Can their not be a wrong method of doing something? I said in my post “religion is an antiquated method of producing knowledge.” Perhaps I should have said outdated? Regardless of what criteria we have for knowledge today, it does not change the fact that for centuries religions monopolized knowledge. Knowledge is just legitimized information. I did not say religions created Truth (with a capital t) because that would imply they were completely correct. No, knowledge is what power determines to be knowledge. Whether that is religious, political or scientific authority depends on the society, but it is still knowledge.
Boyi
Karma: −189
Christianity was an just an example. The theory I am suggesting is that any global religion has existed for this long because it contains attributes beneficial to human survival ( benefits to human survival are not limited to the promotion of literacy; though I would bet that is a key attribute). I used Christianity as an example because that appears to be the majority of this websites background. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism are not inferior to Christianity. Confucianism for example strongly promotes literacy as well, one could argue even more than Christianity.
So no, it would be ridiculous to attribute Chinese literacy to western missionaries. What would be interesting is to question to what extent Chinese religious mindsets limited the develop of science as a formal institution in China. The major Chinese transcendental belief systems (Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism) provide a conception of the universe as singular, dynamic, and consummated; whereas the Judeo-Christian position describes a static, imperfect, and discrete universe. To what extent does a pre-existing belief in a stable order that is waiting to be perfected lead to the primacy of formal science in a society? I think that is a really interesting question.
We take it as self-evident that rationalists would eventually move towards empiricism, but does it makes sense to seek out facts about the world when you axiomatically accept the universe to be a constantly shifting entity? Would there be such a ideology of progress without the Christian mindset of an imperfect world governed by rules waiting for man to discover?
I find it funny that people, on both sides of the argument, put science as opposite to Christianity. The mindsets that set the West up for a scientific revolution are byproducts of Christian thinking.
While a large portion of religious knowledge is orthogonal, I would refrain from defining all knowledge produced by religious means that way. Proving the existence of God and divine order was a large motivator for early academics, scientists to. Without the discourse of a knowable, structured universe that was provided by Christianity empirical investigation might not have taken root the way it did in the west.
I actually think it is quite funny when people pit science against religion when the idea of a ordered discoverable universe stems from the Christian discourse.
Furthermore, what do you think has sustained and developed literacy and research during the centuries before science? Or better question why Judeo-Christian religions were so successful?
I will tell you. Judeo-Christian religions have dominated the religious market because it contains qualities beneficial to survival. In the Jewish faith you become a man or woman by proving that you are literate (reading the torah). That may not seem so revolutionary now, but during a time when most religions were based on blood tributes it was a pretty fucking revolutionary idea.
Again, I am not trying to advocate for Christianity or Judaism to replace science or be the norm for knowledge production. All I am saying is that you cannot deny that they got us where we are. They were the norm.
Religion is the original norm for producing knowledge whether you like it or not. I am not saying it was a good method, but you cannot deny that it is embryologically the basis of knowledge and knowledge production. The first scholars were theologians and aristocrates, the first colleges were religous institutions. I am not saying that it is a correct methodology, but it is our history.
Early doctors healed people in ways we no longer condone, but we cannot deny the fact that they were the forefathers of modern medical knowledge.
You are correct that rhetoric can be misused. It should be complemented by facts. My point is that just because rhetoric can be used to convince people of falsehoods does not prove that truth is not equally dependent on rhetoric to become normative in people’s minds.
People are not born judging information by its verisimilitude. Empirical fact as a criteria for knowledge must be taught. I am not saying it is a bad thing to teach people (it is really good), what I am saying is that judging information by fact has to be seen as highly technical knowledge, not a fundamental system of cognition. The majority of the world’s population does not judge information by fact. I am not even convinced that all scientists or rationalists truly judge information by fact.
My perception of you is that you see religion as an antiquated method for producing knowledge. I agree with you. I do not think religion should be the criteria of determining facts. Where we do not see eye to eye is that I also believe that religion serves several other functions beyond literal interpretation of the world. One of which is the maintenance and strengthening of social bonds. So I cannot as easily deem non-factual beliefs as a waste of resources (see my comment here http://lesswrong.com/lw/bk/the_trouble_with_good/ for more on this).
