Keith Burgess-Jackson

The question of analysis brings us to another question which is very closely connected with it. Are moral predicates, such as right, ought and good, unique and peculiar; or can they be completely analysed and defined in terms of non-moral predicates? Theories which answer this question in the affirmative are called naturalistic; those which answer it in the negative are called non-naturalistic. The following would be typical examples of naturalistic theories. “Better conduct means conduct that comes later in the course of evolution and is more complex and unified than earlier conduct of the same kind.” “Right action means action which tends to promote the stability and increase the complexity of society.” “To say that a person ought to do so-and-so means that, if he does not, he will be punished either in this life by his fellow-men or in the next by God.”

It should be noticed that, if any form of the Emotional Reaction analysis be true, the question is answered automatically in favour of naturalism. Ethics becomes a branch of psychology. Nevertheless, there would remain a somewhat similar question even for those theories. It would take the following form. “Is the emotion which we express, or assert ourselves to feel or to have a disposition to feel, or which we assert that most members of a certain class have a disposition to feel, when we utter a moral sentence in the indicative an emotion of a quite unique kind? Or is it just a combination of emotions, e.g. fear, love, hope, etc., each of which can occur in non-moral contexts?”

If the Objective Analysis be correct, the question of Naturalism v. Non-naturalism remains quite open, and special arguments are needed to answer it.

The importance of the question is this. If Non-naturalism be true, Ethics is an autonomous science with an irreducibly peculiar subject-matter, though it will still have very intimate connexions with certain other sciences, such as psychology, sociology, etc. But, if Naturalism be true, Ethics is not an autonomous science; it is a department or an application of one or more of the natural or the historical sciences. Now the reduction of a plurality to a unity is a source of intellectual satisfaction, and therefore philosophers have a strong motive for trying to produce a workable naturalistic theory[.]

(C. D. Broad, “Some of the Main Problems of Ethics,” Philosophy 21 [July 1946]: 99-117, at 102-3 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: I’m an ethical non-naturalist.

Here is a New York Times story about hypocrisy. Philosophers call studies such as those described in the story “descriptive ethics.” The contrast is to normative (prescriptive) ethics, which is either theoretical or practical. How we behave and how we ought to behave are, of course, different things. When you infer an “ought” from an “is,” you are said to violate Hume’s Law. I should add that Hume’s Law is a special case of a more general law, which holds that the conclusion of a deductive argument can contain no more information than the premises. The conclusion can contain the same amount of information as the premises or less information than the premises, but not more. It follows that if the conclusion of a deductive argument is normative (evaluative, prescriptive), then at least one of the premises is normative (evaluative, prescriptive).

Addendum: Gregory Kavka comments on Hume’s Law (the violation of which he calls the “Naturist Fallacy”) here. Do not confuse the Naturist Fallacy with the Naturalistic Fallacy. Here is Mary Warnock:

Moore calls the attempt to define ‘good’, which is indefinable, The Naturalistic Fallacy. But it is important to notice that the fallaciousness consists in the attempting of a definition at all, rather than specifically in defining a so-called non-natural object in terms of a natural object. . . . The true fallacy is the attempt to define the indefinable.

Mary Warnock, Ethics Since 1900, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 13 (ellipsis added).

Physicist Brian Greene explains why science matters. Please keep in mind, as you read his op-ed column, that the most science can do is provide naturalistic explanations of phenomena. For some people, that is enough. For others, there are more fundamental questions, such as why we have just the natural laws we do. Were they created by a supernatural being? If so, what are the properties of that being? Science, by its own terms, has nothing to say about these questions.

Save yourself some time. Read the answer by the philosopher.

Addendum: Do you want my answer? Here it is:

Scientists, as such, provide naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena, such as the movements of the planets, the behavior of coyotes, and the process of photosynthesis. God, by definition, is a supernatural being (albeit one who can intervene in the natural world, which God created). Science, by its own terms, has nothing to say about the existence of God, and cannot, therefore, make belief in God obsolete. Only someone who is woefully confused about either science or God (or both) could think otherwise.

Feel free to provide your own answer.

