My friend Doug Geivett and I are in the beginning stages of developing a new version of a moral argument for theism. The argument is meant to be one part of a cumulative case, and not a stand-alone argument. In one portion of the argument, we argue that particular virtues, such as patience, humility, and forgiveness, are conceptually flawed and practically undermined if they do not include divine intentionality, that is, if they are not related to God in particular ways. This is all very rough at this point, including the following discussion of patience, but the point is to use the blog to think out loud as we develop the case. So any suggestions or objections are welcome.
Consider the virtue of patience. I think
it is clear that it is reasonable to be patient. But certain forms of patience
are not reasonable, if naturalism is true. On naturalism, I can be patient in
line at the store, or with other drivers, or with my children, because of the
therapeutic and relational value of patience in these realms. However, the
naturalist cannot as easily account for the patient endurance of suffering or
trials, in the following way. What am I waiting for, in the midst of terminal illness, challenging trials and
tribulations, or an apparently irresolvable situation, when the desired states
of affairs are outside of my ability to bring about? On naturalism I’m waiting
for “my luck to change” or something along those lines (and whatever that means). This seems to be a weak
basis for patience, and not a good reason to think that whatever I am waiting
for will in fact occur. On naturalism, the attitude is “Wait and see.” By
contrast, on theism I am waiting for God
to come through. The attitude is not merely wait and see, but rather “Wait and
see how God will prove his faithfulness.” For the theist there are positive
reasons for patience, for expecting something good, sooner or later, to happen.
There are reasons to be hopeful in patience. This is not the
case on naturalism, making patience in many contexts, for the naturalist,
irrational.
The
argument with respect to patience, then, is this:
(1) It
is reasonable to have and exercise patience.
(2)
Christian theism can give a better account of (1) in certain contexts compared
to naturalism.
Therefore,
(3) The
reasonableness of patience in these contexts is a piece of evidence favoring
Christian theism over naturalism.
For those readers interested in moral arguments, I recommend the recent book by Dave Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2011).
16 comments:
Very provocative – end enlightening about the consequences of naturalism. I wonder how Aristotle/an Aristotilian might commend patience in the light of suffering.
Here goes. It's not clear to me that for the "naturalist" patient endurance is irrational; this might be the best way to contend, e.g., with an illness so long as one is resolved to fight to the bitter end (think: Dylan Thomas' poem, "Do not go gentle..."). What would be irrational is a kind of hope that is only vindicated by some kind of theistic telos. But the naturalist rejects that already. So the argument seems to be from hope, not patience, and so...begs the question against the naturalist.
I've been thinking about the possible relations between patience and hope, and I think it's true that hope could firm up one's resolve to endure with patience (but I suppose the same is true of faith). I've also been thinking about Sartre (and despair as he understands it), and it's true that patience--just as any other virtue--couldn't be grounded in an external telos. The telos has to be human flourishing (in spite of an indifferent world)--and not necessarily just one's own. So I think all the "naturalist" would need is a way of showing how important patience is for that. I'm in the wishy-washy stages of outlining some such ideas. And also the Dalai Lama wrote a book about patience and anger (which I haven't read yet, but might be worth looking at since he's operating from a very different kind of religious perspective).
How are virtues -- specifically, those dispositions both theists and atheists agree are virtues -- "practically undermined" if they lack some sort of relation to God? (I'd like to see this bold and intriguing claim developed as far as possible without presupposing that God exists.)
For instance, it's not clear to me that patience requires hopefulness in order to be rational. In the godless and ultimately meaningless world with which I'm familiar, though encouraging it in others is probably a good thing most of the time, hope is more of a temptation than a virtue, a distraction from the mindfulness about the ceaseless misery and suffering of existence lying beyond the orbit of one's personal experience.
Hope.
Matt,
As a first stab, the question would be why is that the best way to contend, if it is, on naturalism? To answer that we'd have to know in what sense "best" is being used and how that is explained, if it can be, on philosophical naturalism. Second, could you expand on why hope that is only vindicated by a theistic telos is irrational? Third, my view is that there are important connections between patience and hope, but I think there are likely things to say about patience apart from the connections here, which I'll need to develop.
For the second part of your comment, how might a philosophical naturalist account for human flourishing as a telos in a way that can objectively ground the virtues?
Rob, I'll have to leave the claim as mostly a promissory note at the moment, but consider humility. The best naturalistic version of humility sees it as the realization that luck or blind chance deserve the majority of credit for one's success, rather than God, who deserves this on theism. It isn't clear to me what it even means for luck or chance to deserve or receive credit, and if this is nonsensical then at least some of the motives for humility, properly conceived, will be undermined.
