Scott
Chastain
Essay
3 Churchland (Phil. Behaviorism
& Functionalism)
In order that we may critique both the concepts of philosophical
behaviorism and functionalism it is necessary that we operationally
define both concepts, compare and contrast them, and then we will be in a strong
position to lay out a strong objection for both theories and then attempt to
overcome them, if possible.
Philosophical behaviorism can be defined as a materialist theory of mind
which states that when we use the word “mental” or “mind” we are really
describing is the disposition to behave in a certain way, given the
circumstances of the event. If I
were “disposed” to enjoy drinking a margarita, and I were offered a
margarita I would drink it. Of
course if the circumstances were not appropriate for consuming alcohol (let us
say I was in class at ISU where alcoholic beverages are prohibited) then I would
turn the drink down. Any
“thought” I had about drinking the margarita was only my disposition to
enjoying that particular drink.
Functionalism would be best served by describing it as a theory of mind
that describes mental events as a series of interconnected sensory experiences
and thought processes. In other
words, this theory defines mental states by their functional roles. If we use the example of a flowchart or Turing machine
program, we can see that any single state is affected by the states connected to
it causally. If we drop fifty cents
into a coke machine, it affects the machine so that we can purchase any of the
cans of soda that cost fifty cents, but it does not allow us to buy the one
dollar bottles of soda. If we add
another two quarters it allows us to purchase anything it offers. If we are thinking about a long relaxing walk on the beach
(mental state) and a kids drives by blasting music out of his car (sensory
input) our reverie is translated to angry thoughts. You could say that the noisy kid was like a quarter in our
Turing machine.
Although both philosophical behaviorism and functionalism are
materialist theories, there are some striking differences.
First, the behaviorist model is similar to identity theory in that by
saying that mental states are really predispositions to behave would indicate
that certain types of behavior are biologically linked to certain kinds of
brains. Cats are predisposed to
behave like cats, dogs are predisposed to act like dogs, and humans are
predisposed to act like humans because cats have cat brains, dogs have dog
brains, and humans have human brains. Although
this isn’t an overt claim of p. behaviorism, it is a concern. Functionalism, in contrast, would allow for a mental life to
exist within any device, biological or synthetic, that could host the functional
program. In this case it better
explains how humans can imitate dogs better than dogs can imitate humans.
Why would a person be disposed to act like a dog, without a dog brain?
Yet the human mental program is far more advanced than a dog’s, so that
the human can run the dog program while still running the human program, whereas
the dog cannot run the human program at all. The second most notable difference is that behaviorism
reduces mental states to simple behavioral dispositions, and functionalism at
least allows for the thought process to exist as something more philosophically
profound than behavioral effects.
There are some similarities betwixt them both, however. One similarity is that they are both materialistic.
This means that they both believe that a physical process is happening,
and as such they both reject any sort of dualistic concept of mind as a
spiritual entity. The most obvious opposing similarity is that both theories
cannot account for the essence of experiences.
If I stubbed my toe the behaviorist would say that “pain” is my
predisposition to scream at the end table, hold my toe, and mutter curses.
The functionalist would say that the input of my toe impacting with the
end table produced a causal shift in my mental state to the function that
produces the outputs of my screaming at the end table, holding my toe, and
muttering curses. In actual
experience, stubbing my toe hurts! From
my mental state, I exhibit that behavior because of the pain I am feeling, which
is unpleasant.
Beyond the objection of essential quality of experiences, we have more
objections to consider for each theory.
A strong objection to philosophical behaviorism is that of deception or
secret desires. For example, let us
say I had the predisposition to drink a margarita because I enjoy them, and I
was offered the delicious drink in a context where they are allowed to be
imbibed. I may choose, for whatever
reason, to abstain because I want to trick the bartender into thinking that I do
not like margaritas. My behavior
would be contradictory to my actual mental state.
A better example would be a person pretending to have hurt his arm.
He jumps up, cradling his limb, grimacing, and making vocal sounds that a
person in pain makes. Philosophical behaviorism would say that he was actually
in pain.
This seems like conclusive evidence to disregarding this theory entirely,
however there may be a way to overcome this objection.
