Right Reason

My current lunch time reading project is the 2007 book by Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (Oxford University Press). Although I’ve only just broached the first chapter, I can already tell that I’m really going to enjoy it immensely, and from time to time I might share some of the really good bits as I work my way through it.

The book is basically a defence of the view that there is a plausible physicalist conception of the mind that is compatible with moral responsibility and free will, but along the way you end up getting a great introduction to the position in philosophy of mind called nonreductive physicalism.

Like the authors, I’m a physicalist. I’m not a mind-body dualist like a large number of my Christian peers who believe that we are a combination of two very different and (potentially) independent substances: intelligent, conscious souls, and mundane matter. An observation really leapt off the pages at me today. I can so easily relate to this observation, because I sometimes observe my Christian peers who are mind-body dualists struggle with the idea of physicalism for just this reason.

Mary Midgley characterised physicalism like this:

If certain confusions result from Descartes’ having sliced human beings down the middle, many feel that the best cure is just to drop the immaterial half altogether … The philosophers who favour this programme are known as Physicalists.¹

I suppose technically someone who does this is a physicalist, since he will have to say that people are made only of physical stuff, but I would hate to think that anyone would assume that because I am a physicalist I am committed to this view. In a Cartesian view (i.e the view of Descartes) The mind is the true self, the seat of all consciousness, the marker of personal identity, the active ingredient in the person whereas the body is passive, unnecessary and more of a machine than anything else. Any decent variety of physicalism (and certainly nonreductive physicalism) is not just dualism with the soul removed. Radical dualism and physicalism have very basically different views not just on the nature of the mind, but also on the capacity of the body. If we were to just accept the Cartesian view of the body with the soul stripped away, we would be left with nothing but a machine, something like a zombie – which (although incredibly cool in it’s own way) is nothing like what your average physicalist is likely to believe in.

To use another analogy, I’m reminded of the words of Nursie on Blackadder II when she recounted the birth of Queen Elizabeth I:

Out you popped, out of your mummie’s tumkin and everybody shouting, ‘It’s a boy, it’s a boy!’ And somebody said, ‘But it hasn’t got a winkle!’ And then I said, ‘A boy without a winkle? God be praised, it’s a miracle. A boy without a winkle!’ And then Sir Thomas More pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl, and everyone was really disappointed.

It’s obvious what’s wrong here. A girl isn’t just a boy with a missing penis. Every DNA molecule [EDIT: this should read “every cell“] of a girl’s body is different from that of a boy. Remember, physicalists don’t just reject the dualistic view of the mind. They also reject the dualistic view of the body, and physicalism is not just dualism minus the soul.

I submit the following questions/requests/general comments for the consideration of all journal editors out there.

Firstly, consider why you are asking people to send two (or even three) printed copies of an article that you might not even accept. You’re running an international journal, and you’re asking people to mail bundles of maybe 30 pages. Sending these packages internationally is not cheap!

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Hi all!

Some time ago now I announced that I would be speaking at a conference at the University of Oxford in late August if I could raise the funds. That announcement is HERE.

As you can see via the thermometer over on the right hand side, we’re getting there. A big chunk of the funds that have come in have been generous donations from readers of this blog. Thank you so much. Without this support, this speaking event just could not happen. The time has come where I really need to get the plane ticket before prices get a lot higher. However, a part of what is showing as received in that thermometer (just over $1000 of it, in fact) has been promised but not received yet. It’s a portion that I will receive by reimbursement some time after I’ve spent the money. This means that while I’m getting there, I’m not quite there yet.

So, if you’ve been aware of this speaking engagement but been undecided on whether or not you wanted to offer any support, now would be a fantastic time! I hope to be able to get the tickets within the next week. While the actual cost of the ticket isn’t set in stone yet (I’m having a quote put together now), it will be somewhere between $3250 and $3600. As this needs to happen whether I get any further support or not, I’ll do what it takes to get the ticket as soon as the quote is complete (i.e. I’ll use temporary credit, just because this is worth it). If this were World War I (which, let’s face it, it’s not), now is the time to go over the top. One last push and we’ll be there.

