Solipsism
The Atlantic’s rather boring Wunderkind Ross Douthat tells Jerry Coyne what’s what. He breathes heavily for some time in order to come up with the obvious point that many disciplines make various kinds of claims that are not scientific claims and that that’s all right.
One can reason productively about questions that cannot be resolved through falsification tests. If this weren’t the case, philosophy departments, historians, polemicists, and many social “scientists” would be out of business in a hurry.
Yes indeed; very true; well spotted. But…is it relevant?
Now of course religion is not a thing like political philosophy. But there are similarities between the way that belief operates in both religion and in politics. In making their case, an apologist for Christianity and an apologist for, say, liberal democracy are likely to draw on a similarly hodgepodge-ish set of claims – some philosophical, some historical, some scientific, some anthropological and some personal.
Ah, so that’s where you went wrong. Yes, sure, there are similiarities (though frankly not many), but they’re not the point. The point is that religions really do make literal factual truth claims, often with much heat and emphasis; religions do make claims about facts as well as values, and the factual claims are based on…nothing; they’re sheer invention. That’s the point.
At the very end of the piece, Douthat did an incredibly stupid thing, a thing which is more common than one might expect in this day and age.
[T]he standards of scientific rigor simply aren’t the only standards that there are for holding warranted beliefs. And if you applied Coyne’s “method of disproof” standard to every important question in life, you’d end up paralyzed by indecision – you’d never cast a vote or marry a woman, let alone choose which God to worship, or whether to worship one at all.
Oh look, there I was foolishly assuming he was talking to everyone, people in general, which would include me, only to get to the last sentence and realize he was talking only to men. It appears I was intruding the whole time. How disconcerting.
OB: “Oh look, there I was foolishly assuming he was talking to everyone, people in general, which would include me, only to get to the last sentence and realize he was talking only to men.”
No, not quite. He was talking to all heterosexual men, and inevitably by simple logic to all women except those NOT contemplating at least the possibility of entering upon a same sex marriage; ie to a minority of women, but not zero.
Getting to that point of profundity was a pretty dreary wade none the less.
Literally, yes, and I did think of that, but in reality of course he was talking to (straight) men. The point is not the logic but his stupid assumption that ‘you’ means people like him.
True enough – but why single out factual claims? Religions’ value claims are also based on nothing at all. Or rather, they’re based on the uninformed, unreflective assumptions and prejudices of the people who wrote the religions’ various holy books and who currently interpret the books (and re-interpret them periodically in service of their current agendas and interests) – all of which adds up to somewhat less than nothing, if what one wants it to add up to is some sort of justification.
In fact, I’m rather more worried about the completely unjustified value claims grounded in religion than the completely unjustified factual claims, both because fewer people take the latter seriously and because the consequences of faulty factual claims tend to be less appalling than the consequences of spurious value claims. Every horrible story you ever link to from B&W about religiously inspired abuse of girls and women is rooted in the value claims advanced by various religions, not the factual claims.
But I suspect you agree with me on this, OB, and emphasized the factual claims because that’s what Coyne was writing about. Nevertheless, I felt it needed saying. Given how often the bogus authority of religion on matters of value is asserted, I don’t think that it is possible to speak out against it too often.
It appears that Douthat is confusing one more detail. Often times questions are rigorously scientific and empirical – but the complexity of the logic and the chaotic nature of the question makes it hardly distinguishable from a non-empirical value question. However, I think the calculus remains empirical (i.e. fact based) and computationally never enters the realm of value-based unempirical questions.
So it is important to distinguish between complex/ unreducible but empirical questions from the value-based rational or god forbid irrational questions.
I believe Douthat is making a fundamental mistake in this regard conflating these categories.
I am sure others on the blog are noting this as well, but possibly in a different language?
G – your point is well taken. It is VERY important to separate facts from values. Values are essentially arbitrary, even if secular, they remain arbitrary.
Take a soccer game for example. Facts are the ball, the players, the grounds, the goal posts, etc.
Values are the rules of the game.
There is no rule that says the game has to be fair, interesting, within a certain period, adjudicated, etc. These are the values.
The problem with singling out religion’s value claims is that you have to refute that with other value claims. And guess what – the other value claims are rather arbitrary as well!
So I think we should stick to refuting the fact claims, otherwise you will be pulling yourself down to the same level as the other side. You are entering into a debate which you will emerge as muddy as the religious person.
You would be amazed that even simple value claims like the golden rule is NOT subscribed by all.