When there is such a plurality of truth being developed how do you assess what truth is Truth. And even if you could how do you know that such truth is not contingent, or that it is more beneficial than detrimental to your life?<
I don’t think this is responsive to my third point. But maybe I just don’t understand.<
My response was meant to question your statement ” I think it is still worth it to learn the truth.”
At the pinnacle of your values is Truth. Can you explain to my why Truth should be regarded more important than social relationships/ personal health.
I probably did mis the humor I am really gullible, but you missed my point about the morality of the universe.
by transcendental I meant a value dealing with issues of the meaning of life. Anytime you talk about what is the purpose of life, what should people do, what is moral, is the universe moral, whether you are talking about a god or a godless universe, it is a transcendental question. There is a misconception on this blog that transcendental means christian or God.
I am not a theist. I am a transatheist.
The author of the article is arguing that a better way to convince theists of the atheist agenda is to not attack them socially, but to find some other critique in their argument. MY POINT, is that this is a good strategy BUT a flaw in the author’s example of how to initiate it is an assumption of the theists reasons for their values. The assumption the author makes is that theists believe in God because they need the universe to be moral. Or in other words, that the value of religious belief is dealing with a transcendental issue. I am saying that for some people this is not the case. Some people value their religious beliefs for social reasons (such as loyalty to an in-group). For people like this, the author’s tactic is just as cornering as what he is advocating against.
I never really thought of my posts as debates. I write them during my break at work as fast as possible. I would call them brainstorms more than anything. I can see how that makes understanding what I am saying complicated. I will try to be more considerate from this point on.
-Rhetoric is orthogonal to truth. I like truth. While rhetorical knowledge is not a valid way to discover truth about the true nature of reality, it does reflect truth about the nature of human psychology. There is truth about the human condition. The idea I am trying to convey is that humans are born with ways to evaluate knowledge. They are taught to evaluate it by the standard of facts, but their are other “logics” that we as human animals run on. You are right that purely deductive reasoning produces no new knowledge. It was for this very reason that philosophers and scientists wanted to delegitimize it. My point is that just because the science of rhetoric does not produce new facts about the external world, does not mean that it does not represent facts about how humans naturally interpret information.
-If the proposition is that there is a “transcendental” god, and all you have is non-transcendental evidence, then the best course of action is to reject the hypothesis. No amount of empirical evidence supports believing a hypothesis that is asserted to be beyond empiricism.
My use of the word transcendental here has nothing to do with a physical God. I do not believe in a literal God. Some philosophers and other scholars use the word transcendental to categorize issues dealing with meaning or abstract principle. The author of this article spoke of the morality of the universe. Regardless of whether you are talking about God or not, this would be categorized as a transcendental issue. My point was that some theists probably are not theists for transcendental reasons, but rather for social ones. Meaning that they do not really think about whether or not the universe is moral. The morality of the universe has nothing to do with their religious faith. They are loyal to a belief system because they are loyal to the social network that supports it. For people like this, convincing them that there is a morality without God is futile, because morality was never the issue. They are theists in the same way you root for your home team at the game regardless of who is better or worse.
-It is unpleasant to learn that your beliefs (of any kind) were false. I think it is still worth it to learn the truth. Not everyone here agrees.
When there is such a plurality of truth being developed how do you assess what truth is Truth. And even if you could how do you know that such truth is not contingent, or that it is more beneficial than detrimental to your life?
Don’t you think it would be easy to say your point, or the problem that you have with my point than cryptically telling me I am missing something. You ever think it is you who are missing something you are just not being open enough to let me figure out what it is. Same to the other 4 silent people.
In my opinion the Karma system is really stupid if you just criticize someone’s idea without stating what it is your criticizing or even who you are.
Those seem to be a series of essays on morality, but can you point me to the essay that shows there are absolute moral facts that are not influenced by subjective values?
