Subjective process, objective result

Suppose Xander and Willow are each working on the same math problem. They are not cooperating, but they're both working on the same problem. Each of them relies upon their knowledge of mathematics and their ability to perform arithmetic. They differ from one another in terms of both knowledge and ability. Willow is very good at math, but Xander is not, and they come up with different answers.

Suppose now that it wasn't a math problem. Instead, it was a moral question. Once again, they are not cooperating, but they are both working on the same problem. Each of them relies upon their values and their judgment. They differ from one another in terms of both values and judgment, and they come up with different answers.

In both cases, we're talking about a subjective process. Each of them is trapped in their subjectivity, as are we all. Xander can't use Willow's judgment any more than he can use her ability at arithmetic. He's stuck in his own head, with his own judgment. But does that mean the question itself is subjective? Does that mean that there is really no right or wrong answer, and that it is just a matter of opinion?

In the first case, no. There is a right answer, and at least one of them (probably Xander) has gotten it wrong. But in the second case, lots of people want to say that there is no right answer. I think that's wrong. I think morality is every bit as objective as mathematics, but that's argument is beyond the scope of this post. For now, I'm just trying to dispel one particularly bad argument against the idea of objective morality.

I see atheists making this mistake all the time, and it drives me nuts. The argument is that since morality depends on values and values are subjective, morality therefore must be subjective. Morality is based on values, but in the same way that mathematics is based on arithmetic. Values are the process we use to evaluate moral questions, just as arithmetic is a process we use to solve math problems. Different people have different aptitudes for arithmetic, and this explains why different people will come up with different answers to math problems, but that doesn't make math subjective. Similarly, because values are subjective, different individuals will reach different answers to moral questions, but that alone doesn't make morality subjective. 

I don't care what you think

But "Weird Al" Yankovic thinks I'm pitiful. That stings

One of my favorite websites (don't call it a blog) is Why Evolution is True, launched in connection with Prof. Jerry Coyne's 2009 book of the same name. A recent post on that site led me to a story on CNN about the results of a contest to come up with "Ten Non-Commandments". It's a pretty good list, but I want to focus on just the second one.

"Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true."

This seems straightforward enough, but I think it has profound implications if we really take it seriously. And we should. On the surface, it's a simple warning to avoid wishful thinking. However, what it's really doing is subtly shifting the goal of reasoning itself. When asked to consider a given proposition, what most of us usually do is we start with our general sense of whether or not it is true. If we're good skeptics, and we want to protect ourselves against our own cognitive biases, we try to remain open-minded pending a thorough review of relevant evidence, so that our ultimate opinion will be founded on as firm a basis as possible. That's terrific. But whether we're good skeptics or not, we're giving our opinion as to whether the proposition in controversy is true.

Make a special note of that word "opinion". This simple that word that everyone understands is surprisingly tricky.There are two major types of opinion that I want to distinguish because I think the differences may be important. One kind of opinion is exemplified by aesthetic judgments. In these cases, there is simply no fact of the matter, and these opinions therefore can never be considered right or wrong. But we also use the word "opinion" to refer to provisional beliefs about matters of fact in the face of uncertainty. Predictions, for example. In my opinion, Hillary Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic nominee for President. Unlike aesthetic judgements, that is a factual claim. It is (or will be) either true or false. Also, counter-factuals. In my opinion, they would have won if the quarterback hadn't been injured. It is notoriously difficult to evaluate counter-factuals because they can't be tested, but we can still talk about what would happen if they were. We have opinions about unsolved historical mysteries. I had an opinion about the identity of Deep Throat, the Watergate informant, but it was wrong. We have opinions about whether or not celebrities are gay, or defendants are guilty, and so on. .

As New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is supposed to have said, "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts." When "opinion" means "aesthetic judgment" and "fact" means "established fact", it means exactly what it says. But when our opinions are standing in for unknown facts, the situation is quite different. When we apply that principle to those opinions, we conclude that a person is entitled to any opinion which could be true. I've seen this principle invoked in hundreds of arguments between atheists and theists. After an atheist presents a list of very good reasons to think that there is no god, the theist may reply "But that doesn't prove that there is no god. Can you deny the possibility?" Apart from moving the goalposts (the possibility of god is a very different question than the existence of god), this point implies that you are entitled to believe anything which isn't demonstrably impossible.

This may seem reasonable to you (surely it must seem reasonable to lots of people), but there's a serious problem with using certainty to distinguish fact from opinion. First of all, it's ambiguous. Do you mean that it is certain as a matter of fact, or merely that you feel certain about it? Clearly, feeling certain about something is not evidence that it is true, so that's no good. But "certainty as a matter of fact" is also a bit tricky since nothing is entirely certain. All knowledge claims are probabilistic, which means that all claims are uncertain, which means all statements of fact are actually opinions in the face of uncertainty (even if it's very, very little uncertainty). If we apply the Moynihan principle to these opinions, we have to conclude that anyone is entitled to believe anything about anything. While this is true as a matter of political liberty, it is obviously not a valid way of reasoning.

So let's look again at that Non-Commandment. The key phrase is "most likely to be true". That is a game-changer, because opinions about what is more likely to be true are opinions in the face of uncertainty. Even though each of us must reach our own estimate of the probability in question (because our estimates will be based on a whole lot of other considerations about which we will disagree), it is ultimately a matter of fact. It's objective. It may be open to debate, but it is not a matter of opinion. When you approach a question in terms of what you think is the right answer, you give yourself license to believe anything that isn't clearly impossible. But once you consider that not all possible answers are equally likely, it raises the question of whether it is ever reasonable to believe a less likely possibility over a more likely possibility.

