Atheism and Theism are not worldviews …

So, there’s been a debate (re)started over what it means to be an atheist, and if a specifically atheist identity can go beyond the mere lack of belief in gods. Which is what P.Z. Myers titles his latest post on the subject, where he goes after a set of Twitter comments by Russell Blackford on the subject.

Myers assembles Blackford’s tweets into a paragraph like this:

Just to be clear. My stance as a pro-feminist man does NOT follow from the fact that I am an atheist. Even if I became a philosophical deist overnight, I would maintain the same stance. Let’s not oversellMere atheism what mere atheism entails. None of which is to deny that actual religions can be used to provide false rationales for some abhorrent views.

Myers starts his reply this way:

That’s a bit of a mess, so let’s unpack it. I find interesting because my pro-feminist stance does follow from the fact that I am an atheist; perhaps we ought to recognize that there is more than one way to be an atheist, something I’ve been saying for a long time, and apparently Blackford and I are very different kinds of atheist.

Casting this as being able to be different kinds of atheist is quite revealing. The underlying argument throughout all of this has been that certain things follow from atheism, or at least from atheism for certain individuals. But if Myers is going to concede that there can be different types of atheists that can all legitimately be called atheists, then it seems that it doesn’t really follow from atheism qua atheism, but instead from your other beliefs and your worldview in general. Which would be what those who talk about “mere atheism” are trying to argue.

This becomes clearer when Myers talks about how these things follow from his atheism, as he repeats what he’s said before:

In my case, the absence of a god invalidates all truth claims by revelation and all the traditional authority of holy books. It creates an epistemic gap, which I suppose someone could fill with just about anything: whim, utility, emotional needs, dice-rolling, whatever. I have no idea how Blackford explains cause and reason, but I know how I do: by an acceptance of natural causes which can be examined empirically and by experiment…by science. I also concede that where I can’t apply science in evaluating human motives, I use empathy and the principle of equating another’s condition with my own.

My atheism entails using those methods to resolve ethical decisions, for instance. That’s my toolkit. My atheism has stripped me of the tools of dogma and authoritarianism (and good riddance).

…

But then, I don’t need any other mechanism — it seems to me that science and love of my fellow human beings is more than sufficient argument to guide the entirety of my life. And those are necessary axioms that I am compelled to accept by my atheism, even if there could exist alternate axioms that would also fill the gap left by the absence of gods.

So what he’s really saying here is this: When I become an atheist, I have to give up the worldview I had that depended on it. At that point, I need to adopt a new worldview, and thus have a new basis for my worldview. Once I have that worldview, then I can go on acting in the world according to that worldview. So, becoming an atheist has forced me to change my worldview, and this is the worldview I ended up with. Thus, my worldview follows from my atheism.

In a sense, this is correct, in that if someone had a worldview that relied on a God existing and then came to believe that no gods exist, then one would have to — to be rational — abandon that worldview and build a new one. This, of course, would only happen for people who started with a religious worldview and then became atheists, as people who never had a religious worldview would have developed a worldview that didn’t depend on a belief in God at all — even if they did believe in God.

However, where it goes wrong is that it implies that the worldview that Myers adopts is, in fact, derived from atheism. It isn’t. Myers could have built his new worldview on dogmatism and authoritarianism (and some might accuse him of having done just that) and still claimed to derive it from atheism in just the same way as he claims to have derived his undogmatic and anti-authoritarian from atheism. His view, therefore, is consistent with atheism, but not derived from it. In fact, it would probably be more reasonable to say that his atheism likely followed from those values, rather than the converse. Note that Myers concedes here that this is the case and that there are other axioms he could use to fill that gap, but these are the ones he chose. Saying that he is compelled by his atheism is just false; interpreting him as charitably as possible, it sounds like it is more empathy and naturalism that does that, not atheism.

And the reason for this is clear: atheism and theism are, at their heart, beliefs (or lack of beliefs) about a specific proposition: There exists a god. They aren’t worldviews in and of themselves, and as such can’t be used to replace a worldview. If you say that you’re an atheist, no one can say anything else about you other than that you lack a belief in gods; if you say that you’re a theist, all someone can say is that you believe in one or more gods. They can’t say anything about your other views. Does it mean that you’re a feminist, or a misogynist, or a liberal, or a conservative, or a moral relativist or a deontologist or a consequentiast or someone who is interested in socal justice or anything else? No. Not at all. Those follow from your worldview, and atheism and theism are not worldviews. If you are an atheist, you don’t even have to be a naturalist, as you can accept that some supernatural things exist … just not gods.

The issue, then, with the people like Myers who are advocating for atheism to be something more is that they want to turn atheism into a worldview. But if you do that, then you’re going to have to insist that people who call themselves atheist accept certain things, things beyond just lacking a belief in gods. And this worries those who don’t consider atheism to be a worldview. It’s one thing when the things that people are saying are part of atheism are just obvious facts, but if you hold a more radical view — Myers, for example, is on the far end of the liberal scale, it seems to me — then you would be saying that things follow from atheism that other atheists disagree with. If Myers wants to represent atheism a certain way, then it would mean that he would represent atheism as being something that a lot of atheists don’t accept, not merely as part of atheism but even as part of their worldview. Now, Myers can claim that he is just speaking for himself … but then he has no reason to object to the “merely atheists” who say that atheism just is that. Myers can easily claim that he has an atheistic worldview, where his lack of belief in gods plays a much stronger role in justifying and defining his worldview than it might in others while still accepting that atheism itself is indeed just that “mere lack of belief”.

That he seems resistant to doing that seems like he’s after the former more than the latter. And that’s precisely what the “mere atheists” don’t want to happen.

A Zero Sum Game of Rights?

