Essential case study on the fundamental questions of theoret

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Ernest Schlameel, while rising from his seat, bumped the restaurant waiter who was carrying a drink tray. The drink tray was ruined. Upon seeing this, Ogleby Handsborough took off his glove and used it to slap Schlameel in the face. When later asked why he thought Schlameel deserved a slap, he responded by pointing out that Biblical scripture required it—(and, as far as scripture goes, that is perhaps accurate enough).

This is as good a case as any to delve into the fundamental questions of morality. Morality is about how you ought to act.

One question that interested readers may have is: Why should you care what Biblical scripture says? Well, Biblical scripture is the word of God—an infinitely wise and benevolent being to whom you owe a considerable debt of gratitude. The implicit premise is that you ought to listen to advice that is wise and benevolent. Indeed, that is an analytic truth if I’ve ever heard one.

Delving deeper, we can further ask whether there is a reason why wise and benevolent advice is actually wise and benevolent. Clearly, there must be. If there were actually no reason why wise and benevolent advice was actually wise and benevolent, then there would be no reason to think it was actually wise and benevolent. (I.e., If something is good, then there is a reason why it is good—otherwise, there’s no reason not to doubt that it was good in the first place).

Let’s re-examine the place that we’ve arrived at. God’s commandments must be good for some reason, otherwise there’s no reason to follow them, or to even think that they are actually good. In other words, if there’s no reason why God’s commandments are good, then there’s no reason why it’d be bad not to follow them.

Objectors may respond, “fool, the commandments are good because they come from a wise and benevolent person”. But if the commandments aren’t made for some reason, then they aren’t coming from a wise and benevolent person. The alternative is that God’s commandments are the arbitrary, groundless, baseless whim of God—just something commanded but for no reason.

Recognize what this means for Ogleby Handsborough: scripture is not the foundation of morality simply because it is God’s word. (God’s word is not the foundation of morality simply because God said so). —The reason why God says what he says is the foundation of morality, not simply the fact that he said it.

Think of Ernest Schlameel, who has been slapped in the face. He’ll want to know why, and, if he is a philosopher, he’ll want something more than an appeal to scripture. He’ll want to know why a wise and benevolent God commands us to slap someone in the face who spills a drink tray. It’s a fair question.

If you are truly at a loss for what to say, at this point, then welcome: this is where morality begins…

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This again: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

Let’s see if we can finally resolve it once and for all. And then, having done so, determine if Ernest Schlameel did indeed deserve to be slapped.

Afterward, we can dispense with God altogether and try to resolve it using only reason and the objective logic inherent in the language invented by mere mortals.

3

River, did you have a point?

Although, I can already tell you the bottom line:
“Follow these words because people are just too damn stupid to reason it all out for themselves.”

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I think you don’t need to be god before you can be kind. Some animals are friendly and kind, even though they are so tiny compared to the ideas of an all-mighty God-figure. Therefor, being good, benevolent and right, is not a question of power, but instead it has to do with our personality, our values, which is the method we have received for living. Also some ‘gods’ in old mythical text are actually immoral. It took me a long time to realize there is no gods. What I feel I realized is that there is an absolute universally present law that a being cannot be all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. Reality is ultra-finite. Now, it would be hard to explain why I believe this, and in some ways I can’t explain it.

As regards iambiguous, I will tell you what I told Stuart. I believe that eventually things that were not known become known. Sciences made progress in the world of truth. Since morals and values are natural, they are also eventually knowable to a fine degree. As regards treating reality as knowable, that is all a question of whether or not you are being positive. Positive people want to build knowledge. It is a form of hope. I explained elsewhere that the ideal moralist would be intelligent, experienced, professional, contemplative, positive, healthy, etc. And that his morals would most likely be better than the morals of a unintelligent, negative, inexperienced, irrational, etc person.

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What if people are too damn stupid to conduct and channel divine energies in order to do prophecy and write inspired books?

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Since Dan and Iamb did not ask, I feel rather stupid. Is there an obvious Connection between the slap and the 10 Commandments?
Or was the OP assuming ‘as if’ one should slap in those situations according to scripture and moving from there?
Apologies from the remedial Group in the back.

Going with the latter, that we are just assuming for the moment that it is supported by scripture, I will give an answer to the end question.

It seems to me it could be an appropriate response, to slap the guy. Not because of scripture however. If he is Always not looking where he is going, often messing things up for other people, perhaps endangering himself, I might, if pissed off at him about his effects on other people or angryconcerned about his self-care, in some situations, do something extreme. Not being one to wear gloves inside restaurants, the specific mildly violent though largely symbolic act would likely be something else. I am not sure this is clearly a consequentialist determined act and a consequentialist evaluated moral judgment on my part. I could Project consequences that I might be trying to hinder, and perhaps, hopefully, I have taken this up verbally with my friend, including, finally, with some emotional vigor, Before resorting to even primarily symbolic violence. I would prefer that movement from concerned to angry verbal to physical, and the latter jump generally when physical issues are already on the table as they are here and more so in my added context. But I don’t Think my act is primarily about the future and my consequentialist moral concerns.

