Mackie’s Argument From Queerness – A Double-Edged Sword

What are objective moral values?  If moral values are objective there should be some way that we can come to agreement on what kinds of things that they are.  Are they sui generis, non-natural properties with which we can somehow get into contact?  If so, do such things exist?  Alternatively, are objective moral values to be explained in terms of the natural, physical world rather than something non-natural, and if so, how do we explain their strange qualities?

In this paper I will examine J. L. Mackie’s argument from queerness, which is an argument against the existence of objective moral values.   I will agree with Mackie that objective moral values as Mackie describes them, if they exist, are quite strange and unlike other properties in the universe.  The peculiar qualities of objective moral values present a strange problem.  If they are as Mackie terms them, ‘queer properties’, one’s approach to them turns on one’s acceptance of naturalism.  That is to say, that if one embraces naturalism one will reject the existence of objective moral values, whereas one who embraces objective moral values will reject naturalism.  So my conclusion will be that the argument from queerness is on suspect ground because it is dependent on an assumption of naturalism, but if objective moral values exist, this assumption is ungrounded. 

Along the way, I will also look at attempts to argue that objective moral values are not queer properties but can be explained in terms of natural properties.  In particular, I will examine David Brink’s response to Mackie’s argument from queerness, but conclude that it does not successfully avoid Mackie’s argument.

Kant's First Antinomy - Can We Know If the Universe is Finite or Infinite?

            Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a towering and original work in the philosophical cannon.  Kant’s transcendental idealism is designed to remove skeptical doubts about empirical science that Hume had raised by asserting that space and time are conditions of experiences that are internal to each of us.  However, Kant cautions that because space and time are internal intuitions that condition our experience we can never know things in themselves or noumena but only things as they appear to us or phenomena.  If we forget this, Kant warns that we will end up in endless philosophical muddles.  Central to showing the necessity of transcendental idealism are the antinomies of pure reason, which show that when we try to go beyond the conditioned, that is experience within the bounds of space and time, we come to intractably contradictory positions such as the universe in finite in time and space and the universe is infinite in time and space.  Kant wants to use the antinomies to motivate us to accept transcendental idealism, because if we assume a transcendentally realistic view of and think we can reach the things in themselves, we end up in the intellectual mire of the antinomies.

A Mind Divided Against Itself – Cartesian Soul Theory and Brain Splitting?

Jeff McMahan in his book The Ethics of Killing – Problems at the Margins of Life, examines several accounts of personal identity – what we really are. Among those examined is the theory that we are souls.  McMahan finds several problems with soul theory, both hylomorphic soul theory and Cartesian soul theory.  

This paper, however, is solely concerned with his treatment of Cartesian soul theory, which will be referred to as soul theory for the remainder of this paper.  I will attempt to show why McMahan’s objections to soul theory do not hit the mark.  First, I will examine whether his contention that studies showing divided consciousness in patients whose corpus callosum has been surgically split, spells the end for Cartesian dualism.  Second, I will show that McMahan is somewhat less convinced that such patients have divided consciousness when this example becomes an issue for his theory of personal identity.  Finally, I will review his thought experiment concerning the splitting of one’s cerebral hemisphere into two parts and whether the insertion of these hemispheres into two different bodies can be reconciled with soul theory.

Click on this link to read the full  a paper.

Why Be Good?

In my last blog, I talked about drivers who ignore the one-way sign posted at the end of the street on which I live.  A frequent tactic of those who live on the street to discourage this flouting of the rules is to shout “WRONG WAY”, at cars failing to adhere to these rules.  I suppose this will alert someone who was not aware they were driving in the wrong direction to their misdeed, but mostly it will make them aware that people are watching.

If we see morality as rule following is there a danger that we only follow the rules when someone is watching, or when someone can catch us.

Plato asked what we would do if we could do what we liked without anyone finding out?  In The Republic, he gave the example of a magic ring that made the wearer invisible. (1)  An ancestor of Gyges of Lydia was said to have used this ring to kill the king and take his place on the throne, without anyone finding out what he had done.  Plato pondered whether anyone with such power that he could not be caught would do the right thing.  So we have to ask ourselves if we just follow rules because we are afraid of getting caught or if we had Gyges’s ring would be do what we want?

To take a more contemporary example, imagine, on a dark night, a car hitting a pedestrian on a deserted road and driving off.  If no one sees the incident, and assuming that the driver successfully conceals or explains away other evidence such as damage to the car, should the driver stop and help and put himself or herself in possible legal jeopardy?