In the case of the tricky drinker, the functional behaviorist could
account for this contradictory argument by explaining that there was a reason
(yet unknown) which predisposed the margarita lover into behaving like he
disliked one of his favorite beverages in that bar (for example, the man could
have made a bet with someone that he could convince the bartender that he hated
margaritas). In the latter example,
the person pretending to be in pain was disposed to acting like he was in pain
because he was being paid to act in a film where his character was hurt in the
arm. Thus his behavior would
indicate that he was predisposed to acting like he was pain. I feel this is a conclusive objection, yet it leaves one
wondering what the point of this theory is if we can incessantly rationalize
behavior to an infinite number of predispositions. This seems to leave philosophical behaviorism as a rather
arbitrary explanation for mental processes.
Functionalism has it’s own share of problems, but seems to make a bit
more sense than behaviorism. Firstly
it fails to identify when a program reaches enough interactions to be considered
“mental” or intelligent. This
is particularly a problem for the applications of artificial intelligence.
It would seem that if an organism or device functioned intelligently, it
would be intelligent. I could conceivably train a billion or so rats to accomplish
a series of simple tasks, each one having a different set from every other.
If I put them all together, they could simulate a large Turing machine,
each rat being a part of a larger program.
If I set it up right, I could theoretically arrange it so that if I typed
in words on a keyboard, it would begin to light certain lights or ring certain
tones, that would trigger the rats to react in preset ways.
It would be odd to call the rats collectively intelligent.
One possible solution to this would be to distinguish between the simple
programmed reactions to stimulus input and the internal ability to connect
mental states. It does not seem
intuitive that the rats, simply responding to conditioned stimuli, would have
any internal mental states reacting with each other.
Where in the rat model do we find imagination, pondering, problem
solving, etc…? Although this
model seems to be functionally intelligent, it is leaving out the ability of
mental states to interact internally.
As for the objection to the qualities that we possess that neither
functionalism nor philosophical behaviorism seem to be able to account for, we
must consider the nature of those qualities themselves.
Can we really call them “mental” or are they in fact physiology
interacting with our brains to produce these experiences?
If we took a person and cut out all of their physiological experiences,
such as pain, sight, sound, tactile encounters, taste, and we also shut down the
neuro-chemical processes which contribute to the intensity of any emotional
state, would that person cease to have “mental states” of any sort?
While I cannot deny that such stimuli do indeed affect our mental states,
but they may in fact be physiological experiences that are only additional, and
not essential, experiences. Even
our unintelligent rats seem to experience pain in pretty much the same way we
do. We do not consider the blind
person any less human for her never having experienced the color green.
A synthetic brain could be created which in every way functioned like a
natural brain except that it isn’t hooked up to any sensory inputs, and has no
internal bio-chemical emotional capabilities (it’s neurons would still
interact electro-chemically like our neurons, but would simply lack sensory
receptors for the neuro-chemicals involved in strong emotional states, like
dopamine. This brain could still be
capable of functionally active mental states which interact with one another,
and functionalism would stay intact. Of
course, in this case we would not be able to observe any behavior and
would thus remain a problem for philosophical behaviorism
When all is said and done, I feel that it is a combination of various
theories which can best explain our minds.
Although it is desirable for philosophers to reduce any theory to its
simplest form, this may be untenable for something so complex as our minds.
That having been said, I feel that behaviorism’s problems far outweigh
any sense it makes, and is the least of all the materialist theories to bear any
weight. Functionalism seems quite
promising, and I feel that whatever the mind actually is, functionalism may pay
an important role in defining it.
Essay
4 Searle
John Searle offers us his “Chinese Room” thought experiment which he
believes refutes strong A.I. We
shall discuss briefly what strong A.I. is, how the “Chinese Room” works, how
it proves strong A.I. is impossible, and then consider some objections to this
proof.
I.
Strong A.I. (artificial intelligence) is a computer simulation of the
human mind, with the capability to solve problems, understand contextual
material, and to have an assortment of other cognitive states unique to
“intelligent sentient beings.”
II.
The “Chinese Room” is a thought experiment wherein we imagine a man
inside a room with a desk and a chair. The
man, who can neither speak nor read Chinese, is given a handful of manuals which
give him instructions on what to do with each symbol he receives from an outside
portal. Although our man cannot
read the symbols, he looks up the instructions as to what to do when he receives
any symbol or combination of symbols. He
then writes out the response he is required to output.
