h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You know...we could spend ages discussing higher dimensions, woo-woo maths, etc - and very fascinating it would be, too. But I struggle to see why someone like Plantinga imagines that these are of the slightest relevance to theology. At the end of the day we're still operating in the same, familiar universe and *only* in that universe. This is the only place we can sensibly talk about.

So why do they bother? Another relavant quote I came across from Dawkins:

'If there were any evidence for god, the religious would be all over it. There would be none of this business about not being able to understand him by rational means.'

Of course, that's a bit of a straw man Dawkins is using there, isn't it, Ed?


As for almost posting what I posted, admit it: I'm one of your sock puppets.

1+1=2 is only true when there are people there to define the symbols and assert it, so it's very dependent on the laws of physics.

Ed, I think the undefinability of what is good is more of a problem for utilitarian ethics than the computational intractability.

>>1+1=2 is only true when there are people there to define the symbols and assert it, so it's very dependent on the laws of physics.

OK...but then we get into the distinction between the imaginary and the perceivable. We can *imagine* other kinds of maths, but we can't perceive them. Not in this universe. Ever seen the square root of minus one of anything. Similarly...I'm quire comfortable with the idea of an *imaginary* god. Such a thing might even provide reasonably coherent explanations for various things. Just don't try and tell me it's real.



>>I think the undefinability of what is good is more of a problem for utilitarian ethics than the computational intractability.

No...I think that 'good' is reduceable. Ultimately, when we say 'good' we are constrained to mean 'that which favours me/ my family/ my species/ my genes'. I can't honestly think of a plausible definition that departs from that general area.

That's not to say that questions of 'What is to the good' can usefully be analysed from the viewpoint of, say, the gene (or the molecules that comprise it...or the valencies of the atoms that comprise them...and so on down to quantum level). Rather, our material nature endows us with an unreliable but inesecapable mechanism for differentiating between good and bad. (To the best of our ability, according to our pathetic limitations in identifying and weighing the various factors).

And as you touched on earlier, wen talking about Freedom...it's not necessarily fruitful to even try to justify the unreliable, variable, competing versions of what is rationally good. We have to sort this out at an even higher, inter-individual level. This is my 'Democratic Conversation'.





Jaysus. I don't know where I got this 'Democratic Conversation' from. I must be quoting. It sounds too good to have come from me.

does the fact that the square root of minus 1 exists in human mathematics mean that it has some sort of Plantingean 'beyond the universe' place and, therefor, God? It strikes me that, contrary to the 1 + 1 = 2 argument for god, mathematics actually suggests that non-existent things can be discussed without necessitating any reality either within or without the universe.

Ed, you can't reduce 'good' to 'that which favours...', it just begs the question: what does 'favours' mean? (Perhaps, 'that which is good for...'?) And there's no avoiding that there are irreconcilable differences of opinion on this. For example, the definition of life (or life that we care about): do we treat animals the same as people? is abortion murder? etc. There are no answers to these questions, we have to choose what we mean. (And it's not just religious people who think that abortion counts as murder btw.)

I'm not disagreeing with you on the conclusion though: we need plurality, freedom, your Democratic Conversation (googling it comes up with plenty of hits btw, but no obvious definitive coiner of the phrase), etc.

"Ever seen the square root of minus one of anything."

I'm not sure I've ever seen 'one' of anything. And I'm fairly confident I've never seen 'zero' of anything. Or alternatively, I'm seeing zero of almost everything all the time - which is worse?

1 and i are both abstractions, it's just that the former is slightly more salient than the latter.

Hi Ed,

>we could spend ages discussing higher dimensions, woo-woo maths, etc - and very fascinating it would be, too. But I struggle to see why someone like Plantinga imagines that these are of the slightest relevance to theology.

Yes, exactly. So let's ditch Plantinga's bizarre conclusion and spend ages discussing Platonism and mathematics please It seems to me that there is a genuine difficulty with point 3 whichever way you look at it, and I learn best via discussion.

>Ultimately, when we say 'good' we are constrained to mean 'that which favours me/ my family/ my species/ my genes'.

But this is just a self-centred form of utilitarianism! Counterexample: imagine you are a doctor. Your wife is in hospital urgently needing a heart transplant; she'll die within days otherwise. Your daughter needs a liver transplant and your [insert other relative] needs [insert other organ]. In reception is a healthy, unrelated person. Are you ethically justified in killing that person to obtain the organs you need to save all the others? Wouldn't that benefit you, your family, your species and your genes? Isn't society better off if one person dies than if three do? - so by your definition above, aren't you morally justified - indeed *obliged* - to commit murder?