Stephanie Zvan over at Almost Diamonds has just reposted a post about viability and maternal rights, that she’s trying to use against a claim about pain and maternal rights. The underlying argument is that some people are saying that the rights of the foetus don’t start at birth, but start instead at some point before it, and they are using viability or when it can experience pain as that hallmark. Zvan doesn’t want to argue against assigning it there at this point, but wants to argue over rights themselves, mostly, it seems, by using two graphs and then assigning positions based on that. I won’t reproduce the graphs here, but let’s look at her conclusion:

It is the argument that once the fetus has rights, the pregnant person no longer does. They no longer have any say in how their body is used. They no longer have any right to say that pregnancy is not in their interests–medical, emotional, social, or financial. They have no rights at all in the matter.

That’s what a law banning third-trimester abortions does. It assigns 100% of the rights to the fetus, not 50%.

I went back and looked to see where she argues that the political position entails this, as opposed to the viaiblity argument itself which she says — rightly, in my opinion — that at that point both the mother and the foetus have rights. I can’t find an actual argument, so it looks like it’s an argument through producing a graph of your opinion, which is not a good argument. Because the key is that if the mother and the foetus have rights, then we have to figure out how to balance those rights against each other, which Zvan concedes and claims to solve:

So how do we protect the rights that a fetus does have in these situations? That’s a good question, but frankly, it’s a medical question. The fetus may be theoretically independent of the pregnant person, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually independent. It’s still inside the womb, and every means of getting it out carries risks to both parties. What risks vary greatly from pregnancy to pregnancy.

Consider also that the reason many people stop wanting to be pregnant at this point is that the fetus is less than healthy, which may translate into less than viable. Balancing rights and risks of both parties simply isn’t something that can be done in the general case. If we are truly interested in protecting everyone’s rights, this stays a private, medical matter informed by the conscience and situation of the pregnant person making the decision.

Well, so much for all of those laws and court decisions, then, that do indeed try to balance rights and risks of both parties in all the relevant situations, taking into accoung all of the relevant facts, starting from the general principles and working our way down to the specifics. Also note that in cases where rights clash, we generally don’t leave the protection of the rights of one person in the hands of the person whose rights they’re clashing with. As I’ve said before, we generally dont let someone who has a vested interest in someone dying decide if that person should live or die, at least not without a lot of oversight … far more than just a doctor talking to them about it.

The problem here is that while she concedes that at this point there would be rights to balance, she never in fact tries to suss out what the rights are or how to deal with the conflict. We deal with conflicts of rights all of the time, as I just pointed out. It’s odd that in this case she wants to throw her hands up in the air and ignore the issue … which, in fact, ends up treating the situation as if the maternal rights are all that matters.

So, what are the rights involved? Well, on the side of the foetus we clearly have the right to life. Now, the right to life is not a right to be alive, really, but more a right to not have your life taken away from you, or rather for you to not be deprived of life. So no one is obligated to provide you the means to keep you alive, but they can’t directly take your life from you or unreasonably take the means for you to preserve your life away from you. That last part involves a lot of wrangling, but let’s just go with it for now. At any rate, we can see that this is a pretty important right.

Now, the maternal rights involved here are different. The one that is most obviously involved — because it’s the name of the movement — is the right to choice, to be able to choose how to life one’s life as one sees fit. Unfortunately, it seems completely obvious that if the right to life and the right to choose clash, then the right to choose gives way. You don’t get to cite choice very often as a reason to kill someone, although you can use it as a reason to not provide resources to someone so that they can live, but as stated that doesn’t fall under the right to life. So the fallback position is to appeal to the right to bodily autonomy, and control over one’s body. This is a lot stronger position, but it also isn’t obvious that, in general, it would trump someone else’s right to life. The examples given that challenge this — like the “violinist” case — tend to fall into categories where we start talking about someone else using your resources to stay alive, which isn’t covered, but are also controversial precisely because in those cases a direct action is required to stop them from doing that, which does clash with the right to life. Depending on which way you view it, you can come to different conclusions.

Okay, so let’s look at some specific cases, then. Imagine that you are past the point of viability or whatever, and the mother goes to the doctor of a perfectly healthy foetus that isn’t causing her any undue risk — beyond the normal risks of pregnancy — and says that she wants to get an abortion because a child would be bad for her career, or she isn’t ready to raise a child, or they’re too poor to raise a child. These seem to be cases where the primary concern is choice and not integrity, and it would seem that the right to life should trump those cases. Sure, there is a negative impact on her quality of life, but you don’t get to take or ask for a direct taking of someone’s life because it impacts your quality of life.

So the next cases are the major health problems from an abnormal pregnancy. If she is quite likely to die if the abortion is not performed, then what we have is a clash over rights of life: the foetus wuld be killed if the abortion proceeds, but if you don’t allow it you would be depriving the mother of the means to preserve her own life. This is the toughest call in all of the cases, and it is easy to see why, as it relies on balancing the exact same right against itself. Then you have the cases where the foetus has a condition where it likely will not survive the pregnancy or, if it does, will have a greatly decreased quality of life. This is also controversial, but in general on these points we leave these decisions up to the parents or guardians, so then that would be a decision between both parents and the doctor. Then there are cases where there is a great risk to her health but not necessarily to her life. This is the only case where right to bodily autonomy is considered, and we should be able to see the issues here. If it is a great risk — paralyzation would be one prime example — then we would, I think, be intuitively sympathetic to allowing the abortion, but if it was something like not being able to have children again we intuitively would feel less sympathetic. So a tough case, and one that requires much more thought.

But what’s interesting here is that in only one of the cases does it seem that the right to bodily autonomy is involved. When we look at the reasons, we can see that for some of them it seems to be choice that’s in play, not bodily autonomy, or that it is the right to life that is in play, not bodily autonomy. Only in one very special case is bodily autonomy the driving force, and that’s also one that’s heavily debatable. So, then, by parsing out the specific cases and looking at the general rights they address, we seem to be able to come up with some fairly good guidelines on how to balance the rights of both parties without having to leave it up to the mother, informed by the doctor. Which is what Zvan says we can’t do. Funny, that.

