Maverick Philosopher

1. You really ought to get out for a hike while the wildflowers are still in bloom.

Someone who asserts (1) is not speaking from a moral point of view. He is using 'ought' in a nonmoral sense. He is saying to the addressee that it would be a good idea, not morally but aesthetically, to hike while the wildflowers are still blooming. The sense of 'ought' in (P), however, is moral. So (1) is not relevant to (P) and cannot tell against it. But consider

2. Given the amount of vile and irresponsible speech engaged in by cyberpunks, you ought not allow just anyone to comment at your site.

In (2) the sense of 'ought' is moral just as it is in (P). But someone who asserts (2) does not by so doing imply that the addressee is under a moral obligation to not allow just anyone to comment. (2) expresses a moral recommendation. It is morally commendatory rather than morally imperative. One who asserts (2) is saying that it is a morally good idea to not give a forum to just anyone.

Since (2) and (P) both feature the same sense of 'ought,' a moral sense of 'ought,' and (2) does not impute an obligation, (2) is a counterexample to (P). So it looks as if I ought to replace the biconditional (P) with the conditional

P*. Necessarily, if agent A is morally obligated to X, then A (morally) ought to X but not conversely.

This result seems to tie in nicely with what I said about the obligatory and the supererogatory. The morally obligatory is that which it is morally good to do but morally bad to leave undone, while the morally supererogatory is that which it is morally good to do but NOT morally bad to leave undone. What counterexample (2) shows is that there are actions that are morally supererogatory: morally good but not required.

Thanks to correspondent Phil O. Sophy the TerraVitan for help in sorting this out. Any errors that remain are of course also in part his responsibility!

1A. If p is necessary, then p is possible, but not conversely.
1D. If A is obligatory, then A is permissible, though not conversely.

2A. P is impossible iff ~p is necessary.
2D. A is impermissible iff ~A is obligatory. (e.g. Sexually molesting children is impermissible iff not sexually molesting children is obligatory.)

But of course the following ab esse ad posse principle has no deontic analog:

3A. If p is true, then it is possible that p is true.
3D. If A is done, then A is permissible.

This is not surprising since the deontic is a species of the normative.

Now let's try to characterize (not define) the deontic concepts of the permissible, the impermissible, and the obligatory in terms of the axiological concepts of good and bad:

4. If A is impermissible, then A is bad to do and good to leave undone.
5. If A is obligatory, then A is good to do and bad to leave undone.
6. If A is permissible then A is axiologically indifferent: neither bad to do and good to leave undone, nor good to do and bad to leave undone.

These characterizations seems to leave conceptual room for two other sorts of actions, actions that are good to do but NOT bad to leave undone, and actions that are bad to do but NOT good to leave undone. The former are supererogatory in a wide sense of the term, and the latter are suberogatory.

For example, paying one's bill in a restaurant is (legally and morally) obligatory: it is good to pay the bill and bad to leave without paying. But tipping is (legally, though perhaps not morally) supererogatory: it is good to tip but not legally required, and in this sense not bad to leave no tip. If this is unclear, consider tipping in excess of 20%. Surely this would be supererogatory: good to do (ceteris paribus) but not bad to leave undone. One could plausibly argue that restaurant patrons are morally obligated to tip in the amount of 15-20% of the tab given that waiters and waitresses work for minimum wage and rely on tips for a livable wage; but surely no one is obligated to leave a 50% tip, say. And yet it would be a very nice thing to do for that pretty waitress working her way through school. It would be good to do but not bad to leave undone.

Do you balk at calling such trifling actions supererogatory because they are not grand or heroic like throwing oneself on a grenade to save one's buddies? Well then, I will accommodate your point by distinguishing between wide and narrow senses of 'supererogation.' Or I might just give you the word as long as you grant me a category of actions an example of which I have just provided.

Now for some examples of suberogation. A supererogatory act is a good act that is in excess of what is morally or legally required. A suberogatory act is then one that is bad but not so bad as to be impermissible. The following might be examples: talking too much, public displays of affection, breaking wind in public, picking one's nose in front of others. The practitioner of public rhinotillexis does nothing legally or morally impermissible, but it is something bad, and not just aesthetically. I want to say that it is a morally bad action that not impermissible. So I say it is suberogatory.

More needs to be said. I am not sure that in the end the sub- and supererogatory don't collapse into the permissible thus obviating the need for two further categories of actions. Further reading: My essay On Tipping, and the SEP article, Supererogation.

Now it might occur to someone to wonder whether logical arguments from evil for the nonexistence of God also beg the question. Is there anything to this notion?

Logical arguments from evil start with a fact, the fact of evil. No doubt evils exist. But for evils to prove the nonexistence of the omni-qualified God of traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, these evils must be gratuitous. A gratuitous evil is one that cannot be reconciled with the existence of the omni-qualified God, for example, an evil that God has no morally sufficient reason to permit, or an evil that God cannot prevent because it is the deed of a free agent. A gratuitous evil, then, is one the existence of which is logically inconsistent with the existence of God conceived in the traditional way.

Granted, evils exist. But only gratuitous evils are inconsistent with the existence of God. Only they pose a problem for the existence of an all-good God. Consider the pain of a just punishment, the pain of imprisonment, say, that convinces a miscreant, an armed robber for example, to reform his life. (Few penal punishments are truly rehabilitating, but certainly some are.) The pain of punishment is evil. But in my example, it is necessary for the achievement of a greater good. Thus the evil in question is not gratuitous.

How do we know that there are gratuitous evils? To know this, we would have to know that God does not exist. Thus we would have to know the conclusion of the LAFE to be true in order to know that its key premise -- Gratuitous evils exist -- is true. But this is the very definition of begging the question.

Therefore, it seems that LAFE begs the question. To appreciate my point, compare:

1. If there are gratuitous evils, then God does not exist.

2. If creation exists, then a creator exists.

Both of these propositions are analytically true. So if one knows that there are gratuitous evils, then one knows that God does not exist. Likewise, if one knows that creation exists, then one one knows that a creator exists. But how does one know either of these things? Suppose I witness a brutal and unprovoked assault on a human being by another human being. Witnessing this, I witness an evil. But by what mark do I recognize the gratuitousness of the evil? By no empirical mark since what I observe is consistent both with the assault's being gratuitously evil and with its being nongratuitously evil.

Something similar holds for (2). How do I know that what I see, mountains and valleys, cacti and sky is creation or created nature as opposed to uncreated nature? By what mark do I know that nature has the status of having been created? By no mark.

Return to the brutal assault. Imagine it to be perpetrated against a loved one. Atheists will naturally take such crimes as 'proof' that there is no God. But it is no more 'proof' than the existence and order of nature is 'proof' of an intelligent creator. Both athetist and theist interpret the data in the light of a worldview that precedes the data and is imposed upon them. Each can fit the data into his scheme. But fitting data into a scheme is not the same as data proving a scheme. Thus the brutal assault fits the atheist's scheme but does not prove it, and the existence and order of nature fits the theist's scheme but does not prove it.

So here is my challenge to Peter and others: explain how LAFE does not beg the question against the theist.

2. Atheists are not less moral than believers.

Therefore

3. Religious faith does not offer the only real basis for morality.

The problem with this argument lies in its first premise. It simply doesn't follow that if religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than theists. This blatant non sequitur trades on a confusion of two questions which it is essential to distinguish.

Q1. Given some agreed-upon moral code, are people who profess some version of theism more 'moral,' i.e., more likely to live in accordance with the agreed-upon code, than those who profess some version of atheism?

