"The Abolition of Man" discussion thread

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=MrFantsyPants]
I guess that it goes without saying that I believe that Lewis’ conclusions are wrong, and reminiscent of other theists’ belief that atheists are not capable of basic human morality.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, I read him differently; he’s not saying atheists are incapable of having a moral system, which is a very easily refuted argument; he’s saying that people who don’t believe in objective morality (which includes some athiests) can’t get morality from that alone, but must get it from elsewhere. A considerably more worrying argument, because it means a proponent can just handwave any example by saying it came from a different source.

My objection to self-evident upthread was the idea that the lack of intrinsic moral values was clear and obvious, which I don’t think it is.

22

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
The first essay, “Men Without Chests” might be defended as a response to the culture of its time, but in today’s world, Lewis has already lost the argument. How many today believe dulce et decorum est? Lewis does throughout the book, but especially here and in the appendix, what he accuses his opponents of doing: supposing the mores of his own era and social class to be universal.
[/QUOTE]

Lewis says that certain values and attitudes are “universal” in the sense that he believes they come from the nature of the universe. He does not believe that they are natural or innate to all human beings; in fact, he specifically says that children will not hold these values unless they are taught to do so. Hence the fact that some of those attitudes have changed in the intervening years doesn’t disprove what Lewis was claiming. Some might say that it confirms part of his prediction about how modern intellectual trends would play out.

As for his claim to have proved the existence of “the Tao” through the examples in the appendix, I’ll certainly acknowledge that there is room for debate there. The quotes he provides may not have reflected the prevailing beliefs in those civilizations, and there are other societies that he didn’t mention at all. But in “Men without Chests” the claim he’s making is that there is a certain pattern to the universe that all civilized people believed in up to a certain point in time, not that are are certain beliefs that all human beings have at all times.

23

[QUOTE=MrFantsyPants]
In a universe willed into being by a creator, imbued with purpose, and filled with sentient beings for whom it was designed, of course the waterfall is intrinsically good, just like the watermelon and the pangolin. For something such as a waterfall to have an ultimate moral value, there needs to exist an ultimate moral authority.

If you don’t believe in an ultimate moral authority, then, I would suggest, the idea that these objects have no intrinsic moral value is self-evident.
[/QUOTE]

I think that part of the reason why Lewis brought in sources from non-western cultures in “Men without Chests” was to hint at the fact that this isn’t true. Some people believed that the ultimate moral value existed before and extended beyond their god or gods, while others believed in it without believing in any god. (Confucius, for instance.)

To these people, the relationship between personal values and the Tao is that certain value judgements are harmonius with the way that the universe exists and proceeds. (Similar, in a metaphorical way, to the fact that some sounds are harmonius with each other.) Other value judgements are not harmonius.

24

Plus the existence of a supreme moral authority doesn’t necessarily mean everything has an intrinsic value.

25

OK, I have read “Men Without Chests” but not the other two essays (yet). However, I will make an effort to keep the thread alive.

As I read it, Lewis’ argument is the following:

  1. Some things have objectively true attributes.
  2. Professor Clive Staples Lewis recognizes those objective attributes.
  3. A purpose of education is to teach youth to recognize those objective attributes.
  4. Anyone who disagress with Professor Lewis about the attributes of an object is an untermensch.
  5. Inculcating youth with the ability to recognize these objectively true attributes is propagation of culture. Inculcating youth with any other attributes is propaganda.

I part ways with Professor Lewis right up there at Point 1. I don’t believe there are objective responses to things in nature, that one reaction is more ‘just’ or ‘ordinate’ or ‘appropriate’. Everyone has a right to their own reaction, and no-one has a priviledged position to call one reaction correct and one incorrect. Not even an opium-addled Romantic poet.

No, Professor, the equivalent statement to *You are contemptible * is I feel contempt for you. There is nothing absurd about it. Even if a person provokes contempt in your heart, another might say that that person dulce et decorum est.

26

[QUOTE=Reno Nevada]
I part ways with Professor Lewis right up there at Point 1. I don’t believe there are objective responses to things in nature, that one reaction is more ‘just’ or ‘ordinate’ or ‘appropriate’.
[/QUOTE]
Can you explain why you don’t believe this?