He sends the output back out of the room through a slot, and it is
interpreted by the outside. For all intents and purposes, his response seems intelligent
and articulate, despite the man’s failure to understand either what he was
being asked, or what he said in response.
III.
This, Searle believes, is what is happening inside a computer running
strong A.I. The computer is only
“simulating’ intelligence, and cannot understand what indeed it is
being asked or what it is responding.
A.
The man has inputs and outputs that resemble in everyway, a person who is
fluent in Chinese, yet
he doesn’t understand the language.
The computer is no different. It
may have inputs and
outputs which resemble an intelligent being in every way, but yet it does
not understand any of it.
B.
This experiment seems to contradict the essentials of functionalism.
The man in the Chinese
Room is operating functionally, yet doesn’t have understanding.
Had the directives the man
received been in English, he would have understood the instructions.
The English symbols have
meaning to the man who speaks English, whereas the Chinese symbols had no
meaning.
This indicates that for the sake of this argument, the word
“understanding” should be
operationally defined as having this sort of ability to derive
“meaning” from the processes under
examination.
C.
The end result is that strong A.I. cannot exist because the computer, no
matter how perfectly,
simulating human intelligence is only doing just that, simulating.
The computer cannot
“understand” what it is doing. Without
comprehension, we are not dealing with any sort of
intelligence in the way we personally experience it, but only a causal
machine following its
programming.
Although several objections have been raised by Searle himself and argued
by Searle himself, it is the one objection that he finds the most absurd that I
would like to focus my attention on. This
is the “systems” reply. The
“systems” reply basically suggests that understanding in the Chinese Room is
not reached through the man alone, but through all the components of
the room. The information
decoding instructions, the inputs and outputs, and the man, all combined make
the room intelligent.
Searle appropriately mocks this reply, as it seems rather obtuse to think
that adding instructions and pieces of paper to the man would somehow mean that
the man plus the paper and instruction manuals understands Chinese.
Even if the man internalized all the instructions and memorized each
symbol he was being shown, he would still not necessarily understand the
language he was responding correctly to.
The problem here is threefold. To
discuss these problems it has become necessary to discuss “intentional
states.” These are states
whereupon an “intentional” or “thoughtful” process occurs to directly
act upon any input or to somehow alter the output.
In the case of a traditional intelligence simulator or the Chinese Room
experiment (assuming the man always follows directions accurately and without
fail) the output effect achieved by adding input would be systematically the
same every time. While Searle
could argue that the computer could use a randomizer to select from various
responses to achieve a more realistic output, the man in his experiment could
have as part of his instructions the chore of tossing a die and then based on
the toss select one of six variant responses (or more, depending).
While this is true, a person could figure it out by asking the same
question enough times. In the case
of A.L.I.C.E. the thought-bot, repeated asking of the same question soon
discover the limit to these randomized responses.
It would be no different for the man in the Chinese Room.
Unlike a limited intelligence simulator program, and the man in the
experiment, a comprehending being with intentional states could invent limitless
responses (even gobbledygook) to any question.
Even with a brilliant man or a very fast computer the amount of responses
in this experiment would be severely limited compared to an intentional entity.
This leads us to our second quandary.
The man inside the room would understand that he is inside a room
following instructions. This would
allow that man to interfere intentionally with the experiment. He could deliberately mix up the outputs, or refuse to
answer. Or give more than one
answer. While it is true he would
not understand what his answers would mean, he would understand that he was
screwing up the system. A computer
without understanding, no matter how randomized you make the output command,
could never intentionally screw up the outputs.
Sure you could program it to randomly give a wrong answer, or a double
answer, or even gibberish, but it would not understand that it was responding in
such a way. It seems that no
matter what we do to the Chinese Room, the same argument could be made for the
A.I.
This is our third and final objection to the Chinese Room. If everything that applies to the man in the Room can be said
to mirror the processes in a computer, rendering it impossible to have
understanding with strong A.I. we should examine the processes in our own
brains. Are they any different,
really? From any materialist point
of view (and I cannot consider the mind as a spiritual, non-physical thing for
this argument, if that is your position, then disregard this entire problem).
Our brains are essentially input-output response systems.
