psychopath but whether they can motivate any psychopath and, if not, why not.  My claim is that if the moral principle was rationally justifiable on the basis of logic and evidence alone, then the psychopath should be able to comprehend it as something more than an arbitrary rule.  You are claiming that there are "other possible explanations for why moral principles don't motivate the psychopath".  OK.  For example?

Let me try putting this another way.  

I can support a religious argument on the basis of personal religious experience.  So can plenty of other people.  If I present an argument based on my personal religious experiences and my experiences are similar to those that the other person has experienced, my argument may be persuasive to them.  If I present an argument based on my personal religious experiences and my experiences are not similar to those that the other person has experienced, the argument will likely seem irrational to them.  For example, if I tell that I experience the presence of the Holy Spirit and then wrap that up in rational language, do you consider that a rational reason to believe in the Holy Spirit?  If not, then why is that different if you wrap up a moral emotion in rational language and try to use that to convince a psychopath that killing other people is wrong?  Why is the "moral fact" (an emotional response, really) more legitimate than a "religious fact" (a religious response)?

Quote from: AkrasiaAlso, keep in mind that 'rationally justifiable' is different from 'based on reason alone'.  Many of my desires are 'rationally justifiable' even though they are not based on reason.

Then what are they based on?  And why can or can't a belief in the supernatural be similarly based on reason?

Quote from: AkrasiaUltimately reason aims at providing a coherent and consistent account of reality.  The fact that some emotional responses to particular situations lead us to act in ways that conflict with an impartial account of reality is hardly surprising or worrisome (at least for moral theory; it's obviously worrisome from a practical point of view).

So why is the fact that the religious responses experienced by religious people to particular situations lead them to act in ways that seem to "conflict with an impartial account of reality" create a problem for moral theory?

Quote from: AkrasiaA moral realist can claim:

(a.) moral properties exist (so he's not a moral sceptic or a 'subjectivist');
(b.) a moral property just is a property that will motivate properly situated human agents to act in certain ways (or prompt certain responses in them, etc.);
(c.) moral reactions can nonetheless be rationally criticised and reformed (say, to better conform to the relevant moral properties; this is one reason why the moral realist is not a 'subjectivist');
(d.) people may often be in situations in which they are not responsive to the relevant moral properties; and
(e.) some people (e.g. psychopaths) may be incapable permanently of being responsive to moral properties.

So moral realism is a view that (1.) affirms that objective moral properties exist, and for which (2.) the fact that psychopaths exist in no way threatens this fact.

It seems be asserting that moral properties exist.  Is that correct?

And if you are rationally criticizing moral reactions, why isn't the critique that they are emotional rather than rational a problem?  Doesn't that make it possible to rationally criticize any moral reaction away whenever it's convenient, just as you can rationally criticize away a person's religious experiences on similar grounds?  

Quote from: AkrasiaNow, if psychopaths made up 96 percent of the population instead of 4 percent, then 'moral properties' as such would not exist (rather, 4 percent of the population would be capable of apprehending something that most people could not, in much the same way that only a small percentage of people can 'lucid dream', i.e. perceive that they are dreaming while they are doing it).  If 100 percent of people were psychopaths, the properties would not exist at all (at least not for human beings), just as 'colour' would not exist (at least not 'for us') if 100 percent of people were colour blind.

Two problems with that.  First, a sizable part of the human population believes in the supernatural and reports religious experiences.  Why isn't that sufficient to make "religious properties" exist, in the same way that you claim the experience of morality makes "moral properties" exist?  Second, you are wrong about color.  Color exists whether we can see it or not.  That's why, despite the fact that we can't really see either infrared nor ultraviolet light, we don't say that those colors don't exist, and even if every person were colorblind, the person who claims that they don't exist just because they can't see them would be delusional, would they not?

What's different about morality is that there seems to be no test that you can do to demonstrate a moral property beyond the fact that people experience it in the way that it's possible to demonstrate that light we can't see really exists.

Quote from: AkrasiaNow you might not like moral realism for some reason.  That's a separate debate.  But it's a perfectly coherent, defensible account of morality that is thoroughly naturalistic in its metaphysical assumptions.

Then is the only reason why a religious experience is not equally naturalistic is that the naturalistic excludes the possibility of a supernatural?  And isn't that just begging the question, then?  

