Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Source of Moral Authority

The question of the source of moral authority arises here. There is confusion in today’s society between ethics and morals. This has come about with the secularization of all public life. Today moral authority is extended to the alleged “wisdom” of temporal sages and wits.

Let’s examine the character of the object: morality.

Both morality and ethics are based on imperative statements such as “should” statements and “must” statements. The term imperative derives from imperare: to command, order as does the term imperial and necessarily involves the authority to enforce the statement with consequences. Imperatives are not derivable logically from any empirical investigation of nature. Imperatives are rules for guiding human behavior, not rules describing the behavior of natural phenomena. The behavior of natural phenomena is deterministic; human behavior is not (if it were, arguing the issue would be of no consequence). So human behavior is thought to be controllable through commands or rules.

Without the authority to enforce consequences for behaviors, imperatives are of no value. The entire weight of an imperative depends on (a) consequences whether positive or negative, (b) the desirability or revulsiveness of the nature of the consequences, and (c) the probability of actually incurring those consequences.

Ethics today are usually proclaimed by a theoretical philosopher or a professional bio-ethicist; his authority is himself. Ethics are derived pragmatically using logic, frequently to evaluate cost/benefit ratios of competing behaviors. The consequences for not observing the ethic could be as small as cost/benefit gains or losses, or as large as threatened global disaster scenarios predicted by the ethicist, with implied guilt for those who do not observe the ethic. When one hears statements declaring that “we MUST…” or “the nation(s) MUST…”, it is a human-derived ethical imperative statement [1].

Morals are considered passé by secularists because morals are derived not by human logic, they are rules pronounced on the authority of a supreme being that is declared non-existent. The traditional consequences for not observing these rules are declared to be too onerous for the value of the infraction. If such a being did exist, the moral authority of that being would be high, much higher than man-made authority, and the benefits and consequences would apply to all humans, universally.

Now for the question of the applicability of ethical authority. An example has been given of ethical behavior being driven by a political philosophy, in this case, Libertarianism. Assuming that the principles for Libertarianism are consistent across all Libertarians, what is the source of authority for declaring those principles to be unassailable, universal and valid ethics? The answer has to be the human mind, operating on principles thought to be logical.

So the human mind, or at least a subgroup of human minds, has declared an ethic. No matter how compelling the logic behind the ethic, what gives those rules or principles universal moral authority?

There are a couple of possible ways to achieve universal moral authority for human-derived principles. First is through the appeal to the collective conscience for voluntary righteous behavior vs. guilt for non-compliant behavior. This is not a likely source of universal authority for the machinations of human minds.

The second way to achieve universal moral authority for human-derived principles is through the use of force. And this is the way that is historically implemented.

It is easy to conclude that political philosophies are not actually imperatives without the injection of force into the equation. This realization is what drives Atheist/Materialists ever Leftward, regardless of their starting philosophy.

But the larger conclusion remains that personal absolutes are not the same as universal absolutes, and that principles that derive from personal absolutes are as likely to evaporate as any other personal opinion. As bedrock foundations for universal principles of behavior, personal absolutes or opinions won’t suffice.

Regardless of the Atheist and Materialist subpopulation that adheres to personal principles, the potential volatility of such principles suggests that they haven’t the persuasive force to be a source of universal voluntary submission or guide for universal conscientious righteous behavior. It is the weightless, empty nature of Atheism / Materialism itself that renders any adopted personal, man-derived principles to be of no weight in evaluating the character or potential behavior of the Atheist.

Certainly these arguments apply somewhat to Christians as well, and this statement always surfaces despite being a tu Quoque fallacy. With Christians, at least the principles are not volatile and can be found easily. And the same goes for Muslims. Whether or not a Christian or Muslim [2] behaves according to their universal principles does not remove the expectation that they would, and ordinarily do, and moreover the principles give a baseline for a metric of character evaluation that does not exist for Atheist / Materialists.

Interestingly a political philosophy such as Libertarianism does not allow the proponent to actually exercise those principles unless he is in power. Without the power to implement the political philosophy or authority to enforce its consequences, a Libertarian is just a philosopher, not a practitioner.

[1] Typically looking for enforcement power to help implement the ethic, and frequently expecting to gain from the implementation.

[2] Actually due to the internal contradictions in the Qu'ran, behavior rules are interpreted by local mullahs, rendering Islam to be a human-derived principle set as well.

3 comments:

Martin said...

This is what I don't get.

I presume you claim that you have moral, universal absolutes from God/The Bible, and that I, as an atheist, have relativistic morals from human reason, or whatever.