(obviously, for me, if this accident was not part of some pattern of near dangerous or really rude lack of self/other care, I would not Think of slapping my buddy. Stuff happens.)

I would say there is something proto-deontological about my reaction. I say proto - etc. because it is not like I have a written out internal tablet of rules that cover this situation. It would be a more vague, social mammal type sense of enough is enough, which, given the social mammal category, would include concerns about his self-care and effects on others. I hesitate to put this on the level of a commandment, which seems like some external rule I need to use to guide my actions (and attitudes in those that relate to attitudes). But then there are also consequentialist or causal analyses that are feeding my application of my social mammal instincts. Here, however, they are not making a claim that things will work out better if I punish people who recklessly disregard others and themselves. It is more that, yes, noted effects in the past have led to a last straw situation.

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Jørgn Knäckebröt was a butcher. On a day, he butchered his wife.
A peasant, not knowing that his wife had wanted for Jørgn to butcher her (this was so) saw what happened and called the Po-lice.
Shit went down.

Who is the culprit?

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Jorgn’s wife.

On to the main question,

Let's say an action A is (im)moral because [i]x[/i] where [i]x[/i] is some moral theory- consequentialism, enlightened self-interest, natural law, virtue theory, whatever. 
 God makes a decree about A based on His perfect understanding of [i]x[/i], and of the concrete matters concerned.  We obey God because it's always ever obvious that He has a better understanding of [i]x[/i] than we do.  Compound this with the fact that we can't even be sure what [i]x[/i] is; if God seems to demand something that goes against the Categorical Imperative.   This is why I created my thread about Supreme Intelligence and moral knowledge a week ago, by the way. 
 So two pushbacks to this idea:

1.) Shouldn’t we then just ignore all this ‘religion’ business and do what is right, since what is right is in some way independent of God? Well, what is right is not independent of the material facts, and the material facts are (say) that God created us, sustains us, has certain intentions for His creation, and certain knowledge about our future. That being the case, it’s easy to see that ‘ignore God and religion altogether’ might be immoral through a combination of x and the concrete facts of God’s relationship to us.

2.) Might then God be wrong, if He seems to be doing evil? Well, all else being equal, God might not exist at all. Given base deism and nothing more, God might be stupid or evil, sure. But theistic religions are revealed religions, and implicit to ‘revelation’ is the idea that something was hidden. Given that the concrete circumstances of the revelation make the revelation plausible enough to adopt as one’s faith, the question becomes not “Could a hypothetical God about which we know nothing be evil/stupid/etc.”, but rather "Can this revealed account of God plausibly coexist with the world as we experience it, given the limitations of our knowledge?

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Alone?

On to the main question,

I wish I’d gotten that, preferably after mulling first over the given situation.

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If it’s not, then say what it’s about…

Sure, I’ll have the social mammal type sense. The question is whether and how it’s justified.

The issue is to recognize that if the foundation of morality is independent of God—which so far everybody agrees that it is—then “God says so” is not an adequate reply in any moral dilemma, or any time that you are actually talking about morality.

Here’s an analogy: If I have poor visual eyesight, I go to an optometrist. An optometrist is like God—he has perfect eyesight, knows about how eyes work, can probably reconstruct an eye, fix mine, etcetera. Maybe he even makes eyeballs from scratch. In an eye test, (or a moral dilemma by analogy), I have to see what alphabetical letters are on the page, at a distance. I can’t. I’m not good enough. But my optometrist can. So far we agree that the letters on the page aren’t what they are because the optometrist says so. And if the optometrist is reciting to me what the letters actually are, (or making a list of commandments about what the letters are), I am not actually seeing. I’m not doing anything visual. (I’m not doing ethics, by analogy). And likewise, if you rely on being told what to do via commandments, then you are not doing morality/ethics (not seeing for yourself, by analogy). You’re not thinking about how you ought to act, you’re simply following commandments just because they are commanded.

It is simplistic enough to say, “Well, God knows all that shit already, so let’s just listen to what he says”. Well, in reality, this thread isn’t created to deal with the epistemological issues of disagreements about what God says, or disagreements about which religion is right, or disagreements about how you know what God says, or how you know God exists, or any other epistemological issues. The point isn’t to complicate things in that way. That’s why it’s safe, for the time being, just to assume that slapping someone in the face is a scriptural commandment, verbatim. Or stoning people to death, or take your pick.

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Which in this case would be when I do it. I did justify it, though I suppose I did not draw the conclusion that it was justified. And in a sense I am admitting that any justification will come after the fact. Though I may have justification to allow myself to act without fully formulating my justification consciously, even to myself.