The answer to this question is No. But even if the answer is Yes, I am willing to concede arguendo to Harris that it is No. In any case (Q1) is not philosophically interesting, except as part of the run-up to a genuine philosophical question, though it is of interest sociologically. Now contrast (Q1) with

Q2. Given some agreed-upon moral code, are atheists justified in adhering to the code?

The agreed-upon code is one that most or many atheists and theists would accept. Thus don't we all object to child molestation, wanton killing of human beings, rape, theft, and lying? And in objecting to these actions, we mean our objections to be more than merely subjectively valid. When our property is stolen or a neighbor murdered, we consider that an objective wrong has been done. And when the murderer is apprehended, tried, and convicted we judge that something objectively right has been done. Let's not worry about the details or the special cases: killing in self-defense, abortion, etc. Just imagine some minimal objectively binding code that all or most of us, theists and atheists alike, accept.

What (Q2) asks about is the foundation or basis of the agreed-upon objectively binding moral code. This is not a sociological or any kind of empirical question. Nor is it a question in normative ethics. The question is not what we ought to do and leave undone, for we are assuming that we already have a rough answer to that. The question is meta-ethical: what does morality rest on, if on anything?

There are different theories. Some will say that morality requires a supernatural foundation, others that a natural foundation suffices. Here you can read the transcript of a debate between Richard Taylor and William Lane Craig on this topic. I incline toward the side ably defended by Craig. Although I respect Taylor very much as a philosopher and have learned from his work, he seems to me to come across in this debate as something of a sophist and a smart-ass.

But the point of this post is not to take sides on the question of the basis of morality, but simply to point out that Sam Harris has confused two quite obviously distinct questions. For if he had kept them distinct, he would have seen that the question whether morality requires a basis in religion is logically independent of the question whether theists are more moral than atheists. He would have seen that invoking the platitude that atheists can be as morally decent as theists has no tendency to show that morality does not require a supernatural foundation. He would have seen that (1) is false.

See Is Religion the Problem? for further criticism of Sam Harris.

I don't see that "x is something I ought to do iff x is something I'm morally obligated to do" is a conceptual truth, or even true. [. . .] Non-consequentialist moralities allow room for good deeds that are not obligatory. If helping a stranger is a good deed and you are fully able to perform it without endangering others, then I am quite comfortable recommending to you that you ought to do it. But I am not suggesting you have any duty or an obligation to do so. [. . .] So, you ought to help does not imply you have a duty to help.

I will now demonstrate that you ought to help does indeed imply that you have a duty to help, assuming that one is not equivocating on 'ought' and is using 'ought' as it is used in (P).

I agree that there are good deeds that are not obligatory. Suppose my neighbor is away when an important-looking package is delivered to his door. I take it into my house for safekeeping until he returns. Surely I am under no obligation, moral or legal, to do such a thing. Yet it is a good deed.

But it does not follow that it is a deed that I ought to do, or that I have a duty to do; it is precisely a supererogatory action, one above and beyond the call of duty. (A supererogatory action can be something as trifling as this, and need not be grand or heroic, but more on this in a separate post on supererogation.) If I ought to X, and I omit to X, then I do something wrong. Therefore, if I ought to pick up my neighbor's package, but omit to do this, then I do something wrong. But obviously I do nothing wrong in leaving my neighbor's package where it lies. Hence it is not the case that I ought to pick up my neighbor's package. Nor do I have any duty to pick up my neighbor's package.

I suspect my correspondent is simply playing fast and loose with 'ought,' a word with several meanings in English. Some examples:

a. 'The car ought to start; I installed a new battery.' This looks to be a non-normative use of 'ought,' one with no relevance to moral theory.

b. 'If you want to get to Tucson from Phoenix by interstate highway, you ought to take I-10 East.' This sentence is a hypothetical imperative, and the subject-matter is morally indifferent.

c. 'If you want to be a successful hit man, then you ought to learn how to kill with a .22 caliber gun.' A second hypothetical imperative. Here the subject-matter is not morally indifferent, but the 'ought' has noting to do with a duty.

d. 'If helping a stranger is a good deed, and one wants to be helpful, then one ought to help.' Another hypothetical imperative, and close to what my correspodnent said above. But this use of 'ought' is not the use in principle (P) above.

e. 'You ought to pay your debts.' A categorical imperative, and a morally relevant use of 'ought.' This is the use of 'ought' that is featured in (P) above.

In sum, (P) seems rock-solid and I will continue to adhere to it until someone can instruct me otherwise.

Hitchens is also right about Geraldine Ferraro:

Ferraro may have sounded sour when she asserted that there can be political advantages to being black in the United States—and she said the selfsame thing about Jesse Jackson in 1984—but it's perfectly arguable that what she said is, in fact, true, and even if it isn't true, it's absurd to try and classify it as a racist remark.

But then our man goes off the deep end, joining Dawkins and the rest of the Gang:

How true it is that religion poisons everything.

Hitchens' brilliant mind, so capable of nuance, shuts down when religion comes up. He saw through the illusions of the Left and courageously broke with his former comrades; but in his unreasoning hatred of all religion he is a leftist still.

Suppose the poor devil in the canyon is not only thirsty but also hungry and blistered. It seems reasonable to say that although I am morally obliged to give him water (to ward off imminent heatstroke), I am not obliged to give him food and moleskin, even though the pains of hunger and blistered feet are evils. If I minister to him in those further ways inessential to his survival, then my deeds are supererogatory.

As I understand the obligatory/supererogatory distinction, an agent's failure to perform a supererogatory act that he can perform in no way diminishes his moral goodness. This suggests a definition:

D1. An action X performed by agent A is supererogatory =df (i) X is permissible but not obligatory; (ii) X exceeds what is morally required; (iii)A's failure or refusal to perform X in no way diminishes A's moral goodness.

Now I have just given two examples of acts that look to be supererogatory: giving the greenhorn food, and giving him moleskin. The guy's feet hurt and that is a low-level evil. Suppose the evil is dysteleological: it serves no good purpose such as that of teaching the bonehead that setting out on a ten mile hike in brand-new boots is a stupid thing to do. (For if he truly is a bonehead, he won't learn from the experience.) Even on the assumption of dysteleologicality, it seems that I am under no moral obligation to provide foot care, and that my failure to provide foot care to the witless biped does not diminish my moral goodness.

Further examples are easily constructed. Now if there are supererogatory actions, then one or both of the following principles would seem to be false:

P1. A morally perfect being prevents/alleviates/eliminates all gratuitous or dysteleological evils that it knows about and can eliminate.

P2. A morally perfect being prevents/alleviates/eliminates all evils that it knows about and can eliminate.

Now suppose that an argument from evil employs (P1) or some equivalent as I think Peter Lupu's LAFE does. Then it may be possible to neutralize such an argument by citing a possible case in which an omni-qualified being does not prevent (etc.) a dysteleological evil, but without prejudice to his being perfectly (completely) good, because the removal of the evil would be a supererogatory act.

Suppose I stub my toe, mildly, twice in a row. Perhaps the first toe-stubbing serves the purpose of warning me to be careful. It leads to a greater good. But the second stubbing is dysteleological, and the pain, which is a low-level evil, is gratuitous or dysteleological. How then can an all-good God, who is all-knowing and all-powerful, allow such an evil to occur? Surely God could have created a world in which Vallicella on 25 March 2008 stubs his toe only once! On some versions of LAFE (and perhaps on Lupu's) just one such instance of evil suffices to prove the nonexistence of God. For on LAFE an all-good God simply cannot exist if even one instance of gratuitous evil exists!