“we should stick to refuting the fact claims”
Since one claims of fact is that religious values were decreed by God this doesn’t really lose us much. ;-)
“Values are essentially arbitrary”
They are generated by similar organisms, however. They have a shared grammar at least.
Don’t they? (Serious question.)
“Every horrible story you ever link to from B&W about religiously inspired abuse of girls and women is rooted in the value claims advanced by various religions, not the factual claims.”
I don’t actually think that’s true, G. I think many of those stories are rooted in factual claims, sometimes in addition to value claims and sometimes on their own. In fact I could even claim to know that they are, because I found a lot of that kind of thing while writing Does God Hate Women?
Hamidreza, it appears to me that the ethics of any religion is a series of hypothetical imperatives: IF you want to (a) go to Heaven (b) reach Nirvana (c) find inner peace (d) etc, THEN you must follow the prescribed teachings/ path/ rules/ etc.
Without the hypothetical imperative, the prescribed behaviour would appear on its own to be highly irrational, like that of the person sometimes encountered in a public place speaking earnestly but to no one. Saying the rosary, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and so on would fall into that category were they not known widely to be means to an end.
However, there is a difficulty with your position:
“The problem with singling out religion’s value claims is that you have to refute that with other value claims. And guess what – the other value claims are rather arbitrary as well!
“So I think we should stick to refuting the fact claims, otherwise you will be pulling yourself down to the same level as the other side. You are entering into a debate which you will emerge as muddy as the religious person.”
The rules of soccer are set out, like the Ten Commandments, as a series of negatives: If you want to avoid penalties against you, then you must not (a) touch the ball with your hands (b) grab hold of an opposing player (c) abuse the referee… etc. Without the concept of winning, and those rules as to how to do it, the ‘facts’ of the ball and the pitch etc are inconsequential.
So consider this: “If you martyrise yourself in an approved way, then you will find yourself immediately in Paradise, in the company of 72 virgins… etc.” That is a fact claim in its own right, and not refutable by a contrary fact claim of the same kind, eg “No you won’t. You will go to Hell… etc.”
It has to be done with something like “I don’t care how many heavenly virgins might be involved, you are under arrest for incitement to murder.”
That rests on laws made with majority approval, and arguably on a utilitarian basis. If we want the greatest happiness for the greatest number, then… etc.
dirigible > “[Values] are generated by similar organisms, however. They have a shared grammar at least.”
Arbitrary does not imply randomnness. I dont think anyone is saying that values are chosen out of a hat. There is a grammer and a system. That is why we call it a “value system”.
But essentially the foundation is arbitrary. That is they are chosen based on rationalistic arguments. By definition a value is NOT grounded in facts, but do still affect us, just as facts do.
So yes, there is a system for values. However they remain arbitrary (detached from epirical reality)
Ian,
Your point is well taken. If a value claim can be refuted with a fact claim, then so much the better. It makes the job a lot easier.
However I am skeptical if one wishes to refute a value claim solely based on another value claim. This has the danger that it will debase the discourse – which is what the value-based folks would love to see happen. You will be playing into their hand.
Democratic value making enforced through laws makes a lot of sense. It is an improved value system. But lets face it, it is still essentially arbitrary, and the axioms of this system rests not on an empirical foundation, but on a rational-egalitarian foundation.
So I dont have an answer to this conunderum, and there probably will be none (an undecidable question?).
This is the handicap that secularism will have to be burdened with till eternity. So instead of trying to win an uphill battle, it would be wiser to level the battlefield. That is why religion should be attacked not on its rationalistic beliefs, but on its methodology.
Hamidreza: Lots of people are prone to declare that values are completely baseless and arbitrary – but not so many are willing to agree that it’s perfectly okay to torture, murder, and consume human toddlers, if you’re into that sort of thing. So which is it?
I don’t mean to be crass and dismissive – well, actually, I do. I’ve lost all patience with the completely unsupported insistence, without argument or evidence, that all value claims are completely arbitrary – which would mean that no value claims are any more justifiable than any others, and thus that anything goes. To claim that value claims are difficult to support, or that any given claim is disputable, is not the same thing as saying that all value claims are utterly arbitrary and a matter of pure will or faith. No one who claims to believe this actually does believes it (hence the toddler-eating snark), and no one who promotes it has ever made a truly convincing argument for it beyond “But it’s a value claim, and value claims can’t be proven! So there!”
Making the distinction between factual claims and value claims amounts to only a tiny step in actual substantial thinking about in moral reasoning. Go read someone who put years of thought into such matters: Hume, for example, rather famously criticized unwarranted moves from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ – yet you will find that he had somewhat more to say beyond that criticism; several more chapters of Treatise on Human Nature after he made the oft-quoted criticism about is-to-ought claims, in fact.