But the morals you claim as absolutely given to you by God seem to change with the culture and be just as relativistic as atheism's.

It seems to me that you (meaning the religious), get your morals from the same place I do (upbringing, culture, etc) and then apply God's Word ad hoc to support them.

Abortion is wrong, but I can find Bible verses to suggest that the soul is only implanted upon the baby's first breath. But since much of modern Christian culture is against abortion, scriptural support can be found to support this position.

Homosexuality is wrong, but then so is eating shellfish and every other rule from Leviticus. Unless you are a modern Christian, where one can filter out the "ritualistic" rules but leave the "behaviorial" rules, thus making God's Word support their cultural bias against homosexuality. The Episcopalians culturally accept it, so they find verses to support it. Heretics! Burn them! No, they aren't heretics. They are following the One True Path to God. Heretics! Who knows?

Or just say that Jesus did away with the Law so they don't have to answer tough questions about it. Oh wait, no, he DID support the Law ("not one iota"). No, he didn't. Yes, he did. Out of context. No, YOU'RE taking it out of context. No, YOU are. Who knows? I've asked five different Christians and get just as many answers, most of which are contradictory. I presume four of them were not True Christians.

How about purgatory? Wait, it exists. No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. Scripture out of context. No, YOU are taking it out of context. Original Hebrew. No. Yes. Who knows? Ask five Christians...

The Rapture? Invention of a 19th century preacher. No, it's prophesied by the Bible. No wait, the verses are being taken out of context. No, they aren't if you look at the original Hebrew. Yes, they are, heretic. Ask five different Christians...

And in the past, the culture supported racism against black people and pointed to the Bible to support it. Now, racism is (more than in the past) anathema, so people point to the verses in the Bible that support that, all ad hoc.

The Bible to me seems much like Nostradamus, or astrology; it's vague enough that you can force it to fit almost any viewpoint you want. And your relativistic viewpoints come from the same place as mine: your upbringing, your culture, and to a tiny, tiny extent, your genetics.

Where is this "absolute" of which you speak?

Stan said...

Martin glad to see you here…

I am not here to provide apologetics for Christianity. As I have said many times apologetics are human logic, attempting to describe something outside human logic. And anyone wanting to find errors in human logic, with which you seem obsessed, will find such errors and use them against the human logic. I personally doubt that apologetics ever really convicted anyone of anything.

There are intuitive absolutes (we’ve been through this so many times now) called the First Principles, which are not derivable empirically and which are not in any way material in and of themselves, and which therefore are metaphysical. There is an intuited logical consistency in the universal laws of cosmic behavior. All old hat. All pointing to an intelligent source prior to the cosmic beginning, one that must be intuited.

Now the question is,

“Can rules for behavior - deriving their authority from such a pre-existing intelligent source - be intuited?”

And because intuition is a subjective, internal, personal function, it is entirely up to you to decide that. It’s not up to 5 Christians who you interview to deliver “Truth” to you. It is completely and entirely up to you to investigate that issue, without a priori bias, and to make your own conclusion based on your own intuition.

That’s why submission is voluntary. Truth cannot be forced onto an individual who rejects it in advance. Truth is “realized” in the sense that a new reality opens up which contains that newly apprehended Truth. This new reality does several things. It expands the horizons of reality that were previously held. It allows investigation of issues from a perspective previously not available.

But if the investigation consists of sniping at historical Christian failures (and contemporary failures as well), sniping at the details of the bible rather than the overall tenor and message, and never trying to intuit the source of the principles of the logic you say you use, you will continue in your current stance, possibly forever.

You said,
”And your relativistic viewpoints come from the same place as mine: your upbringing, your culture, and to a tiny, tiny extent, your genetics.”

You have no way of knowing that. Your presumptions are purely based on Materialism and anti-ecclesiasticism. You have no evidence and have jumped to a conclusion. And you completely neglect the fact that I have gone through the process, completed it, and found your position (which essentially correlated with my own, held for most of my adult life) to be wanting: ie. false.

But it useless for you to try to milk an answer to your issues out of me – it really is up to you to introspect your own way to answers.

Perhaps your intuition will deliver different answers: so be it, at least they would be honest answers based on your personal process.

And BTW, the process actually never stops. Think about that one.

Stan said...

I need to amend a statement I made above for clarity. In reference to apprehending an intelligent source prior to the cosmic beginning, I said,

"...must be intuited".

This might easily be taken differently from my intent, and should be stated, "...requires intuition if it is to be apprehended as a reality".