The 'evil' premise in Lupu's LAFE is simply this: Evil exists in the world. (p. 4) Now for evil to exist it suffices that there be just one instance of evil, e.g. the evil of my second toe-stubbing. But how could one instance of evil, even if it is gratuitous, prove the nonexistence of God? That sounds absurd. It is on a level with saying that if God existed, then turkeys would fly around ready-roasted, thereby saving us much bother on Thanksgiving; but they don't, so God does not exist.

The reasonable thing to say, it seems, is that God's failure to stop me from stubbing my toe a second time does not diminish his goodness one bit. And this for the reason that such an intervention would have been supererogatory. So I am wondering whether logical arguments from evil can be neutralized by appeal to the obligatory/supererogatory distinction. Evidential arguments from evil are of course another story.

My quietism ended when current events taught me the dangers of religion. I had always known how religions, including Christianity, led to wars in the Middle East, Ireland, and so on. Many wars, of course, are not based on religion. Even religious wars result from non-religious forces as well. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that many wars have been and continue to be fueled in large part by religious beliefs. It is no coincidence that terrorists are so often motivated by religion, since it is hard to get non-religious people to volunteer as suicide bombers. (76)

It is true that people holding religious beliefs have used, and are using, their religious beliefs to justify war, terrorism, and such other evils as forced conversions and inquisitions. No reasonable person can deny this. But what Sinnott-Armstrong (S-A) says above in the second sentence is that religions lead to wars. Does he really want to say that all religions lead to wars? Buddhism? I understand that there are some Buddhist terrorists. But surely a professional philosopher such as S-A can see the difference between (i) Some Buddhists are terrorists and (ii) Buddhism causes war and terrorism. If a Buddhist is a terrorist, this is an accidental fact about him; there is nothing in the essence of Buddhism that enjoins terrorism. No Buddhist qua Buddhist is a terrorist. It escapes me how the doctrines, precepts and practices of Buddhism cause war, terrorism and kindred evils. Similarly for Christianity. Plenty of atrocities have been committed by people who identify themselves as Christians. But that is not to say that the characteristic doctrines, precepts and practices of Christianity cause war, terrorism and the like. It is rather the opposite: when the doctrines and precepts of Buddhism and Christianity are acted upon they tend to mitigate human savagery.

And then there is the case of Gandhi whose principle of ahimsa (no-harm) derives from his Hinduism. Hinduism as understood and practiced by him surely did not lead to war and terroism. Did he perhaps not understand the principles of his religion? So it cannot be religion as such that causes war and terrorism.

A second obvious point that needs to be made is that even if (some? all?) religious beliefs cause wars and other evils, or rather are part of the motivational framework of individuals who are bellicose and terroristic, this is also true of other belief-systems, belief-systems that are anti-religious. Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism are examples. According to the Black Book of Communism, Communists in the 20th century murdered close to 100 million people. Now Communism is virulently anti-religious. It is a political ideology that is committed to the destruction of religions as to the destruction of an 'opiate' in Marx's famous simile, one that keeps people from realizing the worker's paradise here on earth.

So my question to Sinnott-Armstrong et al. is: If you oppose religion because of its tendency to cause bloodshed, why do you not oppose political ideology as well and for the same reason? Indeed, if you believe that religion is the problem, why do you not hold that belief as such is the problem, or all belief that transcends matters of obvious empirical fact? After all, people fight bitterly over all sorts of beliefs religious and non-religious. (Some believe in wealth redistribution, other do not; some believe in anthropogenic global warming, others do not, etc.)

If one opposes a religion such as Christianity because it causes wars despite its preaching of 'Thou shalt not kill' and 'Love thy neighbor,' but does not oppose anti-religious political ideologies like Communism that also cause wars but which preaches that any end is justified including murder if it leads to the socialist paradise, then the 'reason' proffered for rejecting religion is bogus. It is simply no argument against religion to say that some people use it for murderous ends; for it is also the case that some people use anti-religious ideologies for murderous ends. A good reason for rejecting religion cannot be a reason that would also apply to non-religions and indeed to any belief-system that inspires contention and could be used by someone to kill and commit kindred evils. It is absurd to say: I object to religion because it leads to bloodshed but I have no problem with non-religious belief-systems that also lead to bloodshed.

Sinnott-Armstrong senses the difficulty in his position for he goes on to say:

Of course, atheists kill, too. Russian and Chinese Communist governments are famous examples. However, these atheists killed in the name of communism, not atheism. (p. 76)

The difference, then, is that theists who kill kill in the name of theism, whereas atheists who kill do not kill in the name of atheism. Now surely this is an example of special pleading. For although it is true that some theists kill in the name of theism (e.g. some Christians kill in the name of Christ; some Muslims kill in the name of Allah, etc.), it is also true that some atheists kill in the name of atheism: there are cases of atheists who have tortured and crucified Catholic priests in order to show them that there is no God. These atheists tortured in the name of atheism, whrether they were Communists or Nazis.

To say or imply that no atheist kills in the name of atheism is blatant special pleading. It amounts to saying that atheism is by definition a belief-system that cannot be misused by anyone, and if anyone were to misuse use it that would show that he is not an atheist! If a Communist crucifies a priest to prove to him the nonexistence of God, one cannot reasonably say that it was the Communism but not the atheism of the torturer that was responsible for the crime.

3. Felons should not be permitted to own guns.

I see no contradiction. Since I am not a philosophical anarchist, I do not deny the possibility of there being a state that is de jure legitimate. Suppose some state S possesses at time t legitimate political authority over its citizens. Then S at t has the right to pass and enforce laws, and the citizens of S have the obligation to abide by them. Now it is reasonable that felons, or some subclass of felons, say convicted murderers and armed robbers, be barred from the possession of firearms. This is just common sense. States exist, among other reasons, to protect life, liberty, and property. A state that failed to pass and enforce laws against gun possession by known murderers, armed robbers, and other bipedal predators would be failing to do its job.

The fact that S at t outlaws gun possession by felons is logically consistent with S's allowing gun possession by law-abiding citizens, and indeed for reason (2) above along with other reasons. For although S is de jure legitimate at t, it might cease to be at some later time t*. A morally legitimate state, I would argue, protects the rights of its citizens, including the right to revolt against the state should it become oppressive.

To sum up. Assuming that philsophical anarchism is false, (2) and (3) are consistent. But if no state is morally legitimate, if every actual and possible state violates the moral autonomy of its subjects, as Robert Paul Wolff argues (if I understand him), then (2) together with (3) would entail a sort of contradiction: if no state is morally legitimate, then no state can legitimately restrict access to firearms, and so (3) could not be held consistently with (2).

We need to examine whether the problem a theist of a specific stripe has in reconciling God and evil is easier to solve or perhaps harder to solve than the problem a generic theist has.

To see what I am driving at, imagine a version of theism — call it version A — that affirms God, immortal souls, and the eventual blissful communion of all souls with God. On this version of theism there is purgatory, but no hell defined as a state of everlasting separation from communion with God. Thus on this version of theism there is post-mortem evil, the pain of purgatory, but this purgatorial evil is instrumental for the achieving of a higher good and is to that extent redeemed by this higher good.

Now compare this theism-A with a theism-B which affirms God but denies post-mortem existence whether in the form of immortal souls or in the form of resurrected bodies. On this alternative the God of the generic theist (defined above) exists, but for human beings this life is all there is: at death a human being ceases to exist utterly. Now does it not seem that the theist-B faces a much tougher problem than the theist-A when it comes to reconciling a good God with the fact of evil?

For the theist-B, the horrendous evils of this life are not compensated for by any life to come. But for the theist-A, the transient evils of this short life are as nothing compared to the endless bliss of the soul's communion with God and with other purified souls. Thus gratuitous evil for the theist-A is a vanishing quantity.