Isn’t calling rhetoric “the dark arts” using the exact tactic you are advocating against?
I like your idea, but I think it is incomplete. First, I don’t like the way you demonize rhetoric. Before labeling rhetoric the “dark arts” I think it needs to be proven that it is truly fact and not rhetoric that convinces people of what is rational. Secondly, I do not think convincing someone that the universe can be moral without God is a a proper line of flight.
In regards to my first critique, I think there is a false dichotomy being draw between reason and value. I do not know how this idea will be received on a radically rationalist blog, but as far as I know no one has yet to prove that reasons can escape values. If you are aware of such an essay/ body of work, please let me know about it, though I do not see how you could ever remove rhetoric from communication. For example, the problem I have in your reasoning about the reassurance of a moral universe is one with your rhetoric.
Basic to the science of rhetoric is the idea that audience determines the nature of the argument. Audience can be interpreted as context. The context of the debate determines what is correct and what is false. You see convincing a theist of the morality of a non-theistic universe as leaving them a line of flight. The assumption that you are making, is that what is at stake for the theist is the issue of morality. The issue of existing in a moral vs. amoral universe is a transcendental one. Likewise, God is a transcendental topic. The problem with your reasoning is that just because God is a transcendental topic does not mean that a theists belief in God is for transcendental reasons. For example, a belief in God not only represents “God”, it represents a history, a culture, a family. How can you say that a person’s belief in God is the primarily of transcendental concern as opposed to filial concern (meaning believing in God because of a stronger belief in ones father or mother)?
As of now I cannot claim to have a perfect method of knowing the correct value base of a person’s belief, but I am certain that there are people who are theists not for transcendental reasons, but for cultural or personal ones. Let’s pretend that it is one of those people that your are trying to correct of their fundamentalist flaws.
If you convince a person that the universe is still moral without God is that going to give them a line of flight? No, it will not. They can either: A.) except that God exists or B.) Except that their parents and loved ones were stupid and wasted their lives believing in something stupid (which would imply that they were raised stupidly). How is this any less damaging to the ego than the alternative you proposed? It isn’t.
Please do not misinterpret my meaning. I am strongly in favor of rationalism. I just don’t find it rational to deny the irrationality of social existence. Rhetoric and solidarity are more fundamental to human existence that rationality. I am all for increasing rationality, but not in order to eliminate values.
I am not suggesting that we should tolerate everything. There are bad ideas out there, religious fundamentalism is one of them. I like your idea of leaving a line of flight. My suggestion would be that the line of flight must take into account a base level of irrationality. For example, rather than getting rid of God, I think we should redefine God. There are plenty of theologians who are working to do just this. Religion serves a purpose. That purpose is not to define the empirical world or provide a totalitarian mantra of action and thought. Nothing should do these things, not even science. What we need is not to eliminate religion, but to rectify what it means. The same is necessary for science and for logic. A scientific fundamentalist and a mathematical fundamentalist are just as dangerous as a religious fundamentalist.
″ The argument is that transformational relationships have less payout per effort than other social improvement acts (like donating lots of money).”
I realize this is the argument, it is what I am disagreeing with.
Well given the way you word it, yes, it does seem suspicious. There are several things I would change about your retelling of my position.
1.) I advocate for proper and efficient relationships. This idea is local if you mean thinking of mechanical solidarity before organic solidarity, but in this day in age with telecommunication and a globally mobile workforce I would not call relationship cultivation “local” in the traditional sense. For example, my self-network spans multiple continents. The potential for impact is huge.
2.) Proper relationships are by no means “fuzzy,” I would say that the fact that you would describe relationship cultivation as fuzzy shows a serious lack of mental effort. Since it is something I think about a lot, I will give you an example. First let me say I am currently trying to define all core relationships of the social self. The social self is the idea that human identity, motivation, action, cognition, do not arise from autonomous agents, but from, a network of human, non-human, and cultural relationships. One such relationship is the relationship between child and parent/ child and guardian. It is possible to not have parents, or to not have a guardian, but it is not possible to avoid the consequences of this fact. The dynamics of the child to parent/ guardian relationship is fundamental to a person’s actions, thoughts, and feelings. If my mom or dad were to die, no matter how happy, satisfied, complete I felt immediately prior to this, it would completely rearrange my feelings and thoughts. I would eventually recover, but I would be a different person, one who had to figure out how to be happy, satisfied and complete knowing my mother was not alive.