Are you, for example, coming from the same place as MrFantsyPants (above)?

Lewis doesn’t bring himself into the argument as much as you imply. He bases his discussion much more on “This is what the majority of people throughout history have believed” than on “This is what I personally believe.”

I don’t like the way you’ve put this. You make it sound like anyone who disagrees with you is violating your rights, like a person who responds to any challenge or disagreement with a petulant, “I have a right to my own opinion.”

I think you’re overpersonalizing. Is claiming to know or believe something necessarily claiming to have a privileged position over someone who disagrees? If a person honestly believes that one reaction is correct, are they any more at fault for saying so than you are for saying you don’t believe that any one reaction is more correct than any other?

In this last bit, I think you may be missing Lewis’s point, or even agreeing with him without realizing it. I can explain further if you want, but the point is a minor one.

27

[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Lewis says that certain values and attitudes are “universal” in the sense that he believes they come from the nature of the universe. He does not believe that they are natural or innate to all human beings; in fact, he specifically says that children will not hold these values unless they are taught to do so. Hence the fact that some of those attitudes have changed in the intervening years doesn’t disprove what Lewis was claiming. Some might say that it confirms part of his prediction about how modern intellectual trends would play out.

As for his claim to have proved the existence of “the Tao” through the examples in the appendix, I’ll certainly acknowledge that there is room for debate there. The quotes he provides may not have reflected the prevailing beliefs in those civilizations, and there are other societies that he didn’t mention at all. But in “Men without Chests” the claim he’s making is that there is a certain pattern to the universe that all civilized people believed in up to a certain point in time, not that are are certain beliefs that all human beings have at all times.
[/QUOTE]

I suppose that might not have been the most penetrating criticism of him. After all, since he did believe that some values (at least in broad outline) were universal among cultures, it would have been odd if he had thought the values of his own culture were particular. And to be perfectly fair, I don’t think the appendix was meant to prove anything–he was just giving examples.

I’ve been struggling with a way to answer this for you, and I think it may come down to my basic view of the universe, and perhaps highlights why ITR champion views this as a good book to start a discussion, and I see it as quite unconvincing.

In a universe willed into being by a creator, imbued with purpose, and filled with sentient beings for whom it was designed, of course the waterfall is intrinsically good, just like the watermelon and the pangolin. For something such as a waterfall to have an ultimate moral value, there needs to exist an ultimate moral authority.

If you don’t believe in an ultimate moral authority, then, I would suggest, the idea that these objects have no intrinsic moral value is self-evident.
[/quote]
I should have responded to this earlier, but I wanted to let MrFantsyPants respond to Thudlow first, and then I got distracted by something shiny. I rather agree with MrFP that the subjectivity of morals is self-evident. Of course, declaring something “self-evident” is really just a way of saying you don’t want to justify it, so I suppose I’d better try to explain, especially since my explanation is different than MrFP’s.

It isn’t just that I think the idea of objective values is false. I think the idea is positively incoherent. I simply can’t imagine what an objective value would look like, nor a universe that had them.

A supreme being (if one existed) wouldn’t be enough as Revenant Threshold pointed out (unless I misunderstood him–maybe he meant that values derived from a supreme authority would still be extrinsic to the things themselves). Even if God himself appeared before me and revealed that cracking the small end of an egg is the vilest of all sins, what logic would prevent me from (humbly) disagreeing? You would have to take the additional step of defining good as being that which God intends, a question-begging definition which, given the doubt over such a being existing, would not easily be accepted.

Even Lewis admits that you can’t argue someone into the Tao from outside. But what is that but the very definition of subjectivity. Objectivity, if it refers to anything, surely refers to that which can be reached from outside, that which pushes back at you whether you believe in it or not. If you can never get an ought from an is then oughts are subjective by definition. After all, anything objective is an is. Self evidently.

PS–That shiny, distracting thing I mentioned above? It was a copy of The God Delusion. Is ITR Champion going to start the thread on it soon, or should I do it? I’d really like to hear what the theists think about it.

28

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
PS–That shiny, distracting thing I mentioned above? It was a copy of The God Delusion. Is ITR Champion going to start the thread on it soon, or should I do it? I’d really like to hear what the theists think about it.
[/QUOTE]
It is shiny, isn’t it? :slight_smile: Okay, I went ahead and started a thread to discuss it.