So when I titled this post "I don't care what you think", I mean that I'm not interested in what you believe is true. That's the wrong question, and it's "just a matter of opinion". Your opinions can't challenge mine because we're each entitled to our opinions. If we disagree, it doesn't mean that (at least) one of us is wrong. I'm interested in what you think is more likely to be true because that is a matter of fact. If we disagree, and you're right, then I must be wrong.   

 I confess that most of what is attractive to me about this Non-Commandment is that it makes the case for atheism so much easier. It's hard not to conclude that the existence of god is unlikely (especially when you start loading up the concept with claims about virgin births and winged horses and such), therefore belief in god is unreasonable. Objectively unreasonable. That may be as close as we'll ever get to a definitive disproof of god, but I think it's quite close enough. However, I'm under no illusions that this little Non-Commandment is going to end religion. Plenty of people will conclude that god is more likely than not to exist for all manner of reasons, and so the debate will go on. But it will go on in terms that are a lot more favorable to atheism.

Morality and responsibility

There is a tension that I feel in my own thinking about morality, and since that tension will inevitably be reflected on this blog, I want to bring it out into the open. 

DISCLAIMER: This post isn't really about "Star Trek"

On the one hand, I think that morality is extremely important, and I want to encourage people to think about it and talk about it much more, especially in the context of important public policy issues which effect many people's lives. Let me use a conveniently recent example: the CRomnibus appropriations bill. Ezra Klein helpfully provides this highly informative summary of what we need to know to "sound smart" about it. But notice what is missing from that summary. There's nothing in there at all about how the various provisions of this bill will impact the lives of real people for better or worse. I don't mean to single out Klein. I'm just using his piece as an example of the moral blind spot that exists in much of our political discourse. I think that blind spot skews public policy against the public interest, especially in economic policy.

On the other hand, I think the whole concept of "moral responsibility" is untenable. This is a direct consequence of my views concerning free will. Based on everything we know about the process of making decisions at the level of the brain, I think our decisions are determined not (or not only) by our moral character, but by a complex combination of circumstances governing the interactions of our brains with our environments at any given time. Psychology experiments have shown that people often have no idea why they do the things they do, and invent post hoc rationalizations on the assumption that they must have had a good reason. One experiment I recall reading about concluded that whether a person is holding a hot beverage or a cold beverage will influence how they interact with others. How can people be morally responsible for their choices when those choices are ultimately determined by complex physical interactions at the atomic level which we don't understand and cannot control?

I want to convince people to think more (and more clearly) about morality as a means of making better decisions. I want to use the persuasive force of moral language to convince people (politicians, for example) to do what they should do, yet I can't really blame anyone for doing what they shouldn't do. There's an obvious tension there, but is it actually a contradiction? Maybe. I don't think so, but maybe. 

Unfortunately, I've always found these to be rather difficult issues to talk about, mainly because so much of the language we have to use is really fuzzy. If Miles punches Julian, resulting in a broken nose, there is a very straightforward sense in which Miles is responsible for Julian's broken nose. In that sense, it is perfectly appropriate to "blame" Miles for breaking Julian's nose. Who broke Julian's nose? Miles did. Simple. But blaming Miles rests on the tacit assumption that he could have done otherwise. If we have reason to think that the punch was somehow unavoidable, and that Miles could not have prevented it, then it doesn't seem fair to blame him after all. When we look carefully at what really caused Miles to punch Julian, we'll discover that it isn't the sort of thing he could have prevented.  

Suppose Miles was drunk. That seems like an easy one. Alcohol impairs a person's judgment, rendering them less capable of making good decisions. Assuming Miles got drunk knowingly and voluntarily, we can consider him responsible for what he does when drunk (and that's basically how the law would treat it). But when we look carefully at what caused Miles to get drunk, we'll discover the same problem all over again: it was entirely the result of complex physical interactions taking place in Miles's brain.

Blaming people for the things that they do is sometimes very useful, so it's a bit awkward if it seems unjustified. If Miles blames himself and feels guilty about it, this might prevent him from losing his temper next time. And if Miles is arrested and prosecuted for assault, this could cause other people to think twice before punching someone themselves. Fortunately, these purely practical considerations don't require us to blame Miles in the deep sense. It doesn't matter that Miles is not responsible for punching Julian. What matters is that he and others are more likely to make better decisions next time. That consequentialist analysis is all the justification we need for holding Miles legally responsible. If so, do we even need to hold him morally responsible? I don't think we do.

And what difference does it make anyway? Holding someone morally responsible can be a form of social exclusion. It sets that person apart from everyone else by putting them in a special category. It makes that person appear to be different from the rest of us, which provokes in us that comforting sense of superiority. It makes that person a bad person, and we need not (some would say should not) have compassion for bad people. Miles punched Julian because he's a bad guy, and I never would have done that because I'm not! But when we let go of moral responsibility and focus instead on the morally-neutral issue of causal responsibility, it allows us to feel compassion for Miles without minimizing our concern for Julian, and without condoning or defending what Miles did in any way.

What's the downside of holding people morally responsible for their actions? I don't know where to start. We tolerate abominable conditions in our prisons because criminals deserve to suffer. We scrimp on social services because poor people don't deserve our help. We can't have affirmative action because that means favoring people of color over the white people who really deserve those jobs. We can't tackle income inequality because the 1% deserves its wealth. When we realize that no one deserves anything, and that everything ultimately comes down to luck in one way or another, we see that these views are indefensible. There are also personal, psychological, and social costs to negative emotions like guilt and anger, which depend upon some notion of moral responsibility.

I wanted to draw attention to this tension firstly because I think it's very interesting, but secondly because I think it's useful to try to identify the potential weaknesses in my own positions. By focusing on those weaknesses, I hope to either shore up my position or uncover a mistake. But mainly because I just like this stuff.