Quote from: AkrasiaNeither moral realists nor expressivists deny that morality would not exist if human beings – with their particular biological and psychological constitutions – did not exist.  (I think that there are sophisticated 'internalist' 'practical reason' views that can overcome this challenge as well, but that's a race in which I have no horse.)  This doesn't mean that particular moral practices cannot be rationally criticised and reformed.

On what grounds do you criticize or reform an emotional response?  How do you judge one emotional response to be more valid than another?

Quote from: AkrasiaBut people do change their views about particular moral issues because of arguments.  For example, I know people who have become vegetarians because of utilitarian arguments that they found convincing, people who came to change their views about distributive justice, etc.

And I met a person who was convinced to become a vegetarian by visiting a meat packing plant.  Did the person in your example become a vegetarian on purely utilitarian grounds or because their perspective on the moral status of animals changed?  The same thing with distributive justice.  Was it because of a shift in morality or because their moral distance from those who pay and those who benefit was changed?

What the train problem suggests is that you can get people to give you different moral answers based on adjusting how close or distant a person is from the other actors in the moral situation.  That is why commercials asking for money to help starving children in Africa focus on getting the viewer to empathize with the children, rather than presenting utilitarian arguments about the general good and so forth.  They play to the emotional response because that's where the change in perspective has to happen.

Quote from: AkrasiaWhy couldn't it also involve altering our emotional responses to particular situations after rational reflection, or finding that our emotional responses have been altered after we come to view a particular situation differently thanks to moral argument and reflection?  People seem to do this on a regular basis.  I know that my own 'emotional responses' to certain situations that I now regard as cases of injustice are quite different to my previous 'emotional responses' to analogous situations which I did not then regard as cases of injustice.  And I changed my views about justice as a consequence of rational reflection and deliberation (indeed, in the course of taking two particular philosophy courses).

Did your emotional response change or did the way you frame the problem change?  For example, the train example given in that Discover article says that you can get a person to give you a different answer for the same utilitarian problem (killing one person to save five) depending on whether killing the one person is distant and dispassionate (throwing a switch) or close and personal (pushing them to their death).  Did you really change the emotional response to a particular moral question or did you change the way you frame the question in your mind?  

Quote from: AkrasiaA moral realist would argue that the possibility of such changes is precisely what 'moral progress' hinges on.

How do you measure "progress" and why is it considered beneficial?

Quote from: AkrasiaSimilarly, changes in people's emotional responses are key to theories of 'virtue ethics'.   Aristotle, for instance, thought that moral education involved teaching people to feel the right emotions in response to certain situations.  Nonetheless, rational reflection and judgement played a central role in Aristotle's ethics, despite his acknowledgement that emotional responses were key (and his acknowledgement that some people were simply 'insensible' to virtue).

And how does one teach people to feel right emotions?  And what makes one emotion "right" and another emotion "wrong"?  And why is that superior to feeling no emotions at all?

Quote from: AkrasiaI thought that you said previously that it was something that psychopaths could understand 'logically'?

One can "understand" (in the sense of comprehending the components and how they relate) something logically and then assess it to be illogical, thus not "understand" (in the sense of understanding why the conclusion should follow from components).  The first "understand" is used in a Japanese "wakarimasu" sense while the second is used in a conventional English sense (that to "understand" implies "agreement" or at least "appreciation").  

Quote from: AkrasiaNo matter.  The fact that claims about colour have no meaning for someone who is colour blind, or claims about other people's 'mindsets' have no meaning for autistic people, does not mean that claims about colour or other people's 'mindsets' are purely subjective or mere fictions.

The problem is that it is easy to rationally convince a colorblind person that color exists and there are autistic people who come to understand that other people have different "mindsets" based on rational arguments but a psychopath cannot be convinced that "moral facts" exist.  In both of your other examples, direct personal experience is not necessary to understand that what it being described objectively and really exists.  It can be demonstrated through evidence and argument.  The psychopath suggests that direct personal experience is necessary to understand "moral facts" and that they have no meaning without that experience (you seem to acknowledge as much, above).  As such, a "moral fact" is not the same thing to a psychopath as color is to a colorblind person or another person's mindset is to an autistic person.

