Now Gangadean does a bit of both (or tries to at least). He does metaethics in much of this chapter, in particular, at the beginning as well as first-order ethics throughout. My last two posts took issue with many of these meta-ethical claims. Claims like, "choice assumes value" for instance. That seems like a metaethical posit. We'll continue on this front.
On pg. 118, Gangadean again makes a bunch of assertions (sans arguments). For instance, after speaking about the good being that which is of highest value (helping himself to the presupposition that there is such a thing), he writes.
And if the good is of the greatest value, and most to be desired, we would not want to come short of what truly is good and have in its place something which merely appeared to be good...We would desire and need rational justification, not mere prima facie rationalization. And in the face of conflicting views and consequent challenges to justify our actions and the moral claim made on others in the name of the good we must be able to justify any knowledge claim concerning the good. For all these reasons ethics must be concerned with giving rational justification for an answer to the question "What is the good?" For rational justification assures that we have knowledge (118).Now I just don't see how this passage suffices to prove that we need rational justification to do ethics. To be clear, I think that ethics as a field of inquiry does require (in a very loose sense of the word) that we are able to argue our points of view. However, this is tempered by the fact that our moral views ultimately bottom out at intuitions or core judgments we have that particular things are good, bad, right and wrong. Even the theist has got to admit that there is no argument for why a person should live according to God's design plan. At some point, the answer is going to be, "just because." Why is murder bad? Because humans have intrinsic dignity. Why is it bad to kill someone with intrinsic dignity? Because to have intrinsic dignity means to bear the image of God? But why is it bad to kill someone bearing the image of God? It just is.
But notice Gangadean has committed himself to much more than that, here. He thinks that any knowledge claim concerning the good must be rationally justifiable. And given his bizarre view concerning what it takes to have knowledge, it would seem that rational justification for a claim amounts to giving an impervious proof for it. And now if this is his claim, that he can prove beyond all doubt every moral claim he is making against the skeptic (or challenger), then this is an incredible standard that he has just set himself up against. So it will suffice our purposes to show where he fails on this front. And I guess my first point is that he's actually failed to establish that such a standard is required for the rest of us and our moral claims. He hasn't done anything like prove that anybody that partakes in ethical inquiry must prove beyond all doubt any of their ethical claims against objections. Nor has he proven that ethics in general must necessarily concern rational justification.
In section two (starting on pg 118) Gangadean asserts "There are certain metaphysical, personal, and epistemological conditions which are necessary in order to make rational justification for ethics possible." And he will go on to try and motivate each of these in turn.
1) Gangadean claims that "a necessary condition therefore for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal." Does he have an argument for conclusion? We want premises which deductively entail (not just suggest or make likely) this claim. Here's the best I can make of his meandering discussion.
a) There must be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute.
b) This absolute must be eternal and only some is eternal.
c) According to materialism (all is matter) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
d) According to spiritual monism (all is spirit), the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
e) According to dualism (matter and spirit are co-eternal) the distinction between good and evil cannot be rationally justified.
f) Hence, only the view that some (spirit) is eternal (i.e., Theism) can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil.
g) Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal.
This is a bad argument. It oversimplifies a great deal of material. And he really needs to do more about justifying each of these premises (at least if we are holding him to his own professed standards), not the least of which is the first premise a).
It would be really nice if he would first say more about what he means by 'metaphysical absolute.' I I think by it he simply means the God of theism. But I'm not always sure. This is another one of Gangadean's loaded terms which he simply fails to get precise on. And one should be very careful when dealing with Gangadean in this respect. Don't let him get away with failing to get clearer on his technical terms. He owes you that much since he claims that meaning is more basic than truth (and he certainly wants you to say that his claims are true).