I am not sure, at root, I am a moralist. Though as the mammal I am, I will justify on occasion. A lot of my moralizing is really a kind of get off me. It’s not quite like I Think everyone should want what I want and need what I need, and so they need to live like I do. As an empathetic mammal, I do want people to get off other people, sometimes, when my sense is that those they are on, do not want to be in that other way of living.

I prefer to bracket off objective morals. I am not saying there are none, but it feels like too much of a task for me. People claim to want different things from me, radically, and I have only so much Control anyway. So I set that aside. I try to steer away from ‘this would be best for you also even though you don’t know it’ type Dynamics where we are around morals.

I may sound like i do this and I will also work like a moralist by trying to show moralists that they are contradicting themselves, but that is tactical. Or in the ideal it is tactical. I make no claims that I never on occasion feel moral disgust.

I’m a kind of pantheist - perhaps panentheist - so it is not really possible to have a moral Foundation independent of God, for me, since, well, God will be involved by def.

To the extent that you hold to the commandments in whatever action is in question. If however God said, I would prefer you do not use violence. This gives a lot of swingroom to make moral choices within what is left over - and also leaves open the possibility of using violence. And however much thou shalt not kill sounds quite a different thing than this, since killing is allowed in certain circumstances - not simply via hypocrisy but rather through what is meant by killing as something like ‘murder’, there is a lot of swing room to be a moral agent.

But I agree with the idea that any time you follow the Word of God because it is the Word of God you are less a moral agent. The Christian, say, could say that being a moral agent is in the continued decision - and perhaps not an easy one to follow - to follow God’s Word. Morality with a single rule - to follow God’s will - as a discipline. They would be allowed, I Think, to explain why they Think God has this or that rule, but that, in the end, is not the justification. But all that’s not really me, just thought I would mention it.

Right, good, I bracketed that stuff off and it isn’t my way of deciding so…

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Let me give Another response to this.
If it is not justified then my nature is wrong. If that is the case, I rebel. I mean, how do I move forward and draw conclusions and participate in the universe if my nature is wrong? And the existence of a God, even a nice old monotheist version like the Christian one only makes it more ironic that I would need to go against what He made. and in the end, an objective moral system, say one that you generated with a committee, would lack that irony, but put me in a similar Catch 22. I mean, why should I even trust myself when I decide to go along with the committee when I am secularly damned on a number of levels? Now, this does not mean I would simply ignore the committee, and I don’t ignore existing committees, though some are now regularly throw in the slush pile. I can be informed, I can tweak, but if my essential nature is off, I will side with my essential nature.

Is that justified? From what I observe, yes. But then, that’s me observing, and including feedback from other social mammals, most of whom I like and respect. So that’s a bit circular and it is not the reason I side with my essential nature. I simply refuse to do the opposite. That also seems to be my nature, but also, to the extent that I did do the opposite, as we are all trained to do so, my sense is that this did not help and certainly hurt me.

again, me observing, again with feedback from those I like and respect.

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Not sure I get it. Would it be fair to attach the term ‘god’ to every proper noun? Because if so, it might just be worth removing ‘god’ from every proper noun.

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Moreno, I appreciate your comments, but all of a sudden, the topic of my own thread has bored the shit out of me. So, I can’t do them any kind of justice at the moment.

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Well perhaps I dragged things off into my own little mind. Just ignore most of what I wrote.

How would you justify the slap? Or a situation where a slap would be justified for you. It is probably better to take a situation where you believe it is justified.

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I’m open to suggestions.

But the suggestion can’t be, “Yo, just trust guy” —which is about as sophisticated as religious “moral” reasoning gets.

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I’d justify the slap with arguments about tradition and heritage and I’d pretend to be one of those “never-change-anything” conservatives and in a false flag kind of way try and make them seem more douchey. I’d appeal to all kinds of old ways and authorities and I’d insist that the slapping was my only option within the proper decorum. Then if the slapee got mad, I’d tell them they were classless and of low moral character, then I’d dodge taxes and try and vote his welfare out from under him just to teach him a lesson.

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I’ll take the first baby step.
First I Think a justification needs to address two issues in this scenario:

  1. the correctness of the negative reaction
  2. the chosen action

1 could be justified, but then there is no good justification for 2.

Options for justifying number 1 would seem to fall into Three main categories:
aesthetic/classical type morals - buffoons reduce the value of Life in the moment. Clumsiness itself is offensive, in and of itself…
consequentialist type morals - clumisness or lack of care of this type will lead to X and Y. X and Y are bad, generally due to the effects on people, perhaps including the clumsy person.
deontological moral type moral - it is a (hopefully minor) Evil to be spacey, unaware, clumsy. One needs not take into account consequences, though these may be bad, the mere presence of this lack of care is a sign of evil. Say something equivalent to Envy or Hating all the time, even if one never acts on these mental states.

