In his polemic “Why Do Progressives Love Trains?” Bob Higgs notes that the leftist elite have an awe for rail transport that borders on spiritual sentiment. Reasoning with a railroad worshiper is like reasoning with a religious zealot. All talk of the privacy, flexibility, and convenience that automobiles can offer is brushed off as contrary to the revealed gnosis of auspicious light rails and high-speed trains.
Bob Higgs is right to point out the biases of established centrism. But I do feel that his portrayal of rail transport as wholly undesirable and unsustainable is a little unfair. I, for one, love to ride the train from time to time. I am perfectly willing to forgo the privacy in preference for other things – like the freedom to sit there and stare out the window without having to keep my eyes on the road or worry about sharp turns and sudden stops. There’s a certain amount of responsibility that comes with driving which I am more than willing to delegate to another person. And I’m sure there are other people like me – people whose idea of a good Friday afternoon is nothing more complicated than sitting at a table with one or two friends, eating sandwiches and sipping malt, and gazing out the window at the passing bridges and bulrushes and telephone cables.
Sure, there is something to be said about the endless subsidies that Amtrak survives on. But there’s also something to be said about the subsidies that all car-driving Americans rely on to get from home to work and back again. We all know that without subsidized roads, subsidized water, and subsidized security on loans, there would be no such thing as sprawling suburbs in the desert. (Just as without subsidized water and subsidized feed and limits on the liability of polluters there would be no such thing as factory farms, and meat would be considerably more expensive.)
I guess my main point is this: too often we let our cultural biases get in the way of our theory and analysis. We look at the hemp sandal and synthetic wool pullover wearing yuppies who drink their soy fair trade lattes in coffee mugs rather than paper cups (because they shudder at the thought of producing solid waste that they can’t use to fertilize their lima bean garden) and we assume that they want to force onto us a dream world that can’t happen without the forceful extraction of wealth – all the while forgetting that the world we envision is marked by collective privilege propped up by subsidy upon subsidy and eminent domain upon eminent domain.
If all our principles were recognized as law, whose dream world would it really be? I see toll booths charging exorbitant fees on southbound 17 on warm Saturdays and Sundays. Not that that’s a bad thing. Those of us who can’t afford to drive to Santa Cruz can run to Alviso with inflatable rafts and splash around in the Bay. I see tolls on 101 being so high on weekdays that half of us may as well walk to the nearest Caltrain station. And if the cost of maintaining a rail line really turns out to be too high, then I may be sipping my beverage of choice on a bus instead. The libertarian spirit is not paranoia. It is the dogma of individual sovereignty, colored with confidence in the human mind. It does not eschew otherness. It is curious, and open, and it smiles on all the outcome of its principles.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Corporeality, not Scarcity, as a Precondition for Property
This very short essay is written largely in response to an essay by N. Stephan Kinsella, in which he argues that authors cannot retain exclusive ownership of their ideas since there is no scarcity of ideas. Following the tradition of Murray Rothbard, Kinsella claims that the reason we can have ownership in land and physical products is that they are scarce. A function of property rights, he claims, is to moderate the use of scarce resources. According to him, ownership of non-scarce resources is logically impossible – it makes no point to call an infinitely-abundant thing your own, since if someone steals it from you you can just grab another. Though I do agree with Kinsella that physical objects have a particular quality which renders them “own-able”, and that ideas lack this quality, I do not believe that this quality is scarcity. Or rather, I should say that “scarcity” is not the word he should use. Instead, he should use the word “corporeality”.