Quote from: AkrasiaBut it doesn't do this at all.  It is not even clear to me how it could pose a challenge to externalism.

So are you claiming that it's not falsifiable?

Quote from: AkrasiaMy objection all along has been that you are positing a false dilemma: either 'rationalistic internalism' is true or moral scepticism is true.  My point has been that these are not the only two alternatives.

I think they are if you really value evidence and reasoned arguments as much as you claim that you do.

Quote from: AkrasiaThere are meta-ethical theories that are not in any way vulnerable to the existence of psychopaths (e.g. non-reductionist and reductionist moral realism, expressivism, 'sentimentalist' versions of 'virtue ethics', etc.).  If you think that the existence of psychopaths requires moral scepticism, you need to show how they also rebut these other meta-ethical theories.  But you haven't even begun to do this!

Very early on in this debate, you set a standard for what you consider a good reason to hold a belief, as opposed to just pure faith.  So the question is not simply whether some meta-ethical theory can provide an explanation but whether that meta-ethical theory stands on ground any more firm than a religious belief.

Quote from: AkrasiaIn short, even if I were convinced that psychopaths undermine the plausibility of 'rationalistic internalism' (orthodox Kantianism), I would hardly feel the need to become a moral sceptic/error theorist.  That's because the existence of psychopaths does not even affect the plausibility of a large number of alternative non-sceptical meta-ethical theories (including the  ones that I find most plausible).

And what makes those theories seem more "plausible" to you than any other theory or even religious faith?  Is it really the logic, reasoning, and evidence that matter or is it simply an emotional response that determines what feels right to you?

Quote from: AkrasiaWell I certainly would not deny that some people ignore rational arguments for emotional reasons.  Who would?  However, I know that some people who have been strongly emotionally attached to certain views (religious, ethical, political, etc.) have come to change those views thanks to rational deliberation and reflection.  So it certainly seems possible (at least for some people).

How did the "rational deliberation and reflection" change the emotion?  

In the cases I can think of right now where "rational deliberation and reflection" changed my feelings about an issue, it's not so much that my core moral emotions changed but how I framed the argument or understood the components changed.  

For example, suppose a person is asked the question of whether it is moral to push a person in front of a train to save 5 more lives down the track and they think it would be wrong to do so.  So I present them with a utilitarian argument that abstracts the individual and emotionally distances the person from them and then get them to agree that it's better to kill one person than 5.  I haven't really convinced them on utilitarian grounds.  What I've done is encouraged them to think of pushing the person in front of the train as if pushing a person in front of a train was the same as throwing a switch.  And bringing the person back would be a matter of once again humanizing the victim that the person must deliberately kill to save five.  In either case, it's not the rational argument that's changing their mind.  It's really an appeal to the person having more or less emotional distance from the various components of the moral problem.  While there is a rational and deliberative component to it, the ultimate decision is not a rational one.
 

Quote from: AkrasiaPerhaps one needs to want or desire that their beliefs conform to reality in order to feel the force of logic, reason, etc?  Well, maybe.  And if there are people who simply don't have that desire, I don't know what to say to them.  But such persons seem simply to be 'cabbages' (as Aristotle described them), and not worth discussing anything with.
:shrug:

And can you find morality in the force of logic, reason, and evidence alone?  The psychopath suggests that you can't, unless you treat moral violations and conventional violations as the same thing, thus reducing questions of whether or not you should kill your neighbor to the same level as whether or not you should chew food with your mouth open or download songs illegally from the Internet.  You seem to be acknowledging as much when you say, "if psychopaths made up 96 percent of the population instead of 4 percent, then 'moral properties' as such would not exist".  At that point, if you try to frame your argument on the basis of what others think or the collective good, you run into the second problem that the psychopath poses, which is that without the emotional moral context, none of that has any value or meaning, either.  For what reason, purely on the basis of logic, reason, and evidence, should a person care about any of those things?

Quote from: John Morrow…  My claim is that if the moral principle was rationally justifiable on the basis of logic and evidence alone, then the psychopath should be able to comprehend it as something more than an arbitrary rule.

I understand that you’re claiming that.  God knows you’ve asserted it enough times.  But one can claim that moral properties are ‘response-dependent’ and not based on reason alone, while nonetheless having a meta-ethical theory about moral properties that one comes to accept on the basis of (theoretical) reason alone.  

