gratitude and divine authority

 Why obey God?

One plausible answer is that our relationship to him entails that we have an obligation to obey him. This is the rationale offered for parental authority: the nature of the parent-child relationship entails that the child is obligated to obey the parent (generally speaking, of course). But what explains this obligation? It depends on who you're asking. Perhaps the obligation is simply a natural feature of the relationship; to ask why the obligation exists is like asking why the color yellow has the shade that it does. 

This explanation appears to be the one C. Stephen Evans offers in God & Moral Obligation. He writes: 

"If God exists and is a genuine person, then the relation between creature and creator is a genuine social relation, and like other relations, carries with it distinctive obligations...A proper social relation with God is one that requires [or obligates?] humans to recognize the enormous debt of gratitude they owe to God, as well as the value of an on-going relation to God. Most religious believes have seen this relation to God as one in which God rightly has authority over them" (29).

The chain of reason seems identical to the one that justifies parental authority: God and man have a social relationship, and that relationship entails a recognition of gratitude to God. This recognition generates good reasons to obey God's commands, and hence, God has authority over man. 

Why does our relationship with God entail this obligation? It is not clear to me why Evan thinks so. One hint is that gratitude explains why we might be motivated to obey God. Elsewhere, he writes: 

"I should want to satisfy the requirements of a being to whom I owe an unlimited debt of gratitude, and whose love for me is such that he intends me to enjoy an eternal happiness in communion with himself and others who love him" (31).  In a footnote, he says that this passage indicates that he "is committed to the existence of normative facts that do not depend on God's commands..." (31). 

I take this to mean the following: when someone asks why they should obey God, they should recognize their debt of gratitude to him. Upon this recognition, they recognize the normative fact of gratitude: recipients of gifts are obligated to express thanks to their gift-givers. This fact exists independently of God; it does not exist because God willed it into existence. And when we couple the recognition of our debt to God with the recognition of the gratitude principle, we find that our debt of gratitude requires of us an expression of our thanks to him. I take it that Evans thinks no less than our full obedience to God is a sufficient expression of our thanks. 

There are at least three ways to object to this argument: first, we might object to the content of the principle of gratitude. We might concede that this principle of gratitude exists, but that it does not require full obedience of us. It might entail something less demanding: a thank-you card, a good reason to submit to God's authority, etc. But this objection might say that whatever gratitude requires of us, it is not full obedience to God. 

The second way of objection is this: the principle of gratitude does not exist independently of God. If you're someone who thinks that God is the creator of everything, then Evans' appeal to a normative fact that does not depend on God is straightforwardly unacceptable since it is a thing God did not create. Most classical theists, I think, would surely get off board here. 

The third way of objection is this: the principle of gratitude might exist, but it seems unlikely because of how strange it is. Christian moral realists often say the following to atheist moral realists: sure, it's possible moral values may somehow exist like numbers and shapes do, but don't you find that strange? How did they get here? Are they arbitrary? What authority do they have over us? Etc. But we might say the same thing about this principle: sure, it might exist, but how did it get here? Why does it have authority over us? Why is its authority so strong that it entails absolute obedience to God? 

I think the second route is most persuasive for classical theists; I think the third route is most persuasive for non-classical theists. First route has some merit, too, but I don't have space to elaborate. 

why obey God?

 I just God & Morality: A Debate. It's excellent! I want to discuss the following objection from critics of divine command theory. The objection is this: Divine Command Theorists fail to provide a satisfying explanation of why we should obey God. Here are some explanations Divine Command Theorists have provided. We should obey God because: 

(1) because He commanded us to do so.

This is unsatisfying due to how circular it is. Unless we add a further premise about why God's commanding something makes us morally obligated to to it, we're left with a viciously circular explanation. 

(2) because God knows what's best for us.

This is satisfying, but only because I've left the original question ambiguous. (2) tells us we should obey God in the sense that doing so would be very good for us given God's knowledge. Just as we should obey our doctor's medical advice because of her medical expertise, we should obey God because of his moral expertise. But this is not the sort of question we are interested in when we ask why we should obey God. We are interested in whether we have a moral obligation to obey God, not whether it would be advantageous for us to do so. With this tweaked question, I find it obvious that God's knowledge is insufficient to generate a moral obligation to obey his commands. 

(3) because you just should. 

The average religious person probably thinks this. We don't have a further explanation for why we should obey God; if he exists, it just seems like we should obey him. But it is not obvious to me that this is true. Why is it that theism just entails categorical obedience to God? I'm not clear it does. 