Most atheists share the very strong intuition that the probability of this world's containing the amount of evil it does is much greater on the hypothesis that God does not exist than it is on the hypothesis that God exists:

Prob(E/~G) >> Prob(E/G).

But to properly evaluate this inequality, how can one leave out the rest of what most theists believe? The amount and kinds of evil in this world enters the calculation, no doubt. But the absence of gratuitous evil, and the presence of unending bliss in the next world, are also relevant if the question concerns reconciling God and evil within theism-A.

To sum up:

1. Real live theists are not generic theists, but theists of some particular stripe or other. Generic theism is an abstraction.

2. The problem of evil, if it is to be a genuine existential conundrum and not a mere logic puzzle, is the problem of reconciling the existence of the God of a particular religion with the fact of evil as evil is understood from within this religion.

3. A theism that affirms God, post-mortem existence, and the eventual unending blissful communion of all souls (or resurrected persons) with God does not face the same problem of evil as a version of theism which denies post-mortem existence.

4. It is dialectically unfair for atheists to argue against all (classical) theists from the fact of the evil in this world when (i) not all theists are generic theists, and (ii) some theists believe that the transient evils of this short life are far outweighed by the unending bliss of the world to come.

5. It is arguable that there is no insoluble problem of evil for theists-A. Suppose this world is a vale of soul-making in which human beings, exercising free will, make themselves worthy, or fail to make themselves worthy, of communion with God. Combine this soul-making idea with post-mortem existence, and the existence of purgatory but not hell, and we have perhaps the elements of a solution to the problem of evil. (Cf. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Part IV)

Let me conclude by noting that a theism-C which holds to eternal damnation for some may exacerbate the problem of evil. Here I refer you to David Lewis' posthumous "Divine Evil" in Louise Antony, ed., Philosophers Without Gods, Oxford 2007, pp. 231-242. Lewis, may God rest his soul, maintains that the usual logical and evidential arguments from evil are a "sideshow" compared to a "simpler argument, one that has been strangely neglected" (p. 231) that focuses not on the evils that God fails to prevent, but on the one's he perpetrates. And then he goes on to speak of hell and eternal torment. You can guess what conclusion he comes to.

We shall have to examine Lewis' simpler argument from evil in a separate post. But I am happy that he in effect concedes one of my points, namely, that a serious discussion of the problem of evil must address the whole of a theistic position and not focus merely on God and his attributes.

If so, then whether we have a right to life, or any natural right, cannot depend on the interpretation of any document. Therefore, with respect to the question of gun rights, the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, albeit important, is logically secondary. The logically prior question is whether there are natural gun rights that need constitutional codification, recognition, and protection.

Th notion that one has a natural right to own a gun may sound absurd, but if I can derive the right to own a gun from the natural right to life, then I will have gone some distance toward showing that the right to own a gun — or more generally, the right to procure for oneself the means of self-defense — is a natural right.

So here is my argument.

1. Every human person possesses a natural right to life.

2. If every human person has a right to life, then he has a right to defend his life against those who would seek to violate it.

3. If every human person has a right to defend his life, then he has a right to an effective means of defending his life.

Therefore

4. Every human person has a right to an effective means of defending his life. (From 1, 2, 3 by Modus Ponens and Hypothetical Syllogism.)

5. In many circumstances, a handgun is the only effective means of defending one's life.

Therefore

6. In many circumstances, human persons have a right to possess handguns, a right that is not conferred by constitutions but ought to be respected by them.

The conclusions (4) and (6) follow from the premises, though I might need to think more about the logic of the move from (4) and (5) to (6). (What exactly is the form of the argument and the validating rules of inference?) But are the premises defensible? I maintain that they are.

I take (1) to be axiomatic. In any case it is here assumed and cannot be here defended. Note that the argument does not assume that every human being is a human person. Charles Manson is a human being, but it is arguable that by the commission of his crimes he forfeited his personhood, and with it his right to life. Some will hold that human fetuses are not persons, and so have no right to life. I believe they are wrong, but the above argument does not rest on the assumption that they are.

To see that (2) is true, consider what happens if you negate it. The negation of (2) is: (~2) Human persons have a right to life, but they do not have the right to defend their lives. The absurdity of this is self-evident. How can I have a right to life if it is morally impermissible for me to defend my life? My having a right to life may not entail any moral obligation on my part to defend my life, but it surely entails the moral permissibility of self-defense. For if I have a right to life, then others have an obligation not to harm me. This obligation of theirs entitles me to meet a deadly threat with force sufficient to thwart the attack up to and including killing the assailant. We appear to be at moral rock-bottom here. I say (2) is self-evident. Reject it, and there is probably no point in further discussion.

I don't know exactly how to explain what a right is, but it is something like an entitlement (is this a case of obscurum per obscurius?) If I have a right to X, then I am entitled to X, and that entitlement grounds the moral permissibility of my defending my pursuit of or possession of X.

We now turn to (3): If a human person has a right to defend his life, then he has a right to an effective means of defending his life. The negation of (3) also strikes me as absurd: You have a right to defend yourself, but no right to the possession of any effective means of so doing. In rebuttal of this absurdity consider the following.

To will the end is to will the means. So, to will one's defense is to will the means to one's defense. Therefore, if it is morally permissible to will one's defense, then it is morally permissible to will the means to one's defense. To will the means to one's defense is to will the possession of, and the ability to use, sufficient means for one's defense. I grant that qualifications may be needed. Arguably, felons ought not have the right to purchase firearms. A felon either forfeits his right to self-defense, or has that right overridden by the community's right to be safe from his predation. The right to own a weapon for self-defense, even if derivable from the natural right to life, is like the right to life itself: in some circumstances it is forfeited.

But how could the natural right to life be forfeited? How could one lose such a right? Suppose that you, unprovoked, attack me with deadly force with the intent to kill me. I am justified in killing you if that is what it takes to stop your deadly attack. If I am so justified, then my killing you is morally permissible. Now if your right to life was not forfeited by you at the moment you attempted to kill me, then your right to life would generate in me the correlative duty to respect your life by refraining from any and all actions that might harm it. It would then be impermissible for me to kill you. Therefore, if one who possess a right to life cannot ever, by anything he does, forfeit the right to life, then my killing you is both permissible and impermissible. But that is a contradiction, whence it follows that there are circumstances in which a person forfeits his right to life.

So I don't see any problem with a person's possession of natural rights that can be forfeited by the person's free acts. There is also the case of capital punishment. 'Surely' capital punishiment is in some cases not only morally permissible, but morally obligatory: justice in some cases demands it. Well, if you agree with that, then you have to grant either that the natural right to life can be forfeited or else overridden.

(5) is obviously true pending some obvious qualifications that I left out for the sake of brevity, the soul of wit and of blog. A handgun is an effective means of self defense, but not in all circumstances, only if the defender is properly trained in the use of firearms, etc.

The conclusion follows from the premises, and the premises are defensible. So I say the individual qua individual (as opposed to the individual qua member of some collective such as a police force or military unit) has an individual right to possess firearms for the purpose of defending his own life. The existence of such an individual right does not entail that it is unlimited. Thus if I have a right to firepower sufficient to my self-defense, it does not follow that I have a right to firepower sufficent to lay waste to a city. One non sequitur to avoid is this: There is no unlimited individual right to keep and bear arms; ergo, the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right.

Arguments like the foregoing make appeal to people's reason. Like all my arguments, the above argument is directed to open-minded, reasonable people who are doing their level best to form correct opinions about matters of moment. You decide whether I have been employing right reason. But if you wish to criticize, just be sure that you engage what I have actually written and not something you have excogitated on the occasion of skimming my post.