In his essay, Kinsella writes: “Were we in a Garden of Eden where land and other goods were infinitely abundant, there would be no scarcity and, therefore, no need for property rules; property concepts would be meaningless.” But property concepts would have meaning in an Eden where there is no scarcity at all. Let’s imagine a world where the ground is a plane – where flat land extends infinitely everywhere. There are forests all over this land, with trees that give as many fruit as you would need, and in every kind. You walk through acre after acre of this land holding a basket, picking fruit and gathering vegetables, and storing them in your house. Once you run out of fruit, or once they become too ripe for your taste, you can get your basket and go out again, gathering as much food as you would need. Though the amount of food is infinite, a traveller who visits your house decides that he wants your fruit, and decides to take all of it without your permission. You could simply go out and get some more, just as he could have. But his acquisition of your food without your permission is still theft, even though all the food you want is just a short walk away. The infinitude of food does not remove the fact that this visitor stole from you. He stole the product of your labor. He made you work for him without your consent, and in this regard he made a slave out of you. Scarcity, then, is irrelevant in deciding whether something can be owned by you and whether taking it from you without your permission is the same thing as stealing it from you.
To say that something’s abundance excuses taking it from you is to say that mixing your labor with an un-owned thing does not necessarily make it yours. It amounts to saying “well, you have plenty, so you shouldn’t mind me taking a little”.
The right criterion is not scarcity, but corporeality. The fact that an object is material makes its use by another impossible as long as you use it. This is why your use of a physical object necessarily implies excluding its use by others. And this is why you have an exclusive right to own objects that you make yours by mixing your labor with them. It is the necessity to exclude another’s use of an object in facilitating your use of it that makes that object ownable by you. Since only corporeal objects have this necessity, only corporeal objects can be owned as property.
It is true that something cannot be scarce unless it is also corporeal. And it might be safe to say that in this world, everything that is corporeal is also scarce. But the meaning I believe Kinsella is trying to convey is much better expressed by the word “corporeality” than by “scarcity”.
In his essay, Kinsella writes: “Were we in a Garden of Eden where land and other goods were infinitely abundant, there would be no scarcity and, therefore, no need for property rules; property concepts would be meaningless.” But property concepts would have meaning in an Eden where there is no scarcity at all. Let’s imagine a world where the ground is a plane – where flat land extends infinitely everywhere. There are forests all over this land, with trees that give as many fruit as you would need, and in every kind. You walk through acre after acre of this land holding a basket, picking fruit and gathering vegetables, and storing them in your house. Once you run out of fruit, or once they become too ripe for your taste, you can get your basket and go out again, gathering as much food as you would need. Though the amount of food is infinite, a traveller who visits your house decides that he wants your fruit, and decides to take all of it without your permission. You could simply go out and get some more, just as he could have. But his acquisition of your food without your permission is still theft, even though all the food you want is just a short walk away. The infinitude of food does not remove the fact that this visitor stole from you. He stole the product of your labor. He made you work for him without your consent, and in this regard he made a slave out of you. Scarcity, then, is irrelevant in deciding whether something can be owned by you and whether taking it from you without your permission is the same thing as stealing it from you.
To say that something’s abundance excuses taking it from you is to say that mixing your labor with an un-owned thing does not necessarily make it yours. It amounts to saying “well, you have plenty, so you shouldn’t mind me taking a little”.
The right criterion is not scarcity, but corporeality. The fact that an object is material makes its use by another impossible as long as you use it. This is why your use of a physical object necessarily implies excluding its use by others. And this is why you have an exclusive right to own objects that you make yours by mixing your labor with them. It is the necessity to exclude another’s use of an object in facilitating your use of it that makes that object ownable by you. Since only corporeal objects have this necessity, only corporeal objects can be owned as property.
It is true that something cannot be scarce unless it is also corporeal. And it might be safe to say that in this world, everything that is corporeal is also scarce. But the meaning I believe Kinsella is trying to convey is much better expressed by the word “corporeality” than by “scarcity”.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Rational Thought and Universal Morality
The following essay was submitted on October 23, 2006, to complete a writing assignment for a University of St Andrews Divinity class called "God, Sex, and Money".