This is obviously a very quick post; much more could be said in defense of these explanations and other ones. But I did want to jot something down before I transitioned to the next phase of my work for today.

quick thoughts on Hume

Here is one way of thinking about Hume's theory of perception: imagine a shaped stamp is pressed onto a circle of wet ink. Depending on how hard the stamp was pressed, the stamp should leave a rough outline of its shape on the ink. 

For Hume, we can think of the stamp's pressing onto the ink as the way we get impressions. We receive an impression when the senses come in contact with something in the external world, and the impressions lasts only as long as they interact with the object. From these impressions, we gain ideas, which are simply copies of the impression. Ideas are distinct from impressions only with respect to vivacity: with the latter, there is a much higher intensity of experience than the experience of ideas. A simple example of this is the difference between stubbing your toe and recalling the experience of stubbing your toe at a later time. The former experience is a much more intense experience than the latter, even though the latter can still produce intense feelings. 

There are two interesting implications that follow from this theory. First, notice that reason is absent. To me, this is counter-intuitive. When I think of the way I perceive the things around me, I tend to think that reason at least has some role. Not for Hume! And second, the upshot of this view is that we only get ideas of things from impressions. This is also counter-intuitive to me. It seems like we can think of immaterial things in a way completely detached from impressions. Further, it seems like we can think of things we've never encountered before, like a thousand-sided die. Hume might reply to this and say that when we think of this gargantuan die, we are really just combining together simpler ideas we gained from impressions into a giant die. This might be right!

quick thought on rawls

John Rawls advocates his "Original Position" thought experiment as a way to properly set up a just society. The experiment begins with a veil of ignorance, in which all participants are ignorant of a host of many features about themselves: age, gender, time period, economic status, etc. The veil of ignorance helps participants think about justice in a way that is detached from these morally trivial traits that can obscure decision-making about justice. In these conditions, Rawls thinks reasonable people will endorse the principles of his "justice as fairness" doctrine. Since the veil of ignorance makes them unaware of their social position, then they will not choose to constitute society in a way that unfairly privileges one group of people with morally trivial traits over another. 

This view presumes something important about human motivation: when we make decisions, we act on our own self-interest. Ironically, this view of the generation of society is similar to Nozick's in Anarchy, Statu, Utopia. There, states eventually arose because individuals in the state of nature had to create communities of protection; that is to say, they were not sufficient on their own and needed the state to provide important services. And this also seems plausible: whatever the origin story is, one important reason most people submit to the authority of the state is that it provides important services that we need to flourish, such as a way of arbitrating cases of gross injustice between dominant and vulnerable parties. 

I have at least one quesiton about this view that I hope to answer: first, should we join Rawls in pre-supposing that we make decisions out of self-interest? It is one thing to say that the state provides services that we have reason to embrace, but it is another thing presume from the outset of the "Original Position" thought-experiment that the doctrines we choose to embrace are chosen in our own individual interest. Surely there are some decision-makers who will not reason in this way. For example, we may think of a group of ascetic monks who do not care to have equal opportunity in society, and they do not mind if they are apart of the disadvantaged class in a society where the Rawlsian difference principle is not respected. In answering this question, Rawls may have at least two avenues of reply: first, argue that the asceticism of the monks is, in fact, self-interested decision making, though it's self-interested in certain spiritual goods and not the material goods most people are interested in. Second, Rawls could argue that his scheme of decision-making is an ideal one that presumes the participants are rational actors, and the asceticism of the monks is not rational. Here, he would need to elucidate what he means by rationality. 

vicious institutions

It is obvious that Mother Teresa was a virtuous person. Her life was marked by charity, justice, temperance, and a host of other good character traits. We can say the same thing about all kinds of moral exemplars: Thomas Aquinas, Jackie Robinson, etc.

But what about an entire institution? Are these the sorts of things that can be virtuous or vicious? Over the past few years, it's normal to hear from news outlets that "the police are systemically racist." It's not entirely clear what this means. Maybe it means that police departments churn out racists. But this can't be right because of the "few bad apples" rejoinder attached to charges of systemic police racism.

My sense is that the term just means that, on average, the institution of policing (i.e., the collective whole of police departments in the U.S.) tends to produce officers with latent racist bias toward certain minority groups. More pointedly, the charge is that the policing system tends to produce officers with the vice of prejudice. The result is that we have vicious people as a result of a vicious system. 