Would the driver’s actions be bad even if he was not caught or otherwise found out?  I would say that whether or not he or she faced any consequences his or her actions would still be bad.  If that is true, then something is bad even if you don’t get caught. Even in the ring of Gyges the point is not that the ring makes his actions good, the problem presupposes that there is a good and a bad way to act, but rather why we should do what is good?

However, what about those who don’t get caught?

We could respond by stating that most people don’t “get away with it”.   We have police and justice systems designed to make sure that the guilty are punished.  But in a world with this much corruption and selfish ambition, can we say that no one gets away with it?  Moreover, if someone were truly successful in getting away with their crimes, we would never really know what they had done.

It seems to me that unless there are consequences for wrong actions, then there is no reason to do the right thing if one can get away with it.   Since, it is likely that there are some at least who get away with things, take a moment to reflect on unsolved crimes, it would seem to follow that there would be no reason to do what is good if one can "get away with it".

This is indeed a great problem.  We could try to solve it by better policing and a fairer judicial system, but will we ever reach perfection, or even near perfection?  That is to say, that it is likely that we will never see complete justice in this world.  Perhaps if all of our actions were watched or recorded all of the time, we might achieve such justice.  However, not too many would find that to be a palatable solution, and our experience of human nature would lead us to believe that instead of using total surveillance to achieve total justice, it would be used to perpetuate total forced submission.  Moreover, we might distrust that the judicial parts of that system would act fairly and impartially.

What we would need is a fair, impartial judge who observes everything, and carries out a just punishment, so that no one “gets away with it” in the end.  Further, this judge would need absolute power to see every crime and be able to punish all of the guilty, while at the same time be above corruption.  If such justice is to have existed throughout history and to extend into the future, this person must have endured throughout human history and must continue to do so for as long as we exist, or else this perfect and powerful person, would need to be replaced from time to time with no gap between such powerfully, perfect persons.

It is clear that if such a person does exist, he or she would be morally perfect, supremely powerful, all-knowing, be everywhere at the same time.  If you think about it, this sounds a lot like God.

(1)             Plato, Republic, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 47-49.

Reversing Forward – Is Morality Just Rule Following?

I live on a one-way street.  However, I frequently observe cars going the wrong way up the street.  But even more interestingly, some people go the wrong way up the street in reverse.  Does this make it O.K.? 

Isn’t that the human condition, we know the right thing to do, but it can be inconvenient or painful, so we try to do something else?  But we have a nagging feeling that we need to do the right thing so we try to renegotiate the rules.  If I can’t drive forward in that direction, maybe driving the forbidden direction in reverse is a little better.  Not perfect, but then we are only human – right?

If we see doing the right thing as following the rules, there is a temptation to try to modify the rules so they are easier for us to comply with.  Further, if being ethical or living a morally good life merely involves following the rules, then our motives for doing so are of no consequence.  That is to say, we don’t drive the correct way down the street because it is the right thing to do but because we are just following a rule.

Some "Thoughts on Mind & Cosmos" by Thomas Nagel

I have been a fan of Thomas Nagel since I first read his essay “What It’s like To Be a Bat”.  His lucid, common sense analysis was striking to me as an undergraduate philosophy student.  I was therefore intrigued about his latest book – Mind and Cosmos, especially since there was such a furor surrounding it.  There has been much talk, well in certain circles, about Mind and Cosmos.

In the debates between theists and non-theists, Nagel’s book has lauded by the theist side for championing their cause, and treated as a dangerous betrayal by nontheists. (1)  But I think the book is neither.  Sure the subtitle, Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, may lead you to think that he has landed firmly in the camp of theism, but I think that would be to go too far.  We have to keep in mind that just because Nagel holds neo-Darwinism to be false doesn’t mean that he believes theism is true.  Nagel makes it more than clear that he is not a theist, he just doesn’t want to base his atheism on something he considers to be false.  And that indeed is laudable. 

So what has caused all the fuss?  Nagel claims in Mind and Cosmos that the dominant naturalistic worldview, which holds that a blind process of natural selection is responsible for our existence, is fundamentally flawed.  It should also be noted that he mentions his doubts on the likelihood the ability of purely physical laws to explain the origin of self-reproducing life forms, and the likelihood of natural selection producing the life forms we see today in the available geological time. (2) However, the first sticking point for Nagel comes in his area of specialty – philosophy of mind. Essentially, he holds that the project to reduce the mind to physical properties has failed because of the intractable problem of explaining consciousness.