29

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
A supreme being (if one existed) wouldn’t be enough as Revenant Threshold pointed out (unless I misunderstood him–maybe he meant that values derived from a supreme authority would still be extrinsic to the things themselves). Even if God himself appeared before me and revealed that cracking the small end of an egg is the vilest of all sins, what logic would prevent me from (humbly) disagreeing? You would have to take the additional step of defining good as being that which God intends, a question-begging definition which, given the doubt over such a being existing, would not easily be accepted.
[/QUOTE]
A truly supreme being can define good as whatever it wants to define it. My objection to a supreme being necessarily meaning all things have an intrinsic, objective value isn’t that they would have to make it so, because they can; it’s whether they would do so. If our supreme being is Thor, for example, then hammers might have a good objective value, since Thor likes hammers. And likewise there would be many things that have intrinsic value, good or bad. But let’s say Thor doesn’t care about cheese; perhaps he gives it no intrinsic moral value.

It’s not a matter of could they, but would they; and in some cases they just might not.

30

But how could they? What is it about Thor’s liking hammers that makes hammers objectively better than cheese? Thor may be the ground of all being and all that, but his opinion is still just an opinion.

In other words, I know what God would have to do to change water into wine–I have a robust theory of what makes water water and wine wine–molecular theory. I know what it means for a substance to be one or the other and what a change would entail. Likewise, I know what God would have to do to resurrect a body. My theory of life is a little less robust than molecular theory, but I can still postulate some basic changes that such a feat would involve. I could tell, IOW, the difference between a dead body and a risen one.

How would I (or anyone else) detect a change in intrinsic moral value? If we can’t, even in theory,–if God would have to tell us–then it is not objective, by definition.

31

It’s not the actual liking, it’s about the liking motivating him to make them objectively good. If he wanted to make all things blue, he could do so. If he can give things the quality of blue, why can’t he give things the quality of good, if he is supposed to be all-powerful?

If it’s a question just of not understanding what exactly would be done - well, I don’t see how it would be, either. But a supreme being would logically have that power, even if we can’t see how it would be done.

Just God having to tell us doesn’t mean anything. Objectivity doesn’t rely on it being recognised. You could, in theory, have a universe in which no-one, not even a god, recognises what is actually objectively true. What we actually can detect has absolutely no bearing on what is objective or not, since, by definition, we are subjective beings. To go back to Thor, if everyone was colourblind, and he would have to tell us that things are blue, that doesn’t mean they’re not blue.

32

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
It’s not the actual liking, it’s about the liking motivating him to make them objectively good. If he wanted to make all things blue, he could do so. If he can give things the quality of blue, why can’t he give things the quality of good, if he is supposed to be all-powerful?
[/QUOTE]

Actually, Lewis has a pretty straight answer for you: God did in fact do so. However, there is, if not a contradiction, a risk inherent in good. In order to become more good, a certain kind of thing must have the ability to choose that which is NOT good. And good is dangerous. It is powerful, and it is even scary.

Even Satan is good at his root and in the possibility of what he is. But he refuses to recognize or accept this. In essence, he’s a rather pathetic being. He was a majestic tiger with the glory of the dawn. Now he is a begraggled, mangey scavenger. His claws aren’t even as sharp as they once were and his muscles are getting awfully thin and his breathing is hoarse. He can still hurt you, but at the same time isn’t he rather pathetic?

Now, whether the Prince of Lies chooses to acknowledge it or not, he is still at his core the same as the majestic young tiger. And that glory could emerge again if he acknowledged his error and let himself heal.

What you didn’t ask but I think you mean are two other questions: why are there terrible things in life and why doesn’t God just force everyone to be good. But the answers are related to the above.

First, a tenet of many Christians is that the world did NOT come off as it was supposed to. Satan polluted it. But at the same time, I am not convinced that the “terrible things” we fear are all that bad. I love storms. Rainstorms, thunderstorms, ice storms, even tidal waves. Some people thnk storms are terrible, because they can cause harm. Well, it is usually the foolishness of humans which enables the storms to hurt us. But apart from that, it’s not our world. We don’t own it, and we certainly have no authority to demand it be made more suitable.

