Metaethics test....very sad I know, but one gets bored

Relativism You scored 50 Objectivism, 31 Naturalism, and 52 Cognitivism!

You believe in moral propositions, but not moral facts or reduction of moral talk. You may be a relativist. Don't be scared by the fact that "relativist" is usually an accusation, spoken with a sneer - just because it's not in vogue doesn't mean it's wrong, which you know doubt know. "The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to some group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them."

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Objectivism You scored higher than 99% on Naturalism You scored higher than 99% on Cognitivism

Link: The Meta-ethical Theories Test written by jacostyle on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

How, according to Kant, should one judge the moral worth of actions performed out of a feeling of compassion?

This essay may be of interest, not necessarily academically, but in its discussion of three differing views of morality.

For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) “an action of this kind, however proper,…has nevertheless no true moral worth …”[1]
We will begin with Kant’s rejection of compassion (and inclination) as a morally worthy motive in favour of duty, before moving to the alternative views of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Kant’s possible reply to them; finally I will argue that only Hume came close to grasping the true ‘nature’ of morality. Kant failed to understand man and society and thus mistakenly ruled out emotion as a moral force.

The core of Kant’s moral system, as outlined in the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and elaborated upon in The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason, is the autonomous, free, rational willing of a ‘duty’ for the sake of duty alone. If an act can be performed with the logical willing that all should perform it in similar circumstances (if it is ‘universalizable’) then it is rational, moral, and dutiful. (This is Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’). In fact “Morality consists solely of rational principles…”[2] The only motive force is reason; and only rationally willed actions made for the sake of duty may be praised for only these are truly ‘free’, autonomous: acted upon because they ‘ought’ to be, independent of external influence.
Kant termed emotions, sensations, taste, all things such as ‘compassion’ as inclinations. He “denies that any action can be free (in the way required for moral worth) if it arises merely from rational inclination.”[3] This Kant termed the heteronomous will for it is acting, not freely/autonomously, but under the influence of innate proclivities within the individual. Because Kant wanted to argue for a universal a priori morality, he couldn’t allow for this individual variation to affect or act as the motive force for truly good action.
Importantly, we must not understand Kant to be condemning compassionate, or indeed any other beneficent act, action. He does, in fact, call them “beautiful”[4]. The point is thus not that compassion is immoral, but that it is amoral: without moral worth only in the sense that it would be unfair to praise someone for their ‘luck’ in being born with sympathetic, philanthropic, inclinations. No, it is the autonomous will that is to be praised, for it rationally chooses to follow its duty simply because it is its duty. Thus is practical love morally worthy for it has been chosen freely, whilst pathological, or emotional, love is beautiful but ultimately amoral.[5]