Zvan treats the political argument as if it creates a zero sum game of rights, but she gives no reason for thinking that and, as we’ve seen here, treating as a case where both parties have all their rights leads to similar considerations as you’d find in the pro-life arguments. So it’s not a zero sum game at all, and so all Zvan does is distort the situation so that she can accuse her opponents of trying to take away the rights of women. As this post shows, that isn’t what’s happening when one actually works out what balancing rights should mean in the specific cases.

Equal time, and criticism, for both sides …

So, over at Lousy Canuck Jason Thibeault has posted a link to a radio show that he thinks is aiming at strawfeminism. I decided to listen to it, because long experience has taught me that I really can’t trust anyone who simply says “This is stupid”, and I can report that Thibeault is completely wrong in this assessment: they’d have to actually be making arguments before you could claim they’re taking apart strawpersons.

They have two big “arguments”:

1) There are two types of feminists: attractive ones and not-so-attractive ones. The attractive ones use their attractiveness to their advantage and gets jobs and families and good lives, while the not-so-attractive ones get jobs in academics and government and are very angry about their lack of attractiveness.

2) Feminists and women are acting only in their own interests, and so don’t care any more about family or anyone else.

Now, on the first claim, this is actually provably untrue, because I personally know — dealing with academics a fair bit and feminists — that there are a number of quite attractive women who are feminists of the sort that they seem to deride as falling into the unattractive category in terms of behaviour, and an number of less attractive women who use their skills and marketing to get jobs in industry. I know that feminists here will be exasperated that I am opposing their argument by focusing on the attractiveness of the women, but my reply is that when their entire argument and distinction is based on judging the attractiveness of the women involved the easiest way to tear them apart is, in fact, to point out the factual error instead of trying to get into a debate over whether they should be judging on attractiveness or not, especially since logically if I did try that they could easily point out that we should do that in this case because it is the differentiating factor. Thus, I point out that it ain’t, and refute their point, instead of dancing around it in an attempt to shift the focus to a topic more, uh, correct.

Going further, they might have been able to draw a distinction between women who are willing to use their attractiveness and sexuality as a selling point in order to get ahead in life and women who find that to be sexist and objectifying and so detrimental to women as a whole. This would actually be a reasonable debate in feminism, although it’s clear that a number of women who might be associated with that attitude due to their results would deny actually doing that or thinking it acceptable, so it’s a bit shaky. But at least it would have been a point that isn’t just clearly factually wrong; the whole debate over women and sexuality seems to relate to attitudes kinda like this. So there’d be some intelligence in making a point like this. Guess what they didn’t do?

On the second claim, it’s probably true … but not limited to feminism. We are a far more individualistic society than we used to be and a far more selfish one, or at least it seems that way to me. I’m not even going to say that I’m immune, given that I can be fairly selfish far too much of the time. So that women are being encouraged to put their own interests first and reject the old-fashioned ideas of sacrifice and concern for others is a sign of the overall society, not of feminism, and so we shouldn’t expect feminism to be immune from that. Thus, here, they relate something that is at least arguably true … but miss that it’s a societal trait, not a feminist trait.

Thus I can quote one voice in Wizardry 8 in reference to this clip: “It is void of content.”

Atheist Virtues …

Alain de Botton is an atheist who wants to maintain the more, well, I guess “spiritual” is a decent word for it, attributes of religion and how they build a community in a form that is atheistic and so doesn’t rely on a belief in any god at all. Most of the New Atheists have basically mocked him for this. His most recent move is to define a set of virtues for the modern — and presumably atheist — era. Both Stephanie Zvan and Russell Blackford have commented on them.

What comes out in both posts and annoys me is a worry that these things aren’t virtues because there are cases where you shouldn’t engage in them. Zvan, for example, makes this the heart of her criticism of “Resilience”:

Look, resilience has distinct advantages in a lot of situations. Being broken by the small things isn’t anything anyone looks for. Being stopped by every trifle doesn’t get you very far. But sometimes quitting really is the best solution to a problem. Do you want to keep beating your head against an abusive “friendship” trying to get it to change? Is that a virtue?

There are times when treating resilience as a virtue is dangerous. There are times when it’s too much. Then, calling it a virtue is an active harm.

Blackford also hints at this as an issue, but as you might expect has read Aristotle and so grasps the way around the problem:

In some cases, I think that impatience, of a kind, might be a virtue – if it means, for example, impatience with bullshit. Aristotle would probably say that the trick is actually to be patient at the right time, with the right people, for the right reasons, and so on (and similarly to be impatient at the right time, etc.).

What annoys me is that this is somehow raised as an objection against de Botton, who never actually implies that considering these things as virtues means considering them as virtues even when the reason they are a virtue isn’t in play in a situation. Something like Aristotle’s “moderation” idea should always be in play when considering why a virtue is a virtue, because at the very least virtue should never, ever require you to act like an idiot in order to act virtuously. Two of the original Virtue Theories — Aristotle and the Stoics — both insisted that that wasn’t the case: Aristotle with his idea that the moderate is the virtue, and the Stoics with their idea that virtue was defined by doing what is the rational thing to do. It’s become a throwaway, strawman point to talk about the virtuous having to act on that virtue even when it doesn’t make sense to do so, but Virtue Theories don’t rquire people to become “Lawful Stupid”, following the letter of a definition of a virtue while ignoring the reasons that thing is called a virtue in the first place. Resilience, for example, is defined by de Botton as this:

Keeping going even when things are looking dark; accepting that reversals are normal; remembering that human nature is, in the end, tough. Not frightening others with your fears.