And likewise, you ask about God forcing us all to be good. But this is one thing God cannot or will not (your choice, irrelevant argument) do. He cannot ravish, he can only woo. He can give us the choice to make the right decisions, he can help us make them, but he cannot force us. Do we not already know the answers which are important? We KNOW, do we not, that murder is wrong, that theft is wrong, that oppression is evil? Is our problem a lack of knowledge or a lack of interest in choosing that which we know is right.

33

Nope, I make no such arguments here. All i’m saying is that a supreme being could choose to make things inherently and objectively good or bad, should they so wish. I’m saying nothing at all about any results from this, regarding the issues you raise or not. I didn’t ask those things because I didn’t mean to ask them. My argument in this case is solely that; a supreme being might make things objectively good or bad, or perhaps not.

I think you may be reading a wee bit too much into what I was saying there. :wink:

34

I finished reading it yesterday. I don’t think it did its job at all. I’ll add more details later.

Secondly, why was this book chosen to be the big Defense of Theism here? I don’t get it.

Now, if all atheists could be expected to read one book from the theists’ point of view, what should it be?

35

Sorry it took me so long to reply to this. My Doping time is limited.

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
Can you explain why you don’t believe this?[That there are objective “correct” responses to natural phenomena]

[/QUOTE]

I don’t know that I can. I will point out that Lewis was completely unable to (or, at least, did not) defend his point of view. Really, I think this disagreement is the core of the matter. I guess my belief in the relativity of response is simply that there are many, many people in the world who have a different response to the same phenomena. I am unwilling to call some of them “right” and others “wrong.” There does not seem to be a basis to do so.

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]

Are you, for example, coming from the same place as MrFantsyPants (above)?

[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=MrFantsyPants]

Much of what I had to say has been said, but also, I am troubled by Lewis’ claim that there is an inherent goodness or badness to things, regardless of the observer. He claims that the waterfall is in fact sublime. Its sublime-ness is as much a part of it as its wetness. Humanity could disappear, and that there waterfall would still be sublime. That garbage dump next to it, however, is pretty despicable.

[/QUOTE]

I agree with this point. I go farther; if someone sees beauty in a garbage dump, maybe there is beauty there for him. Who am I to tell him otherwise?

[QUOTE= Thudlow Boink]

Lewis doesn’t bring himself into the argument as much as you imply. He bases his discussion much more on “This is what the majority of people throughout history have believed” than on “This is what I personally believe.”

[/QUOTE]

See, I don’t think Lewis would be at all happy to put the definition of the Good up to a vote. Would you? Remember there is a Chinese voting block 1,000,000,000 strong who have no reason to agree with you. If that group doesn’t scare you, there is the silent majority—all of our ancestors that have come and gone before us. They might vote for slavery, or head-hunting, or against private property, or against rights for White people. Lewis would say they were wrong. I am not willing to do so.

[QUOTE= Thudlow Boink]

I think you’re overpersonalizing. Is claiming to know or believe something necessarily claiming to have a privileged position over someone who disagrees? If a person honestly believes that one reaction is correct, are they any more at fault for saying so than you are for saying you don’t believe that any one reaction is more correct than any other?

[/QUOTE]

Lewis makes some pretty personal remarks about the people who disagree with him. A mere trousered ape, for instance. The urban blockhead.

I am careful to say that this is my understanding of the world, and why I feel Lewis is incorrect. This is a different statement than Lewis is incorrect.

[QUOTE=Reno Nevada]

No, Professor, the equivalent statement to You are contemptible is I feel contempt for you.

[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE= Thudlow Boink]

In this last bit, I think you may be missing Lewis’s point, or even agreeing with him without realizing it. I can explain further if you want, but the point is a minor one.
[/QUOTE]

I think you must be misunderstanding either Lewis or me. We are both pretty clear, though. Lewis is contradicting Gaius and Titius when they claim that any remark of this nature is a remark about the speaker, not the object. I am supporting G&A—what you find contemptible says a lot about you, and not necessarily anything about the object of your contempt. I really think this is the core of the argument, not at all a minor point.