To pursue philosophy on a Spinoza-like basis you need the modern day equivalent of lens-grinding, that is, an occupation in some new, expanding, and lucrative technology. How computer-savvy are you? That would be one way to go. There are still many middle-aged and elderly people who don't use computers but want to. You could go into business as a computer consultant and offer a wide range of services from simple set up of computers and peripherals to software installation, troubleshooting, DSL setup, virus removal, web design, instruction in the use of word processors and other applications, and the like. I suspect you could turn a reasonable buck in such retirement hotbeds as Arizona and Florida.

I myself wouldn't be able to take high school teaching; I couldn't even stand college teaching. But no doubt you are a better man than me in this regard. So you might try to land a high school teaching gig in the States upon return, and then during summer vacation try to launch some such business as the one I have outlined, eventually transitioning out of the teaching job.

The best approach is one that you may be too old for. That is to spend the years from 20-40 or thereabouts in some highly lucrative occupation building up a large grubstake that will see you through from 40-90 and allow you to live the life of leisure in the classical sense. You would have to live like a monk during your earning years while building your 'slave'; properly monitored, however, he should be able to take care of you for the rest of your life if you know how to live frugally. But most people's approach to life is far too extravagant and front-loaded for this solution to be viable.

A loving and psychologically supportive wife who pulls down a substantial salary is of course also a great boon for the would-be man of leisure!

P1. Not everything morally impermissible should be legally impermissible.
P2. Not everything morally obligatory should be legally obligatory.
P3. Not everything morally permissible should be legally permissible.

Ad (P1). This could be put idiomatically by saying that not everything morally wrong should be illegal. I hope you will agree with me that drinking oneself into a stupor is morally wrong. It's a Friday night, you are alone, you stay in your house the entire time, but you down a quart of whiskey. I hope you will agree with me that this is morally wrong. (I could give an argument, but it belongs in a separate post.) Though morally wrong, such behavior should not be illegal. If you don't like my example, you are invited to concoct one of your liking that makes the same point.

Why should not everything morally wrong be illegal? The positive law is made by human beings and enforced by state power. But it is notorious that power tends to corrupt its possessors, and this is especially clear in the case of the agents of the state. (Ever have a run-in with a cop, a sheriff, an IRS agent who overstepped the bounds of his legitimate authority?) Given the egregious violations of individual liberty including mass murder that state agents have been known to commit, reasonable people support limited government. One way to limit government is to restrict its sanctions to behavior that impinges upon public welfare. Thus there need to be laws against drunk driving. But laws against private drunkenness (as in my example above) tend to give too much power to the state, besides being unenforceable. Laws that are unenforced, however, tend to breed disrespect for law. Laws should be few in number, rational in content, and enforced with credible sanctions. So not everything morally wrong should be illegal.

Ad (P2). If you morally must do (ought to do, are obligated to do, have a duty to do) X, should the positive law require it of you? I answer in the negative. Consider the philosophical/religious duty to worship no such 'false gods' as money, power, sexual pleasure, Lady Luck, but to worship or devote yourself only to worthy objects such as God, truth, justice, benevolence, and the like. I would argue that it is morally impermissible to worship any such thing as money, sex, etc. and morally obligatory to apportion your highest concern only to worthy objects such as truth and justice. But these views of mine, thought rationally defensible, can be opposed with a show of rationality by sincere people. A hedonist might sincerely and thoughtfully maintain that pleasure alone is the good and that there can be no grounded distinctions among pleasures, and that therefore the pursuit of sexual pleasure among consenting adults is a perfectly legitimate and morally permissible object of pursuit. I would consider it better if people devoted themselves to truth over sexual pleasure, but the abuses that would result from using state power to enforce that view of mine would be worse than the positive outcomes would be good.

For a second example, consider the moral obligation to maintain one's physical health by the usual measures including good diet and vigorous exercise. If you value individual liberty and understand what I wrote above, you will not want laws that mandate these measures. (By the way, this is why 'universal health care,' i.e., government conrol of the delivery of health services ought to be opposed: a government that controls health care will be in a position to demand 'apropriate' behaviors from people including not engaging in activities deemed risky.)

Ad (P3). If an act is morally permissible, should it also be legally permissible? No. Surely there are circumstances in which running a red light is morally permissible. Suppose at three in the morning you slowly and cautiously coast through a red light at a deserted intersection in the proverbial 'middle of nowhere.' Surely that is morally permissible. Yet it ought not be legally allowed: a well-crafted law cannot have a clause that reads, "A motorist shall not run a red light except when it is safe to do so."

For a second example consider that is it morally permissible for some 15 year olds to drive. But it ought not be legally permissible for 15 year olds to drive. The same goes for voting. There are 15 year olds more mature than some 50 year olds and more fit to cast a vote. Yet it ought not be legal for 15 year olds to vote. Finally, it seems obvious that some marijuana use by some people in some circumstances is morally permissible, but it scarcely follows that marijuana use ought to be legalized. What is harmless for some will be dangerous for many. Laws crafted for the common good cannot take into account individual differences.

Forgive me for not being impressed with Martial's special pleading. Surely no one but Martial can be Martial. But it is equally the case that no one but Callistratus can be Callistratus. If one has an irreducible ipseity and haecceity, then so does the other.

Martial crows that he is poor but famous while Callistratus is rich but obscure and then he illictly infers that while anyone can be what Callistratus is, a rich man, only one person can be what Martial is, a famous writer of Latin epigrams. Well, it doesn't follow.

Of course, there is only one man has all the (monadic and relational) attributes of Martial: there is only one writer of Latin epigrams who hailed from Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis, who had a friend named 'Iulius Martialis,' etc. But the same is true of Callistratus: there is only one rich man who had holdings of such-and-such a size in Egyptian Syene and Gallic Parma, etc. For each of these men there is a uniquely identifying description. They are equal in point of uniqueness.

So in the end it appears that Martial's bragging comes only to this: I am famous, Callistratus, and you are not. But why should anyone think that fame is a better attribute than wealth? I say wealth is superior: wealth has an existence outside of people's heads; fame is merely a fleeting, fickle image inside their heads.

Martial, you are a two-bit scribbler, and no philosopher!

A man stands on a street corner, Bible in hand, and preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. Passersby regard him as of no account, as a loser, a bum, a fanatic. They give him a wide berth and would be embarrassed to be seen associating with him. But let the fellow clean himself up, get himself admitted to a divinity school, earn a degree and become an assistant pastor somewhere, and suddenly he has social status. For now his preaching is a livelihood, a means of attaining a comfortable living standard, and he is now a serious and productive member of society. He is now of account and is known to be such at the local bank. He amounts to something in the economic and social currency of the realm. As the Danish Socrates might have said, he has learned how to make a living from the fact that another man was crucified.

A novelist sits in her garret and scribbles away day by day. Her relatives and acquaintances think her a failure despite two published novels. You see, they fell stillborn from the press and she barely covered the costs of writing them. When she explains that she lives for her art, some smile indulgently, others display demeanors that run from quizzical to scornful, but all mock her behind her back. For it is clear to them that she is wasting her time on a lot of nonsense. But let the novelist hit paydirt, and all changes. Now she is of account. Scorn turns to envy. She is on her way to becoming a person of substance in one of the more crass senses of this irridescent word. For now she has found a way to turn a buck from her writing, and that confers value upon it.

Suppose there were no way to make a living from philosophy, or that one’s chances of making a living from it were about as good as a chess player’s from chess. Suppose, in other words, that philosophy had no place in university curricula and that there were no teaching jobs. How much philosophy would be published? How many journals and presses would go under? How many introductory texts would see the light of day? What would become of the professional organizations, the conferences and congresses and the rest of all that philosophically marginal busy-ness? How many ‘philosophers’ would abandon philosophy and end up in real estate?