But where does this imply that you keep going even when there is no hope of being successful? Where does this imply that you don’t try to avoid or reverse reversals? Where does this imply that you don’t recognize when things are too tough? Where does this imply that you don’t frighten others when they need to be frightened? Again, there is no reason to assume that de Botton’s virtues imply that you should be an idiot in service to virtue, and so it is indicative that one of the first criticisms against anyone who advances virtues is “Well, in this case you shouldn’t act what you call ‘virtuously’ because it won’t give you what you think the virtue will give you.” The reply to that is “Duh! Virtues are defined in relation to a purpose, and if in a case you wouldn’t fulfill the purpose then, well, acting that way isn’t a virtue.”

Zvan relates Virtue to Sin:

Elevating resilience to the level of a virtue does more than just change it from a tool into a fetish. It also casts lapses in resilience as lapses in virtue–sins. This does what religion all too often does, forces people to choose between what is good for them in any one situation and avoiding sin/maintaining virtue.

Which is precisely why this annoys me, because both Virtue and Sin relate to an overall principle or idea of what is good for people. Thus, neither can indeed actually clash with what is good for a person because if the action would lead to what is considered the overall good for a person, then it is virtuous/not sinful even if a strict definition of the virtues or sins might suggest that, and if it would not lead to that overall good for the person then it is not virtuous/is a sin no matter how closely it might resemble one of those virtues or not be considered a sin by strict definition. So what we see here is precisely the wrong sort of objection to a Virtue or Sin Theory, where she attacks it based on an idea of “good” that isn’t the one being used. In this case, it seems — especially with the link to religious sin — that she’s using the idea of personal pleasure/pain as her good, and saying that in some cases you might end up more miserable if you try to be Resilient, so that forces you away from doing what is really good for you. Now, it is possible that de Botton wants a sort of “happiness” justification for his virtues, but then being Resilient when it won’t bring happiness, even long term, wouldn’t be a virtue for him. For religions and for the Stoics, being “happy” isn’t what is good for people, and so simply clashing with happiness is not in any way making it so that someone is choosing what is not good for them. In short, avoiding sin/maintaining virtue always is what is good for a person in all situations … it’s just what is thought of as “good for a person” varies.

Zvan then moves on to talk about the capacity to be Resilient:

That isn’t merely a situational problem either. Resilience has been a hot topic in psychology for at least a couple of decades. We know that resilience can be a powerful thing, so we’ve studied how people can have more of it. The factors that increase resilience are largely beyond anyone’s control. How you are raised, how much trauma you’ve experienced when you encounter a bad situation, how well others support you–these aren’t choices that people make.

Under those circumstances, raising resilience to the level of a virtue as de Botton does is cruelty. We’ve had enough of religions setting arbitrary standards that people can’t meet just by trying, haven’t we?

And the problem here is that it seems to be based on a notion that if you are to be expected to meet the demands of virtue or religion, you should be able to do so by simply trying really hard at it in specific situations. It should never be the case that some people will just naturally have more ability to do it, and so that while it just comes easy to some people others have to struggle with it, and even work to develop it. There is, of course, the reasonable expectation that if we are going to demand virtue from someone they have to be reasonably able to actually do it, but the cases where that might be an issue are cases like the kleptomaniac, not the cases she cites. All of the cases she described are, in fact, controllable at least with respect to whether or not one faces them with Resilience … even if one needs therapy or training in order to get to that point. While one cannot control how one was raised, one can train out the things they were taught or adopted from their upbringing and train in new behaviours and beliefs. One can try to train out or train down the reaction one has had to trauma. One can either build a supportive network or train themselves to rely less on the support of others. While one can say that these aren’t really choices that people make, how one reacts to them and what one does in response to them are, and that is what people are responsible for. No one ever promised that acting virtuously is or ought to be easy, and to become a virtuous person may indeed require a lot of work, and work outside of merely reacting to the situations that you are put in. You may well have to prepare a lot to be Resilient in situations where others are just naturally Resilient. I don’t see why having to put in that strong effort would be unreasonable; you don’t get anything good without expecting to have to work at it.

Zvan also goes after, surprise, surprise, “Politeness”:

Politeness is a set of behaviors that serve a purpose. de Botton is close on that purpose, though I think he’s going a bit grand with “civilization”. Few rules of politeness are that universal. Still, politeness is that set of behaviors that allow a society to function without constantly haggling about how it should be done. It’s a codified nonverbal and verbal language that tells you where you stand in a transaction.

…

Sometimes we need to haggle over how things are done in a particular society. Societies contain injustices. They can head in a direction that is doomed to failure or even catastrophe. Sometimes there is simply a better way. Sometimes there is virtue in the haggling.

We can’t do that, however, when politeness–separate from the specifics of its function–becomes a virtue. Then the slowing down, even if we gain insights we wouldn’t moving at full speed, becomes the sin. Agitation becomes the sin. Negotiation on how we are treated becomes the sin.

I disagree with this definition of “Politeness”. I would argue that Politeness is indeed a set of social rules and behaviours that are intended to demonstrate reasonable respect. You thus can and should haggling and negotiate Politely. Politeness doesn’t stop you from getting what you want or need, or talking about injustice or trying to head off disaster, but is instead basically a reminder that in your words and actions you always have to treat the other people not merely as means to your end, but as ends in themselves. Or, basically, as people with their own beliefs and desires, and their own goals. It’s always seemed an odd assertion to me that the “anti-accommodationists” have always seen the calls for Politeness as calls to stop disagreeing, as opposed to as calls to treat their opponents as reasonable people who are expressing the beliefs they actually hold. The insistence on calling “lying” saying something that you think is false that they clearly think is true is clearly, to me, Impolite, as is ignoring what a person says their beliefs are and translating them based on what others believe into something you think fits better, because both stop treating the other person as a person deserving of reasonable respect and intellectual charity and turns them into a punching bag for your own beliefs.