As a last remark, it seems odd to defend the unknown authors of a long-forgotten grammar book. I have little doubt that the book was as useless as Lewis claims; most text books are pretty bad. Still, from Lewis’ criticism I think I can understand more about Lewis than I can possibly know about Gaius and Titius.

36

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
It’s not the actual liking, it’s about the liking motivating him to make them objectively good. If he wanted to make all things blue, he could do so. If he can give things the quality of blue, why can’t he give things the quality of good, if he is supposed to be all-powerful?

If it’s a question just of not understanding what exactly would be done - well, I don’t see how it would be, either. But a supreme being would logically have that power, even if we can’t see how it would be done.

Just God having to tell us doesn’t mean anything. Objectivity doesn’t rely on it being recognised. You could, in theory, have a universe in which no-one, not even a god, recognises what is actually objectively true. What we actually can detect has absolutely no bearing on what is objective or not, since, by definition, we are subjective beings. To go back to Thor, if everyone was colourblind, and he would have to tell us that things are blue, that doesn’t mean they’re not blue.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that depends on what you mean by blue. If by blue you mean “radiating or reflecting light with a wavelength of between 450 and 490 nanometers,” then it is true that objects could be blue even if no one could see them. Under this definition of blue, however, one must give up the idea that peacocks are blue or (under a similar definition of yellow) that this is yellow.

If, on the other hand, you define blue as “producing in a normal human the perception of color as when looking at a bright, clear sky or very deep water” (which is what most us actually mean by it) then obviously you need normal humans (or at least somebody) who can see it.

Objectivity doesn’t depend on being recognized, but it does depend on being, at least in principle, able to be recognized. Something that, in principle, can only be experienced or recognized from one viewpoint (like my perception of blue) is by definition subjective.

Just like blue, good needs to be defined. What do you mean when you say God could make something objectively good? Could God make murder objectively good? What would be changed if he did? How do we know murder isn’t objectively good, and we just didn’t notice?

37

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
Well, that depends on what you mean by blue. If by blue you mean “radiating or reflecting light with a wavelength of between 450 and 490 nanometers,” then it is true that objects could be blue even if no one could see them. Under this definition of blue, however, one must give up the idea that peacocks are blue or (under a similar definition of yellow) that this is yellow.
[/quote]
This one, in this case. Peacocks are a good example, though I didn’t know all that about them until you posted it.

No, I disagree. Subjectivity doesn’t require recognition, because we can say theoretically there is someone that experiences “blue” as the smell of cheese.

I think the difference is this; a subjective experience is one that is true for the experiencer (if there is one), but not true as holds to some actual state of the universe. An objective experience on the other hand is also true for the experiencer (if there is one), and also is reality. The problem with your definition of subjectivity is that in principle a supreme being is not the only one who could recognise or experience it; another omniscient being could do so (omnipotency can’t be shared, but omniscience can). A being, not omniscient, but with total knowledge of this particular experience could do so. Likewise, we could theorise about two identical people who see the world in identical ways. Are their experiences, since they are not only experienced or recognized by one viewpoint, therefore objective?

What do I mean? I honestly have no clue. I have no concept of what would be done. But I am not a surpreme being. If we’re hypothesising a supreme being, then certainly it would have that power, and many others, even though we don’t understand them. I don’t understand how to make a working engine, but that doesn’t mean there are no people who can. Could it be done? Supreme-being-wise, yes. Omniscient being-wise, no; not because it couldn’t, because again, omnipotent, but because an omniscient being would not and could not change it’s mind. What would be changed? The objective state of the universe, and it’s mind (as well as probably the afterlife for us lot :wink: ). How do we know it isn’t, and we didn’t notice? There’s no way to know for certain.

38

But you know an engine when you see one, right? If you don’t know what you mean by “objectively good” then you might as well say God could make something froosnavo glipnich.

39

In this link, it tells you who Gaius, Titus, and Orbilius really were:

40

[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
But you know an engine when you see one, right? If you don’t know what you mean by “objectively good” then you might as well say God could make something froosnavo glipnich.
[/QUOTE]
I do, and you’re correct. Hence why a lot of religious people will say we should trust in God (or equivalent); only he has full understanding, and our own musings on the matter are not all that helpful. Not really an idea i’d follow myself, but it exists.