Religion and Violence

“Religion poisons everything. As well as a menace to civilization, it has become a threat to human survival.” – Christopher Hitchens (1)

We are often told that religion, including Christianity, is the cause of great evil in the world. That in the words of Christopher Hitchens - “religion poisons everything”. It is claimed that if religion is removed violence will be greatly diminished. In his book, God Is Not Great, the late Hitchens outlined in the second chapter entitled “Religion Kills” various conflicts and atrocities that he blamed on religion. (2)

I’m leaving aside the question of whether one can be good without God. I’m also not going to counter with the argument that atheist belief systems have been responsible for a greater share of evil and death, or enter the debate over whether communist states were atheist. I’m also going to avoid bringing up the thorny issue that if an atheist claims religion is evil they are committing themselves to a system of absolute moral standards.

Instead, let’s do a thought experiment. What if you had a magic ray gun that could remove someone’s religious beliefs instantly? Imagine further that you had a way to spread the effects of this ray gun over the entire earth, so that every person on the planet was struck, and no longer had any religious belief.

Gap

Waiting for an invitation that never came 
Cocooned in my complaints 
As events passed me by 

But was it lying step-crinkled on the carpet 
The something else 
Ignored as nothing more 

The opening of space just wide enough 
But I missed my cue 
I didn’t see how I could fit on through.

Sporting Morality

I was listening recently, as I often do, to a sports call in show.  The sport in question was football, or soccer as it is known in my current abode.  Callers were discussing professional fouls – e.g., deliberately sticking out a leg out to trip an opponent who has beaten you. A professional foul makes no legitimate attempt to win the ball.  Everyone can excuse a tackle intended to win the ball back that was either not properly executed or a tackle that fails because the other player successfully avoided it.  A professional foul contains an element of intention.

One of the presenters of the show, a former pro, complained that a particular player should have professionally fouled an opponent who went on to score.  The rationale being that a deliberate breaking of the rules was permitted if it stopped the other team scoring.  Indeed, the former pro opined that, the referee would punish the professional foul with a free kick or a yellow or red card.

For those who don’t know, a yellow card is a caution, a red card sends a player off for the remainder of the game.  Two yellow cards automatically mean a red card.

But, I was struck by a caller who said that he coached kids and who stated that he would voluntarily punish his own underage players by substituting them if they committed a professional foul.  That is, the coach would punish them beyond any punishment handed out by the referee. 

Through a Glass Darkly

For much of the past couple of years the majority of my posts at Songs of a Semi-Free Man have considered the idea that we are haunted by the sense we were meant for something more, or even that something else is going on in the background. In the words of St. Paul we see “through a glass darkly”. (1)

We grope for meaning in love, work, education, art, sport, family. We want to do great things; we want to be part of great things. It is not enough to live, mate, procreate, work and die. If this is our fate we reject it (even as we give intellectual assent to philosophical and scientific dogmas that promise such a pointless existence). Death pains most of all.

We dream of utopia but live in the shadow of the waking nightmare of Doomsday. We want to scream out – “I am and I matter.” Sometimes we even dare scream – “they matter too.”

Certain

Certain enough
To point the finger
To condemn
To hate
Certain enough to scream
With our eyes closed
We can’t hear anyone else

Lack of Peace on Earth

Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I'm sick of all of this
Hanging around
Sick of sorrow
Sick of pain
Sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth (1)

Peace on earth. No trouble with being overwhelmed with that this year. Wars, rumors of wars, fear of economic collapse. It seems that nearly everyone has something to lose this year, or fears losing something. Indeed, just the normal rush to buy presents, decorate the house, visit relatives, and look like you’re having fun, can be trying by itself.

So Christmas with its message of peace and joy rings hollow to many. Why should we expect this time of year to be more peaceful and joyful than any other day of the year? All the giving, getting, and going just doesn’t seem to get us there.

Some Thoughts on Hell

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today - John Lennon (1)

John Lennon asked us to imagine there’s no heaven. I’ve tried, but all I come up with is hell. 

Many things occur on this planet that demand judgment and punishment, but many go unpunished.  If there is no certainty of punishment, there is no reason not to play the system to get as much an advantage as you can.  That is not to say that you can get away with everything but rather that not everything will be punished.  So, if you can get away with it, go ahead.  You might respond that our moral standards will keep us in line, and while I certainly hold to the reality of objective moral standards, the problem is that if detours from these moral rules are not punished, there is no justice.

 Moreover, experience and history tells us that humanity doesn’t keep to an honor code.  We may know that certain acts are wrong but we are also plagued by the thought that some people get away with it.  If everyone else is doing it why can’t we?