So, my challenge on this one is this: do you not think that you can negotiate or disagree Politely? If you can’t, why not? I’ve seen many people who disagree with me Politely on a number of issues, even really important ones, so why can’t you even achieve a modicum of Politeness?

Zvan continues:

This simple list also doesn’t even begin to address the virtues inherent in the “negative” emotions. There are none without uses. Fear is critical in good decision-making, even if it shouldn’t be allowed to rule us. Anger has accomplished much that is good. Even jealously tells us something about our own needs and desires that we can put to good use. Where do we give these useful negatives their due if we raise one set of traits and tools above the others?

Virtues aren’t mere tools, no matter how much Zvan wants to cast it that way. That emotions can be useful doesn’t make them virtuous because it doesn’t make them inherently good, meaning that they aim at the ultimate good for people. A Virtue Theory can give them their due without elevating them to Virtues by evaluating their use at providing the good, and thus judging them against the Virtues so that their entire value comes from how well they support the Virtues. Can it be reasonably argued that anger is good in and of itself? This is unlikely, since it reacts both to the good and to the bad. All emotions, I argue, are reactions that have to be conditioned to reflect the good, but are never good in and of themselves. One can argue that I could “save” anger and the emotions like I save Resilience and say that anger is not really anger unless it aims at the good … but anger and all emotions are actual reactions in us, and likely largely physical ones. Resilence, therefore, can be tied to behaviour and not to the specific reactions that produce it, but it is difficult to do that for anger. Thus, for the emotions, we must consider the physical reactions as what it means to be them, and then when we look at that we discover that they do not aim at the good and so are not themselves Virtues, although they can be of use in aiming at the good and thus in us becoming and remaining Virtuous. But being useful is not enough to be a Virtue.

I’ll end with Blackford, who ends up listing some that he thinks are missing:

But nor does his list contain distinctly opposed virtues, such as skepticism, anti-authoritarianism, sex-positivity, or enthusiasm for change. Surprisingly, the traditional virtue of courage does not appear on the list.

I thought that his version of “Confidence” could probably have taken the place “Courage” normally occupies, but that’s debatable. What I do want to focus on are the others, and question why they should be considered virtues at all. It seems trivially obvious that all of them can be quite problematic if overdone, but it isn’t clear that you can “moderate” them without making them meaningless. If we interpret “Skepticism” to be something like “Do not trust certain forms of evidence/arguments unless it is reasonable to trust them”, this sounds just like normal, everyday reasoning, the kind that most people engage in. If we interpret “anti-authoritarianism” to mean “Only trust reasonable authority”, then again it’s hard to see what special way of living this picks out. And the same applies to all of the other terms. If you try to interpret them “moderately”, it’s hard to see how they could apply to the debates we commonly have over them today, and if you leave them more specific to those debates it’s clear that they can fail to pick out the good.

You could argue that you can define them relative to the good the way I did for Resilience, but if we take “Increase the happiness of people” as our base good you can clearly see the issue. Would those advocating for Skepticism accept it meaning “Act skeptically unless it doesn’t make people more happy to be skeptical”? Would those advocating for Anti-authoritarianism accept it meaning “Act against authority unless it will make people happy to accept authority”. For Sex-positivity, you can see it being utterly meaningless to interpret it as “Think of sex positively unless it won’t make you happy to think that way”, and for Enthusiasm for Change it is equally meaningless to call it “Embrace change except where that would make people unhappy”.

So, then, these don’t see to be things that can be made into virtues, because defined broadly they are meaningless and defined narrowly we can easily see that they don’t always aim at the good. Only if you think of them as being the “moderate” versions can this argument even get off the ground … and then that ends up simply defining them to be the most reasonable positions instead of arguing for them being such, which is something that a lot of the New Atheist arguments end up being: broaden the definitions so much that there is no possible way that any reasonable position could oppose it and declare victory, ignoring that the opponents weren’t arguing about the broader definition in the first place. I’ve seen it with science, with natural and with skepticism, and I don’t want this overdefinition to get in the way of determining and asssesing virtue.

Gender vs Equity Feminism: A Not-So-Uneducated Guess.

So, there’s been a lot of talk about “gender” vs “equity” feminism, and various definitions and accusations of what each side holds tossed around, usually with great anger and angst … which pretty much describes most of the history of the feminist movement, to be honest. Now, I’m not fully up-to-date on all of this; I read “Who Stole Feminism?” years ago when I was still fairly actively discussing this stuff, as opposed to now when I basically have limited interest (and I did like the book), and I haven’t really read all of the debates around those terms, and so am just relying on a lot of sniping I’m seeing, but I’ll try to give what I see as the best distinction between the two views as I see it, without actually referencing any specific examples of people or comments. So, consider this not-so-uneducated musing.

(Here’s the wikipedia discussion. I don’t match it, but I think I’m broadly consistent with it.)

The biggest difference in the behaviour that I see is that equity feminists focus on the laws and also in some sense on the cultural and other structures, but are unconcerned about the actual outcomes, while gender feminists tend to rely heavily on the outcomes to make their arguments. Note that this is not saying that gender feminists think that equality of opportunity must mean equality of outcome and equity feminists don’t; I think both sides at least in theory accept that. But gender feminists use inequity of outcome as evidence of inequity of opportunity, while equity feminists tend to look at the policies independently of what the outcome actually is. Thus, gender feminists will argue that if only 10% of the CEOs are women, or women only make 93 cents on the dollar compared to men, or if the speakers/membership of an organization is predominantly male, then there’s probably a sexism problem there, while equity feminists will be skeptical of that and ask what the gender feminists can actually point to that indicates sexism.