OB: Well, yes, factual claims are made about women’s essential inferiority, etc. But when the factual claims are so clearly value-laden and based on prior value judgments – well, on prior value assumptions – I try not to dignify them by calling them “factual.” That’s tricky territory, there. Lots of people claim that their pet value claims about the world are matters of plain fact, after all. Lots of people also claim that their pet beliefs about the world which are demonstrably false are matters of plain fact. But being wrong about a factual claim and being wrong in thinking that your claim is factual when it is actually a value claim are not the same mistake.
G – I have trouble making that leap. It is very similar to a leap from the empirical to the rational. We can have an elaborate rational system that is so beautiful, abstract, powerful, etc. But if there is no empirical input to that, it would be garbage-in – garbage-out.
Saying a value system is well crafted, aesthetic, utilitarian, and uplifting, etc. can be an attribute of the system – but I have difficulty understanding why that is not essentially an arbitrary construction with arbitrary meta-values which of course will depend on our biases, shortcomings, etc.
There may in fact have been cultures where murder and todler consumption was at least of a ritual. In the animal kingdom, this is quite common. So you would think material conditions such as the survival of fitest may at some point require such eccentricities. The salmon runs where I am are the most pathetic – with huge amounts of carcasses strewn around after spawning. Now what kind of life is that?
Maybe its best if we do NOT deify our values? Maybe its best if we get together as intelligent conscious beings and accept the limits to our morals – a theoretical upper limit that no amount of self-indulgance and theorizing will transcend?
Maybe if we stop denying this rational fact, then we may arrive as a society at some inner collective peace that we can now intelligently and with a level head then discuss what it takes to build an acceptable and workable value system?
If there is a theoretical imperative for the arbitrariness of values and a theoretical upper limit to our morals, then best is to acknowledge it and get on with it. Trying to beat around the bush trying to justify our ethics just so as not to look bad, may be futile and just gives ammunition to postmoderns and other reactionary forces that will take this as a way to impose moral equivalencies. And believe me they will.
/end of rambling
Hamidreza,
I’m an anti-realist about moral values, and even I don’t see that you’ve given any support for the claim that all values are arbitrary.
Yup, what Dave2 said. Insisting that the arbitrariness of values is a “rational fact” – whatever that means – is just repetition, not argument.
If all you mean by “morality is arbitrary” is that people’s beliefs about morality differ, you are saying something that is incredibly trivial. But people’s beliefs about facts also differ, and I don’t imagine you would say that facts are arbitrary – so you must mean something more.
The only argument you make for that something more, though, is pointing out that people’s beliefs about morality differ. Any such argument assumes what you want to prove: Pointing out that people differ in their moral beliefs is only evidence that morality is arbitrary if you assume that their beliefs determine morality – i.e. that just believing some behavior is good makes it good, which is just another way of saying that morality is arbitrary. Without that assumption, the fact that people differ in their beliefs about morality – or anything else – would only serve as evidence that some of them (perhaps all of them) are mistaken in what they believe. Of course, you aren’t alone in this: The history of 20th century metaethics is rife with people assuming what they wished to prove.
Incidentally, the existence of customs involving human sacrifice or other horrid acts hardly makes any sort of case that such acts are viewed in a morally positive light, even by the sacrificers. Rather the opposite, I think: The sociocultural power of human sacrifice would seem to spring primarily from the moral horror of the acts demanded by deities: “Our god is fearsome and powerful, and we must do terrible things to appease him and avert his wrath.”
G –
‘Well, yes, factual claims are made about women’s essential inferiority, etc. But when the factual claims are so clearly value-laden and based on prior value judgments – well, on prior value assumptions – I try not to dignify them by calling them “factual.”‘
Yes, but the Vatican and the SBC and others have learned to be a bit more crafty than that, you know – they’re careful not to say that women are inferior – now they say that they are ‘complementary’ – equal (in some useless formal sense) but different, oh so different, really really different. The Vatican bangs on and on and ON about this shit. That is to be sure a value discussion, but there is a quasi-factual element. You know – wtf does that mean?
G – its clear that I am saying that there is no empirical basis to morality – **at the limit**.
The limiting case is important IMO, because that is where the imperative arises.
Otherwise its very simple, and acceptable to say something like: Whatever induces physical pain in the subject is morally unacceptable. Physical pain is an empirical fact and can be measured.
Dave I assume by anti-realist you mean you agree to what I say.
So maybe you could provide support to the argument that in the limit, values are arbitrary?