Mike, I guess I don't see why humility should necessarily have any positive concern with desert or assignment of credit, beyond the artifice of, say, moira, to which even the gods are subject. Why is knowing we are not our own work, that luck swallows everything, not enough?
Mike: sorry, what I meant is that for the naturalist, hope (that the good will come) would be irrational precisely because the naturalist is operating outside a theistic view already. And in the naturalist's world, I take it, there are no guarantees that the good will come. That is, the naturalist qua naturalist has no grounds for hope. But that doesn't imply a lack of grounds for patience. Just not a patience based in eternal hope. (Unless one could reconstrue it on something like the model of hoping one wins the lottery. But that's a lot thinner than the hope available within the theist framework.)
On the second question: the short answer is that it's good to flourish, both for ourselves and others (and I assume that since we're social beings we can't flourish as individuals without others to, as it were, co-flourish with us--so our flourishing can't be at the expense of others...you know, let a thousand, or say, 7 billion, flowers bloom...).
I agree that there are connections between patience and hope, too. I'll have to think about how far one can press hope into the uncaring void (as it were) without it becoming silly: the question is, roughly, how far can the naturalist press the hope that it is possible to make something meaningful out of one's life and (in the bad cases) one's suffering. Of course, if meaning is open to experimentation, creativity, and invention, then perhaps even for the (imaginative) naturalist, the doors are pretty wide open. (You should check out Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope.)
Matt,
Got it. With respect to flourishing, though, the deeper question I'm interested in is what counts as human flourishing, on naturalism? And once we have a potential answer or set of answers, in what ways might the naturalist give an account of it within a purely naturalistic framework. I think there are problems with trying to square a teleological account of flourishing with a naturalistic view.
what counts as human flourishing, on naturalism?
I suppose one could say something to the effect that, at a general level, human flourishing involves the manifestation of human excellence--so, the cultivation of our moral, creative, and intellectual capacities. Flourishing, as Aristotle would say, is an end in itself, and I guess a naturalist could say that it doesn't need a deeper (i.e. theistic) justification. That is, the answer to "what's the point" is that flourishing is good (and much better than not flourishing). The meaning/satisfaction/joy/etc. is found within the activities that support and express human flourishing.
And maybe naturalism simply can't provide any positive account of human flourishing, but rather only provide the best resources available to identify and palliate the misery and suffering inherent in life, a project in which we can thank blind and purposeless Darwinian processes for selecting most human beings to have some capacity to be interested in participating.
Matt,
My question would be how do we determine which capacities to develop? On naturalism, it becomes difficult to see which human capacities should be developed, and which should not, if we are the result of the blind processes of chance and natural selection--think of Russell's famous quote about this.
Rob,
If it is true that luck swallows everything, then so be it. But what is luck, really? Is there such a thing, or is this merely a useful fiction for us? If the latter, it isn't helping us get any closer to understanding the universe and our place in it.
Mike-- I understand your point and almost posted something in anticipation of it. In short, I think the issue would be one about what capacities are conducive to flourishing as social individuals. Of course, as someone like MacIntyre might point out, there would seem to be a lot of room for variation here (and so a kind of "virtue relativism" might be lurking). At a minimum, a naturalist might, I suppose, try to work outward from Sartre's idea that if I value my own freedom then I ought for the same reason to value the freedom of others. And so whatever aims we select and virtues we seek to cultivate would need to be compatible with respecting the equal value of other people. Going beyond this, some virtues would cultivate a capacity to appreciate/empathize with/etc. others. I suppose an objection to this general direction is that one could argue that flourishing--even as a social individual--wouldn't seem to require virtues that conduce toward universal respect. (I.e. that one only needs a small group of peers amongst whom one can flourish--and to hell with the "herd.") I'll have to think more about it.
The other side of this would be that one could identify virtues/capacities that help individuals fare well given our own limitations/finitude and that enable people to contend well with adversity and change. (This is where I think patience, for example, would fit in...)
Mike -- An a priori proof of the impossibility of ultimate responsibility, while admittedly not directly orienting us towards a correct or right understanding of the universe and our place in it, does seem to at least helpfully rule out those views which cannot accomodate the Basic Argument. And that might release resources of enthusiasm and attention, which we now realize were squandered, for the work of making genuine progress. (God, I hate to sound so optimistic.)
An optimistic Rob--wonders never cease!
But to dampen it, how can you trust a priori reasoning, on your metaphysical views of the universe, human nature, and the like?
some more (inchoate) thoughts about this here
Mike -- For present purposes, I'm committed to the reliability of an priori argument for the impossibility of ultimate responsibility insofar as God's omnipotence doesn't entail that he is able to do that which is logically impossible.
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