This also ties into the idea of gender feminists wanting to eliminate all gender distinctions and equity feminists not wanting to do that. Again, I don’t think either side really thinks that there are no differences between the genders, but equity feminists will tend to fire back at the gender feminist analysis of percentages with “Well, maybe there are differences between the genders that cause different desires that explain the difference in percentages” and gender feminists tend to react to that as if there aren’t any that should matter, and if there are then those differences should be eliminated, since a lot of them are merely social anyway. But equity feminists will deny that it is the responsibility of businesses or organizations to correct for the actual preferences of people, and so you can’t call an organization or business or policy sexist if it does treat people neutrally, even if that neutrality happens to have the impact of skewing the percentages.

You can see this in the Michael Shermer “It’s a Guy Thing” example (okay, so I guess I was kinda fibbing about not referring to actual people or cases [grin] But I’m still not using them as proofs of the definition, which is more what I meant). His answer would be a typical equity feminist position: what we do is put the pieces in place that are fair, evaluate fairly, maybe even make some small gestures to find more women speakers — since they might be being overlooked due to other considerations — but if we have done that and we still have a low percentage … well, then, maybe there’s just something about speaking at conferences that appeals more to men than to women, which explains the difference, but the organization isn’t sexist if it doesn’t try to fix that. (Note, BTW, that in a TVO discussion on a similar topic, the female head of an organization dedicated to improving these sorts of percentages essentially accepted that women didn’t seem as interested in those sorts of things, giving an example of herself being asked to comment on the recent change in Popes and declining, while her husband had no problem accepting despite the fact that he had less interesting things to say). The blowback on this is a typical gender feminist reply, saying that there’s something about women that means that they don’t participate fully in something that’s good is itself evidence of sexism; even if true, women shouldn’t be blamed for having these gendered traits that are likely socially imposed anyway, and so something has to be done about that.

Another clear example is the discussion Stephanie Zvan had over negotiation and its impact on pay disparities. Zvan has the typical gender feminist response: even though the system seems fair, because women aren’t as comfortable negotiating it leads to that pay disparity and so is sexist, and so must be changed. The counter is that it isn’t sexist because it does treat everyone fairly, and the company has no obligation to fix the desires of women or change a policy they need — as I argued — to bring about the equal percentage. Women should learn to negotiate, or accept lower wages.

Now, if you look at these examples, you can see the problems each position has. Gender feminism will tend to try to force companies, organizations or policies to fix or react to the underlying cultural expectations or else be called sexist, and in all of those cases they can easily ask why they should have to, especially if it costs them time and resources. And it does seem reasonable to ask why a company should be obligated to fix the problems with the culture that it exists in; surely that’s better suited to other groups, and when that happens then the fair policies ought to produce the right percentages. On the other hand, equity feminism will tend to deny the role cultural expectations plays in these things, and judge equality simply on what the policies say and not on how they interact with cultural expectations. But it is clear that you can indeed play the cultural expectations and introduce policies that are sexist while not looking it. Cultural expectations aren’t irrelevant when making policy, but policies shouldn’t have to design themselves around that to the detriment of the purpose of the policy either.

Anyway, that debate isn’t really here nor there at this point. At this point, I’d simply like to say that these definitions, to me, seem reasonable based on what both sides tend to argue and seem to fairly represent both sides, as it gives them both relevant arguments and relevant flaws. Also note that gender feminism will appear to people who like numbers as evidence, as appealing to the percentages gives a clear number that you can work with to determine if something is sexist or not. Equity feminism, on the other had, bases sexism on an analysis of the policies and the intentions, and so it isn’t as clear-cut, but doesn’t stray as close to the “equality of opportunity = equality of outcome” line. Thus, you would probably expect to see scientific and mathematical types siding with gender feminism, with philosophical and, say, interpretive types siding with equity feminism. In short, people who want numbers and quantitative analysis for everything will tend to be gender feminists, while people who don’t trust numbers and want qualitative analysis will prefer equity feminism. If you look at the people on either side of recent debates in atheism over this, I think my analysis isn’t too far off.

Reading In …

One of the issues people have had with feminism — and still do have — is that it has a tendency to read in sexist intentions and interpretations even when there really isn’t any evidence of that. Ophelia Benson has a post up at Butterflies and Wheels that is a prime example of this. She’s talking about what Michael Kelly said about Senator Ivana Bacik, where he called her shrill, and Benson says:

Michael Nugent points out a classic example of the special rules by which what would be an utterly normal tone of voice and wording and manner in a man get called “shrill” when it’s a woman speaking. The woman is Senator Ivana Bacik, asking questions at the parliamentary hearings on abortion law. She speaks firmly, and with an edge, but not the least bit “shrilly.” But hey, she’s a woman, and she’s talking firmly and with an edge to men. Must be shrill. Stands to reason.

First, I decided to look up the definition of the word “shrill” to see what could be meant here. I, and at least some commenters, thought it meant this:

1. sharp and high-pitched in quality

Which you could make a case for that being something that you might use against a woman in a sexist manner, since their voices are generally higher-pitched and the higher-pitched a voice is the more hysterical it seems in popular culture, but then I came across this definition in the thesaurus:

2. shrill – being sharply insistent on being heard; “strident demands”; “shrill criticism”

Now, it’s clear that she didn’t fit into the first definition, but it’s at least debatable whether she fits into the second. Which, then, did he mean? The title is “We can’t be cowed by shrill voices” which makes a bit of a link to the voice, but in the actual article he says:

Shrill caricatures have no place in mature debates.

And that’s clearly referring to something like shrill criticism, which is definition 2, and so it is reasonable, then, to conclude that he was using that definition in the title as well. Now, if a man had said something like she said, do you really think that he wouldn’t have called that shrill caricature as well? Benson has absolutely no evidence that he wouldn’t, because it isn’t in what he said — or at least quoted — at all. She’s reading it in to what he’s saying, and thus declaring that his use of the word or his discussion is sexist based on nothing more than what she brings to the work, not on what he himself actually brought to it. This is not good when you are criticizing him and people like him for something that you have no evidence they are actually doing, consciously or no.