Each synapse in our brain has absolutely no understanding (that we are
aware) of what it is doing when it fires. Somehow
out of all of these neurons working together, interconnected, this slippery
concept of ‘understanding’ arises. We
become intentional entities. By
what process these blind neurons develop, as a whole, the concept of
understanding, is unknown. It is
obvious that the Chinese Room cannot account for the complexities in the human
brain (OR in the Turing program running in our brains, should you feel that the
function of the mind is more important the organic item which hosts that
program, although I would think you need the necessary equipment to run any
program. Our mental states are very complex, so you would need a
rather sophisticated device such as a brain, or computer equivalent, to run the
program.). Somehow in the
intricacies of the brain true understanding arises.
Our brains are nothing more than the man in the Chinese Room (except that
they are less capable of understanding and internationality than the man is).
I think that complexity of the right sort is the key to both our mental
states and strong A.I. In the
end, Searle can deny that any computer has true understanding, but what he is
really pointing out is the age-old problem of other minds.
While it is true that Searle and you and I shall never be able to know
with certainty whether or not the strong A.I. computer is truly intelligent, we
are also equally unsure of the same problem in each other.
For all I know there is a little man inside John Searle’s skull
receiving input, following instructions, and kicking back outputs that match.
Essay
5 Berkeley
In the 17th and early 18th centuries a debate about
the nature of external objects was in the making.
John Locke delivered his theory about the nature of things, and then
George Berkeley wrote a response, with a somewhat unfair representation of
Locke’s viewpoint. We shall
explore both views and how they described the nature of physical objects,
various problems with both viewpoints, which viewpoint seems more strongly
supported, and address the issue as far as their implications for our own
existence is affected.
According to John Locke “ideas” exist in minds, and “qualities”
exist in objects. He then further
divides qualities into two types, primary and secondary.
The primary qualities found in objects are things such as solidity, mass,
figure, volume, and quantity. The
secondary qualities are items which are more subjective sensory experiences of
the objects, such as color, taste, smell, sound etc…
The secondary qualities are caused by the nature of the objects
themselves, and are not qualities directly attributed to the object.
Fire, for example, produces the feeling of warmth (or pain) but that
warmth is simply the result of the power the fire has to produce warmth.
Warmth is not in the fire, but instead an idea caused by the fire.
Primary qualities, however, are not in our minds, but exist as essential
to the objects themselves. What
defines an object are its mass, volume etc…
If we remove the taste of a fish from the fish, it would still be a fish.
Without mass though, it would not be anything of a physical sort, and
certainly not a fish.
The ability of objects to inflict us with their secondary qualities
(powers) is evidence of their external existence.
That the same objects have qualities about them which do not change based
on perception is further evidence for their external nature.
The persistence of these objects to overpower us with sensations which we
are seldom capable of controlling and would not desire to experience is also
evidence that these items exist separate from our minds.
Surely, if these objects affected us and were internal to our minds, we
could simply change our minds and avoid the experience (such as pain and other
unpleasant experiences).
Berkeley found that this explanation was not sufficient. He mocked Locke with a character named Hylas, and had poor
Hylas represent Locke, and used the character Philonous to represent himself.
For the sake of brevity I will simply refer to these characters by as
Locke and Berkeley.
Berkeley took the argument
presented by Locke concerning secondary qualities, and then went on to show that
the same argument could be made for primary qualities as well.
To do this he had Locke agree that “real existence” is that which
exists independent of minds. Although
this is a rather narrow definition (it would suggest that minds do not exist!),
and it is also unlikely that Locke would have agreed with it, we will have to
work with it somewhat to make Berkeley’s argument hold water.
For the record Locke would have states that while the sensory experience
of pain does not exist anywhere but within the mind, pain really exists!
However, by this definition (which could be conceivably modified to do
what Berkeley wanted it to do, without encountering the problems its narrowness
as it stands suffers), the secondary qualities have no “real existence”
because they do not exist anywhere but in the mind.
We know that they do not exist anywhere but in the mind because they are
required by our minds to have any meaning at all.
Fire produces both warmth and pain, based on how close we are standing to
that fire. While it seems odd to
say that pain exists in the fire, it is no different to say that warmth is
really in the fire either. If a
person put a hand in the snow and the other they kept inside their coat under
their armpit, and then thrust both hands into one pool of water, the water
should both feel warm and cold at the same time.
The reason for this almost arbitrary temperature is that the experiences
exist within the mind alone.
Berkeley then goes on to show that this almost arbitrary nature exists in
primary qualities as well. The
figure of an object changes shape when we move nearer or farther away from it.