I may return to this post later, but there's something confusing about attributing the same economy of virtues and vices we attribute to persons also to institutions. I think that, in order for us to do this cleanly, we have to develop a coherent account of what it means for something to be an institution. Maybe this requires a foray into group ontology. But this is enough for now. 

what is incitement?

Jeff Shaprio has an intriguing article in WSJ where he makes a case that Trump is not guilty of incitement. You can read it here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-trump-isnt-guilty-of-incitement-11610303966?reflink=share_mobilewebshare&fbclid=IwAR1LJisgXV_3dx4mg75SQJ0_WqBOk8Q0Zkb7_5VnlcDO5OhgZioMlqry59M

I don't care to make any normative claims about whether or not Trump's rhetoric was permissible. Here, I just want to try and work out some account of what it means to incite a riot because I think popular talk about this issue is sloppy. 

Shapiro cites Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) to show that "it's a crime 'to intentionally or recklessly act in such a manner to cause another person to be in reasonable fear' and to 'incite or provoke violence where there is a likelihood that such violence will ensue.'" I take both of the quotes included in Shapiro's citation form a conjunction. For example, I don't think it's a crime to intentionally act in such a way to cause another person to be in reasonable fear (this would be bad news for Halloween haunted houses!).

One case that clearly violates Shapiro's citation is a KKK rally where a leader calls for violence against a particular ethnic group. The leader intentionally acted in such a way as to call members of that ethnic group to be in fear and he provoked violence that would likely be carried out by the members of the group. This much is clear.

Once case that clearly does not violate Shapiro's citation is a pastor who preaches about the crucifixion of Christ inspiring a mentally unstable congregant to go out and harm someone in the same way Christ was harmed. The pastor neither recklessly nor intentionally acted in such a way to cause fear or violence to anyone. 

But things are less clear when we move away from these obvious cases. These days, political rhetoric is unfortunately quite tribalistic, where one group A expresses some clear animus toward group B at some kind of rally. Suppose some speaker at group A's event never explicitly calls for violence against group B, but he harshly criticizes group B, which inspires radical members of group A to do violence against some members against group B.

The speaker's guilt probably depends on the content of his critique and whether or not such content would provoke a reasonable person toward violence. If the speaker just says that group B is generally impolite, there's no rational case for violence against group B. However, there might be a rationale for violence if group A's speaker said something like this: "Group B is planning on murdering you by this evening. Right now, they're planning on destroying you at [x location]. Do with this what you will!"

Here, there is no explicit call for violence, though the speaker has caused reasonable people to be in fear. But this alone isn't sufficient for incitement; the content of what the speaker said should likely provoke violence. And it seems reasonable to think that the speaker's words would likely lead to violent self-defense against group B. 

Still, the speaker has some plausible deniability. "I never told them to get violent! I never even called them to any sort of action except, 'Do with this what you will!' I'm innocent." On standards of incitement such that the speaker must explicitly call for violence, sure; however, on Shapiro's citation, it seems the speaker is in trouble.

macintyre, emotivism, and permissible manipulation

 I sent this email to my father-in-law, who is a professor of management at Houston Baptist University. 

"I just read this article from a philosopher who works in business ethics. He thinks MacIntyre’s charge of management being wholly emotivistic can be applied to new forms of leadership (e.g. transformative/charismatic leadership). Both of these manipulate workers by affective attachment, so they’re no better than the Weberian models MacIntyre was originally critiquing. 

 

I think that’s fine, but this doesn’t matter unless we think manipulation is categorically bad. Manipulation might be pro tanto bad, but there might be other considerations that outweigh its badness. It’s generally bad to manipulate my friend into giving me money. However, if my friend is going to use his money to do something illegal, then perhaps my manipulation might be an exception. 

 

I see nothing different from forms of leadership that use affective leadership. So what if there is manipulation? And so what if it’s emotivistic? We have to figure out whether or not such manipulation is ethically impermissible. It’s not immediately obvious to me that it is. 

 

One consideration is whether or not leaders have the proper authority over their workers to manipulate in these ways. As a father, I have the authority over my child to manipulate my child to do some things (e.g., I’ll give him ice cream if he cleans up his room). But my neighbor doesn’t have nearly the same kind of authority to manipulate my child to do similar things, at least without my consent. If managers have a similar kind of authority, I take it that these issues can be put to rest. 

 

If I remember correctly, MacIntyre might say that manipulation happens when I treat a person as a means by persuading them to do something apart from rational argument. I guess I just don’t follow. Most of what we do is driven by many other things besides rational argument. Maybe I’m just being too cynical, though."