Would it be a bad thing if there were no way to live from philosophy? The answer is not obvious and indeed depends on one’s conception of philosophy. Consider a related question: Would it be a bad thing if no one were able to make a living from religion? In thinking about these questions, you may want to consider the examples of Paul the tentmaker, Spinoza the lensegrinder, and Thoreau the surveyor.

What they lived for, and what they lived from, were kept distinct. An exemplary modus vivendi if you want my opinion.

He who proselytizes in the cause of unbelief is basically a man in need of belief. (p. 34)

It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it. (p. 34)

Hoffer uses 'native Americans' above correctly as opposed to in the PeeCee manner. You may enjoy my Proof that I am a Native American.

Sorry to offend my European readers, but it must be said:

We are told that the paradise of the masses in America is a 'pig heaven.' Granted; but the Europe the masses left behind was a pigsty. (p. 32)

I'd quote more but another library patron has recalled the book from which I am quoting. The audacity of the fellow!

P1. One is obligated to do X iff one ought to do X.
P2. 'Ought' implies 'can.'
P3. Prima facie obligations can be overridden.
P4. If X is obligatory, then X is permissible, but not conversely.

Suppose the child will die unless he has a series of painful operations. On this supposition the mother's prima facie obligation to protect the child from preventable instances of suffering is overridden by the 'greater good' of being cured of a terminal disease. Therefore, the mother is morally justified in permitting her child to suffer the pains that are the unavoidable concomitants of the series of operations. We can express this by saying that the mother's allowing of her child's suffering is morally permissible. Now if an act is permissible, it does not follow that it is obligatory. But in the case before us, the mother's allowing of her child's suffering, since it is necessary for her child's cure, is also morally obligatory. That is, the mother ought to allow the suffering; it is not the case that she merely may allow the suffering. For she ought to do what she can to help her child, and among the things she can do is allow the operations; therefore, she ought to allow the operations and the suffering that is unavoidably concomitant with them.

It seems to follow that the suffering associated with the operations ought to occur, and that the mother has the moral obligation both to permit it and to do what she can to bring it about. Now suppose the suffering occurs. Then it both is and ought to be. It is because it occurs. It ought to be because its occurrence is necessary for a greater good. Is this paradoxical or counterintuitive? I think not. It may sound paradoxical to say that the child ought to suffer certain pains; but the paradox is removed when it is realized that this ought to be the case only on condition that without these sufferings the child would be worse off than with them.

Perhaps a paradox can be generated if God is put in place of the mother, and in place of the child's suffering (which is necessary for a greater good) we put every instance of suffering in the actual world. The idea is that all the instances of suffering in the world, although prima facie such that they ought not exist, are morally justified by their roles in contributing to greater goods. It would seem to follow that not only would all of those instances of suffering be permissible, but they would also all be morally obligatory in that without them the maximal amount of good would not be attained.

Now Lupu finds this paradoxical and indeed incoherent:

Therefore, every existing instance of suffering ought to have occurred; and every moral agent, including a perfect God, has the moral obligation to permit it or bring it about. So, according to this theodicy, whatever is the case, ought to be the case.

What an astonishing an counterintuitive result! It threatens to obviate moral distinctions and undermine the very purpose of our moral conceptual system. (p. 26, emphasis in original)

Now it surely sounds absurd to say that, since a world containing the Holocaust is (tenselessly) the case, that it ought to be the case. But the counterintuitivity may be lessened if we bear in mind that a world containing free agents is of greater value than one without them, and that God has no control over the actions of free agents. Absolutely considered, there ought to be no evil. But given free agents and their wrong choces, there is evil and this evil must be permitted by God if there is to be the greater good of finite free agents.

What follows from a higher-goods theodicy is not that whatever is the case ought to be the case, but that whatever is the case ought to be the case GIVEN that free finite agents exist and make wrong choices. Thus God is not morally obligated to actualize a world containing genocide; he is morally obligated to permit the existence of a world containing genocide given that a world containing free agents is better than one without such agents.

As far as I can see, Lupu hasn't made the case that a higher-goods theodicy entails the collapse of the distinction between is and ought.

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk. (Hegel, Preface to The Philosophy of Right, T. M. Knox, tr. slightly emended)

The 'grey on grey' is presumably an allusion to these lines in Goethe's Faust:

. . . gray, gray is all theory
And green alone the golden tree of life.

Wisdom and understanding come at the end when it is not dark yet, but getting there, as green gives way to grey. The Hegel passage is also a 'forward allusion' — is there such a thing? — to the famous protest by Karl Marx in the 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach:

The philosophers have variously interpreted the world, but the point is to change it.

But those who attempt to change the world before understanding it are apt to make a bloody mess of it. The Commies broke 100 million eggs, but where's the omelet?

Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos was published in 1928 by A. Francke AG Verlag, Bern. A translation by Hans Meyerhoff appeared under the title, "Man's Place in Nature." (Beacon Press, 1961) The book is not an "inspiring ethical meditation" but a contribution to philosophical anthropology, as Scheler makes clear in the third paragraph of the preface: "This essay represents a brief and highly condensed summary of my views on some of the main topics of the 'Philosophical Anthropology' on which I have been at work for a number of years . . . ." (p. 3)

My guess is that Kimball is confusing Man's Place in Nature with Scheler's main ethical work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik which first appeared in the years 1913-1916. A translation by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk of the the fifth edition (1966) of the German text appeared under the title, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973).

A minor point? Yes, but worth making if it motivates a few of you to read Scheler's rich but neglected work.

One question concerns the validity of the inference from

1. Subject S under the influence of drug D experiences that p

to

2. S's experience that p is nonveridical.

Surely this is a non sequitur. Right now, under the influence of caffeine, I note that my coffee cup is empty. This is consistent with the perceptual experience of the cup's being empty being veridical, which it is. So from the mere fact that a subject is 'on drugs,' it does not follow that that any of the subject's experiences are nonveridical. Now caffeine is a very mild drug. But suppose I was I was on a combination of caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, and methampehtamine. Even then one could not infer that the perception in question was nonveridical. Even on a dose of LSD-25 most of one's perceptual experiences remain veridical. In the case of Moses, from the fact, if it is a fact, that he was under the influence of a psychotropic drug while on Sinai, it does not follow that his experience of being addressed by God and being given the Decalogue was nonveridical.

Of course, if you begin by assuming that there is no God, then it is plausible to explain the Sinai experience by saying that it was drug-induced. But that simply begs the question against the theist. The crucial point is that a subject's being on drugs is logically consistent with the veridicality of his experiences; therefore, one cannot infer from the fact, if it is a fact, that Moses was under the influence of a psychedelic or psychotropic drug that his experince was nonveridical.

So even if Shanon could prove that Moses and the people around him were under the influence of powerful drugs, that would not support his contention that nothing supernatural occurred on Sinai. It would not because it is consistent with theism. How does Shanon know that the drugs Moses supposedly took did not open "the doors of perception" (in Aldous Huxley's phrase) allowing him access to the transcendent, as opposed to shutting him up among figments of his own imagination?

There is a second question whose full discussion should be reserved for a subsequent post. It is clear that mathematical and other truths can be grasped whether one is awake or dreaming, sober or drunk, on drugs or not. If a valid proof occurs to a mathematician in a dream, it is no less valid because the mathematician is dreaming. Why should not the same hold for moral truths? If it is true that it is morally obligatory not to kill human beings, then the experiencing of this truth is veridical whether or not the subject is awake or sleeping, sober or drunk, on drugs or not. So even if it could be proven that Moses was under the influence of powerful drugs on Sinai, what relevance would that have? At the very most it might cast doubt on the veridicality of Moses' perception of God, but not on the veridicality of his experiencing of the content of the Decalogue. If it is true that one ought not kill, then it is true whether or not God exists. And if it is true that one ought not kill, then one's intuiting that it is true is veridical whether one is awake of dreaming, sober or drunk, on drugs or not, or a brain in a vat as opposed to a brain in a skull.