David Hume (1711-1776) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778), both contemporaries and inspirations for Kant, present very different pictures of morality and its relation to emotions as motive forces. For them the concept of duty is derivative from sentiment, emotion.[6] In other words, they dispute the principle of reason as the basis for moral action and thus Kant’s rejection of sentiments such as compassion
For Rousseau, as with Kant, morality is universal. However, in strict opposition, this universality is based, not on a priori reason, but on “the immediate force of conscience as a result of our own nature, independent [my emphasis] of reason itself.”[7] Reason, for Rousseau, is simply the interpreter of innate feelings into intelligible moral frameworks. It is this innate nature, conscience, in man which is the reason for the universal morality as outlined in Emile.
“The morality of our actions consists entirely in the judgements we ourselves form with regard to them. If good is good, it must be good in the depth of our heart as well as in our actions.”[8]
Thus we can see that in this interpretation, compassion is very much a moral motive for action and worthy of praise.* Rousseau and Kant disagree on the nature and thus the value of motives for action.
David Hume’s morality, as outlined in Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, is both naturalistic and strictly empirical.[9] Reject “warm feelings and prepossessions in favour of virtue…and morality is no longer a practical study nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions.”[10] Once again, as in Rousseau, we see that the ground of value is sentiment, not reason. Reason gives us how to get what we want but not what we want: “Reason…is no motive to action and directs only the impulse received from the appetite.”[11] Hume wanted to ground motivation strictly with sensation. Not only this, but his empiricism demanded a rejection of every system of ethics not founded on fact and observation.[12] Thus a maxim cannot be true in and of itself without reference to the external world. This is in clear opposition to Kant’s rational a priori system. Hume strongly disagrees, once again, with the rejection of compassion, a sentiment, as a ‘moral’ action. Duty, the ‘ought’ of morality, cannot be derived from the ‘is’ of the world, from any statement of fact; rather we must turn to sentiment and its approbation.
For him, this is everything that morality is.
“Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions.”[13]
How then might Kant reply?
Why should we praise an action or a motive on the basis of the inclination of a person? If someone is born with a specific temperament, compassion for example, why on earth should they be lauded by others? They are simply lucky to be born like this; there is little effort on their part to do the ‘right thing’. This is a seductive point and still a problem today. It seems ‘right’ to us to praise someone for a compassionate act, for altruism effected by sympathy or some other quality of temperament. Yet, observed logically, if one has, simply as a part of one’s mental makeup, a proclivity towards certain action it should be no surprise, even less a cause of moral praise to see this psychological potential fulfilled. It is from this powerful standpoint that Kant argues for reason not emotion as a moral motive. But this is simply not how we think, and if it not how we think and how we reason our actions, how can it be anything other than an, admittedly admirable, moral construct. Hume and Rousseau, in arguing for a sentiment-based morality are more accurately reflecting the world. Kant has idealised morality; made it perhaps what he wishes it was, but not in fact what it ever can be.
Furthermore, I would argue (as it turns out Hume also did[14]) that reason as the ultimate ground of action and moral deliberation is untenable from the point of motive regression.
For it must surely be seen, firstly, that in Kant’s conception of the moral action being that which is derived from a rational duty acted upon for duty’s sake there must be a sentiment behind this. To act simply for duty’s sake means that there must be a desire for dutiful action. Kant’s reasoning is simply circular in arguing for duty as an independent motivation. Thus behind the rational construct in Kant’s system is the sensation: returning us to compassion as the ground for moral action.
Secondly, on a very much related point, if we fail to recognise this conclusion we are left with, to paraphrase Hume, an infinite regression from reason to reason. “Something must be desirable on its own account…”[15] and grounded in emotion rather than the logically impossible basis of reason, for then we never get anywhere with a true identification of motive. Sentiment is, and must, be the ground for moral decision. I will, however, argue a different interpretation of the results of such a view below.

‘Morality’ as a concept, makes sense in the context of human society. This is, however, purely a functional construct, existent only because it is useful to us here and now. This is why moral codes vary so much across countries, cultures, traditions, and time-period. There is no objective moral standard, be it Kant’s a priori or Rousseau’s innate nature of man. Even the traditional ‘goods’ of society, supposedly spread across a number of cultures and thus ‘legitimated’ are often simple derivatives of one culture in whom we share common intellectual history, who themselves are amalgams of yet earlier functional societies: successful because their social interactions worked as the basis for general practice. Morality is indeed based on sentiment, but ultimately it is the socially derived and communally beneficial sentiment of interactive and self-interested beings: Different everywhere and everywhen, both between cultures and more subtly between individuals within cultures.
Ultimately, Kant’s designation of sentiment as amoral is a failure to recognise the nature of mankind. His morality falls on the false premise of a universality that is simply unknown.


[1] Kant, quoted in Solomon, p549
[2] Ibid., p547
[3] Benn, p94
[4] Ibid., p95
[5] Solomon, p551
[6] Solomon, p546
[7] Emile, quoted in Solomon p.545
[8] Ibid. p543
* Reason still plays an important part in moral judgement; sentiment here is ‘tied to a kind of natural reason’ with conscience as a powerful moral feeling very much linked with divine reason. (Solomon, p543)
[9] Solomon, p541
[10] Hume, quoted in Solomon, p541
[11] Ibid. p540
[12] Ibid. p541
[13] Ibid. p539
[14]Hume in Solomon, p541-542
[15] Ibid.

© Alan Bowden, 2005

Can there be a CHRISTIAN doctrine of creation?