These conversations are much more fun when I disagree with you

Gif

Hi Dogster,

>1+1=2 is only true when there are people there to define the symbols and assert it

Ha, I call thee post-modernist! Are you saying that it is possible that there might be other universes where 1 + 1 = 3? Or 1 + 2 = paperclip ? Surely not? Isn't there something inherent in the nature of a pair that it consists of two of something?

Gif

Hi Anhaga,

>It strikes me that, contrary to the 1 + 1 = 2 argument for god, mathematics actually suggests that non-existent things can be discussed without necessitating any reality either within or without the universe.

Interesting...

Gif

Gif,

The universe itself doesn't need the concepts "1", "+" and "2", they are concepts that are made by humans to help them comprehend the universe. It's not that there might be universes where 1+1 is not 2, but rather that without humans, or beings that think similarly to humans, there is no "1", "+" and "2" so the question couldn't even arise. Also, I'm a little wary of the idea of imagining another universe, it seems to both presuppose that our way of thinking is necessary, real and universal (thus presupposing the answer to the question about 1+1=2), and that one can expect meaningful results starting from premises that are empirically unexaminable (similar to God).

>>Ed, you can't reduce 'good' to 'that which favours...', it just begs the question: what does 'favours' mean? (Perhaps, 'that which is good for...'?) And there's no avoiding that there are irreconcilable differences of opinion on this. For example, the definition of life (or life that we care about): do we treat animals the same as people? is abortion murder? etc. There are no answers to these questions, we have to choose what we mean. (And it's not just religious people who think that abortion counts as murder btw.)


Well...some clarification, then. When I say that 'good' is reduceable, I'm not implying that we will all reduce it to the same thing. However - we do reduce it to *something*. Whether we mean something that favours (promotes? generates? allows for?)...a psychological state; gene survival; a liveable society; believing that one has pleased god; whatever will depend on who's talking and what they're talking about.

Let's take the killing animals one. I think - although I may be wrong - that 'It's wrong to kill animals' can be reduced to:
'My empathy for animals causes me distress when I think about animals being killed. This emanates from my survival-beneficial biological capacity for empathising with other humans. '

Or try abortion:
It would be inimical to personal and species survival if humans regularly killed one another. Thus we've come to a socio-biological pact whereby murder is Not The Done Thing. This is reinforced by a (learned? innate? it's not important) mechanism whereby we by-and-large feel a psychological revulsion at the concept of murder. Some extend this psychological revulsion to the killing of foetuses and to them it is intolerable to think of a society in which 'foetus murder' is permitted. Others are able to compartmentalise to the extent that they distinguish between a foetus and a 'person' (the stage at which the transition occurs varies, but nearly everyone counts ex-utero humans as people), and to them the benefits of controlling fertility allow them to countenance a society in which abortion is allowed.

*Now*: These reductions are quite complex - and, yes, they allow considerable scope for variation between individuals. In practice, we jump to conclusions which can be quite hard to unpick. For these reasons, there's seldom a great deal of mileage in reducing others' (or our own) arguments too far. We use other processes for reconciling the irreconcilable, and not everyone ends up happy.

This is a lot more fun than dissecting scripture, isn't it?

>>But this is just a self-centred form of utilitarianism! .... so by your definition above, aren't you morally justified - indeed *obliged* - to commit murder?

But all this is saying is that our morality is inconsistent and throws up paradoxes and quanderies. So what? All it shows that there are too many variables for us to get our feeble brains around. Sometimes we just end up doing what feels right at the time. Your guess is as good as mine.

Hi Ed,

And yet... we do need to make those decisions. If a doctor walks into a waiting room and starts hacking people up with a scalpel, 'that's a bit of a quandry' doesn't sound like a good response. We do actually *need* to have (as a society) a firm, definite response to that sort of thing. Which means we need to agree on it. Which means we need to be able to say *why* we feel the way we do.

Gif

Indeed. And we have fairly settled laws and ethical codes which cover most cases.

For the more difficult one...take the recent decision when doctors wanted to withdraw treatment from a termiunally ill baby who was in pain, against the parent's wishes. The default position is that parents give consent for their children's treatment. In this case, doctors believed that they the oparents might not be adequately in the patient's interests. Someone had to decide. That's what we have judges for.

*But*...in cases like this, there are no right answers.

'Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.'
(William S Burroughs)






While reminding myself of that, I came across another nice Burroughs quote:
"Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way. "

Dogster:

'It's not that there might be universes where 1+1 is not 2, but rather that without humans, or beings that think similarly to humans, there is no "1", "+" and "2" so the question couldn't even arise.'