_______________________________________________________
This essay will hopefully demonstrate that rational thought cannot by itself yield the universal ethical principles on which a moral system may be based. To illustrate that universal ethical principles must be given from somewhere outside of rational thought, I will describe two moral systems which are acclaimed by their adherents to be universally true, and whose key premises cannot be inferred by logic. What I will not concentrate on is whether any of these ethical systems is true. I will concentrate on their main premises, and show – without worrying about whether the premises are true – that those premises which are crucial to moral argument are grounded in something other than reason, and that rational thought removed from an already-built framework of moral principles cannot yield universal ethical principles.
An ethical principle is called universal if it is believed to hold true in every place and time, and apply to every person. (For the sake of this essay, I will use “universal ethical principle” to mean a principle that is believed to be universal, as opposed to a principle that actually is universally true.) It has the claim of universality, and so any belief system that includes it prescribes the same rights and obligations to all people. An individual who believes in a universal ethical principle can apply this principle to any action in any condition, and trust that he acted properly. Cicero’s natural law is one example of a universalistic belief system.
…law in the proper sense is … spread through the whole human community, unchanging and eternal … This law cannot be countermanded, nor can it be amended, nor can it be totally rescinded. We cannot be exempted from this law by any decree of the Senate or the people; nor do we need anyone else to expound or explain it. There will not be one such law in Rome and another in Athens, one now and another in the future, but all peoples at all times will be embraced by a single and eternal and unchangeable law.[1]
One trait of Cicero’s natural law that is not a necessary trait of universal ethical principles is Cicero’s appeal to nature. To him, proper morality is “right reason in harmony with nature.”[2] To act properly is to act as man naturally was intended to act, and so whoever “refuses to obey it will be turning his back on himself.” A man who disobeys natural law “has denied his nature as a human being,” and for that “he will face the gravest penalties.”[3] The emphasis that Cicero places on human nature as the basis of morality is not present in other systems of universal ethical principles.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is an ethical principle that is well-known for its claim of universality. Unlike Cicero, Kant makes no appeal to human nature as the justification for his beliefs. Instead, he claims that moral principles are to be understood a priori, without foundation on particular experience. He says “it is absolutely impossible for experience to establish with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of action … has rested solely on moral grounds and on the thought of one’s duty.”[4] He claims that all moral principles can be summed up in one categorical imperative, which is “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[5] In other words, we may not commit an action in any situation unless it is an action that is permissible in every situation.
This principle is very much like the “Golden Rule,” in that it forbids us from committing an action that we do not want committed against us. But the categorical imperative goes much farther than “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. While the Golden Rule may admit a degree of subjectivity and conditionality, Kant denies both of these. Take, for example, his staunch defence of honesty. Even though it may be to one’s own advantage to “make a promise with the intention of not keeping it,” a false promise is still wrong. While applying the categorical imperative to lying, Kant says:
…I can by no means will a universal law of lying; for by such a law there could properly be no promises at all, since it would be futile to express a will for future action to others who would not believe my profession or who … would pay me back in like coin; and consequently my maxim [of making a false promise when hard pressed], as soon as it was made a universal law, would be bound to annul itself.[6]
Here, Kant gives an outright condemnation of all lying. Lying is wrong when committed all the time, and so it should not be committed any time. This condemnation of all lying makes Kant seem stricter than some Bible characters. Had Rahab[7] observed the categorical imperative when she was asked about the spies who visited her, she would have been compelled to deliver them to the guards, instead of continuing to hide them on her roof, and saying that they ran to the mountains.
Some of the principles presupposed by any universal ethical principle are: some things are good, and some things are bad; something that is good (or bad) in one situation is good (or bad) in all other situations (the claim of universality); and that such-and-such ethical principle accurately describes what is good or bad. A phrase included in each of these principles is “It is certainly the case that…” No man can say that such-and-such ethical principle is universal unless he is willing to say “It certainly is the case that some things are definitely good, and that some things are definitely bad; and that one thing that is bad in one situation is definitely bad in all others.” No principle can be called universal unless it can include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.