In developing the argument for atheism based on the existence of evil, it will be useful to focus on some particular evil that our world contains in considerable abundance. Intense human and animal suffering, for example, occurs daily and in great plenitude in our world. Such intense suffering is a clear case of evil. Of course, if the intense suffering leads to some greater good, a good we could not have obtained without undergoing the suffering in question, we might conclude that the suffering is justified, but it remains an evil nevertheless. For we must not confuse the intense suffering in and of itself with the good things to which it sometimes leads or of which it may be a necessary part. Intense human or animal suffering is in itself bad, an evil, even though it may sometimes be justified by virtue of being a part of, or leading to, some good which is unobtainable without it. What is evil in itself may sometimes be good as a means because it leads to something that is good in itself. In such a case, while remaining an evil in itself, the intense human or animal suffering is, nevertheless, an evil which someone might be morally justified in permitting.

Suppose that to be restored to health a child must undergo an extremely painful medical treatment. So the parents of the child allow the treatment to be administered. We will agree that the infliction of the suffering upon the child is morally justified by the fact that the treatment is necessary to prevent a greater evil which we may assume to be the child's death. Now what Rowe is saying above is that in a case like this, the suffering is (morally) justified but evil nevertheless.

I find this difficult to understand. It sounds like a contradiction. For if the infliction of the suffering is morally justified, then the infliction is morally permissible. But if the suffering is morally evil, then its infliction is also morally evil, which is to say that its infliction is morally impermissible. But surely it is a contradiction to affirm of any action A that A is both morally permissible and morally impermissible.

If the suffering is morally justified in that it leads to a good unobtainable without it, then the suffering, though certainly unpleasant, diagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc., is not under the conditions specified evil. In the situation we are imagining, it is not only morally permissible but also morally obligatory for the parents to allow the painful treatment to be administered. This implies that the treatment ought to be administered. Therefore, if you say that the child's suffering remains evil despite its leading to a greater good, then you are committed to saying that the infliction of evil upon the child is morally obligatory, something that ought to be done. But this smacks of absurdity since it is hard to understand how any infliction of evil could be morally obligatory. Since in our example the infliction of suffering is morally permissible, I conclude that (intense) suffering is not in every case evil.

What Rowe is saying is that (intense) suffering is intrinsically evil, and that its evilness remains the same whether or not the suffering is instrumentally good. What I am suggesting contra Rowe is that whether or not suffering is evil depends on whether or not it is instrumentally good. For me, suffering that is instrumentally good is not evil. I concede of course that such suffering remains unpleasant, disagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc. But I do not understand how suffering in itself, or intrinsically, can be said to be evil.

Perhaps the problem is that there are two senses of 'evil' in play, one nonnormative the other normative, and that Rowe is appealing to the former sense. Accordingly, the nonnormatively evil is that which elicits aversion. In this sense, mental and physical suffering is evil in that beings like us are prone to shun it. The normatively evil, on the other hand, is that which ought not exist. So perhaps my puzzle can be resolved by saying:

1. Every instance of suffering is evil in the nonnormative sense that, as a matter of empirical fact, beings like us are prone to shun it. (Being prone to shun X does not entail the shunning of X.)

2. Some instances of suffering are not evil in the normative sense that it is false that they ought not exist.

3. If an instance of suffering conduces to a good that outweighs it, and the good is unobtainable by any other means, then the instance of suffering ought to exist. Thus the child's suffering in our example ought to exist. Admittedly, this sounds paradoxical. But note that this 'ought' is not categorical but hypothetical or conditional: the child's suffering ought to exist given that, on condition that, the treatment that causes it is the only way to avoid the child's death, which would be an evil worse than the child's suffering from the treatment.

4. (3) is not paradoxical or incoherent.

5. The moral goodness of God is called into question not by the existence of evils in the nonnormative sense, but by the existence of evils in the normative sense. Thus the mere existence of suffering, which is nonnormatively evil, does not by itself cause a problem for the divine moral goodness. For it may well be that all instances of suffering are morally justifiable in the light of a greater good. This does not make these sufferings any less repugnant; but this repugnance is not a moral repugnance but the nonnormative property of thwarting desire.

Other members of the Dawkins Gang as I call them, including Richard Dawkins himself, see here, often employ this piece of silliness. The idea is that since we are all atheists about some god or goddess, we should be atheists about all gods. A howling non sequitur, of course. Consider this parallel 'argument':

We are all anti-scientific about some scientific claim or other in the sense that all of us deny some scientific claim or other and with justification. Thus I deny, and I hope you do as well, Dalton's assertion that water is HO and the pre-Michaelson and Morley contention that light requires for its propagation a medium, the so-called luminiferous ether. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely. But presumably no one will think that one ought to be anti-scientific about every scientific claim.

No one thinks that because many once well-established scientific assertions have been abandoned as false that all scientific assertions ought to be abandoned as false or will be. No one takes the Hitchens-Dawkins 'further step' when it comes to scientific claims. Why should it be any different in matters of religion?

"Because religion is buncombe from start to finish!"

But of course this response simply begs the question against the theist. Anyone who just assumes that the crudest forms of polytheism and the most refined forms of monotheism are on a par simply disqualifies himself from being taken seriously in a discussion like this. Was Democritean atomism the last word in atomic theory? What people like Daniel Dennett, another key Dawkins Gang member, cannot get through their heads is that religion might be subject to development and refinement just as science is. Such people cannot understand development of the God concept as anything different from deformation. They think, quite stupidly, that the crudest anthropomorphic conceptions are those with which religion must remain saddled. But they would never say something similar with respect to science. Why the double standard? See Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept.

One is no doubt free to adopt a scientistic metaphysics -- which, nota bene, science does not and cannot justify -- but then one ought to admit that one thereby (i) adopts a metaphysical stance not entailed by science proper, and (ii) begs the question against theists.

The chapter on Science and Religion in A. N. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World is relevant here. He sees that "religious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from adventitious imagery [and that] the interaction between religion and science is one great factor in promoting this development." (p. 170)

The auxiliary premises specify what it is to be omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect. Thus one of the auxiliaries is something like:

4. If a being is morally perfect, then it eliminates or prevents every evil that it is aware of and can eliminate.

Since the soundness of LAFE requires the truth of (4) or rather the truth of (4)'s necessitation -- Necessarily, if a being is morally perfect, etc. -- theists have questioned whether (4)'s necessitation is true. It seems not to be since it is surely possible that a mother, for example, be morally perfect but not prevent her child's suffering from a painful medical treatment in circumstances in which the outcome of not subjecting the child to the treatment would be far worse than the treatment. A theist who argues in this way against (4) assumes the principle Lupu labels 'PMP,' Pike's Moral Principle, and formulates as follows:

PMP. Under certain circumstances it is justified for any moral agent to permit preventable suffering, and even to bring it about, provided there are legitimate moral reasons for doing so, the person knows about such reasons, and permits (or brings about) suffering only for such reasons.

I concede for now that if (PMP) is false or incoherent, then the standard theistic objection to LAFE is untenable. But Lupu has an argument against (PMP) and a related principle (PMP*). The argument seems to proceed as follows

5. Every instance of evil is an instance of suffering.
6. Every instance of suffering is an instance of wrongful suffering.
Therefore
7. 'Wrongful suffering' must be substituted for 'suffering' in each of the latter's occurrences in (PMP).
8. The result of this substitution is incoherence, for under no circumstances is it justified for a moral agent to permit preventable wrongful suffering.