More importantly though, why should anybody accept a)? Why must there be a metaphysical absolute in contrast to what is not absolute for there to be a means to rationally justifying the distinction between good and evil? Can he rationally justify his claim that there must be a metaphysical absolute if we are going to be in the business of rationally justifying between good and evil? The thing is, there are people that don't believe in God that also believe in objective moral values. And I'm not sure how the theist can prove that this person is wrong. At the end of the day, the theist has a deep conviction or intuition that the important sense of objective moral value is the one that requires a objective moral law giver (and I don't necessarily mean the kind of law giver according to divine command theory). I think this is an entirely legit intuition--I tend to have it, too. But it's nothing more than that. I know not what to say to someone that thinks there's a perfectly intelligible sense of objective moral value that does not require a transcendental moral law giver. I can pound the table against them. I can shake my head in puzzlement at them. Or better, I can bring up considerations that perhaps tell against their position to some extent. But I certainly can't prove them wrong (just as they can't prove my convictions wrong). There's no such argument that assumes only premises that they would fully accept. But this is exactly what Gangadean needs to do if he's going to claim a). Prove them wrong. And it's plain to see that he hasn't done anything like this in his book.
Also, I want to flag that Gangadean hasn't even told us what he means by 'good' and 'evil'. This will be important because he'll later smuggle in Aristotelian/Thomistic notions of good and evil as if they are just indubitably true. Good for humans for instance, is to be rational according to Gangadean. But he hasn't actually got deductively sound arguments for these proposals.
What about premise c)? Is it indubitably true that on the view that all is matter, that there is no rational justification for distinguishing between good and evil? How does he support such a view? Well, he says that according to material monism, everything is natural (war, famine, death, birth, etc). And sadly that's it. In an effort to be charitable I'll take some liberties to elaborate. The idea seems to be that since on materialism everything (i.e., the totality of reality) is explained in terms of bits of matter there's no way to account for moral properties. This clump of matter in a particular part of space interacting with another clump of matter that we happen to call "harming one's neighbor" can't possibly have the property of being objectively immoral. But this isn't a proof. Gangadean's discussion is as oversimplified as it is anemic.
Here's the problem. Not all materialists are reductivists. Sure a hardcore reductivist that is also a materialist is going to say that there is nothing at all, but merely bits of matter in space time. That's all there is in reality. But there are plenty of materialists that disagree with such reductivism. In fact, there are many materialist philosophers who believe that predicates like 'good' and 'evil' or 'right' and 'wrong' can be used to say true things. Goodness and badness emerge out of the physical stuff in ways that we can't understand. Just as mental properties emerge out of physical stuff in ways we can't account for. Now it doesn't matter whether or not you find such views compelling or without problems. The point is, Gangadean isn't in a position to definitively prove these positions wrong or incoherent. But that's precisely what he needs. Presumably he's after knowledge and knowledge of p according to him, requires showing that not-p is impossible. That is, if he claims to know that materialism of the sort we are considering is false (because his own view that rational justification in ethics requires the existence of God) he needs to show how it is impossible for rational justification in ethics to occur on a non-reductive materialist picture. He might shift the burden of proof--that is, to ask the nonreductivist for a proof that moral properties can emerge out of physical stuff. But that should not be confused with Gangadaean actually proving that such a thesis is incoherent. I can't supply for you a proof for the claim that the earth is spherical. I just don't have the means. But that doesn't prove that the earth is non-spherical! Alternatively, Gangadean might insist that material stuff only has physical properties (location, velocity, mass) and so by definition can't have emergent properties that are in some way beyond physical. But it's hard to see that as anything more than begging the question against the non-reductive physicalist. It's like saying, "look non-reductive materialism is by definition incoherent, therefore it is incoherent." So Gangadean has much more work to do if he's going to convince the skeptic of c). And I suspect, on his own standards, Gangadean doesn't even know c) to be true. So he really shouldn't be using it to prove anything else.
These considerations alone are enough to block the argument from establishing premise f) ("Hence, only the view that some is eternal, can rationally justify the distinction between good and evil"). Which means the conclusion, "Therefore, a necessary condition for rationally distinguishing good and evil is the metaphysical condition that only some is eternal" also fails to follow from the premises. That is to say, insofar as a) and c) are not proven beyond all doubt (i.e., according to Gangadean's own standards) the argument is not sound and thus cannot lead us to knowledge of its conclusion.
Notice I've not even criticized his discussions of spiritual monism and dualism (premises d) and e) ). I didn't need to in order to show that his argument in this section, falters.
No comments:
Post a Comment