The size of an object from a mite’s perspective is quite different than
it would be to a human perspective. As
the primary qualities also change based on personal sensory experience, they
become inseparable from secondary qualities.
All objects therefore become “ideas.”
As ideas, they require a mind to perceive them to exist (as no objects
have “real existence”). This
creates the problem that Locke’s explanation has previously solved.
First, this creates the problem of object permanence.
It seems that objects do not disappear when they are out of sight, but
seem instead to remain. There is
the problem of contradictory experience (the fact that we often experience
things which seem to be thrust upon us beyond our ability to choose for
ourselves, like pain). We also have
a problem with natural laws. External
objects seem to obey some external rules uniformly, which seems opposite what
might be expected if our minds were allowed to control reality (they would
probably resemble a dream state).
Berkeley solves this problem deftly.
He suggests that as all perceived things are ideas, and all ideas require
a mind to perceive them, and objects seem to exist when nobody is perceiving
them and follow natural laws, something greater than all of us must be
perceiving all ideas at the same time. In
short, this theory supposes that God exists as the Great Perceiver of all
things.
The biggest problem with Berkeley’s argument is that it doesn’t
explain the existence of minds themselves.
Minds are not perceived, but are instead that which does the perceiving.
Berkeley believed that minds were not ideas, but active agents which are
necessary to perceive ideas. Minds
are active, ideas are not. He also
attempted to redirect the definitional uses of our language by suggesting that
minds are not ideas, but rather notions. Other
notions would include abstract concepts such as justice and morality.
Another problem for Berkeley is the imagination and hallucinations.
Ideas of real objects and ideas of hallucinations seem to be inseparable,
and by this theory, they must exist as they are perceived.
The solution is that ideas of real objects exist as a consensus idea
(they are public), more vivid, and subject to strict laws consistently. Imagined items are far less vivid, private, and not subject
to any laws. In the case of
hallucinations they may be vivid, but they still are private and not subject to
natural law.
It seems to be more intuitive to think Locke was more likely to be
correct, as objects do seem external to
our
minds. Berkeley has many problems
to contend with that seem rather mystical and to be blunt, improbable.
For
one, we have the problem of evil here (God has a lot of nasty ideas!).
Another problem that comes up is the
location of minds.
If all physical objects are merely ideas, then it follows that minds do
not exist within our bodies. Our
bodies continue to exist as they are perceived by God beyond our own minds.
As minds are not ideas, our minds do not exist in God’s mind.
Where in heaven are they?
I think many of the problems that both men presented are really only
surface problems. Our deeper
understanding of physics tells us how objects affect us with sensory
experiences. We understand the
chemistry of taste and smell, and the physics behind temperature.
We know that the reason that the water feels different to our hands in
the cold hand-hot hand experiment has to do to neuron recharging abilities and
the tendency of nerves to stop firing when they are being overwhelmed (which is
why a strong smell goes away if you stick around). Thus the nerves in each hand are operating differently and do
not allow us to sense the waters temperature accurately. However, if 1000 folks with thermometers of different kinds
were to measure the temperature of that water, they would all get the same
results! Our inability to perceive
the external world very accurately is irrelevant to its external existence.
If I and a mouse both were asked the size of a shoebox, I would say it is
small and the mouse would think it the size of a house-trailer.
However if this talking mouse could use a tape-rule, we would both end up
with the same dimensions, and those dimensions would not change despite our
perspectives.
I think the most likely scenario is that consensus objects (objects that
most people perceive and agree exist) do exist, and we have our own way
of perceiving those objects which may be different from person to person or
creature to creature. Despite these
shifts in perception, the objects themselves do not change unless acted upon by
an external force.
Essay
6 Quinn
Philip Quinn offers us his defense of “divine command” or
“theological volunteerism” theory which attempts to delineate morality in
terms of God’s will. We should
carefully lay out the premises involved in “divine command” theory, and
discuss why Quinn finds this theory defensible, what the “Euthyphro”
objection to this theory is all about, and whether or not “divine command”
theory will survive that objection.
“Divine command” theory basically states that which is morally right
or morally permissible is that which God has not forbidden. It goes on to state that what is morally required is that
which God himself commands, and that which is morally wrong is that which God
expressly forbids. Thusly,
theological volunteerism places the entire weight of morality upon God’s
shoulders. Nothing, according to
this theory, can have any right to call itself a moral action if God is not
involved in the equation.