A dogma, according to Simon Blackburn, is “a belief held unquestioningly and with undefended certainty” (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 109). Progressives flatter themselves that only conservatives (especially those of a religious bent) are dogmatic. This is risible, for in my experience, progressives are every bit as dogmatic as conservatives, if not more so. Here are two flagrant examples of progressive dogmatism:

1. Voting behavior. Progressives think that there is only one basis on which to vote, namely, economic self-interest. When confronted with the fact that many poor and working-class Americans vote Republican, progressives are dumbfounded. It must be false consciousness of the sort Karl Marx (1818-1883) used to insulate his theory from empirical refutation. The masses (progressives say) have internalized the values of their capitalist oppressors! They come to believe that free enterprise benefits them, when in fact it exploits and enslaves them. As for how this happens, progressives postulate many ways. One is the use of manipulative language by Republican candidates, who take advantage of people’s love of country, fear of terrorism, anxiety about cultural loss, and hope of personal improvement (among other powerful emotions). It never crosses progressive minds that poor and working-class Americans care about many things besides economic self-interest. That anything other than a welfare state could actually be in the economic self-interest of poor and working-class Americans is, to the progressive mind, inconceivable.

2. Religious belief. Progressives are convinced that there is no god. They don’t argue for their atheism; they assume it. When confronted with the fact that most people believe in a supreme being and an afterlife, progressives are dumbfounded. The belief (they say) must be rooted in fear, hope, anxiety, bad faith, or some other emotion. People need a stern but loving father, so they invent one (Freud). Those who have social power (the aforementioned capitalists!) induce people to believe in an afterlife so they won’t protest against the injustices of this earthly life (Marx). Religious belief is a misfiring of an evolutionarily useful ability: agent-detection (Darwin). No attempt is made to examine the grounds of religious belief. It can’t possibly be true, so its persistence must be explained naturalistically.

Can you think of other examples of progressive dogmatism?

Marx:

Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, “Toward the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: Introduction,” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. and ed. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat [Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967], 249-64, at 250 [italics in original] [essay written in 1843])

Kai Nielsen:

For Marx all pre-communist societies are class societies, driven by class struggles, where the class structures are epoch-specific and are rooted in the material conditions of production. Religions, in his conception, and also Engels’s conception of things, function principally to aid the dominant class or classes in mystifying and, through such mystification, controlling the dominated classes in the interests of the dominant class or classes. Members of the dominating classes may or may not be aware that religion functions that way. But, whether they are aware of it or not, it so functions. Religion, as ideology, serves to reconcile the dominated to their condition and to give them an illusory hope of a better purely spiritual world to come, after they depart this veil [sic] of tears[.] This works, in the interests of the dominant class or classes, as a device to pacify what otherwise might be a rebellious dominated class, while at the same time “legitimating” the wealth and other privileges of the dominating class or classes. In this peculiar way—definitely an ideological way—religion works to “unify” class society, while at the same time giving expression to distinctive class interests. It serves, that is, both to “unify” class society and to sanction class domination, while giving the dominated class an illusory hope, though, of course, not one seen by them to be illusory, of a better life to come after the grave. . . . (Kai Nielsen, “Naturalistic Explanations of Theistic Belief,” chap. 51 in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997], 402-9, at 406)

Obama:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. (Barack Obama, Speech in San Francisco, 6 April 2008)

Interesting, no?

Here is a New York Times story about a new book by the National Academy of Sciences. You can read the book online. In fact, you can download the entire book in PDF format, as I just did. Here is the definition of “science,” from the book:

The use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.

This definition does not exclude Design Theory, which is an attempt to use the methods of science to establish the existence of God. According to Richard Swinburne, “theism [the view that there is a God] provides by far the simplest explanation of all phenomena” (Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 41). Here is Swinburne’s summary of his book:

The basic structure of my argument is this. Scientists, historians, and detectives observe data and proceed thence to some theory about what best explains the occurrence of these data. We can analyse the criteria which they use in reaching a conclusion that a certain theory is better supported by the data than a different theory—that is, is more likely, on the basis of those data, to be true. Using those same criteria, we find that the view that there is a God explains everything we observe, not just some narrow range of data. It explains the fact that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains conscious animals and humans with very complex intricately organized bodies, that we have abundant opportunities for developing ourselves and the world, as well as the more particular data that humans report miracles and have religious experiences. In so far as scientific causes and laws explain some of these things (and in part they do), these very causes and laws need explaining, and God’s action explains them. The very same criteria which scientists use to reach their own theories lead us to move beyond those theories to a creator God who sustains everything in existence. (Page 2; italics in original)