Rational thought is the process by which a person arrives at conclusions which are indicated by statements called premises. An argument is “an attempt to demonstrate the truth of … a conclusion, based on the truth of a set of … premises.”[8] Rational thought is only the process by which a person derives his conclusion from his premises; it does not account for his premises, unless these premises too are conclusions of arguments. The two types of arguments that may be used to derive the conclusion are deductive, and inductive, arguments. Only the former can be used to arrive at universal ethical principles. The latter is a style of argument “in which the premises of an argument are believed to support the conclusion but do not ensure it.”[9] Because induction does not ensure the conclusion, it cannot be used to support universal ethical principles, which must be able to include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.
P.D. Magnus, in his Forall X, says: “An argument is deductively valid if and only if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.”[10] Any statement can be inferred, when given a well-constructed argument. But the truth-value of a deductively inferred conclusion depends on the truth-value of its premises. Even if a statement is inferred from its premises, there is no guarantee that it actually is true, unless the truth of each of its premises were guaranteed. This is one painful weakness that logic has when dealing with moral issues. If there were doubt about the truth of just one premise in a perfectly logical argument, then discerning the truth-value of the conclusion becomes a complete guessing game.
There is at least one (actually, there are many) premise about which there may be doubt, and which would make the moral argument a guessing game. Every premise which introduces a value or principle to a moral argument is a presupposition which may be doubted on the grounds that it is not justified on a purely rational basis. This is a problem for the moral argument that relies on a universal ethical principle – if there is doubt about any premise, there is doubt about the conclusion, and so a claim that includes “certainly” and “definitely” cannot be made. This doubt makes it impossible to argue about universal ethical principles. Doubt can be erased in one of two ways: either the premise can be demonstrated to have a purely rational justification, in which case it would not be any kind of assumption, and would not be an introduction of any value or principle; or the premise can be accepted as something that simply stands true, without any need for a purely rational justification. The latter implies that there is a basis, other than pure reason, which may be used in moral argument.
If one were to believe that rational thought alone is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, then he would be ruling out any source of moral principles that is outside of rational thought. He would be addressing the problem of doubt by using the first method given. Any principle that is “assumed”, or called “self-evident”, or received from any source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought, must be discarded if the moral argument should be purely rational. This poses another serious problem for the man who wishes to arrive at universal ethical principles by using purely rational thought. If he wants to use universal ethical principles, he must argue deductively; if he argues deductively, he must make sure that no doubt can be cast onto any of his premises; if he wishes to argue on a purely rational basis, then he must make sure that all his principles are founded on reason alone, and he may not draw any moral principles from a source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought. But to refrain from using moral principles that aren’t founded on pure reason means refraining from arguing for universal ethical principles. The claim of universality, which states that certain things should not be committed by any person in any situation, is itself a principle without any rational basis. No universal ethical principle can be stated without this claim, and so arguments that omit this claim cannot arrive at universal ethical principles. Purely rational arguments cannot infer universal ethical principles.
By blatantly spelling out the claim of universality, Cicero and Kant spell out assumptions which are not founded on rationality. Cicero reveals his assumption (actually, just one of his assumptions) when he says that proper law is “unchanging and eternal,” and equally applicable in both Rome and Athens.[11] Kant’s assumption is emblazoned on the very wording of his categorical imperative. “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[12] Even the fact that he makes assumptions is made clear in his writings.
We shall … have to investigate the possibility of a categorical imperative entirely a priori, since here we do not enjoy the advantage of having its reality given in experience and so of being obliged merely to explain, and not to establish, its possibility.[13]
Arthur Schopenhauer calls Kant’s morality, which is derived from “postulates of practical reason,” a morality “rested on concealed theological hypotheses.”[14] But the presence of a ‘theological hypothesis’ does not invalidate an argument for universal ethical principles. In addressing the problem of doubt, the arguer may choose the second method, which is to accept moral principles as legitimate assumptions that need no purely rational justification. If he does this, however, he would be relying on sources outside of pure reason, and would not be relying on rational thought alone to yield universal ethical principles.