Quote from: John MorrowYou are claiming that there are "other possible explanations for why moral principles don’t motivate the psychopath".  OK.  For example?

They lack the ability (appropriate emotional apparatus, or whatever) to apprehend the relevant moral properties under the appropriate circumstances.

Quote from: John MorrowLet me try putting this another way.  

Why is the "moral fact" (an emotional response, really) more legitimate than a "religious fact" (a religious response)?

If I thought that ‘moral facts’ ultimately could only be explained by reference to supernatural phenomena then I would indeed be a moral sceptic (this is Mackie’s position).

However, there are many meta-ethical theories that are perfectly naturalistic in their metaphysical premises.  Perhaps they are ultimately mistaken, but you certainly have not even come close to showing that.  Hell, you haven’t even seriously addressed them!

Quote from: John MorrowThen what are they based on?  And why can or can't a belief in the supernatural be similarly based on reason?

Lots of beliefs can aspire to be ‘rationally justifiable’ or be ‘based on reason’ and still be mistaken.  I might interpret a particular natural event or emotional response to be a ‘supernatural’ one (‘God spoke to me’) even though there is in fact a perfectly naturalistic explanation available that correctly explains the event or emotional response (‘I thought God spoke to me, but in fact I’m a schizophrenic, or whatever’).

Quote from: John MorrowSo why is the fact that the religious responses experienced by religious people to particular situations lead them to act in ways that seem to "conflict with an impartial account of reality" create a problem for moral theory?

The ‘religious responses’ experienced by religious people in particular situations lead them to form beliefs about things that don’t really exist.  However, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘creating a problem for moral theory’.  I don’t think religious people are (necessarily) immoral.

Quote from: John MorrowIt seems be asserting that moral properties exist.  Is that correct?

It’s a complicated view – or rather, set of views – and I’ve just given you an incredibly crude summary.  No, the view does not merely ‘assert’ that moral properties exist.  Don’t be so foolish.  There’s a lot more to it than that, but I simply cannot give you a complete primer in contemporary meta-ethics here.  I just don’t have the time to do that, and in any case you would be better off simply reading a proper philosophical presentation of the relevant view (or views, as there is more than one version of moral realism out there).

Quote from: John MorrowAnd if you are rationally criticizing moral reactions, why isn't the critique that they are emotional rather than rational a problem?  Doesn't that make it possible to rationally criticize any moral reaction away whenever it's convenient, just as you can rationally criticize away a person's religious experiences on similar grounds?  

Moral reactions (at least according to some realist views) involve both the emotions and reason.  Providing an account of moral reactions (and moral discourse more generally) is something that is done by reason alone (just as reason might provide an account of any other phenomena in the world, whether that phenomena involves emotions or not) – that’s what makes it a meta-ethical theory as opposed to a particular ‘moral reaction’.  

Quote from: John MorrowTwo problems with that.  First, a sizable part of the human population believes in the supernatural and reports religious experiences.  Why isn't that sufficient to make "religious properties" exist, in the same way that you claim the experience of morality makes "moral properties" exist?  Second, you are wrong about color.  Color exists whether we can see it or not.  That's why, despite the fact that we can't really see either infrared nor ultraviolet light, we don't say that those colors don't exist, and even if every person were colorblind, the person who claims that they don't exist just because they can't see them would be delusional, would they not?

What's different about morality is that there seems to be no test that you can do to demonstrate a moral property beyond the fact that people experience it in the way that it's possible to demonstrate that light we can't see really exists.

Sure, lots of people believe in supernatural things.  But given any particular experience that an agent has and wants to interpret as a ‘supernatural’ experience, we have two possible explanations: (a.) it really is a supernatural experience (despite the fact that people seem to have supernatural experiences that regularly conflict with other people’s supernatural experiences); or (b.) it is really a perfectly natural event that the agent has misinterpreted as a supernatural one.

Centuries ago people saw lightning and heard thunder and interpreted those phenomena as being caused by the battles amongst the gods.  They interpreted thunderstorms as supernatural events (or events with a supernatural cause).  Now we know better.  Likewise, people who today persist in thinking that perfectly natural phenomena are ‘supernatural’ are misinterpreting their experiences.