Swinburne’s claim is that science, properly understood and conducted, leads to theism. If the authors of the NAS book meant to exclude Design Theory from their definition of “science,” they needed to stipulate that scientific explanations must make no reference to supernatural entities such as God. But this appears ad hoc. Why should science limit itself to naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena?

To the Editor:

Paul Davies asserts that, at present, science’s “claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.” But neither the viability nor the dignity of science depends upon any such whole-cloth repudiation of faith. Rather, what science rejects is any kind of faith that demands the sacrifice of intellect, rational judgment or consciousness.

If it turns out to be impossible to find an explanation for physical law from within our universe, which Mr. Davies rightly advocates seeking, if nature in effect declares, this far and no farther, as in particular the multiverse hypothesis implies, this will not have made a “mockery of science”: science will simply have reached its rational limit. The correct response to this is awe, not shame.

The very greatest scientists, such as Newton and Einstein, have always been individuals in whom science and faith have coexisted amicably and synergistically, individuals who have valued conscious understanding of creation, and the human drive to pursue it, as bounty and blessing.

Michael L. Brown
Boston, Nov. 25, 2007
The writer is a professor of mathematics at Simmons College.

Note from KBJ: It’s good to see an acknowledgment that science has rational limits. To repeat something I have said many times: Science is an attempt to explain the natural world in naturalistic terms. It has nothing to say about the supernatural realm, including whether there is a supernatural realm. When scientists such as Richard Dawkins deny the existence of God, they have ceased being scientists. By the way, no religion of which I’m aware “demands the sacrifice of intellect, rational judgment or consciousness,” so that can’t be what distinguishes science from religion.

Here is a New York Times story about how scientists view morality. Scientists view morality differently from the way ordinary people and philosophers view it. There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as we remember the following: Everything that exists, including human institutions such as law, morality, religion, commerce, medicine, etiquette, and art—even science itself—has a naturalistic explanation. Unless you are prepared to say that all of these institutions are thereby discredited, you should not say that any one of them (such as religion) is. We might call this “Dennett’s Mistake.”

One often hears scientists say that they don’t “need” to postulate the existence of God to explain anything. The “God hypothesis,” they say, is useless. This, I think, is the key to understanding the animosity of atheistic scientists (such as Richard Dawkins) toward religion, which they view as a threat to science. They fail to appreciate that there are two conceptions of science, not just one.

In the broad sense, science (from the Latin scientia, knowledge) is the attempt to understand the world. It makes no assumptions about which methods will or will not prove useful in doing so. Let us call this activity “broad science,” which is short for “science broadly construed.” In the narrow sense, science is the attempt to understand the world in purely naturalistic terms. Any reference to the supernatural is therefore excluded by fiat. Let us call this activity “narrow science,” which is short for “science narrowly construed.” Narrow science is a specialized game. It’s as if a group of people got together and said, “Let’s see how much of the world we can explain without postulating any supernatural entities; perhaps many of the things that were long thought to require supernatural explanations do not in fact require them.” It would be like saying, “Let’s see whether we can build a functioning automobile without using any metal.” It’s a challenge—an attempt to accomplish something with only certain methods, assumptions, or materials.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with narrow science. Indeed, it has been surprisingly successful in expanding human knowledge. The problem is that many narrow scientists have forgotten that their conception of science is not the only one. It is simply the one they have chosen. When they confront individuals (such as Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga) who conceive of science broadly, or engage in broad science, they accuse them of not doing science at all, or of misunderstanding science, or of trying to corrupt science. In fact, these other individuals are doing science, just not the narrow science that excludes reference to certain entities.