So far I have been trying to show the impact of a core relationship. The point I originally wanted to make was that cultivating relationships is not “fuzzy.” Frankly speaking it is hard being a good son. If your parents are racist, religious zealots, unhealthy, insecure, it is not your job to fix that. You think it is your job, because your parents raised you, fixed you in a sense, and at some point to validate your own maturity you want to do the same. And honestly in a perfect world you should be able to. I have far more education than my parents about health, psychologically, and sociality. I am positive that if I know what my parents are doing wrong in certain aspects of their life, and that I could do better. There is nothing wrong with telling your parents you think they should change in some way; the problem arises when they do not want to. You cannot force your parents to change. You can cut them out of your life, but that is destroying a relationship not cultivating it. Now I am not talking about extremes here. There might be some cases where they choice comes between those two options, but the majority of the time it is not. The majority of the time, the choice is to either accept your parents for their imperfection, ignore it, or abandon them. The proper choice being the former. It is a hard thing to do.
Proper relationships are not fuzzy. If a relationship is fuzzy all the time, generally you are not maintaining it well.
3.) I see cultivating good people as making transformation change. Meaning that it is a transforming change that does not just stop at initial impact. It is perpetual. If you model proper relations in your social network, then the networks connected peripherally will be impacted. In the short run pouring money on the problem might help, but I do not see this as a solution.
A perfect example of this is Aristotle’s appeal for the need of practical wisdom to complement laws. You can make laws to regulate, but if people do not have an internal commitment to the spirit behind the laws then the laws will become perpetually less effective. How many thousands of pages of new laws does the United States produce each year? The byproduct of which is that normal people can no longer understand the law because it has become so complex. If normal people cannot understand it the result is two-fold. The masses do not internalize it, and the elite figure out how to take advantage of it. I would argue this problem of deficient practical wisdom is directly related to a lack of proper relationships and knowledge of how to cultivate them.
4.) I do not think you can save 10,000 people with any one action. Nor do I think just because your intention is to save people that is what you actually do. If you get 10,000 people malaria nets that does not save them from a. being able to get malaria, b.) living in an environment where malaria is prevalent, c.) the poor condition of their lives, d.) being able to sustain their lineage for multiple generations.
Dambisa Moyo has a book called “Dead Aid” the argument is that the millions of dollars in aid sent to africa is actually doing more damage than good. There are several reasons for this, if you are interested in hearing them I would be happy to share.
Hi, I really enjoyed your essay. I also enjoyed the first half of the comments. The question it brought me to was: whether or not there is no higher utilty than transformation? I was wondering if I could hear your opinion on this matter.
It seems to me if transformation of external reality is the primer assesment of utility, then humans should ratioanlity question their emotivism based on pratical solutions. But what if the abiilty to transform external reality was not teh primer assesement of utility? Recently I have been immersed in Confucian thinkinng, which places harmony as the pinnicale of importance. If you do not mind I would like to share some thoughts from this perspetive.
When faced with a problem it seems that as humasn our inital solution is to increase the complexity of our interaction with said aspect of the external world through expanding scale, organization, detail, of our involvement with that portion of reality in hopes of transforming that reality to our will. Is this logical? Yes, we have clearly demonstrated a potential to transform reality, but have any of our transformations justify the rationale that transformation will eventually lead to a uptoian plateau? Or to put it another way, does the transformation of one good/bad scenario ever completely deplete the nessecity for further transformation? If anything, it seems that our greatest acheivements of transformation have only created an even more dire need for transformation. The creation of nuclear power/weapons was supposed to end war and provide universal energy; now we are faced with the threat of nuclear waste and global anhilation. Genetically engineering food was supposed to feed the world; in ameriac we have created a obessity epidemic, and the modern agricultral practices of the world walk a fine line between explosive yeild and ecological destruction.