Also, I’m not wrong about colour (as opposed to light).  Colour can be understood as what is generally known as a ‘secondary property’ – a property that is the result of the interaction between a certain phenomenon (in this case light) and a certain sense organ (the optic nerve).  So the analogy with colour is perfectly fine.  ‘Colour properties’ are perceived or experienced by people as a result of the interaction of certain light waves with their optic nerves.  Colour-blind people don’t have those experiences – the properties don’t exist ‘for them’ (even though, strictly speaking, they still exist in some sense).  Likewise, according to realism, ‘moral properties’ exist even though psychopaths cannot perceive them.  The point of the colour analogy is show that particular properties might be response-dependent and nonetheless exist.  Anyhow, if it bothers you, nothing significant depends on the analogy.

Quote from: John MorrowThen is the only reason why a religious experience is not equally naturalistic is that the naturalistic excludes the possibility of a supernatural?  And isn't that just begging the question, then?  

No, it’s not ‘question begging’ at all if you have good independent reasons for rejecting supernatural phenomena and explanations.  And most contemporary philosophers think that they have good grounds for doing so – that’s precisely why they try to provide naturalistic meta-ethical theories (or at least theories compatible with naturalism).

Quote from: John MorrowOn what grounds do you criticize or reform an emotional response?  How do you judge one emotional response to be more valid than another?

Some responses properly apprehend the relevant moral properties, while others do not (or not adequately).

Quote from: John MorrowDid the person in your example become a vegetarian on purely utilitarian grounds or because their perspective on the moral status of animals changed?  The same thing with distributive justice.  Was it because of a shift in morality or because their moral distance from those who pay and those who benefit was changed?

The changes in question were the result of critical reflection on the relevant arguments alone, as far as I can tell.  

Quote from: John MorrowWhat the train problem suggests is that you can get people to give you different moral answers based on adjusting how close or distant a person is from the other actors in the moral situation.  That is why commercials asking for money to help starving children in Africa focus on getting the viewer to empathize with the children, rather than presenting utilitarian arguments about the general good and so forth.  They play to the emotional response because that's where the change in perspective has to happen.

Fine.  So what?  That doesn’t undermine my position at all.

Quote from: John MorrowDid your emotional response change or did the way you frame the problem change?  For example, the train example given in that Discover article says that you can get a person to give you a different answer for the same utilitarian problem (killing one person to save five) depending on whether killing the one person is distant and dispassionate (throwing a switch) or close and personal (pushing them to their death).  Did you really change the emotional response to a particular moral question or did you change the way you frame the question in your mind?  

If I changed the way in which I ‘framed the question in my mind’ because – on the basis of rational reflection – I came to think that one way of ‘framing the question’ was superior to another, then I fail to see what the big deal is (at least with respect to any meta-ethical view that I find plausible).

Quote from: John MorrowHow do you measure "progress" and why is it considered beneficial?

That’s a huge question outside of the scope of the current discussion.  This is getting annoying because you seem to want me to explain very complicated, diverse philosophical views to you in ways that you can immediately appreciate on a message board.  It’s an impossible task for someone with limited time, energy, and patience (like myself).  It would take time even in a proper graduate seminar that lasted a full term.  My main objective here is not to educate you about contemporary meta-ethics, but rather to make it clear that the two alternatives available in contemporary meta-ethics are not exhausted by ‘rationalist internalism’ (orthodox Kantianism) and ‘moral scepticism’.  If you want to know what those alternatives are, get a book or take a course.  I will never be able to explain the views to your satisfaction here.

Quote from: John MorrowAnd how does one teach people to feel right emotions?  And what makes one emotion "right" and another emotion "wrong"?  And why is that superior to feeling no emotions at all?

See my reply above.  Do you really expect me to explain adequately contemporary virtue theory, its account of the role of the emotions and reason, and so forth, here?  I just can’t do that.  There are books for this sort of thing.