And then she moves on to that “mature” part:

He makes her a child, too, and one who has no place in parliamentary hearings (despite the fact that she’s a Senator).

Well maybe Michael Kelly divides humanity into two types: potential priests, and shrill babies.

Okay, now, remember how in that whole Michael Shermer thing there was a whole distinction between saying that someone has done something sexist and calling them a sexist? This has been a major thrust of Atheism+ arguments. So how, then, does Benson feel justified in saying that he makes her a child as opposed to the far more likely he thought her questions were immature? Add in the vague comment about dividing humanity into potential priests and shrill babies and it looks like she’s saying that he divides the world into men and women, where men are to be taken seriously and women are to be dismissed. But nothing in what she quoted in any way even remotely suggests that. Now, I’m not going to say that he doesn’t do that, because I don’t know enough to say for sure. But I don’t need to. All I need to do is point out that she’s making claims about him and the debate that she doesn’t have the evidence for, and they only seem reasonable to her because she’s reading quite a lot into the statements … things that, of course, may not actually be there.

In “The Empire Strikes Back”, when Luke asks what is inside the cave Yoda answers “Only what you take with you”. Is it possible that a lot of the sexism that people see in the world is not in the world, but is in what they impose on the world? I have always believed that if you go looking for sexism or racism or any other similar sort of ism, you’ll find it … even if it really isn’t there. This isn’t to say that they don’t exist and aren’t real problems; they do and they are. But my challenge is to the presumption that you can easily see it, and that our perceptions of it are always accurate. Just as some people’s perspectives mean that they don’t see it when it is really happening, it is also quite possible that some people’s perspectives mean that they see it when it really isn’t happening. We are all, at the end of the day, in some ways slaves to our own perspectives, and one should always try to step outside of that to some kind of objective ground when evaluating these things to avoid making the mistake of reading something into a situation that comes from us and not from the situation itself.

Breaking the Law to Do What’s Right …

So, I was reminded today of people who, in the name of social change and changing unjust and immoral laws, break the law to do so. Either they protest when protest is illegal, give out information they shouldn’t, or simply break the unjust laws to demonstrate their unfairness. And, in doing so and being tried and convicted for those crimes, they draw major attention and, if done right, outrage, which causes the laws to be repealed. And most of the time, a lot of time is spent talking about how they shouldn’t be in prison, and they are often released when the laws are changed.

To me and my moral code, this is what the ideal person should do in those cases:

Oppose the law by breaking the law.
Get the law changed.
Either present themselves for legal punishment, or insist on serving out the rest of their sentence. Although they can accept a legal pardon, at the very least they shouldn’t think that they’re owed one.

This is because of one of the things that really attracts me to the Stoic view, which is their hard-headed insistence on responsibility. Ultimately, in this case the person knowingly broke the law, and knew that the consequence of that was that they might be imprisoned for it. It therefore should not be a surprise to them when they are, in fact, imprisoned for breaking the law. Even if the law was unjust, they knew what the consequences of breaking that law were, and should be prepared to accept them. If they weren’t, they shouldn’t have broken the law in the first place.

Thus, that person — and all of us — should break the law when it conflicts with our morality, but be prepared to accept the consequences of the legal fines and even imprisonment that comes from that (although if we can avoid that legally, that would be nice). And this applies to any other circumstances we might have to face. If my doing the right thing will cause other people to hate me, then they’ll hate me. That’s just what has to be done.

Recall that for the Stoics one should give up one’s life before doing what is immoral, and so it seems that there could hardly be any consequences more severe than that. If we accept that view, then the other consequences surely are far less worthy of acting immorally, and so cannot be used as a reason to not act morally in all instances.

(And yes, I am aware that this is actually really, really difficult at times. Hence, why I claim that some moral lapses are understandable, even if they are still moral lapses).

Superhuman Ethics Class with the Avengers Prime

I swear I didn’t plan it this way … both it taking two weeks for the next installment (I’m aiming for once a week) and the specific topic of this week’s essay.

Two weeks ago, I talked about Peter Parker having a good life, and pointed out that it demonstrated the difference between some of the candidates for various moral principles, albeit imperfectly because it focused more on the ultimate value of a human life rather than specifically about what the right moral view is. And then we have today’s essay from “The Avengers and Philosophy”, which just happens to be next on the list of my Philosophy and Popular Culture books, which is “Superhuman Ethics Class with the Avengers Prime” by Mark D. White, which is about … looking at the differences between the Big Three views in moral philosophy by looking at the differences in the moral outlook of the Big Three Avengers, or the “Avengers Prime”, who are Iron Man, Captain America and Thor.

I love it when a non-plan comes together.

Anyway, White argues that Iron Man represents Utilitarianism, Captain America represents deontological morality, and Thor represents Virtue Ethics. And what’s interesting about this is that we can tie at least the first two to an actual value clash in the Marvel Universe, which White also makes a reference to: The Civil War, where Iron Man comes out in support of the Superhuman Registration Act — after opposing it, for the most part, originally — while Captain America opposes it. Iron Man’s main reason for supporting it is indeed Utilitarian, as he thinks that even with the abuses that the authorities and even he engage in that it’s still better than the alternative, while Captain America sees it as an unacceptable violation of basic principles even if it would turn out better overall. So, if you’re a Utilitarian but supported Captain America in the Civil War, maybe you’re more of a deontologist than you think. (Thor wasn’t available in the Civil War, but he was unimpressed that Iron Man would do such things to his friends).