I was somewhat hesitant to say it because of a preceived emotivism of this blog, but what I am questioning is the discourse of progress. Transformation is progress. You say:
“In general, any debate about whether something is “good” or “bad” is sketchy, and can be changed to a more useful form by converting the thing to an action and applying utilitarianism.” But is that not soley based on a emotive value of progress?
From the harmonizing perspective emotivism in itself contains utilty because it is in our common irratioanlity that humans can truly relate. If we did institutionally preceed arbitrary value wtih a logic of transformational utility would this not marganilze a huge portion of humanity that is not properly equipped to rationalize action in such a way? It legitimizes intellectual dominace. In my opinion this is no different than if we were to say that whoever wins in an offical arm wrestle/ foot race has the correct values. That may seem completely absurd to you, but I would argue only because you are intellectually rather than physically dominate.
It should be noted that my argument is based on the premise that there are graduated levels of intellegence, and the level required to rationalize one potential transformation over another is sequesterd from the lower tiers.
I also write under the assumption that the discourse of progress (I think I called it utiltiy of transformation?) is emotive not rational in the sense that it is clearly the most effective cogntive paradigm for human evolution. Before my words come back to bite me, my concepts of “progress” and “evolution” are very different here. Progress is power to transform external reality (niche construction), evolution is transformation of the human structure (I will not comment on whether such orgnaic transformation is orthogenic or not)
Well said, but I would tweak your wording of my question to “now that I am a good person, how can maximize my impact?” What is the estimate of a good person? I would argue that a good person is one who produces meaningful relationships in the world. The model of efficiency above touches only on how to most impact the person-captial relationship, i.e what to do with the material and labor resources I have accumulated to most positively impact humanity. I agree that this is important, but add that the “good person” is defined by multiple relationships, not just of the one they have to capital. For example, I would argue a truly good person would be a good child, good parent, good friend, good older/younger (depending on the age of the opposing actor), good stranger, good citizen, good character, and potentially much more. To maximize the meaning and positivity of all critical relationships is not done through economic efficiency. And while I cannot make any absolute claims that the social impact a person makes is more beneficial than the way they use their capital, personally I believe it to be so.
Now if your original statement about already being charitable was meant to mean that you are already a very humane person (meaning your relational impact in your community is maximized) , then sure, I think maximizing charitable action is great. But I think to maximize your role within a social network is really hard, if not impossible to some extent. I also think that most people are not as empathetically developed as they would like to think. I would go as far to as to say that a perfect empathetic awareness is as unreachable as Truth with a capital T.
I apologize if I sound argumentative, I just was not sure if my question was already dealt with in your minds/blogs and this is a further point.
I agree with the idea that efficiency should be taken into account when considering charitable actions, but I do not know if I agree with your conclusion of what is most efficient. Alleviating a problem does not cure it. While paying for malaria nets, cleaning up the beach, donating to charities alleviates real social issues, it does not address the issue of their causation. In my opinion, what is most efficient is not concentrating on recuperation, but attacking the sickness. Without changing the causal conditions the disease will continue to grow endlessly no matter how much you suppress it. This is why even after going through successful rehab, addicts will experience relapse if reintroduced into their original environments because nothing has changed to prevent the same symptoms from arising again.