Hamidreza: No such thing was clear from what you wrote before, and I don’t see how it’s much clearer now. What does this “at the limit” stuff even mean? How do moral imperatives arise from empirical facts “at the limit”?
You seem to be confused about what moral/value claims and empirical/factual claims are and how they relate. Pain is something that happens in the world (although you overstate the degree to which it can be measured, which is actually a substantial problem in medicine), and a claim about the existence or location or intensity of pain is a factual claim. A claim that needlessly inflicting pain is morally blameworthy is a value claim. Factual claims are about the world as it is (and the way people do behave), where value claims are about the way the world ought to be (and the way people ought to behave). That’s why value claims cannot be deduced from factual claims, and we have to get at them some other way.
You seemed to be saying before that value claims are arbitrary, baseless, and purely derived from individual or collective will or something like that (although the latter isn’t quite the same as arbitrary). Now you seem to be saying that moral imperatives arise from … something having to do with empirical facts somehow, all of which is very unclear.
The term ‘moral anti-realism’ means something pretty specific – several specific somethings, actually. So does the term ‘moral realism.’ I’m sure you mean something specific, too – but you’re not saying what you mean in any clear way at all. Maybe a little more familiarity with the kinds of things that have been said before on these subjects would help. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has pretty good entries on moral realism and moral anti-realism.
OB: Yeah, you’re right. I guess I was just thinking of it from a very internal perspective: *I* know that all of these patriarchal religious claims about the “nature” of women are really just expressions of the traits these assholes think women ought to have – subordinate, silent, respectful of and obedient to the will of their superiors. Not only are these purported “facts” actually value claims, they are rooted in a particularly odious set of values. But of course that isn’t as obvious out there in the wide world as it is in my head.
I still don’t think that the religious versions of such claimed facts about women carry much weight with people who don’t already buy into the values. The perverted science version of the same thing is much more dangerous, though, because its appeal extends beyond the fold. I am reminded of the various ways women’s unhappiness with oppressed lives has been falsely medicalized in the era of scientific medicine: In the 19th century, women suffered from “hysteria,” the treatments for which were appalling at best. In early-to-mid-20th century the diagnosis was variations on “anxiety,” first treated by opiates, and later by Valium. It makes me wonder what proportion of the current over-prescription of anti-depressants is really just an extension of that same story…
G, please allow me to digest that and also take recourse to the Stanford Encyclopedia.
Meanwhile allow me to ask you a question and contemplate your answer.
The Golden Rule is a no-nonsense sensible value (system) that I am sure we both accept and cherish.
Please explain if there is an empirical basis to this rule. And if not, why not.
Thanks.
I disagree that philosophical views cannot be falsified – you can refute someone’s philosophy by showing how it is inconsistent or logically invalid.
Of course, religious beliefs can be falsified in this way, too (even if the falsification isn’t followed with an appropriate adjustment in beliefs). In fact I think many of the basic principles in Christianity are inconsistent with plenty of logical principles, modern ethical values, and empirical facts.
One should also accept proof in love – though the way we collect evidence is naturally much less rigorous than in science. It would be really foolish to have faith that someone loves me if their behaviour is evidence to the contrary.
Hamidreza, your closing question about the Golden Rule seems to reveal what I think might be a very deep philosophical confusion: You seem to have decided that “justified” must mean “based on empirical evidence,” with no room whatsoever for any other sort of arguments or inferences. I not only don’t believe that’s true, I suspect you wouldn’t think it is true if you reflected on it a little more carefully. To wit, if you think you are justified in accepting the Golden Rule, you must have some notion how it may be justified…
The big picture here is this: No value claim could ever conceivably be based solely on empirical evidence (although there may be a role for such evidence) because all value claims are about the world as it ought to be in some sense, and empirical investigation can only discover the world as it is. That does not, however, mean that value claims cannot be justified by any means whatsoever.
G,
“I still don’t think that the religious versions of such claimed facts about women carry much weight with people who don’t already buy into the values.”
No, probably not – but there is an oddly, how shall I say, facty quality to Vatican pronouncements on gender. They read like some kind of expert testimony, despite being of course entirely made up. The good news is that few people not already fond of the Vatican will read or hear the silly things – but the bad news is that the Vatican fan club is not exactly small.
“It makes me wonder what proportion of the current over-prescription of anti-depressants is really just an extension of that same story…”
Not to mention the endless barrage of appearance-related nostrums. I’m forcibly made aware of this every time I do anything on Facebook, I assume because I have a female name. Apparently the only thing I’m interested in, being a woman, is how to look like Julia Roberts.