One criticism of my argument might be that I start with a notion of rational thought that is too narrow to include those rational arguments which do arrive at universal ethical principles. It is possible to have a rational argument that deduces a universal ethical principle from a set of premises that includes a claim of universality. But while this would be a rational argument, it would not be a purely rational argument. When we address the question of whether rational thought is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, we must take it to ask whether rational thought is capable of yielding these principles on its own. If rational thought is capable when provided postulates, then this capability is not attributed to rational thought, but to the postulates. In the case of arguments for universal ethical principles, these postulates are the claim of universality, and any moral value to which it would be attached.
Works Cited
Cicero. The Republic; The Laws. Translated by Niall Rudd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H.J. Patton. London: Routledge, 2000.
Magnus, P.D. Forall X: An Introduction to Formal Logic. http://www.fecundity.com/logic, 2005.
Schopenhauer, Authur. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument.
[1] Cicero, The Republic; The Laws, translated by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 68-69
[2] Ibid., p. 68
[3] Ibid., p. 69
[4] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by H.J. Patton (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 71
[5] Ibid, p. 84
[6] Ibid, p. 68
[7] Joshua 2:1-7
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[10] http://www.fecundity.com/logic. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[11] Cicero, The Republic, p. 68-69
[12] Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 84
[13] Ibid., p. 83
[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, translated by E.F.J. Payne (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 57
_______________________________________________________
This essay will hopefully demonstrate that rational thought cannot by itself yield the universal ethical principles on which a moral system may be based. To illustrate that universal ethical principles must be given from somewhere outside of rational thought, I will describe two moral systems which are acclaimed by their adherents to be universally true, and whose key premises cannot be inferred by logic. What I will not concentrate on is whether any of these ethical systems is true. I will concentrate on their main premises, and show – without worrying about whether the premises are true – that those premises which are crucial to moral argument are grounded in something other than reason, and that rational thought removed from an already-built framework of moral principles cannot yield universal ethical principles.
An ethical principle is called universal if it is believed to hold true in every place and time, and apply to every person. (For the sake of this essay, I will use “universal ethical principle” to mean a principle that is believed to be universal, as opposed to a principle that actually is universally true.) It has the claim of universality, and so any belief system that includes it prescribes the same rights and obligations to all people. An individual who believes in a universal ethical principle can apply this principle to any action in any condition, and trust that he acted properly. Cicero’s natural law is one example of a universalistic belief system.
…law in the proper sense is … spread through the whole human community, unchanging and eternal … This law cannot be countermanded, nor can it be amended, nor can it be totally rescinded. We cannot be exempted from this law by any decree of the Senate or the people; nor do we need anyone else to expound or explain it. There will not be one such law in Rome and another in Athens, one now and another in the future, but all peoples at all times will be embraced by a single and eternal and unchangeable law.[1]
One trait of Cicero’s natural law that is not a necessary trait of universal ethical principles is Cicero’s appeal to nature. To him, proper morality is “right reason in harmony with nature.”[2] To act properly is to act as man naturally was intended to act, and so whoever “refuses to obey it will be turning his back on himself.” A man who disobeys natural law “has denied his nature as a human being,” and for that “he will face the gravest penalties.”[3] The emphasis that Cicero places on human nature as the basis of morality is not present in other systems of universal ethical principles.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is an ethical principle that is well-known for its claim of universality. Unlike Cicero, Kant makes no appeal to human nature as the justification for his beliefs. Instead, he claims that moral principles are to be understood a priori, without foundation on particular experience. He says “it is absolutely impossible for experience to establish with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of action … has rested solely on moral grounds and on the thought of one’s duty.”[4] He claims that all moral principles can be summed up in one categorical imperative, which is “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[5] In other words, we may not commit an action in any situation unless it is an action that is permissible in every situation.