The following is an essay I wrote late last year; long, yes, but food for thought perhaps.

There can indeed be a specifically Christian doctrine of creation; and such a doctrine must have its emphasis in Christ. Christ as Creator, Christ as Redeemer, the Christ of John 1 and of Paul. Christ as creation.
I will argue for an emphasis on a two-fold, christocentric, continuous, contingent and, I believe crucially, New Testament based creation ‘account’[1] augmented by Old Testament scripture.

What are we to understand by ‘creation’? To speak of a Christian doctrine, one must surely first have an idea of what it is we are attempting to formulate (perhaps a better word is ‘discover’).
Well, no, for it seems that the instant we begin to think about this ‘creation’ and what it might involve we begin to get into difficulties of definition. Should we in fact speak of ‘Creation’?
Not only this, the instant we speak of creation we begin to speak of doctrines of creation.
Thus we must understand that all come to the discussion with preconceptions impossible to shake off; with a term loaded with significance and connotations.
So can the Oxford English Dictionary help us?

Creation
• noun 1 the action or process of creating. 2 a thing which has been made or invented, especially something showing artistic talent.
3 (the Creation) the creating of the universe regarded as an act of God. 4 (Creation) literary the universe.[2]

Well, this sends us in something of a circle. We need more than ‘creation’. We need to know what it is to create.

Create
• verb 1 bring into existence[3]

Now we are getting somewhere. To create is to ‘bring into existence’. This is what we are trying to understand, to make intelligible. Ludwig Wittgenstein framed the question well when he said "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.”[4]

So how should a Christian understand such a challenge? What would a Christian doctrine of creation be like?
Firstly, “The doctrine of creation is not the story of an event which took place ‘once upon a time.’ It is the basic description of the relation between God and the world.”[5] (Tillich) Christian creation is not about narrative. The ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…’ (Gen. 1 v1)[6] of Genesis is not the place to begin theologically, it is simply where the Bible narrative begins. Rather, because “Creation…describes the miracle of existence in general…”[7] and our place in it, it must begin with Jesus Christ. It must begin and find its ultimate emphases, therefore, with the New Testament; and it should find its practise in the daily lives of all Christians.
Any Christian doctrine of Creation must have a two-fold emphasis within the New Testament revelation: That of Christ the Creator and Christ the Redeemer.
“What Jesus did and said points to the underlying meaning and purpose of the creation.”[8]
It is important to understand that this is not “the unhappy tradition of distinguishing between creation and redemption as between two distinct modes or steps of divine activity” described by Gregory Baum[9]. For, in line with Karl Barth, the almost absolute emphasis on Jesus Christ as the goal and consummation of creation allows for a non-confliction of the ontological and the soteriological.

