Hi Steve, You'd asked if I had any thoughts in relation to the Sam Harris/"End of Faith" thread. I have to confess that I haven't been following the thread, so I'm unsure of what's already been said. I'm just kind of stumbling in in the middle (or end, for all I know).
I did find your question: "In his book, the End of Faith, Sam Harris counters the argument that without religion there would be no morality by claiming that morality is about happiness and suffering. I don't have the book with me today, but there are several examples of analyses he gives of moral decisions made on the basis of reducing suffering. I'm no philosophy expert, but his thinking sounded Kantian to me. Is that what Kant was about? What are the arguments against basing ethics on happiness/suffering?" In my view, one shouldn't counter the conflation of religion and morality by making a positive claim about what morality _actually_ is. Rather, one should begin by pointing out the conflation. Because if your opponent refuses to distinguish between religion and morality, then you'll lose every time because you've already given him the victory. (In case of refusal to agree on this point, the only argumentative recourse you have is to point out that his arguments are begging the question because he's already assumed that religion and morality are one and the same, so no duh if you lose religion you lose morality.) But say your opponent agrees that the two are distinct--then you have a very different kind of discussion. This becomes a discussion about the relative merits of various ways of reinforcing morality, i.e. good ways of behaving. The reason why Harris' way of going about things doesn't fly with me is because, yes, it seems Kantian (in what follows, I'm going to construe Harris as a Kantian, not because I know anything about Harris, but because you suggested it). The reason I sense Kant in your description is because the positive answer (no, you don't need religion because you've misunderstood the nature of morality--it ain't about God, its about X) takes the form of a foundation. The religionist Harris supposes is one who thinks, not without religion, but without God, there can be no morality. Religion, as opposed to God, is a set of social practices. If the religionist says that they rest on _religion_, then he's already given up the classical ground because now he's in the muddy fight of "Well, why do those practices need to be religious practices? What if we can generate good behavior with non-religious practices?" This is the discussion I suggested above, which is an inconclusive discussion because it's about betting: the religionist has a bet that good behavior will wane if we abandon religious practices and the X [atheist/agnostic/secularist/whatever] has a bet that better behavior will wax if we Y [abandon religious practices/not take them so seriously/keep them out of politics/etc.]. There is no knockdown argument _anywhere_ within range of this discussion. (I've been having this interesting discussion with Sam Norton for years.) So: say the choice is God (not religion). If the religionist says God, our response is likely to be something like, "No, morality doesn't require grounding in God. It's grounded in X." If the X is "social practices," you have to have the muddy discussion (because religion will still have a claim going for it as a good set of practices). Since people generally don't like muddy discussions, but would rather out-and-out win, they look for a knockdown argument and fill in X positively with an answer that will preclude, not only belief in God, but religious practices as a necessary piece of morality. This is where Kant comes in. Kant's answer was that morality wasn't based on God or social practices but on reason. And he created an argument (the reason bit) that showed why we should be moral. It was roughly a transcendental version of the Golden Rule--because reason is universal (what is true here is true everywhere) every action--to be called moral--must be able to pass the universal test: roughly, if you can't will it on yourself, why are you willing it on anyone? It's a good rule of thumb, but the whole transcendental thing is a lame duck (for the usual pragmatist reasons having to do with Kant's assumption that he had no assumptions). I say stick to social practice discussions, but doing that will make you suspicious of the harsh polemics being used by, e.g., Hitchens and Dawkins (and probably Dennett, too). So, what about arguments against basing morality on happiness and suffering? I don't have any because after getting rid of Kant, such bases will all be slug fests having to do with the relative features of happiness and suffering. We aren't so simple as Bentham anymore. We know that this isn't about counting up "pleasure points" or anything, but are about balancing various social practices. Religion (and Platonist philosophers like Kant) breed what Nietzsche called metaphysical comfort, and religionists/philosophers will be unhappier after losing God/Reason/Science (all capitalized to denote idol worshiping), but who on earth said that we can't make a distinction between short-term and long-term and argue that, yes, every social change produces short-term unhappiness, but this change will produce greater happiness and reduce suffering in the long-run. The only reason why we wouldn't be able to make that obvious distinction is if we were required to be Kantians--what is good here is good everywhere. And requiring us to be Kantians begs the question: you've already assumed that distinctions between past, present and future (or more generally, distinctions between different contexts) are besides the point because of a Universal Reason. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail®-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