Quote from: John MorrowThe problem is that it is easy to rationally convince a colorblind person that color exists and there are autistic people who come to understand that other people have different "mindsets" based on rational arguments but a psychopath cannot be convinced that "moral facts" exist.  In both of your other examples, direct personal experience is not necessary to understand that what it being described objectively and really exists.  It can be demonstrated through evidence and argument.  The psychopath suggests that direct personal experience is necessary to understand "moral facts" and that they have no meaning without that experience (you seem to acknowledge as much, above).  As such, a "moral fact" is not the same thing to a psychopath as color is to a colorblind person or another person's mindset is to an autistic person.

I don’t buy this at all.  It seems that psychopaths do understand that other people act in certain ways that appear to conform to moral rules that they see as rubbish or equivalent (at best) to the rules of etiquette.  What separates psychopaths from the rest of us is that they don’t understand the weight that normal people attach to moral rules (the distinction that normal people make between ‘conventional rules’ and ‘moral rules’).  Insofar as psychopaths successfully interact with people who do behave morally, they have at least as good a grasp of the moral person’s perspective as the autistic person does of  another person’s mindset.  Indeed, moreso, since many psychopaths can ‘mimic’ (play lip service to) moral reactions when necessary, whereas autistic people cannot generally even do that.

Quote from: John MorrowSo are you claiming that it's not falsifiable?

Externalism could very well be wrong for a number of reasons, but your arguments don’t even touch it!

Quote from: John MorrowI think they are if you really value evidence and reasoned arguments as much as you claim that you do.

Well you can think that all you want, but you’d be wrong.  I value evidence and reasoned arguments very much.  That’s why I find certain meta-ethical views so compelling.  Meta-ethical views untouched by  your psychopath argument.

Quote from: John MorrowVery early on in this debate, you set a standard for what you consider a good reason to hold a belief, as opposed to just pure faith.  So the question is not simply whether some meta-ethical theory can provide an explanation but whether that meta-ethical theory stands on ground any more firm than a religious belief.

I would say that any of the naturalist meta-ethical theories that are taken seriously by philosophers today stand on far ‘firmer ground’ than religious belief.  (I view some of them as implausible, I should emphasise, but they’re still more plausible than supernatural theories.)

Quote from: John MorrowAnd what makes those theories seem more "plausible" to you than any other theory or even religious faith?  Is it really the logic, reasoning, and evidence that matter or is it simply an emotional response that determines what feels right to you?

It’s logic, reasoning and evidence.  The naturalist meta-ethical theories all aspire to explain phenomena that clearly exist (the exercise of moral judgement, moral deliberation, and so forth), and all try to do so by making reference to natural processes and phenomena.  Perhaps at the end of the day they’re all wrong and some form of moral scepticism is the only alternative.  But at no point do they posit supernatural entities, or employ supernatural explanations

Quote from: John MorrowWhile there is a rational and deliberative component to it, the ultimate decision is not a rational one.
 

I would say that while there is an emotional component to it, the ultimate decision can be a rational one (perhaps not always, or even typically).  A person can decide to think of a situation (‘frame it’ in a certain way) so as to engage certain emotions as a result rational reflection.  

Quote from: John MorrowFor what reason, purely on the basis of logic, reason, and evidence, should a person care about any of those things?  

I never claimed that caring about morality could be generated purely on the basis of ‘logic, reason, and evidence’!  (That’s a ‘rationalistic internalism’.)

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonAt one end we have beliefs that inspire obviously self-destructive actions: drinking the kool-aid, giving all your money to a charlatan, supporting Millwall FC*

At the other end I think we have to look at that actions and example of the people that society consider to be truly great and inspirational and ask what beliefs inspired them

My point was that one can't claim that the sole criterion for evaluating beliefs is their positive or negative effects on the wellbeing of society, since that claim about the nature of beliefs is itself a belief (and so justifying it in terms of is effects on society's wellbeing would be viciously circular).

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonExcept that a mature religion doesn't make falsifiable truth claims of that sort and we're back to "the Way that can be spoken of is not the true Way"

I don't understand this at all.  Why believe one particular religion instead of another, if we can't attribute to different religions different views and claims, and critically compare them?  
 

Quote from: Hastur T. Fannon... based on what you've said, I'd suggest that your loss of faith might be more connected to you developing your own identity independant of your parents than you are perhaps aware

It certainly did not feel that way, and I actively avoided bringing up my atheism with my parents for many years after I had made the move.  But whatever, I don't put much stock in psychoanalysis.
 