Options for justifying number 2 are likely to all have at least some consequentialist characteristics. Unless one is not trying via the action to accomplish anything and the slap is simply seen as what a dignified or Good person is likely to do in reaction to aesthetic or moral Impropriety.

The degree (harshness level) of the act needs to be taken into account, at least by the consequentialists. Presumably the violence must be seen to be outweighed by the bad consquences such an act may prevent. Effectiveness of the act should also be a part of the justification. If the goal is to prevent burps and shooting people in the face cuts down on burps by 2%, be prepared for some serious rhetorical work.

I am assuming that VR is consequentialist on 1 and 2 and would come down on the negative. That the slap does not pass muster. He would need to be shown scientific works demonstrating that clumsiness is intentional - perhaps a kind of passive aggressive pattern that can be unlearned. Sociological studies that would show how corporal punishment of clumsiness is effective and also giving some figures for the effects of clumsiness and how these could be connected to the case at hand. He would want to see controlled studies where slap reactions are compared with verbal interventions - even these of varying degrees. And also long term studies of the effects of slapping as adult moral intervention, to help determine if the negative is outweighed by the positive. And in the specific case evidence that it is part of a pattern for Mr. Shlaameel.

The supporters of the slap would have their work cut out for them.

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Well, if I have to pick one. All we know about the people in the story is their archetypes. The police did what the police should do, the witness did what witnesses should do, Jorgn killed his wife, so we can blame him some too, but he also used his vocation to provide for his wife’s desires, which is pretty straight up ‘good husband’ archtype. Jorgn’s wife wants to be butchered. There’s nothing in ‘wife’ about that, the whole problem starts with her and her insane/immoral desires, and possibly whatever she did to convince jorgn to go along with them. There’s enough blame to go around, Jorgn isn’t innocent. But his wife is the problem.

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Moreno,

Let’s set aside, (for the moment), the question of whether there’s one type of bedrock moral fact that is at the root of any particular moral justification. My point earlier was only that there’s one type of pseudo-moral fact that is not. What I would point out is that there’s one type of pseudo-moral fact that one often finds at the (false) bottom of many people’s moral reasoning. That false and unstable bottom is unearthed the moment that anyone points to God’s word as their justification of how they have acted, or how they think they ought to act.

The claim, “God says so”, is not a justification of any action; it would only support the notion that—if the action has a justification at all—then God would know it. If that were all there were to it, then I would have no problem with people taking God’s advice in the same way that I take advice from my dentist (about my dental health). Unfortunately, epistemological issues enter which mean that you’re not going to be justified in taking God’s advice—as you would for the dentist—but that’s a separate topic.

Here’s an interesting point:

I think it is an analytic truth that if God exists, then God is a consequentialist. That is to say, the property of ‘being a consequentialist’ is conceptually contained in the concept of an omni-benevolent, omni-potent being (i.e., God). To be a consequentialist is just to justify actions and intentions by the goodness of the consequences that they aim at. If God created the world for some other reason than to maximize good consequences, then God wasn’t an omni-benevolent being----because to be omni-benevolent just is to maximize the good. —That’s not a claim about what ‘the good’ is, only that whatever ‘the good’ is, God—being omni-benevolent—would want to maximize it. That’s consequentialism. Not necessarily hedonism, or some other such theory—just consequentialism.

You can see a similar thing happen within Kant. Kant recognizes that many maxims pass the Categorical Imperative test—i.e., they can be universalized. (E.g., being rude to your mother). So, why does he not think that all of those maxims are not all moral laws, on a par with “treating people as ends in themselves”, etc, ----because “people wouldn’t want to live in that world”! —That’s consequentialism! Kant is not entitled to care (by the resources of this theory) about what people want!

You can see a similar thing happen with Aristotle. For Aristotle, you ought to act so as to balance your actions between excess and deficiency of the relevant traits, and thereby achieve a golden mean. Why? —Because that’s how you flourish! You even judge whether someone has flourished by how rich they are! —That’s consequentialism!

A similar thing with Plato.
A similar thing with Hobbes.
A similar thing with Nietzsche.

And a similar thing with Christians. I mean, really, heaven and hell… come on. It doesn’t get any more blatant than that.

So, yea, at the bedrock of morality—there is consequentialism. Unfortunately, that’s not really an interesting claim. The interesting claim is about what the good consequences are.

But as a starting point, I don’t think “good and bad consequences” are nearly as hidden as people think. I am reminded of this every time I stub my toe on a railing. I am reminded of this every time I slam my finger in a doorway. I am reminded of this every time I drink coconut water, forgetting about the last time I tried to drink coconut water.

It’s the circle of life my friend…