Science, like baseball, presidential politics, and chess, is a rule-governed, goal-directed activity. The rules of narrow science are not the same as the rules of broad science, even if they overlap to a considerable extent and even if the goal (understanding, knowledge) is the same. If we fail to keep the two conceptions of science distinct, we will never progress beyond where we are, which is the stage of name-calling, acrimony, and misunderstanding. What Richard Dawkins should be saying (and would be saying, if he had philosophical training and aptitude) is that he’s not interested in doing broad science, i.e., playing the game of broad science. He likes the challenge of trying to explain everything in purely naturalistic terms. In other words, he likes to play the game of narrow science. This is fine. Some people like baseball; some like cricket. The games are similar but not identical. Wouldn’t it be silly for baseball fans to attack cricket fans for not being “true” baseball fans, or for misunderstanding baseball, or for trying to corrupt baseball?

Joseph Bottum has some perceptive comments on the recent surge of atheism (or rather, on the recent spate of books defending atheism). Here’s what I don’t understand. It’s thought (by certain atheists) that providing a naturalistic explanation of religion, or of religious belief, somehow discredits these things. It doesn’t, of course, but suppose it did. Why would it not also discredit irreligion and religious disbelief? If belief in God has a naturalistic explanation (i.e., an explanation that makes no reference to its truth), then so does disbelief in God, for both are beliefs; they are simply beliefs in contradictory propositions. (The theist believes the proposition “God exists”; the atheist believes the proposition “God does not exist.”) Either all beliefs have a naturalistic explanation or none of them does; and if all of them do, then that fact can’t count against only some of them. What I have just said about religious belief is also true of the institution or practice of religion. Suppose religion, qua institution or practice, has certain social or psychological functions that explain its existence, without reference to the truth of what is believed by its adherents. Isn’t the same true of irreligion? And if it is, then irreligion is just as discredited as religion. What I’m not getting is why naturalism counts against belief in God but not against disbelief in God, or against religion but not against irreligion. It seems to me that they stand or fall together.

Wait. Haven’t atheists such as Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett been telling us ad nauseam that religions such as Islam are harmful as well as false? Ian Buruma says that “Islamist terrorists use the Koran to justify murderous actions, but the actual reasons for their holy war are generally political and not theological.” If this is so, then the harm these Jihadists do is not attributable to religion in general or to Islam in particular. It is attributable to politics in general or to their political views in particular. That S is both a murderer and an adherent of religion R doesn’t mean that R caused S to murder.

Addendum: After I composed this post, I discovered this essay by psychologist David P. Barash. Suppose your goal is to explain the pervasiveness of religious belief. You might try to discover some benefit that it confers. But can’t it just as easily be said that the best explanation of the pervasiveness of religious belief is that it’s true? It seems to me that atheists such as Dennett (author of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) beg the question against theism. They assume (without argument) that it’s false and try to explain it in naturalistic terms. Maybe it’s not false! Whatever scientists are doing, philosophers should restrict themselves to arguments for and against religious belief. Philosophers, as such, are interested in the grounds of belief, not in the causes of belief. There could not be a more fundamental distinction.

I sometimes link to things before I read them. Did anyone read this? Forgive my bluntness, but it is one of the most insipid and unedifying things I’ve ever read. First, what are the rules of the “debate”? Debates have rules. If there are no rules, then it’s not a debate, and if it’s not a debate, then it shouldn’t be called a debate. Second, the authors seldom engage one another (except to swap insults). Sam Harris—the atheist—is eager to reject theism, but Rick Warren—the theist—is concerned primarily to defend Christianity. If the debate is about theism, then there should be no mention of Jesus or anything else that is particular to Christianity. If the debate is about Christianity, then Harris needs to stop making sweeping pronouncements about theism or “religion.” Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the exchange (I refuse to call it a debate) is that key terms are never clarified and relevant distinctions never drawn.

For example, there is a big difference between an evidential argument for the existence of God and a beneficial argument for the existence of God. The former says that belief in God is rational because based on evidence or reasons, and that this would be so even if the belief had no benefits to the believer. The latter says that belief in God is beneficial to the believer, even if there is insufficient evidence for it. At one point, Harris says, “There’s no evidence for . . . God.” He can’t possibly mean that. Every flower is evidence for God. If an evil deed is evidence against God’s existence, as atheists such as Harris believe, then every good deed is evidence for God’s existence. What he must mean is that there is insufficient evidence for belief in God. But why didn’t he say that? Why the exaggeration? And what is his evidentiary standard? Certainty? Beyond a reasonable doubt? Clear and convincing evidence? Preponderance of the evidence? The reader is left wondering.