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonYou're right.  There's usually something else and the intellectual justifications come after the core of faith has already been lost.  An emotional crisis, development as a person, or disillusionment with the religious hierarchy are examples of things that can trigger this

Or arguments can generate a crisis of faith.  That's what they did for me and my friend.

John Morrow,

I apologise if I seemed a bit curt at times in my last post directed at you.

However, I spent two hours replying to your posts today, and that's time that I don't really have to spend on a message board.  Obviously I take your questions seriously, and think that it is an important topic, otherwise I would not have bothered.  But I just can't keep spending this kind of time debating you here.

So let me try to provide an overview of the discussion as I've seen it progress so far.

With respect to morality, you claim:

(a.) The existence of morality depends on it being rationally motivating for all persons.
(b.) Psychopaths are rational and persons, but are not motivated by morality.
(c.) Therefore morality does not exist; moral scepticism is true.

Now, I dispute (a.) simply because there are many naturalist meta-ethical theories that deny that premise (e.g. moral realism, expressivism, versions of 'sentimentalist' virtue ethics, etc.).  Not all contemporary meta-ethical theories are committed to what I've labelled 'rationalist internalism' (i.e. premise (a.)).  

You might think premise (a.) is correct, but until you address these alternatives, that is simply an assumption on your part.  I don't have time to explain these alternative views to you here (at least not adequately).  You'd be better off, in any case, looking at other, more polished explanations of them.

In any case, even if you ended up somehow convincing me of the truth of premise (a.) (Good luck!), so what?  All you would have accomplished is to convince me of the truth of moral scepticism.  And as I mentioned earlier, becoming a moral sceptic would not really change things that much.  Even Mackie found himself having to engage in thinking about what kinds of 'ethical-like rules' are best for society.  If morality turns out to be a fiction, it seems to be a necessary fiction (unlike, say, religion).

Quote from: AkrasiaI apologise if I seemed a bit curt at times in my last post directed at you.

Nope, I understand that this takes a lot of time (it does for me, too) and you do it for a living.  But I would also point out that if you engage in a philosophical or moral discussions on a general purpose message board, it helps to be able to summarize and present a "for dummies" version of what you are trying to say, not simply to help me understand but also to help anyone else who is following along.

Quote from: John MorrowNope, I understand that this takes a lot of time (it does for me, too) and you do it for a living...

Meta-ethics is not actually my main area of research (and I don't even teach it), so it takes me longer to drudge up all the stuff that I learned at graduate school than it does for a subject that I work on all the time.  (However, at least I went to a graduate school internationally known for its work in meta-ethics.)

Quote from: GRIMWhat do you mean by 'mature religion'?

I'm not quite sure.  You know that episode of South Park where they're talking about Scientology and the question is asked "Is it any more retarded than the idea of God sending his only son down to die for our sins? Is it any more retarded that Buddha sitting beneath a tree for twenty years?" and Stan says "Yeah, it's way, way more retarded"?  It's something like that.  There's a time in every religion's life when it settles down, has ground the rough bits off it's theology and only kills people when it gets combined with politics - becomes a functional member of society in other words (usually starts birthing lots of baby religions, but that's another story).  By this analogy, Islam is going through a mid-life crisis and Bahai was born middle-aged

Quote from: GRIMBecause you can really, really make CoE, Catholic and other relatively moderate believers start to squirm by talking about Genesis and so on.

Really? Doesn't make me squirm.  Evolution is a settled issue for Catholics and most Orthodoxen and would be a settled issue for Anglicans if we could figure out a way of throwing out the Creationists

Quote from: GRIMIf there are no claims to be made, if there is no intervention, no participation, then the deity might as well not exist in any case.

Fallacy of the excluded middle? God can only be known by analogy or metaphor and those are imperfect.  "The Lord is my shepherd" doesn't literally mean He has a crook and a flock of woolly things that go "baa" - only symbolically ( )

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonReally? Doesn't make me squirm.  Evolution is a settled issue for Catholics and most Orthodoxen and would be a settled issue for Anglicans if we could figure out a way of throwing out the Creationists

God forgive me for reentering this thread, but I thought I'd mention that Hastur is quite correct here.  Catholic teaching embraces evolutionary theory, so do most protestant faiths though the ones that reject it get all the press on the topic (unsurprisingly, religious group agrees with general consensus on issue is hardly a headline that would shift newspapers, whereas nutjobs attack scientific evidence does).