This principle is very much like the “Golden Rule,” in that it forbids us from committing an action that we do not want committed against us. But the categorical imperative goes much farther than “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. While the Golden Rule may admit a degree of subjectivity and conditionality, Kant denies both of these. Take, for example, his staunch defence of honesty. Even though it may be to one’s own advantage to “make a promise with the intention of not keeping it,” a false promise is still wrong. While applying the categorical imperative to lying, Kant says:
…I can by no means will a universal law of lying; for by such a law there could properly be no promises at all, since it would be futile to express a will for future action to others who would not believe my profession or who … would pay me back in like coin; and consequently my maxim [of making a false promise when hard pressed], as soon as it was made a universal law, would be bound to annul itself.[6]
Here, Kant gives an outright condemnation of all lying. Lying is wrong when committed all the time, and so it should not be committed any time. This condemnation of all lying makes Kant seem stricter than some Bible characters. Had Rahab[7] observed the categorical imperative when she was asked about the spies who visited her, she would have been compelled to deliver them to the guards, instead of continuing to hide them on her roof, and saying that they ran to the mountains.
Some of the principles presupposed by any universal ethical principle are: some things are good, and some things are bad; something that is good (or bad) in one situation is good (or bad) in all other situations (the claim of universality); and that such-and-such ethical principle accurately describes what is good or bad. A phrase included in each of these principles is “It is certainly the case that…” No man can say that such-and-such ethical principle is universal unless he is willing to say “It certainly is the case that some things are definitely good, and that some things are definitely bad; and that one thing that is bad in one situation is definitely bad in all others.” No principle can be called universal unless it can include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.
Rational thought is the process by which a person arrives at conclusions which are indicated by statements called premises. An argument is “an attempt to demonstrate the truth of … a conclusion, based on the truth of a set of … premises.”[8] Rational thought is only the process by which a person derives his conclusion from his premises; it does not account for his premises, unless these premises too are conclusions of arguments. The two types of arguments that may be used to derive the conclusion are deductive, and inductive, arguments. Only the former can be used to arrive at universal ethical principles. The latter is a style of argument “in which the premises of an argument are believed to support the conclusion but do not ensure it.”[9] Because induction does not ensure the conclusion, it cannot be used to support universal ethical principles, which must be able to include the words “certainly” and “definitely”.
P.D. Magnus, in his Forall X, says: “An argument is deductively valid if and only if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.”[10] Any statement can be inferred, when given a well-constructed argument. But the truth-value of a deductively inferred conclusion depends on the truth-value of its premises. Even if a statement is inferred from its premises, there is no guarantee that it actually is true, unless the truth of each of its premises were guaranteed. This is one painful weakness that logic has when dealing with moral issues. If there were doubt about the truth of just one premise in a perfectly logical argument, then discerning the truth-value of the conclusion becomes a complete guessing game.
There is at least one (actually, there are many) premise about which there may be doubt, and which would make the moral argument a guessing game. Every premise which introduces a value or principle to a moral argument is a presupposition which may be doubted on the grounds that it is not justified on a purely rational basis. This is a problem for the moral argument that relies on a universal ethical principle – if there is doubt about any premise, there is doubt about the conclusion, and so a claim that includes “certainly” and “definitely” cannot be made. This doubt makes it impossible to argue about universal ethical principles. Doubt can be erased in one of two ways: either the premise can be demonstrated to have a purely rational justification, in which case it would not be any kind of assumption, and would not be an introduction of any value or principle; or the premise can be accepted as something that simply stands true, without any need for a purely rational justification. The latter implies that there is a basis, other than pure reason, which may be used in moral argument.