It is also quite possible to imagine a perfectly human society in which 2 + 2 = 'a whole bunch' rather than 4. In such a society, 2 + 2 = 5 x 12 or 4 = 60.

Ed, I'm not sure we do reduce concepts like good - at least not most of the time. We can be pushed into reducing it when confronted, but it seems to me that there's no reason to think that the reduction existed before we were pushed into justifying ourselves. Now sometimes this can be a useful thing to engage in, because it forces us to think about and prioritise things, and maybe pushes us to to think more deeply about things we've previously just assumed.

Animal and foetus killing are two interesting examples.

In the case of animals, in many cases you're probably right about the inspiration for people's desire not to kill animals. You could also talk about how as a child you experience meat and cute, cuddly animals as two separate things, and the shocking realisation when it comes that they're the same could be the genesis of many people's desire not to eat animals. My dad tells the story of how as a little boy I was once given a plate of lamb chops and said 'Oh, poor little lamb', followed by a pause, and then followed by me guzzling it down to the last bit. I guess maybe that pause was a critical moment for me and I could have gone the other way and become a vegetarian at that point.

But explaining the genesis of an idea is not necessarily the same as defining it. When pushed, most vegetarians (with the honourable exception of yourself of course!) won't say that they don't eat meat because of an anthropomorphic association with higher mammals or childhood experiences. They'll most likely try to avoid the argument entirely, but if pushed (yeah I like to push them, it's a nasty hobby) they'll probably say that it's something to do with the value of sentient life, etc. And they'll only go so far in defining why it is that they don't eat meat as they have been pushed to.

This is a dynamic process, in that by pushing people to explain what they believe, the beliefs themselves change. Although we can identify the origin of the belief as one thing, that doesn't mean that the post hoc professed reasons for the belief are just a deception, because through the dynamic process the professed reasons for the belief partly become the real reasons for the belief.

A similar thing works in the case of abortion, and many, many other examples of belief. Why do I believe in equality? It probably started because of having an older brother who was always one step ahead of me and always won our battles. But if you asked me why now, I'd talk about the dangerous political effects of inequality, the unfairness of advantage gained by social position or the genetic lottery, etc. And I'd be (rightly I think) annoyed if you refused to engage with those reasons, focussing instead solely on my experiences with my brother as a young boy. (This is why arguing with Freudians is so annoying.)

By the way I'm not saying this to contradict you, because I suspect this is largely what you were getting at, and that you'd agree with it. But I think it's worth making explicit, and it's quite interesting (at least to me).

Here's another issue: is there value in having a consistent moral theory? In some ways, it seems like there should be. In the case of logic, inconsistency spreads and is damaging to the system as a whole, and therefore all inconsistencies, however minor, must be avoided. We might guess that the same thing happens with moral theories by analogy. Is that right or not? On the other side, I can see a potential harmful impact of having a consistent moral theory. In order to make the theory consistent, we'd probably have to simplify it to a considerable extent. Now, in corner cases the theory may well dictate doing something other than what we really think is the right thing to do. This can either be an indication that our intuition about what is right needs correcting, or it can be an indication that the theory is oversimplified. In the latter case, it is dangerous because by having a theory that tells us how to act, we thereby abdicate a certain amount of responsibility for our actions, and this can be very dangerous.

Gif's point is important too though, in the public sphere it is important to have shared principles that can serve as a common basis for action, in particular our interactions with others. It's for this reason that I would prefer to focus less on morality in the political sphere, but rather on freedom (and its correlate, equality). It seems to me that you lose nothing in focussing on freedom, and gain a lot in clarity, and in washing away a lot of ambiguity.

>Gif's point is important too though

To be fair... I stole it from a very wise man

Gif

>>Ed, I'm not sure we do reduce concepts like good....But explaining the genesis of an idea is not necessarily the same as defining it.


Well, yes, I agree. I'm not saying that it's *necessary* to reduce opinions about 'good', merely that it is (theoretical) reduceable. If someone classifies something as 'good', then we can simply assume that this subjective classification derives from a tangled web of experiential and biological influences. I fully accept, though, that we have to process and negotiate them at a higher level of abstraction. We can't necessarily understand *why* someone thinks something is good, merely *that* they do...and maybe unpick it a tiny bit.

A bit like art. Generally we're on a hiding to nothing if we try to understand aesthetics from a biological perspective...although as EH Gomrich shows, there's *some* mileage in it.