At another point, Harris says, “You don’t have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.” “Have to” in what sense? It doesn’t follow from the fact that there is a naturalistic explanation of things that there is no supernaturalistic explanation of things, much less that the naturalistic explanation is superior to the supernaturalistic explanation. This needs argument. Unfortunately, Harris doesn’t supply it. One wonders whether he has the intellect to supply it. At one point, Harris and Warren discuss whether Harris is “angry.” By this time, I had lost patience with these jokers, but I persevered to the end. I’m glad I did, because I got to see Warren insist that, since he had allowed Harris to “caricature Christianity,” he had a right to caricature atheism. Newsweek’s editors should be ashamed of themselves for publishing such pabulum. No wonder our public discourse is so shallow and uninformed.

Addendum: In case you’re wondering, I’ve never read (or heard) a high-quality debate between a theist and an atheist. Here are three debates I’ve read:

Flew, Antony G. N., and Thomas B. Warren. The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God. Jonesboro, AR: National Christian Press, 1977.

Miethe, Terry L., and Antony G. N. Flew. Does God Exist? A Believer and an Atheist Debate. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Craig, William Lane, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

All three books are terrible—so much so that I cannot in good conscience recommend them, even to students. I have one other published debate, but I have not yet read it:

Smart, J. J. C., and J. J. Haldane. Atheism and Theism. Great Debates in Philosophy, ed. Ernest Sosa. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

I think very highly of both Smart and Haldane, so I’m hoping that this book is worth the money I paid for it.

All explanations come to an end somewhere. The real opposition between Dawkins’s physicalist naturalism and the God hypothesis is a disagreement over whether this end point is physical, extensional, and purposeless, or mental, intentional, and purposive. On either view, the ultimate explanation is not itself explained. The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics.

(Thomas Nagel, “The Fear of Religion,” review of The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, The New Republic 235 [23 October 2006]: 25-9, at 26)

Many contemporary naturalists believe that with the critical work—the critique of the truth-claims of theism—essentially done by Hume, we should turn, setting both metaphysical speculation and fideistic angst aside, to naturalistic explanations of religious beliefs. The main players here from the nineteenth century are Ludwig Feuerbach, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Max Stirner, and Friedrich Nietzsche; and from the twentieth century Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Axel Hägerström, Sigmund Freud, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Antonio Gramsci. Their accounts, although varied, are all thoroughly naturalistic.

These naturalists assume that by now it has been well established that there are no sound reasons for religious beliefs: there is no reasonable possibility of establishing religious beliefs to be true; there is no such thing as religious knowledge or sound religious belief. But when there are no good reasons, and when that fact is, as well, tolerably plain to informed and impartial persons, not crippled by ideology or neurosis, and yet religious belief (a belief that is both widespread and tenacious) persists in our cultural life, then it is time to look for the causes—causes which are not also reasons—of religious belief, including the causes of its widespread psychological appeal for many people. And indeed, given the importance of religious beliefs in the lives of most human beings, it is of crucial importance to look for such causes. Here questions about the origin and functions of religion become central, along with questions about the logical or conceptual status of religious beliefs.

(Kai Nielsen, “Naturalistic Explanations of Theistic Belief,” chap. 51 in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997], 402-9, at 404-5 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: Theism is the belief that there is a god. Atheism is the belief that there is no god. If one belief cries out for causal explanation, so does the other. Religion is a social institution. Irreligion is a social institution. If one institution can be understood in terms of its origins and functions, so can the other. Atheists assume that theism is false and try to explain its persistence. Their explanations make reference to such things as the need for a heavenly father. Theists assume that atheism is false and try to explain its persistence. Their explanations make reference to such things as rebellion against the heavenly father. That naturalists think their approach undercuts only theism, rather than both theism and atheism, or only religion, rather than both religion and irreligion, suggests that they’re not as intelligent as they think they are.