If one were to believe that rational thought alone is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, then he would be ruling out any source of moral principles that is outside of rational thought. He would be addressing the problem of doubt by using the first method given. Any principle that is “assumed”, or called “self-evident”, or received from any source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought, must be discarded if the moral argument should be purely rational. This poses another serious problem for the man who wishes to arrive at universal ethical principles by using purely rational thought. If he wants to use universal ethical principles, he must argue deductively; if he argues deductively, he must make sure that no doubt can be cast onto any of his premises; if he wishes to argue on a purely rational basis, then he must make sure that all his principles are founded on reason alone, and he may not draw any moral principles from a source that stands outside the process of purely rational thought. But to refrain from using moral principles that aren’t founded on pure reason means refraining from arguing for universal ethical principles. The claim of universality, which states that certain things should not be committed by any person in any situation, is itself a principle without any rational basis. No universal ethical principle can be stated without this claim, and so arguments that omit this claim cannot arrive at universal ethical principles. Purely rational arguments cannot infer universal ethical principles.
By blatantly spelling out the claim of universality, Cicero and Kant spell out assumptions which are not founded on rationality. Cicero reveals his assumption (actually, just one of his assumptions) when he says that proper law is “unchanging and eternal,” and equally applicable in both Rome and Athens.[11] Kant’s assumption is emblazoned on the very wording of his categorical imperative. “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”[12] Even the fact that he makes assumptions is made clear in his writings.
We shall … have to investigate the possibility of a categorical imperative entirely a priori, since here we do not enjoy the advantage of having its reality given in experience and so of being obliged merely to explain, and not to establish, its possibility.[13]
Arthur Schopenhauer calls Kant’s morality, which is derived from “postulates of practical reason,” a morality “rested on concealed theological hypotheses.”[14] But the presence of a ‘theological hypothesis’ does not invalidate an argument for universal ethical principles. In addressing the problem of doubt, the arguer may choose the second method, which is to accept moral principles as legitimate assumptions that need no purely rational justification. If he does this, however, he would be relying on sources outside of pure reason, and would not be relying on rational thought alone to yield universal ethical principles.
One criticism of my argument might be that I start with a notion of rational thought that is too narrow to include those rational arguments which do arrive at universal ethical principles. It is possible to have a rational argument that deduces a universal ethical principle from a set of premises that includes a claim of universality. But while this would be a rational argument, it would not be a purely rational argument. When we address the question of whether rational thought is capable of yielding universal ethical principles, we must take it to ask whether rational thought is capable of yielding these principles on its own. If rational thought is capable when provided postulates, then this capability is not attributed to rational thought, but to the postulates. In the case of arguments for universal ethical principles, these postulates are the claim of universality, and any moral value to which it would be attached.
Works Cited
Cicero. The Republic; The Laws. Translated by Niall Rudd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H.J. Patton. London: Routledge, 2000.
Magnus, P.D. Forall X: An Introduction to Formal Logic. http://www.fecundity.com/logic, 2005.
Schopenhauer, Authur. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument.
[1] Cicero, The Republic; The Laws, translated by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 68-69
[2] Ibid., p. 68
[3] Ibid., p. 69
[4] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by H.J. Patton (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 71
[5] Ibid, p. 84
[6] Ibid, p. 68
[7] Joshua 2:1-7
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[10] http://www.fecundity.com/logic. Accessed Oct 22nd 2006
[11] Cicero, The Republic, p. 68-69
[12] Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 84
[13] Ibid., p. 83
[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, translated by E.F.J. Payne (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 57
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The Historical Messiah
The following blurb was written a Saturday evening some time ago, when my Sunday School class was going through a lesson plan based on a book by a famous preacher.
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I’m supposed to be answering questions in the workbook for Sunday School, and I couldn’t help but think of the way this bunch of believers (and religious believers in general) think about religion. A couple weeks ago we were going through Biblical evidence for Christ’s resurrection (if the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of a perfect God, then all the evidence that we need is in the Bible itself – that is, all evidence within the Bible is sufficient proof) and towards the end the teacher’s wife added “And none of the other religions can claim this. Mohammed died. They admit it. Buddha died. All the founders of all the other religions died…” She apparently said this to illustrate that since the other religions don’t venerate a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead, they don’t offer a way to conquer death, and so are inferior to Christianity, which does tell of a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead and therefore does offer a way to conquer death. I found this remark to be very telling, since it showed how people judge others’ viewpoints – through the standards woven into their own views. Of course, EVERYBODY – not just religious believers – does this. I judge other belief systems according to standards woven into the Esaian religion (the pro-life, animal rights, anti-God, anti-state religion of Isaiah Sage). But the above example demands my attention.