Orthodox I haven't a clue, but I doubt they have an issue with evolution either.  Most religions are fine with it as a concept, they just tend to think god guided it a bit at times whereas atheists don't think that.

Anglicans don't believe anything as best I can tell, and the Sea of Faith Anglicans rather bizarrely don't even believe in god, though personally if I were an Anglican I'd expect my bloody priest to believe in god at minimum.  Not to do so seems a bit of a trades description infringement to me...

Quote from: AkrasiaMy point was that one can't claim that the sole criterion for evaluating beliefs is their positive or negative effects on the wellbeing of society, since that claim about the nature of beliefs is itself a belief (and so justifying it in terms of is effects on society's wellbeing would be viciously circular).

True, but you regard all language about supernatural entities as being nonsense then it's the only criterion that you can use

Quote from: AkrasiaI don't understand this at all.  Why believe one particular religion instead of another, if we can't attribute to different religions different views and claims, and critically compare them?

Emotional resonance? Cultural background? You can look at what behaviours a truth claim produces and evaluate them in that way (Byron's Calvinistic background is reputed to have led to depression and eventual atheism because he came be believe that he was not among the Elect)

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonTrue, but you regard all language about supernatural entities as being nonsense then it's the only criterion that you can use


 
Emotional resonance? Cultural background? You can look at what behaviours a truth claim produces and evaluate them in that way (Byron's Calvinistic background is reputed to have led to depression and eventual atheism because he came be believe that he was not among the Elect)

Hastur, I can't bear to read through the thread again, but you're not arguing are you that one should adopt faith because of positive social effects?  It seems to me a rather pernicious idea, that one should choose to believe something one doesn't really think is true for social benefit, or worse should encourage others to believe something one thinks is untrue because that will have wider benefits.

I've seen Jim-Bob make that kind of argument, that religion should be encouraged as it benefits society.  I don't think that's right, I think one should encourage religion if one believes it to be correct by all means, but when one doesn't believe it oneself?  That seems a form of dishonesty.

Quote from: BalbinusAnglicans don't believe anything as best I can tell

Oi! We have the 39 Articles!

Quote from: Balbinusand the Sea of Faith Anglicans rather bizarrely don't even believe in god

Anglicans or Church of England?  Because several Sea of Faithers (and related weirdos) have been sacked in the States (Spong's early retirement being the most famous) and the ones in the CofE are only there because it's almost impossible to sack a CofE priest

Quote from: BalbinusHastur, I can't bear to read through the thread again, but you're not arguing are you that one should adopt faith because of positive social effects?

Not at all.  I'm arguing that the positive social effects constitute a rational reason for adopting a faith

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonOi! We have the 39 Articles!



Anglicans or Church of England?  Because several Sea of Faithers (and related weirdos) have been sacked in the States (Spong's early retirement being the most famous) and the ones in the CofE are only there because it's almost impossible to sack a CofE priest

Ack, my bad, I confused Anglican with CofE, sorry.

I meant CofE, Anglicans elsewhere in the world clearly believe stuff, it's the CofE that got all wishy-washy.

Sea of Faith always did strike me as bloody weird.  Either believe in god or don't, all this Jesus was a great teacher even if not actually supernatural crap is just humanism in disguise.  What's wrong with just being a humanist?  Why dress it up in borrowed liturgy?

I always felt a bit sorry for those who went to church for communion and got a sea of faither, I may not believe myself but that still ain't right.  Someone seeking guidance or comfort from a priest should not get an atheist in drag instead.

Balbinus, not a big fan of the sea of faith movement, as you might tell...

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonNot at all.  I'm arguing that the positive social effects constitute a rational reason for adopting a faith

In that they're a form of evidence that the faith in question is correct?  Not sure I'm following.

I could see an argument that said if a particular faith leads to clear benefits in people's lives that is evidence that the faith may in fact be correct.  It doesn't persuade me, but I think it is at least an argument that can sensibly be made.

After all, if there is a god who has ordered the universe in a particular way, living in alignment to that likely would bring some benefits, unless the god in question is great cthulhu of course.