Quinn focuses his argument towards the Christian religion specifically,
for various reasons too sundry to mention in this short essay . However, in light of his argument being Christian-centric we
should only bother to keep our essay within a Christian essay as well.
Quinn gives us four main reasons why we should accept “divine
command” theory, and we shall look at each separately.
The first of these premises is that Jesus Christ in the New Testament has
commanded us our neighbors. This
seems a bit counter-intuitive upon first glance.
How can a person command an emotional state? In order to use this in defense Quinn must first attempt to
understand exactly what it was Jesus commanded his followers to do.
Quoting Kierkegaard, Quinn eliminates both “friendship” and “erotic
love” from the command, as these forms of love by definition discriminate.
One does not love a stranger with the same sort of eroticism or fondness
one loves a wife or buddy. The
difference, both men believe, is that a close friend or lover has special
qualities which cull them from the herd, and if they were to lose these
qualities they would no longer hold such a special placement in our loving
schema. Thus, Kierkegaard concludes, the only way we are able to love
the stranger, or the enemy, is to love that unchanging element in all people,
and this can only be accomplished if we are commanded to love.
In all honesty I do not follow the latter conclusion, although the former
seems evidentiary enough.
The conclusion of this premise is that if God commands us to love all
people equally, the morality of love is a matter of obligation to the Christian.
What God has ordered becomes morally required.
The second premise concerns itself with the practice of religious
beliefs. To briefly sum this up, a
large part of Christian doctrine involves conformity to the will of God.
This seems to indicate that it is right for a Christian to obey God, and
thus would serve as a backbone to defining morality. What
is right is what God wills.
The third premise centers about the immorality of the biblical
Patriarchs. Quinn quotes
three immoralities specifically: 1:
Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on an altar of God.
2: The Israelites are
commanded to plunder Egypt. 3: Hosea is commanded to have sex with an adulteress.
This defense is based on the biblical stories where God seems to have
ordered murder, theft and fornication.
In these three cases God has given commands in contradiction to other
commands that were given. God
commands us to not murder, yet has commanded Abraham to do just that. God tells us not to steal, and then orders a theft.
God instructs us to avoid sex beyond the confines of marriage
(fornication) and then orders Hosea to do just that.
Quinn relies on the great sage St. Thomas Aquinas to handle these
difficulties.
Aquinas states that God is the Lord over life and death. It is part of God’s operational existence to determine who
lives and who dies. If God orders
that a particular death be dealt by the hands of a particular human, that is
God’s prerogative, and should not be viewed properly as murder, but as it has
been ordered by God, it should more rightly be compared to a natural death.
Thus Abraham was in the right for his obedience.
In the case of the Israelites, God had sentenced the Egyptians to pay the
Israelites the amount plundered for their sins, and thus the Israelites were not
stealing, but only claiming their due, as commanded by God.
When God commanded Hosea to take on the adulteress, he was in fact having
sex with his own wife. Marriage is
an institution ordained and overseen by God, and thus if God commanded sexual
relations with an adulteress what in fact did happen was that God had married
the two people.
It seems that all three of these events required only one thing to remove
them from being immoral to being morally right, and that was God’s commands.
The last premise Quinn offers is Divine sovereignty. The goal of philosophy is the most comprehensive answer to
any query in its simplest form. As
God is the Creator and ruler of the universe, then God is sovereign over that
universe. This means that God is
self ruled. If God is the one with
the last say in what is right or wrong, it follows that what is morally right or
wrong depends entirely on God’s will.
Quinn believes this theory is defensible against the four main objections
he considers.
The first objection is the Karamazov objection.
The summary of both the objection and the defense is as follows.
If morality depends on God’s existence, and God does not exist then
everything is morally permissible. The
defense is that because you can neither prove God’s existence or lack thereof,
this objection doesn’t successfully refute the theory.
In order to use this objection, you would have to substantiate the claim
that God does not exist.
The second objection is the “moral skepticism” objection. This objection questions how we can come to know what God
commands, and how a person who does not know or believe in God could live a
moral life (as many do) without knowing where the morality comes from.
The defense is that we can know the cause from the effects.