Now Lupu can tell me whether or not this is a fair representation of what he is arguing. If it is, then I reject the argument by rejecting both of (5) and (6). My argument against (5) was given in a previous post wherein I gave examples of evils that do not in any way involve the suffering of sentient beings. There was the 'cliff dwelling' example in the main post, and the 'Reefer Man' example in the Comments. Note that Lupu needs (5) in order to make (PMP) relevant to the problem of evil.

As for (6), it strikes me as false that every instance of suffering is morally objectionable. Suffering is an unavoidable concomitant of athletic performance as well as a means to the end of getting oneself into good physical shape; but sufferings of either of these two sorts which a person inflicts upon himself are not morally objectionable.

Now imagine that this structure upon first being discovered by white explorers had been completely destroyed by them. Its destruction, I claim, would have been an evil state of affairs even though no suffering would have been involved. The Sinagua Indians who constructed and lived in the structure were long gone by the time the white explorers arrived. So they could not have suffered from the castle's destruction. Assume that none of these Indians or their descendants ever returned to the site of the castle. Let us also assume that the white explorers were all of them thoughtless vandals who cared not a bit about the preservation of antiquities. So none of their number suffered in any way from the destruction of the cliff dwelling. Assume further that the vandals accomplished their demolition without hurting themselves in any way physically or psychologically, that no animals were in the structure when it was demolished, that no one other than the vandals witnessed the destruction, and that no reports of the destruction were transmitted, and that all the vandals died shortly after the destruction without having told a soul.

Given these assumptions, no sentient being suffered physically or mentally as a result of the castle's destruction. And yet its destruction was evil. Indeed it was morally evil in that it was brought about by free agents. Therefore, it is not the case that all instances of evil involve suffering. Of course, the destruction I described is a merely possible state of afairs. It is something that merely might have occurred. But it still functions as a valid counterexample to 'All instances of evil involve suffering.' For when a philosopher makes a claim like this, he intends it to be a necessary truth, whether a conceptual truth or some other kind of necessary truth. And it is clear that to invalidate a statement of the form Necessarily, all Fs are Gs, the mere possibility of an F that is not a G suffices.

In rebuttal, Peter or someone on his behalf could just insist that evil by its very nature involves suffering and that therefore it is impossible that there be an instance of evil that does not involve suffering. But then I would want to know why we ought to believe that evil must involve suffering in the face of counterexamples like the one I have provided.

It is certain that the man who wonders as he takes up his pen: what service can be performed by what I am about to write? is not a born writer, and would do better to give up producing at once. Verse or prose, one's work is born of a sort of imperative one cannot elude. It results (I am now speaking only of the authentic writer) from an artesian gushing-forth, almost unintentional, on which reason, critical spirit, and art operate only as regulators. But once the page is written, he may wonder: what's the use? . . . And when I turn to myself, I think that what above all urged me to write is an urgent need of understanding. This is the need that now prompts the ratiocinations with which I am filling this notebook and makes me banish all bombast from them. I hope the young man who may read me will feel on an equal footing with me. I don't bring any doctrine; I resist giving advice; and in a discussion I beast a hasty retreat. But I know that today many seek their way gropingly and don't know in whom to trust. To them I say: believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it; doubt everything, but don't doubt of yourself. There is more light in Christ's words than in any other human word. This is not enough, it seems, to be a Christian: in addition, one must believe. Well, I do not believe. Having said this, I am your brother.

1. Writers are born, not made. For the born writer, doubts about the value of writing are insufficient to impede the process of putting words on paper. Something similar goes for the born philosopher. Doubts about philosophy are just more grist for the philosophical mill and have no tendency to impede the thinker's inquiry. No real philosopher is put off by doubts and objections of the sort cataloged and refuted in Philosophy Under Attack.

2. The writer writes to satisfy a pressing need, the need to understand himself and the world. Driven by that need, he scribbles away, well or poorly, with or without a readership, under gusts of inspiration or in the horse-latitudes of the spirit, and whether it fills or depletes his belly.

3. The truth-seekers are to be trusted, the truth-finders doubted. Makes a good aphorism!

4. Unlike Bertrand Russell and others, Gide discerned truth in Christ's words, but was unable to believe. This shows that the discerning of truth is insufficient for belief. So much the worse for doxastic involuntarism. Belief requires something more, an act of will. There is something voluntary about belief. In many cases, not all, we decide what to believe and what to disbelieve. Josef Pieper who, in his Belief and Faith, p. 26, refers to the last of the Gide lines just quoted, remarks, "A free assent of will must be performed. Belief rests upon volition." (p. 27) See here for more on doxastic voluntarism.

5. Memo to BV: Get hold of the André Gide-Paul Claudel correspondence and explore why Claudel but not Gide embraced the Church of Rome.

Intensifiers are words like 'very,' 'really,' 'actually, 'extremely,' 'insanely,' and so on. They typically modify an adjective or adverb. 'That book is insanely expensive.' 'She talks extremely fast.' Some border on the oxymoronic: 'She is insanely intelligent.' In the three examples just given the adjective/adverb is genuinely modified by the intensifier. In some cases, however, the modification is wholly redundant. 'What she said is absolutely true' conveys no more than 'What she said is true.' Compare 'What she said is undoubtedly true.' 'Undoubtedly' is an intensifier that adds to the sense of 'true': 'undoubtedly true' convey a different content than 'true.' But 'absolutely true' and 'true' convey the same content.

Many different words can be used as intensifiers. On television the other night a pundit remarked, "John Kerry didn't respond to the Swift Boat ads and it literally sunk his campaign." 'Literally sunk' is nonsense if 'literally' is being used as the antonym of 'figuratively.' Political campaigns, because they do not literally float, cannot be literally sunk. If they are sunk, that is a figure of speech. So, being charitable, I will say that the pundit was using 'literally' as an intensifier. I will not accuse him of not knowing what 'literally' means. Though I shrink from saying that meaning is use — see Why Meaning Cannot be Identified with Use — meaning has something to do, a lot to do, with use. Why can't a person use 'literally' as an intensifier? I don't recommend this nonstandard usage of course, being the linguistic prick that I am; but though prickly I also try to be charitable and open-minded.

I suggest that there are wholly redundant modifiers that appear to entail, but do not entail, logical contradictions. I suggest that in 'I can't get no satisfaction' and 'I ain't got no money,' 'no' functions as an intensifier and not as a sign for negation. If that is right, then these examples are not examples of double negatives. An example of a double negative construction is 'It is not uncommon____.' Here it is indeed the case that the two negation signs cancel with a positive upshot. But this is not the case in the ungrammatical 'I don't know nothing,' 'I ain't got no money,' 'I can't get no satisfaction,' and the like.

The following, therefore, is just plain false: "A double negative is the nonstandard usage of two negatives used in the same sentence so that they cancel each other and create a positive." We are also told that 'I don't want nothing' means the same as 'I want something.' That is simply false. It means that same as 'I don't want anything.'

Now what about double affirmatives? Eddy Zemach once commented on a paper I read at the American Philosophical Association. A tough commenter, but a gentleman of the old school. Later he told me and some others a story about Sidney Morgenbesser and John Austin. Austin had claimed in a lecture that although many languages feature double negatives that add up to an affirmative, no language features double affirmatives that amount to a negative. Morgenbesser's brilliant reply came quickly, "Yeah, yeah." To this we might add 'yeah, right,' and 'yeah, sure.' These are genuine double affirmatives that convey a negative meaning.