Christ as Creator
Christ is creator in his Trinitarian oneness with the Father, in his presence at ‘the beginning’ regardless of whether, by this beginning, we are speaking temporally or of an ontological ‘source’.
This shown by Christ as Logos:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was With God, and
the Word was God, He was with God in the beginning. (John 1 v1-2)
Now follows the crux of the first part of our two-fold emphasis:
Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made. (John 1 v3)
Further, Christ is not only “first born over all creation” (1 Col v15), “the beginning of creation, he is also the beginning of the new creation, as demonstrated for the writer of Colossians by his resurrection.”[10]
Colossians 1: v15-20 and Hebrews 1 v3 give us the idea of a continuous creation (or creatio continua) in the phrases “in him all things hold together…” (Col. 1 v17) and “sustaining all things by his powerful word.” Thus “God creates and sustains the entire universe rather than just the beginning.” (Don Page)[11] He “out of eternity creates things and time together…He is creative in every moment of temporal existence” (Paul Tillich)[12] This action is unique (sui generis) and ultimately unintelligible except by allusion through human analogy and metaphor.
It is important to understand that our emphasis on Christ in not to the detriment of the ‘Father’ for it is through the revelation of Christ that we come to a fuller understanding of the Father’s creation. Christ is that manifestation of God by which we know the aspect of the Father; by which we understand the ‘miracle of existence’. This is similar to Karl Barth’s view found in his Church Dogmatics although crucially different in once respect.
Whereas Barth argues that “God is unknown as our Father, as the creator, to the degree that he is not made known by Jesus…”[13] surely one must take the Old Testament texts as accounts of the Father prior to the historical revelation of the Person of Christ. This is not to say that primacy should still not be given to New Testament creation scripture but to argue Christ to the exclusion of the possibility of all other epistemology seems extreme.
So can a Christian doctrine of creation include natural theology as one of its emphases?
Karl Barth’s answer is, as we have seen, an emphatic ‘no’. For Barth God is so radically other (Young) from his creation in ‘material’ terms that knowledge aside from Christ’s revelation is impossible. Yet others such as the neo-Barthians Eberhard Jü­ngel and Christian Link “see a need to overcome a certain narrowness in the original Barthian approach…”[14] Link rejected metaphysics in the philosophical sense: “inference from certain given ‘orders’ ”[15] and focuses instead on Jesus’ parables as examples of “faith actively shaping reality…”[16] Jüngel is similar in that he argued that you can learn nothing of God from nature but “that the word of God has a good deal to say about nature…as a new vision of the universe constituted through the event of redemption in Christ.”[17]
I would argue that the emphasis for the doctrine of creation as regards natural theology is that nature can glorify god, informing us of him by revealing his works to us. This is not to say that the creation is God (this is not process theology) rather that we can come to know someone or something by their actions. We do this in God’s case by observing His cosmos in Faith. Science is, then, arguably natural theology in many ways.

Christ as Redeemer
Christ Creator is he “In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1 v14)
Redemption is the consummation and telos (‘end’) of creation. “The ordaining of salvation for man and of man is the original and basic will of God, the ground and purpose of His will as Creator…”[18] as Karl Barth put it.
This is where our two-fold emphasis can be seen for the unity that it truly is. Christ the Creator and Redeemer is the one Christ of the Cross. “…the cross is not only the parabolic suggestion of the divine reconciliation, it is this reconciliation, its completion, its reality.”[19] Creation is one overarching soteriological act consummated in Christ’s sacrifice: “the redemptive covenant.” (Baum)[20]
The New Testament is riddled with references to redemption and salvation, for this is Gospel itself: 1 Peter 1 v18, Ephesians 1 v7, Galatians 3 v14, Colossians 1 v14, Titus 2 v14, Romans 3 v24 to name but a few. The kerygma (proclamation) is in many senses the creation; and Christ’s death and resurrection are the consummation and confirmation of the covenant and the coming of the Kingdom of God. By this I mean that in Christ’s taking on of the world’s sins, His dying to sin, and His rising to new life we may find the ethic of creation itself, the ground of being of the cosmos: That is to say, God as Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit upon whom the universe is contingent. (Col. 1v17).
The universe is thus contingent, but in the sense that God affects our actions indirectly. He doesn’t strictly affect, he effects through his sustaining action. I am here referring to the concept of ‘two co-existing actions’.[21]
· The genuinely independent causal activity of the world, or ‘secondary causation’; and
· God’s primary causation, which is the ‘uniform enabling of the secondary causes’ power to act’ (Wiles, 1986, p34).[22]
We have this freedom of action from God, that is, we have free-will, because of this dual causality. God is ‘epistemically-distant’. In other words, we do not ‘know’ the transcendent God as close to us in the conventional sense for if we did, how could our actions be said to be truly free? God is immanent in the presence of the Holy Spirit sent down on Pentecost (Acts 2) yet this is not a coercive force “but a guiding within the inherent openness of the flux of becoming.”[23]

A Christian doctrine of Creation, as well as being metaphysical, must be ethical. If the cosmos is “the actualisation of the Christ-life in the material structures of being…”[24] then how are we to receive this gift of existence; this divine gift of love found in the cross?
This question has been framed in reference to the ‘ecological crisis’: “a crisis in the human relationship to nature, in human beings’ understanding of themselves in relationship to nature.”[25] How we treat the natural world is an ethical question in the doctrine of creation. Our ‘rule’ over the world* as found in Genesis 1 v28 should be one of stewardship rather than exploitation, to “act as the visible representatives of God’s benevolent care for creation.”[26] Hence, we should “care for and…preserve the creation”[27] in and for Christ.