Reflections on Nobel Peace Prize for the E.U.

It was announced today that the E.U. is the recipient of this years' Nobel Peace Prize.  As a European living in the U.S., I'm not sure how I can claim my share, but peace in post-war Western Europe is indeed a great achievement.  However, the European project, founded on the idea of the mutual surrender of certain powers to a supranational authority in exchange for peace, is perhaps now more in doubt than ever.  The timing might therefore feel strange, but the Nobel committee likely wishes to remind Europeans of the big picture.  I think the idea of surrendering power to a greater authority that can guarantee peace is a very wise idea.  However, how do we find an authority that all will respect?  Here are some thoughts from an earlier post:

After the Second World War, an attempt was made to bring balance to Europe by establishing a supranational authority, run by Europe’s best and brightest, that would override national and ethnic enmities that had bloodied the continent for millennia. First, France and Germany ceded control over coal and steel production to the European Coal and Steel Community. In the following decades, closer and closer union was pursued, and Brussels was populated by brilliant minds seeking the best for Europe – peace and prosperity.

But, as things stand, national differences threaten to tear the EU asunder. National interests it seems cannot be trumped by bureaucrats in Brussels, however visionary and well-intentioned. Europe is still very much a group of sovereign nation states unwilling to surrender authority to a supranational body.

So, it appears that the European project has failed to produce balance. Moreover, any human authority that tries to settle disputes between nations is likely to be accused of bias by one or more parties to the dispute, and may even become the target of wrath. So, even if we were to find a very wise and virtuous person, who held humanity’s best interests at heart, no one would follow him or her.

We need someone with unquestioned authority to settle the disputes of humanity. This is the picture we find in Isaiah Chapter Two.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob.  He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”  The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.  They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:3-5 (New International Version).

Only a supremely wise, just, and unbiased being could convince disputing nations to beat their swords into plowshares. No more wild experimentation. No sincere appeals that it will be different this time. No more claims to have learned the lessons of history, when at the darkest times it becomes painfully clear that the lesson that we always forget is that history repeats itself.

Humanity clings desperately to the hope that one day swords will be beaten into plowshares. However, it seems, that the biblically-inspired hope of perpetual peace and justice cannot be established without the biblical-described source of such peace – God’s kingdom of justice established on earth as it is in heaven.

 You can read the entire post here.

Leaving It All Behind

You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme... – U2 “Walk On” (1)

We must leave everything to those who follow.  Our greatest treasures are the following generation’s junk.  Stuff they have to clear away.  If they have attachment to something it is because it reminds them of someone who has passed.   They have no attachment to the thing itself.

If you have ever gone through the stuff of someone who has passed away, you will probably have wondered why they kept some things, and then concluded that those things must have been valuable or useful in their time. 

Similarly, if you have ever been in the market for a house, and started looking at potential properties you will have seen things that make you wonder what the previous owners were thinking.  Home renovations are never in my experience undertaken lightly, so some thinking went into that floral wallpaper or wood paneling.

But we don’t take this truth about the temporary worth of goods to heart.  We treasure our shiny, usually slimmer than yesteryear, treasures.

The recent launch of the new iPhone caused thousands to line up for days to be the first to have what in a few years will be obsolete and in thirty years – junk.  But they were willing to spend so much time for this ephemeral object, that in years to come will be perhaps found as a curiosity in an attic, similar to four-track players I found in my parent’s attic when I was a kid.  

It is exciting to have the latest first; to be an early adopter.  Some now cite this as an achievement.  And if you can keep getting the newest first, perhaps you can keep yourself satisfied.  But if you reflect, you will realize that you are paying a premium to own tomorrow’s junk first.

Injected the Wrong Way

"Because you have the cursed Jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way.” James Joyce – Ulysses. 

James Joyce’s celebrated novel Ulysses opens with a tense early morning exchange between two friends - Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan.  Dedalus is offended with Mulligan because on an earlier occasion Dedalus heard Mulligan refer to Dedalus’ mother as “beastly dead.” (1)  Mulligan pushes back criticizing Dedalus for refusing his mother’s request to pray with her at her death bed.  Mulligan, a young doctor responds:

And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own?  You saw only your mother die.  I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut them into tripes in the dissecting room.  It’s a beastly thing and nothing else.  It simply doesn’t matter.  You wouldn’t kneel down and pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you.  Why?  Because you have the cursed Jesuit strain in you, only it’s injected the wrong way.  To me it’s all a mockery and beastly.  Her cerebral lobes are not functioning…Humour her till it’s over. (2)

Mulligan doesn’t believe in God and prayer, but is fine with humoring the wishes of one who does.  Dedalus, on the other hand, can’t bring himself to pray, even at his dying mother’s request.  He won’t compromise his belief in the non-existence of God.  Mulligan’s reference to the “Jesuit strain” is a dig at Dedalus’ education by Jesuit priests at Gonzaga College (a secondary school Joyce also attended).  The implication is that even though Dedalus doesn’t believe in God, he acts in other ways like one who does – and not just any believer – a Jesuit priest – a member of an order known for their tenacious intellectual defense of theism. 