What then is the cause of social travesties? I would argue a lack of high-level empathy. In my opinion the question then becomes does financial donation increase a person’s empathetic capacity? I do not think it does. It definitely increase the amount of pure capital being pushed at a problem, but i do not think that necessarily cures the problem. I know that some of the poorest schools in America have recently gotten state of the art equipment, smart rooms, i-pads, new schools, but their test scores are not changing. That is because the problem is the values being pushed into the kids not the amount of money. What does promote empathy? Pierre Bourdieu is a prominent sociologist who is best known for the idea of habitus. The general idea of habitus is that cognitive and emotional patterns are shaped by human physicality. Aristole’s virtue ethics represent the idea that morality is developed through habitus. Mencius, the second most famous confucian moralist, also had notions of empathy being like a muscle that must be strengthened within people. From this theoretical framework the type of charity proposed in the essay above would be inefficient. While I cannot for certain say what action/ environments cultivate empathy/morality; I think it is a safe bet to say that working to make more money and spending money does not. if that was the case, then the most successful business men and women would also be the most empathetic people. No, it seems more likely that empathy would be developed through committing time to people and places that are not readily identified with the actor’s self. Meaning that the lawyer taking an hour each day to work on the beach would increase his virtue/empathetic capacity, making that working more valuable than the thousands of dollars that he could have earned in that time seeing as there is no way to buy morals.I am not sure if my idea is correct. If the author of this essay writes from a fundamentally economic frame, I write from a fundamentally sociological/anthropological/confucian one. The correct answer is probably a mediation of the two depending on type of charity and circumstance. Thanks for your thoughtful writing.
I don’t think morality should be segregated from desire. I realize that Freud’s concept of drives is at this point in time obsolete, but if there were “drives” it would not be a sex, aggression, or hunger drive that dominated the human animal, but a belonging drive. In my opinion it does not matter where the hardware comes from, what is important is an intimacy with its function. I think for too long there has been a false dichotomy constructed between morals and desires.
as to the question of meta-ethics, I would apply the works of E. O Wilson or Joseph Tainter to the construction of a more humane humanity.
So you are saying the hardware of genes that has fueled the movement of life, and must embryologically exist within the human structure, is a hinderance to the structure of the social animal?
Thanks for the clarification of the corrupted hardware analogy. It was a poor choice of words to compare the argument to human nature being evil. The point I am trying to make is that I do not agree with the statement t hat human nature is flawed. What you are calling flawed I was calling evil. But from this point on I will switch to your language because it is better. I still do not see the logic
-In some cases, human beings have evolved in such fashion as to think that they are doing X for prosocial reason Y, but when human beings actually do X, other adaptations execute to promote self-benefiting consequence.
As proving that human nature is flawed, because it makes the assumption that self-interest is a flaw. I would ask you two questions if I could. First, do you believe self-interest to be a flaw of human nature, if not what is the flaw that is talked about in corrupt hardware? Second, do you believe it is possible to posses a conscious without self-interest?
I would add that just because I support self-interest, does not mean I support selfishness. Please respond!
Then I do not understand what is meant by corrupted. Perhaps it is because of my limited knowledge of the computer science lexicon, but to me the word corrupted means damaged, imperfect, made inferior. To imply something is damaged/ inferior makes a value-judgment about what is well/superior. But if you are saying that doing something out of self-interest is an inferior state, then what is the superior state? Altruism? By what rational basis can you say that people should be completely altruistic? Then we would not be people, we would be ants ,or bees, or some other social creature. Self-interest is part of what makes human sociality so powerful. I do not see it as corrupted hardware, but rather misused hardware (as I state in my original post). The self can be extended to a family, a community, a nation, even to humanity itself, so that even though a person acts out of self-intrest their interest extends beyond an atomized body or singular lineage. Basically I am agreeing with your deception of human nature, but not your interpretation of it.
What I get out of the analogy “corrupted hardware” is that self-interest is a detrimental capacity of human nature. If this is not what is meant, then please explain to me what is meant by corrupted hardware. If it is what is meant, then I stand by my assertion that it is not self-interest that is detrimental but cultural conceptions of the self; making it the software, not the hardware that is corrupted.
Well think about it. How many facts do you believe because you have preformed the experiments yourself, and how many do you believe because scientists or scientific publications have told you to believe them? How many things do you believe because a person you trust tells you? We look down on hearsay, but in reality a huge portion of knowledge is hearsay. It is just hearsay that has been legitimized by power.
Knowledge is legitmized information whether you except it or not. It would be an enormous limit on what peopel could know if they would have to experience everything themselves.