For those who have shown generosity to me in this endeavour, again, thank you so much. Your support means a lot.

Matthew Flannagan and Raymond Bradley are to publicly debate the question: “Is God the Source of Morality?”

Venue: University of Auckland, in “The Centennial” 260 – 098 OGGB (the bottom level of the Business School) on 12 Grafton Rd, Auckland City.

Date/time: Monday 2 August from 7-9pm

The subject of the debate will be whether or not we can sensibly regard God as the source of moral truth. Raymond Bradley certainly doesn’t think so, and in the past I’ve comment on his arguments in that the Christian view of ethics results in a hopeless contradiction. As I said at the time, I think his objections were fundamentally flawed, so I’ll be interested to see what shape his argument takes in this exchange.

For those who can’t be at the debate, the footage will find its way online for all to see.

From the 17th to the 23rd of November 2010 the annual conference of the Evangelical Philosophical Society will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, in the USA. This year my good friend and fellow blogger Matt Flannagan will be attending and speaking on “God and the Genocide of the Canaanites.” Here’s the blurb on his talk from the EPS website:

How could a just and loving God command Joshua to genocide the Canaanites as is apparently taught in the Old Testament? Is God really a moral monster as Christianity’s critics use these passages to claim? Matthew will re-examine these passages in light of the context they were written in showing that the skeptics’ case against God relies on a questionable reading of the Old Testament.

It’ll be a great opportunity for Matt, who, in addition to presenting the above paper will also be taking part in a panel discussion on “navigating Old Testament ethics.”

Matt is in a very similar position that I’m in with my trip to Oxford (see my link on the right hand side of the page). Most people who attend academic conferences are affiliated in some way with a university department, and as a result they have access to funding via that department. Not so for those who are yet to land that elusive first position. Do head on over to M and M and read about the trip. I often hear Christians in New Zealand tell me how great it would be to have Christian scholars at the top of their field working from New Zealand. Well, this is an opportunity to help get people into those positions. I know that any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Does a divine command theory of morality imply that people who don’t believe in God (and the right God at that) cannot know right from wrong?

I’m putting together an article on this subject at the moment, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on Divine Command Ethics and the epistemological objection (that’s what I’ve decided to call the objection).

Divine command ethics is a cluster of views on ethics, and they all have in common a very close connection between the will of God and moral facts. According to some varieties, the property of moral rightness is just the same thing as the property of being willed by God or commanded by God (Robert Adams is perhaps the best known proponent of the latter view). According to other varieties, God’s willing that we do or do not do something is what causes that thing to be morally right or wrong for us to do (Philip Quinn, in my view the author of the definitive defence of divine command ethics, was perhaps the best known proponent of this view). There exist other varieties, but I take these two to be the most common.

The epistemological objection, as you might expect, has to do with our ability to gain knowledge (epistemology is the study of knowledge, what counts as knowledge, how knowledge is gained, the difference between knowledge and pseudo knowledge, how beliefs are justified and so on). In short, the objection is: If morality really came from God, then people who don’t believe in God couldn’t know right from wrong. But surely they do know right from wrong! So morality can’t really come from God.

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Some observations from Matt Flannagan over at M and M reminded me of the existence of the atheist campaign to evangelise the world through billboards. In honour of that campaign, I suggest launching another, much more important campaign:

Any lifeguard who tells me this is sure to put my mind at ease.

Is the existence of God really more queer or strange than the idea that torture and murder are not objectively wrong?

J. L. Mackie was famous for defending two claims. Firstly, God doesn’t exist (a claim defended in his book, The Miracle of Theism). Secondly, there are no moral facts (a position called moral nihilism or an error theory of morality, defended in his book, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong). According to Christian thinkers over the centuries, these two claims have been thought of as closely related, and the second claim is really a consequence of the first. If God does not exist, then moral facts do not exist either. Interestingly enough, this was Mackie’s position as well.

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