Can one actually keep their beliefs or lack thereof private as Buck Mulligan?  One of our greatest needs is for truth, to know why.  The answer to that question is so precious that we will defend it fiercely.   Mulligan represents the cynic not willing to fight for truth. However, it seems that many atheists are not willing, like Buck Mulligan, to hold their worldview privately.

For example, there is outreach to encourage others to embrace non-belief – look at the clergy project an attempt to reach out to Christian ministers who no longer believe. (3)  Community gatherings and celebration of shared worldview – witness the Reason Rally in Washington D.C. last spring. (4) And, more controversially, the suggestion of the need for atheism to create communal contemplation spaces.  Alain de Botton plans to build such a structure in London. (5) De Botton’s plan has not been welcomed by many atheists, but it could be argued that the ideas behind the London building are found in the Clergy Project and the Reason Rally. 

Another example is a lawsuit by American Atheists seeking to prohibit a cross from ground zero being displayed at the 9/11 memorial yet to be completed in New York City. (6) The arguments advanced in favor of displaying the cross are that it was a symbol of comfort to many and is a historical artifact related to 9/11.  If this is a symbol of comfort, that atheists consider to be without meaning, letting the matter lie without protect would be the Buck Mulligan approach.  Let them have their crosses if it makes them happy.  But, to kick up a storm about the 9/11 cross seems to open up atheism to Joyce’s charge that they have the religious strain just injected the wrong way.

But, is this a bad thing?  First, it shows that atheists care about finding truth, and second, that they agree there is a truth out there to be found.  Caring about the truth, and being willing to go to great lengths to defend it is only bad if we base our arguments on bad evidence and tie them together with faulty logic, or if we abandon reasonable argument and try to make others accept our arguments through force.

It is best for everyone to put their cards on the table to put forward what they believe in a respectful manner. 

I say let the truth win.  Let the best arguments win out.  Let’s approach with open minds, not afraid to confront issues where we clash but with gentleness and respect as well.  Let us also recognize that atheists and theists alike are injected with the “Jesuit strain” – the search to find and defend truth – there are worse things.

(1)            James Joyce, Ulysses, Vintage International, New York, 1990; 8.

(2)            Ibid.

(3)            See, “From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader”, N.Y. Times, Aug. 22, 2012, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/from-bible-belt-pastor-to-atheist-leader.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1 (accessed Sep. 19, 2012).

(4)            See, http://reasonrally.org/ (accessed Sep. 19, 2012).

(5)             See, “Alain de Botton reveals plans for 'temple to atheism' in heart of London”, The Guardain, Jan. 26, 2012, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/26/alain-de-botton-temple-atheism (accessed Sep. 19, 2012).

(6)            See “Atheists continue battle against World Trade Center cross at memorial”, CNN Belief Blog, Sep. 10, 2012, available at http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/atheists-continue-battle-against-world-trade-center-cross-at-memorial/ (accessed Sep. 19, 2012).

Back To School

September sneaks up on me every year - the silent assassin of the summer.  It’s true that it’s been a while since September marked the start of a new year for me personally, but now the time to buy back to school supplies for my kids, brings with it the sense of time quickening, a total lack of preparedness, and the amazement that my kids are a year older.  Living in the U.S., as I now do, I appreciate the timing of Labor Day, a quick pause before the madness of the first day of school, which in a couple of weeks will be mere mundane reality.

However, September is not wholly unwelcome as many welcome the chance to reconnect with school friends, but also to learn.

As humans we have a thirst for learning.  Which is in essence a desire to know how things work. To understand the world around us.  We may have hated homework and being stuck in the classroom but it wasn’t because we didn’t want to learn.

Of course not everyone has pleasant memories of school or learning, but I don’t think there are any of us without curiosity of how things work.  You may not be a great fan of “book learning” but there are many types of knowledge and as many ways to acquire it.  Some may be more interested in cultivating the earth or fixing cars, but all of these endeavors lead naturally to a desire to figure the how.

