Murder is not wrong because the The Rules tell you so. The Rule against murder is written because members of the community already do not wish to murder or wish to be murdered.
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But, there is that sympathetic element to it. If one doesn’t have a rule embedded in one’s consciousness, or some intuitive notion that murder is a faulty decision. I think the sympathetic element is the most dangerous. The outcome of copycat. Is that deterministic? A murder has to happen before somebody decides that its not desirable. We’ve determined we wish not to be murdered.
We are not objects or even subjects in time and space. We are processes in space/time. Processes that take place in an environment not always subject to our conscious awareness or understanding.
Right. Changing and revising. But as written down, preserved for future reference.
We are not objects or even subjects in time and space. We are processes in space/time. Processes that take place in an environment not always subject to our conscious awareness or understanding.
Right. Changing and revising. But as written down, preserved for future reference.
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I guess that’s not really what we’re talking about here. But, still, the manifestation of those processes do cause a reaction whether desirable effect or undesirable, and then hopefully we can change the undesirable. Revise. I guess I’m talking about human behavior here, and I could include what we see happening now with climate change — just unintended consequences of not understanding — that present on a materialized/manifest level.
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So I think the compatibilist justification would be that they aren’t so revisionist as the determinist is. They aren’t denying the basic accuracy of your experience of thinking about what to do and then doing it.
Your basic experience isn’t an illusion. You did think about what to do, weighing up various factors you thought relevant at the time, and you did settle on one, and that decision you reached really was the causal explanation for why you ended up doing what you did. It is just that the common explanation for this experience isn’t philosophically examined.
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Maybe I’m a compatibilist materialist determinist. In a Hegelian sort of way, in that the way I understand Hegel, he propounds that history is linear — moving in a straight line.
In order to illustrate the point my scenario is based on what would be commonly regarded as “pre-meditated” murder, not so-called “crimes of passion” between people who know each other, which actually make up the vast majority of murders. We definitely respond to the actions of others. Our response is determined by factors both conscious and not. If I walk in on my brother having sex with my wife how do I respond? I might fly into a rage and if there is a gun present, shoot them both. If there is no gun I might beat my brother up. Or just walk out. (Actually this illustrates a fine practical argument for gun control. If no gun is present then people can’t shoot each other. This makes sense especially when you consider the statistics showing that the number of gun accidents, crimes of passion and suicides far outstrip the incidents where people actually defend themselves with a gun, the ostensible reason for possession in the first place.)
A murder has to happen before somebody decides that its not desirable.
Precisely. Even if we look at it like one billiard ball bouncing off another. Morality evolves over time. True, under certain circumstances societies like Nazi Germany still appear but so does their opposition. This is at least part of the reason why after WWII we got the modern euopean welfare state. In more ancient times, why slavery disappeared as an almost universal institution. It still exists but is almost universally condemned. Why NT admonitions against same-sex marriage now seem so antiquated and barbaric. (If I may editorialize this is why religion is often such a reactionary force. It sanctifies and sustains behaviours and atttudes better abandoned.)
People often detect a contradiction between determinism and prefering one outome over another. But we have history as a lesson. It is not unreasonable to prefer Germany c.2024 to Germany c.1944.
I should point out that the fact that morality clearly evolves over time is another problem with Divine Command Theory which rests on the assumption of some ultimate authority that never changes. Someone ask Craig if he approves of slavery. For Paul only the Parousia would end such an institution. It never occured to anybody in the NT to question it. It is a completely valid interpretation of Paul’s letter to Philemon that at the end Paul is asking Philemon to give Onesimus to him as his personal slave.
Tomos, much of a determinist critique of compatibilism consists of the accusation that they’re really determinists who are trying to rescue free-will by redefining it into existence. Uncharitable perhaps. I do not regard myself as a compatibilist because I don’t believe in free-will by any definition. I think the real argument is what we mean by determinism. Look over at the other thread (Origen) when I respond to Robert for more comments from me.
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I am a collector of dictionaries. The normal kind of course but also tomes more specialized. I recently acquired a Dictionary of Untranslatables, which as the title indicates, collects words that have no precise equivalence in other languages. The one I am enjoying now, the one that has actual relevance to this topic, is ** you do not have permission to see this link **, which compares and contrasts terms that are associated but not identical, the more abstruse the better.
As a hardcore card-carrying pedant I find this kind of thing super keen, groovy even. Can you truly claim to be alive without knowing the difference between poisonous and venomous? Between a labyrinth and a maze? How about the difference between flotsam and jetsam? (It turns out that Maritime Law makes an extremely important non-trivial distinction between these latter terms!)
But what is the point? I can hear you say. There is an entry about ethics vs morality. I can do little better than quote a relevant passage.
Ethics refers to intelligible principles of right and wrong. Morality refers to right and wrong as a ‘felt sense’. One is rational, explicit, and defined by one’s social or professional community; the other is emotional, deep-seated, and dictated by one’s conscience or God. That’s why an immoral act sounds graver than an unethical one: One may get you fired, but the other could land you in Hell.
First of all kudos for the use of the semicolon; modern usage tends to break up such clauses into separate sentences. (I mean, really, how could Robert Burton have written that famous single sentence in his Anatomy of Melancholy that goes on for five and a half pages without the divine semicolon? Diagram this, suckuh!)
Does everyone agree this is a meaningful distinction? I guess I’ve been using the terms more or less synonymously. Does the distinction have any relevance to our conversation? I would say the distinction only becomes relevant in a secular context. DCT would seem to elide the distinction altogether.
Sin is synonymous with disobedience, not immorality. The god of both testaments of the Bible rewards obedience (righteousness) and punishes disobedience (sin). His commands are not commonly aligned with morality, nor does he claim them to be.
He describes himself as jealous. His commands are devoid of ethics. He allows evil to exist, often prescribing it or perpetrating it himself. He routinely requires believers to prove their loyalty to him by violating basic universal morality and he punishes disobedience with death.
The model I’m describing is similar to DCT, but avoids your questions by not pretending morality is part of the system. Obedience itself is the content of “sin” in biblical logic. That bypasses the prior obligation objection because it’s not about morality at all. It’s about control.
The original couple lived as animals, naked and unaware of morality. Eating the fruit changed that. Now they could judge God by a standard he couldn’t control. They were punished for disobedience prompted by curiosity. No harm was done, only a rule broken, only awareness gained, only morality discovered. In response to their disobedience, Yahweh unleashed death and pain into the world to give him leverage to control his creations.
To maintain favor, humans must slaughter animals, an act that by any natural ethic is unnecessary cruelty. The immorality of killing becomes the proof of obedience. You prove your submission not by doing good but by doing what you’re told, even when it violates conscience. The system culminates in Abraham asked to sacrifice Isaac: obedience above morality, loyalty above love.
The sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimate immoral act. A perfectly obedient son tortured and killed as a traitor while his closest friends deny knowing him and onlookers do nothing to save him. He forgives his murderers while in the act and is forsaken by the one who sent him. And in order to prove their loyalty to obedience over morality, Christians must genuinely believe that this ultimate crime was holy, necessary, and to be grateful that it happened.
The church uses the midievil torture device as their symbol – the symbol of the ultimate immoral act, sometimes with the dying innocent victim still attached. They conduct ceremonies where they eat the flesh and drink the blood of the victim, taking part in the event, showing their support for it. All to prove that they are more obedient than they are moral, which is required to regain access to Eden, AKA heaven, a place where death doesn’t exist and they can be in the presence of God forever. Those who are disobedient or whose morality outweighs their fear of God are cast out of existence.
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