The standard that my Sunday School teacher’s wife uses to judge religions was one which is woven into and quite unique to Christianity – the historical Messiah. This is not the Mythical Messiah that you find in mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the birth, death, and resurrection of a God-made-man happened in a mythical world which is understood to have no historical parallel with our own and which functions as an allegory for some greater spiritual truth. It is not the Annual Messiah that you find in Earth-centered religions and spiritualities where God-died-and-reborn is little more than a sacralized expression of the sanctity of material existence and a celebration of the Earth’s cycles. This is the sincere belief in a man who actually existed, who really was born on earth on a particular date, who died on a particular date, and who literally rose again three days later. This is the sincere belief in a man whose life you are supposed to be able to plot out on both a map and a calendar. This is the type of Messiah you know can conquer death for you because he actually did conquer his own death when he rose from the grave some time in the spring of A.D. 30-something. Few other religions revolve around the life, death and resurrection of a messiah who existed in linear, human history. And so, naturally, very few religions besides Christianity would meet the standards that Christianity lays down.
Despite and because of this uniqueness, I should give props to Christianity. It assures the believer by pointing to what it identifies as an actual, historical instance of death loosing its sting. It is also the only religion that has managed to be taken seriously while doing it.
_______________________________________________
I’m supposed to be answering questions in the workbook for Sunday School, and I couldn’t help but think of the way this bunch of believers (and religious believers in general) think about religion. A couple weeks ago we were going through Biblical evidence for Christ’s resurrection (if the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of a perfect God, then all the evidence that we need is in the Bible itself – that is, all evidence within the Bible is sufficient proof) and towards the end the teacher’s wife added “And none of the other religions can claim this. Mohammed died. They admit it. Buddha died. All the founders of all the other religions died…” She apparently said this to illustrate that since the other religions don’t venerate a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead, they don’t offer a way to conquer death, and so are inferior to Christianity, which does tell of a historic Messianic figure who rose from the dead and therefore does offer a way to conquer death. I found this remark to be very telling, since it showed how people judge others’ viewpoints – through the standards woven into their own views. Of course, EVERYBODY – not just religious believers – does this. I judge other belief systems according to standards woven into the Esaian religion (the pro-life, animal rights, anti-God, anti-state religion of Isaiah Sage). But the above example demands my attention.
The standard that my Sunday School teacher’s wife uses to judge religions was one which is woven into and quite unique to Christianity – the historical Messiah. This is not the Mythical Messiah that you find in mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the birth, death, and resurrection of a God-made-man happened in a mythical world which is understood to have no historical parallel with our own and which functions as an allegory for some greater spiritual truth. It is not the Annual Messiah that you find in Earth-centered religions and spiritualities where God-died-and-reborn is little more than a sacralized expression of the sanctity of material existence and a celebration of the Earth’s cycles. This is the sincere belief in a man who actually existed, who really was born on earth on a particular date, who died on a particular date, and who literally rose again three days later. This is the sincere belief in a man whose life you are supposed to be able to plot out on both a map and a calendar. This is the type of Messiah you know can conquer death for you because he actually did conquer his own death when he rose from the grave some time in the spring of A.D. 30-something. Few other religions revolve around the life, death and resurrection of a messiah who existed in linear, human history. And so, naturally, very few religions besides Christianity would meet the standards that Christianity lays down.
Despite and because of this uniqueness, I should give props to Christianity. It assures the believer by pointing to what it identifies as an actual, historical instance of death loosing its sting. It is also the only religion that has managed to be taken seriously while doing it.
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About Me
- Isaiah
- I am a part-time philosopher and a former immigration paralegal with a BA in philosophy and a paralegal certificate from UC San Diego.