So, we can identify some of the problems with each view, and how they balance against each other. Utilitarianism can allow for horrible means to the end of overall happiness and has a hard time ever making any kind of absolute moral principle (Rule Utilitarianism is an exception, but it starts to look a lot like a deontological moral system). Deontology runs the risk of getting out of date and not being able to adapt, and also may not produce a very happy life for anyone. Virtue Ethics has problems defining what the virtues are, and has issues when virtues clash.

So, let’s take the scenario of One More Day (slightly tweaked) to show these problems as well as the benefits. Imagine that these three heroes find out about the deal, but Peter Parker himself doesn’t remember it, and they are put in a position where he asks them if the deal had happened. What would they do?

Iron Man would weigh the benefit of the deal being broken to all people against the detriments, and if he concluded that it would be better for the universe that Peter know, he would tell Peter even if that would devastate Peter. Peter’s well-being is taken into account in the calculations, and if the outcome is to destroy Peter to make things better for everyone else, that’s what Iron Man must do.

Captain America, likely, would have a deontological rule that says he shouldn’t lie, and thus he would tell the truth, again even if it would devastate Peter. However, this is too simplistic for Captain America because unlike Kantians he likely has rules that would allow him to lie under certain conditions. If this is one of them, then he would lie, and if it isn’t then he wouldn’t, but note that unlike Iron Man he would do it even if the total utility works out to be against his principles.

Thor would likely be torn between two virtues. Honesty would demand that he tell the truth, especially to a comrade like Peter … but friendship would demand that he not do anything to deliberately hurt Peter. He’d likely have to jump through a number of argumentative hoops to come to an answer, or else simply refuse to answer at all so as to not have to choose.

So, if you find that you don’t like the morality of one of these heroes but claim to support the view they’re attached to, you might have to reconsider what moral view you actually support.

Spheres of Responsibilty and Hypocrisy …

So, a new story is making the rounds about what is claimed to be the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The one’s over a lawsuit levelled at them because they didn’t perform a C-section on a woman who was having a heart attack to save her seven month old twins. The purported hypocrisy, however, comes in with the defense, where one of the legal defenses raised is that under the law in Colorado the foetus is not a person, and therefore under the law in Colorado they cannot be held legally responsible for “Wrongful Death” because it has been clearly determined that that only applies to persons, and a foetus is not one. Of course, this contradicts the Catholic Church’s stance that foetuses are persons and that they should be considered such under the law, and so leads to suggestions that they consider it a person until someone wants to hold them accountable for what they do to one, at which point they deny it.

(Note that this organization doesn’t seem to be officially affiliated with the Church, and this isn’t yet explicitly a decision advanced or advocated by the Church).

At first skimming and first thought, I was fairly neutral on this, but on reflection I think that the position here is actually completely right, and it all comes down to the fact that the counter-argument is being made in a legal context, and not a moral one. Essentially, what’s happening is this: they are being taken to court to be held legally responsible for their actions in that matter. They are not, in this case, being held morally responsible for their actions. And the law in Colorado is exactly as cited above: foetuses aren’t persons, and you can only be held legally responsible for Wrongful Death if a person has died. So, in terms of how this shakes out:

1) Regardless of the organizations stance on whether or not they would want to pursue this line of argumentation, the law firm they hired would have to because it’s actually the law. They would be a very terrible law firm if they allowed their clients to accept legal responsibility for something that, by the law, they are not actually legally responsible for, and any judge that didn’t call them out for malpractice would also be a very poor judge.

2) Their views on their moral responsibility in this case are irrelevant to whether or not they should accept legal responsibility, because legal responsibility does not reflect moral responsibility. So there’s no hypocrisy in saying “Yes, we think that morally a foetus is a person and so we have moral responsibility, but by the law we don’t have legal responsibility, and that’s what we’re arguing over here”.

3) That they want there to be that legal responsibility does not, in fact, change the fact that the law does not give them that legal responsibility. This can also lead to a bit of a smug sense of satisfaction knowing that if the people who want to hold them responsible here had just changed the law to what the Church wanted, they could hold them responsible … but since they didn’t, they can’t. In fact, at this point it would look like those who are charging them with hypocrisy are the hypocrites, wanting the law to allow the direct killing of foetuses in the case of abortion but when the Church simply asks that the laws they support be applied to all people equally they turn around and insist that they, who oppose the law, should therefore not share its protections.

This is a bit of a reverse is/ought fallacy, which is the argument that if you think that a law ought to be a certain way then you must be treated as if it is a certain way. But that’s false, and again this is all about how the law really is, not about how they want it to be.

Now, that “moral responsibility” part is really important, because I do think that they need to examine what happened and find out why they didn’t try the C-section to save the twins’ lives. Even without the Catholic morality in the mix, it would seem that even basic medical procedures would demand that they give it a shot. So they really do need to find out why it happened, figure out how to ensure it won’t happen again, and give restitution for their likely moral lapse. None of that means that they are legally responsible for a Wrongful Death if the legal defense is right, and that does not mean that they need not fight against being held legally responsible for what they are not, in fact, legally responsible for by appealing to the actual laws, even if they wish the laws were different.

More additions to my reading list …

So, I’ve added more books to my reading list.

I had the Hadot and Chase book on Marcus Aurelius recommended to me over on Unequally Yoked (which is also examining humanism at the moment) and was looking for the copy of Marcus Aurelius that I was sure I had but couldn’t find, and the one there had 10 reviews that were all 5 star, so I picked that up. While I was there, I picked up the Kaufmann book because Jerry Coyne over at Why Evolution is True was promoting it as an excellent counter to theology, and while I couldn’t find “Faith of the Heretic” this one was available, at least for now. So, despite its age, I’ll give it a try and see if its counters really work. And while I was getting the commentary on Aurelius, I picked up one on Plotinus out of general interest.

Now all I have to do is find a spot in my schedule to do the reading and comment on them. Next up is the work of Edward Feser, but I still have to comment on Plantinga and Dennett.