A person who has no knowledge of where gravity comes from is not exempt
from the law of gravity. Similarly,
it is not a part of the divine command theory that the individual following a
moral code does not need to know the source of that morality to act upon it.
Quinn also suggests that religious prophecy and scripture as a source of
knowledge of God’s will.
The third objection is the “divisiveness” objection. This objection states that as there is significant
disagreement within all the schools of religion as to what is morally
permissible and what is not, and what is morally wrong and what is not, and so
forth, it seems to indicate that morality is somewhat arbitrary as we can not
positively know which, if any, religious tradition best reflects the will of
God.
The first defense is that there is not a definitive causal relationship
between a religious teaching and the will of God.
“Divine command” theory states that the will of God determines
morality, not religious teachings.
The next defense is that not all moral
disagreements are divisive. In
certain cases, the disagreements as to whether or not an act was obligated or
supererogatory becomes meaningless, for in many cases the end result is that
those actions served the overall effect of being moral.
The final defense is that divisiveness must be expected so long as
disagreements about moral theory abound.
The final objection is the “Euthyphro” objection, and we should spend
more time on this objection than on the other three.
Euthyphro was asked by Socrates whether an act was pious because it was
an act the gods loved, or if the gods loved the act because it was pious.
In “divine command” theory we are left with the same question.
Is something morally right because God orders it, or does God order
something because it is morally right?
If something is morally right simply because God orders it, there is no
absolute morality. This would leave
us with a God who cannot possibly be a moral being, because by definition
morality would stem from God. If
the latter is true, then there is an absolute morality, and God could (and
should?) be a moral being because morality is not something which God has
created, but instead, something which God practices and expects from us as well.
There are problems with both sides.
If the former be true, then it would attack God’s omnipotence by
limiting what God can do. God
cannot be moral. An omnipotent
being could choose to be moral or immoral.
Therefore God is not omnipotent. If
the latter be true, then God cannot be the Creator of all things, as morality
would be at least one thing God did not create.
Personally I lean toward the former, because the latter already has a
problem in that God did not, presumably, create God.
Another problem that the “Euthyphro” objection brings up is that it
seems to make morality arbitrary. If
the statement “What is morally right is what God commands” defines morality,
then anything God commands is morally right, no matter what it may be.
This means that anything serves an equal chance of being morally right no
matter what it is. If God decided that torturing rats with a hacksaw was
“morally right” then it would be morally right, no matter how morally wrong
that same act was yesterday.
Quinn’s defense of this objection is to state that God is good.
Being that God is good, everything God chooses to do will also be good.
If everything God chooses to do or order to do is morally right and good
at the same time, what is morally right will always be what is good.
This indicates that morality is not arbitrary, because what is morally
right must always conform to what is good, and never to what is bad.
This defense, in my opinion, does not refute the objection in the
slightest way. In fact, the only
thing Quinn has accomplished is to transfer the burden of explanation from the
words “morally right” to the word “good.”
In other words, we now must pose the “Euthyphro” objection towards
God’s goodness. Is something good
because God loves it, or does God love it because it is good?
What if God decided that torturing rats with a hacksaw was “good?”
It would then be expected that God would order us to do this, or at least
not forbid us from doing it. It
would be morally right to torture the rat because it would be good to torture
that rat. In order to overcome this
particular objection, we must not direct the problem to another word, but deal
with it. If God is good
essentially, and what is good is defined as what God is, then God did not create
goodness. If God did create
goodness, then God himself is not “good or bad” but simply existent.
Thus if we still maintain that God is good, then we have only confused
the problem even more, and made even more things arbitrary.
For example, one could say that eating a piece of lettuce is morally
right, that is, morally permissible. It
is not important either way, and certainly not “wrong”. If, however, we are to also say that eating lettuce is good,
then we have turned the arbitrary canon onto things which were before not
important to the moral issue. Lettuce
was “neutral’ to the moral argument, but as we can conceive of lettuce as
being “good” or “bad”.. we have opened up this argument to more things
than the moral argument alone had to contend with.
Eating poison is “bad.” Eating
lettuce is “good.” Why is
one “good” and one “bad?” Because
God commands that one is bad, and the other good.
Why does God command such things?
For no particular reason. In
short, Quinn’s defense has not solved the problem, but worsened it!
When all is said and done, I do not believe “divine command” theory
can possibly survive the Euthyphro objection.