This pursuit of the how assumes that there is a how to be discovered.  For example, there is a way to fix a car, a way to grow plants that survive for more than a month (still a mystery to me), a way to solve a quadratic equation.

Our desire to learn more about the how of the world around us is insatiable.  Look at the Mars Rover, the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, we want to explain the how.  But that leads to a deeper question – is there a why? 

A car can be fixed in a certain manner because it was designed in a certain fashion. 

Is the same true of the how behind growing a plant?  Or the Higgs boson? The more information we learn about the how of the universe, the larger these questions will loom.  Is there a why behind the how?  A purpose to it all?

To read an insightful article about the the Higgs boson, see this article from Oxford professor John Lennox.

Thoughts From a Boat on Lake Erie

Staring at the horizon on water is very different to staring at the horizon on land.  If you are on a large body of water facing away from the shore, whatever is over the horizon is hidden.  Of course we know that the water must at some point give way to some form of land mass but it might be very different from the land at our backs - different language, terrain, temperature. 

A long car journey does not pose the same sort of mystery.  We can drive from rural to urban areas but the changes in scenery are gradual and marked out for us.  Watch out ahead.  We are provided with signs telling us the distance to our destination. On the water the horizon is mysterious.  The time of arrival is unknown, perhaps closer than we think.  The water has no marks that can be read, at least by the likes of me. Perhaps this is a perpetual journey without end.

Staring at water relaxes us.  Refreshes us.  Inspires us to create, to reconsider ourselves and our choices anew.  Water is constantly moving reminding us of renewal and change.  As Heraclitus put it we never step into the same river twice. No matter how bad a situation we find ourselves in, there is the potential to change?  On a stormy day we marvel at its natural power on a calm day we wonder at the restraint of such power.

The ancient Greeks thought of the journey from this life to the afterlife as crossing a river.  Looking at the horizon I can imagine that hidden on the other side of the flowing blue mass is a better place – a good country, connected to our present existence but separated.

We long for that shore.  The possibility of its existence makes life worth living.

The Ethical Life

Ethics is a wide topic that touches every facet of our individual lives and our society.  I want to talk about a very small slice.  The fact that ethics has, in certain cases, been boiled down to one concern – environmental ethics or how we interact with the natural world.  In particular, reducing one’s carbon footprint.

Let me explain.  The BBC recently appointed Justin Rowlett as “Ethical Man”, his task was for him, along with his family, to live ethically for one year.  Something we should all aspire to, right?  However, his ethical duties were not to help old ladies across the road, to treat others with respect, but to live in such a way so that he and his family would minimize their carbon footprint and consequently their impact on the environment.  (1)

There is a clothing line in New York City called the “The Ethical Man” that manufactures and sells clothing made with a minimal impact on the environment. (2)

I’m not claiming that thinking about how we use natural resources is not part of what we call ethics.  I’m saying that environmental ethics are a part and not the whole of living the ethical life. 

I simply have a concern that by portraying one aspect of our existence as living the ethical life, we may stunt truly ethical behavior.  We can tell people it is better to ride a bike to work than drive, but if they ride in a reckless manner so that they run an old lady over on their way, can we say they are acting ethically in a holistic sense?

Moreover, if we tell people that they can be ethical solely by bike riding and recycling that may provide some with an easy way out.  Throughout human history, we have tried to boil down the ethical life to rules that we can follow.  Jesus confronted Jewish religious leaders who claimed living the “ethical life” could be accomplished by following an increasingly elaborate system of religious rules but did not truly behave ethically.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. (3)

And

Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. (4)

He instead stated that only by changing one’s character can one truly act ethically.  He contended that it was not just our actions that determine whether or not we act ethically but our underlying thoughts and attitudes.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (5)

How to act ethically, to live the “good life”, is a problem that many have wrestled with throughout history, and one that all thinking people should carefully examine.  We should not let ourselves or others off the hook by pretending that following rules in a certain area of life, we are truly and completely ethical. 

For more on this topic please see this post – Good.

(1)  See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ethical_man/default.stm.

(2)  See http://www.theethicalman.com/.

(3)  Matthew 23:3 (New International Version).

(4)  Luke 11:46 (New International Version).

(5)  Matthew 5:21-22 (New International Version).

Intersection

Being a little late

He was a little quick

He looked in the mirror

But didn’t see anyone else

A murderous intersection

With no intent at all

The victim drove away

No liability

No responsibility