Thus, I argue that Christ is the core of a Christian doctrine of Creation. Christ as Creator (Jhn 1v1-3) and Christ as Redeemer (Col 1v14) whom we find as one in the Cross (Gal. 6v14). This is to be based on the New Testament, with reference to the Old for understanding of the Father. But consummation of creation is the Gospel, and the Gospel is Christ in 1st Century Palestine, dying for new life. Thus is our doctrine that of the Gospels, the New Testament.
Furthermore, a doctrine of creation must seemingly be a universal one, without exclusion for those not of faith; for the whole of creation was created for salvation, and salvation for the whole of creation. This is not universalism+; rather it is universal opportunity for salvation through the cross.

[1] Brunner, p6-7
[2] http://www.askoxford.com/ Search results for ‘creation’. It must be noted that this is the Compact OED.
[3] Ibid. Search results for ‘create’.
[4] Wittgenstein, p73
[5] Quoted in Young, p107
[6] Bible references will be from the New International Version, unless otherwise stated.
[7] Quoted in Astley et al, p97
[8] P.J. Hefner quoted in Astley, p112
[9] Quoted in Astley et al p92
[10] Quoted in Southgate et al, chapter 2, p10
[11] Ibid, p2
[12] Quoted in Young, p109
[13]Ibid, p88
[14] Per Lonning, quoted in Astley et al, p95
[15] Quoted in Astley et al p95
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid, p91
[19] Brunner, p337
[20] Quoted in Astley et al, p92
[21] Astley, p17
[22] Adapted from Astley, p17
[23] The Doctrine Commission of the General Synod of the Church of England, We Believe in the Holy Spirit, 1991, quoted in Astley et al, p34
[24] Ibid., p112
[25] Bauckham, p183
[26] Southgate et al, Chapter 2, p7
[27] Ibid, p8
+ The belief that all mankind will eventually be saved. Espoused by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 175-185 CE) and, in modern times, the theologian John Hick.

© Alan Bowden, 2006

Aaaaaaaaah

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaall done hoorah! I had definitely forgotten how nasty exams are after a year out. I now have three weeks of NOTHING AT ALL in Durham, just lounging about with my girlfriend, watching the cricket, the world cup, sauntering down to the bar, reading, resting....lovely. In fact I think I'll start right....now

Aaaaaaargh

It's 3.45am and I'm starting to get the feeling that I may have understimated the amount of revision I had to do for the exam which starts in, oh, 5 hours and 45 minutes. Bother....only one more philosopher to go....then sleep...or I may just bash through and rest after 2 hours of Philosophy exam. Oh well, back to Soren Kierkegaard...

Exams.........

Well, I've had two exams so far and, I hesitate slightly to say, so far so good. The first one wasn't amazing, but then I only need a pass; and the second one was, I think/hope, quite good. It's largely philosophy exams from hereon in which means two hours instead of three, shorter essays, but, it must be said, alot more chance of going off on irrelevant tangents.....oh well, back to Ethics & Values revision, just four more exams to go.

Vacillation

An experiment in writing:

He held the knife, tip quivering, over his upturned palm. The temptation, yet at the same time horror, was overwhelming. He was left in tortuous limbo. Fascination and something like pain filled his stomach. No, not pain exactly. More, a vacuum, yes, an emptiness in the pit of his stomach which had little to do with hunger. A yearning? Perhaps that would be a better word. Not that any of this occurred to him at the time, for his entire being was focussed on the juxtaposition of blade and flesh. So close, yet so far. So close…but he knew he would never have the courage to do it; and it was this knowledge that brought the painless, discomfiting, desire for an instant of action. To bring his right hand down; to turn his hand against himself, against its very mirror image. Truly there he would find self-negation, there to truly realise his being: An internal consummation in coming full circle on the path of identity. In piercing himself he would find out his true being, his true ‘I’.
Yet he does not, cannot, will not, and knows he never will. He continues, imprisoned in himself, for evermore, as the knife drops from his shaking hand.

© Alan Bowden, 2006