As most of the premises themselves require an a posteriori belief
in God, and are thus rather weak and circular, I feel that theological
volunteerism is an unsubstantial moral theory.
Essay
7 Mill
John Mill offers us the moral theory known as utilitarianism.
I intend to discuss what utilitarianism is, what it depends upon to be
workable, and then to discuss an objection to this theory and whether or not the
theory can withstand that objection.
Mill believes the best way to approach a moral theory is to first
discover what is intrinsically good. If
we can find out what is good simply for the sake of being good, and not for any
other end, we can develop a moral theory to promote that good.
Mill discovered that the one thing which is good simply for the sake of
being good, and not to meet any other end, is happiness (either glee,
contentment, pleasure, or removal of suffering).
While many things we describe as being good, such as food items, money,
clothing, etc… are good, they are only good in that they help us achieve
another goal: happiness.
Happiness, Mill believes, was the end of the road, and the beginning of
moral theory.
It stands to reason that if something is good, is should be morally right
to promote that good. Therefore, as
the sole end good, we ought to promote happiness and pleasure.
This at first seems like a rather selfish doctrine, but at the end is
probably the one moral theory requiring the most self-sacrifice.
Happiness would be “more good” the more people experience it.
The more happiness there is, the better. We can refine our definition to state that any act should not
only promote happiness, but a more pervasive happiness than a limited happiness
as well. It can also be further
refined by noting that a longer lasting happiness would be more good than a
shorter lived happiness. The end
result is a moral imperative known as “act utilitarianism.”
Act utilitarianism states that an act is right morally if and only if it
maximizes overall long-run happiness, relative to alternatives. The more an act promotes the greatest happiness, the more
morally right it is. The more it
increases suffering and pain, the more morally wrong it is.
Some critics contend that pleasure should not be the end goal of human
existence, as pleasure is what the lesser creatures strive towards. Mill responds to this by expanding his definition of
pleasures. Pleasure is not only the
crude physical euphoria felt during acts of eating and mating, and similar
vulgar pastimes. Pleasure is also
the absence of that which causes suffering.
Pleasure is also the satisfaction of a job well done.
Pleasure is also the ability to reason and solve problems.
Pleasure could even be defined for some as religious worship.
As we define pleasure as an effect far beyond the capacities of the
beasts alone, it is unfair to limit utilitarian theory to only those rough
enjoinments.
This is a demanding theory. In
order for any act to be morally right, it must maximize happiness for the most
people over the longest amount of time. For
example, pulling a kitten out of a tree would not be morally right.
It might make a small child (and a kitten) happy for a short while, but
certainly would not add to greater happiness of the entire world.
On the other hand it is not morally wrong either, as it does not increase
suffering.
I think the most serious problem with utilitarianism is found in the
instance where the suffering of a small group or individual greatly increases
the pleasure of the mob. For
example, according to this theory, the gladiator events in ancient Rome were
morally right. The acts of a
handful of gladiators ripping each other apart not only brought the crowds of
50,000 men and women pleasure, it also helped to unify and keep order in the
city of Rome. Much like modern day
sporting events, the gladiators were the opiate of the masses. It seems counter-intuitive to imagine men ripping each other
apart for the pleasure of the crowd to be a morally right action.
I cannot begin to consider a reasonable defense against this objection.
I think that for utilitarianism to be a workable theory, and I do believe
it shows much promise to do just that, it should be redefined somewhat, and
should also show a clear definition of what is morally wrong.
In the event of the gladiators, the end have been achieved by other less
violent means. Necessity seems to
be the key here. If something
causes suffering needlessly, it ought to be considered morally wrong, no matter
how much happiness it promotes. If
that happiness can be achieved without causing needless suffering, then it
stands to reason that it would be morally right to use the second method, and to
shun the first. I think this is
where utilitarianism needs to be adjusted, and it could use some tweaking on how
much happiness need be generated to be considered morally right.
In the case of the kitten in the tree, if the man did not bother to help
the kitten for the crying child, he would have been promoting unhappiness and
suffering. This would be morally
wrong, as it is counterproductive to promoting the good. It should also stand to reason that the man would be morally
obliged to help that kitten, and promote the good of happiness, no matter how
limited that happiness is. If that
is true, which it seems to be, then it should be considered morally right.
