A little background

I thought it better to get this out in bite size bits, and give you more time to digest it. This will be subject to further changes and additions, but hopefully this will help.

I will suggest that we reach truth through a process which is in some ways both historical, and scientific. Therefore, the background is the story.

I want to make my method clear here, I am following my own advice. As a philosopher who has invested considerably in the ideas of other great philosophers, I am prepared to see their mistakes, and by luck and effort, to move on keeping corrections and getting rid of mistakes.. I also hope that this will hold for my own theories, where when criticism reveals fault I will be able to admit it. I will not assume, however, that it is all for nothing, but rather scrap what needs to be scrapped, and try again.

This is rather a sort of scientific method which has not often been admitted as a part of either the theological method, or the philosophical (I could well offer my own criticisms to my own field, and equally well to my own practices).

Kant, in response to Descartes’, and especially David Hume’s, works that, Kant believed, successfully demolished what had been the philosophical foundations western society, produced one of the most brilliant philosophical works of human history. The philosophy Kant laid out in Critique of Pure Reason, traditionally labeled as a Transcendental Idealism, makes a leap from the most basic conditions required for human experience to show what we must believe to make sense of that experience.

Whatever you think of all that, as brilliant as it may be, Kant then comes up with the Categorical Imperative which, in its most famous formulation reads, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

The power of this theory is incredible. It has many intuitive strengths: what is right is rational, universal, and not tied to what we might think is right or wrong. There is a real notion of duty and obligation, and ones motivations are paramount.

Additionally, the one of the seemingly magical properties of Kant’s Categorical Imperative is that, while being based on the apparently inhuman principle of pure reason and logical consistency, when applied to case studies we find the principle is very persuasive. This is because, while it often is far from what we might want it is certainly in tune with a moral intuition about what might be right in spite of what we want. It gives us a standpoint other then our own opinions from which we can judge both ourselves and others who might have a radically different cultural position.

It is these properties of Kant’s system that I will cling to, and perhaps Kant and I could come to some agreement, but I agree with Hegel that Kant’s principle must be humanized, that it must be grounded in the real and not merely and ideal, however transcendental.

Nearly sixty years later John Stuart Mill wrote the essay, “Utilitarianism,” which is often posited as the major opposition to Kant’s position. These two views are divided from each other in Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome, and Kantianism is deontological, which means that right and wrong is measured against a principle, and not by the results. However, I will suggest that it is the focus on this distinction that has led ethicists astray for so long, for really they are a dialectical unity, and this distinction between the two must be overcome rather than clarified.

Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility. Here utility can be very easily understood as happiness. It
I will be sure to list several of utilitarianism’s philosophical and moral problems to assure people that I am not a Utilitarian, but there are also very good reasons for why it is as persuasive as it is. What happens to people matters, or, there is a real and significant connection between what is right and wrong and human flourishing.

I will go ahead and list several of the problems in utilitarianism, though this will not due justice to the debates, nor the work that has gone into overcoming these problems. I will say this though, about why I lean towards rejecting utilitarianism as an adequate ethical theory: for a theory that gains so much credibility from its simple and sensible seeming premises (though closer examination reveals them to be not quite as self evident as they might at first appear), utilitarianism requires an awful lot of work to overcome its many seemingly blatantly immoral outcomes in test scenarios.

Here are several problems with utilitarianism: it does not put any value on life, but merely happiness, so beings who do not promote happiness, or are not happy themselves, do not have value; it seems very difficult to properly valuate pleasure, happiness, and joy; there are not adequate predictive methods for calculating the results of actions; and utilitarianism does not take motives or intentions into account.

The first and the last are perhaps the most fatal of utilitarianism’s flaws, but the middle two certainly do not make the theory very practicable. All this said, the theory’s intuitive appeal, I am suggesting, is because it has some very important truths embedded in it that its founders almost certain grasped, though failed to fully work out.

The final ethical theory that I would like to lay out in brief is Social Contract Theory. But before I do I need to make a particular distinction very clear, that is, the distinction between true morality and our ethical practice. Now both Matt and I will be arguing there is a morality that objectively exists and by which we can judge human action. There are also all kinds of ways by which any individual decides what to do, and in some cases decides what is the right thing to do. The latter are not necessarily the same as the former, and so we have the possibility of studying human decision making processes as a separate study from objective ethics.

Political studies is a very obvious example of these kinds of studies where by we can examine all sorts of political practices, and the merits and problems in each, recognizing that these political practices are not the same as objective morality, but are obviously, in some way related to the subject.

Having said this, I bring up Social Contract Theory not because of its resemblance to objective morality, for the variety of “Social Contracts,” are a near proof for the subjective nature of the theory, but because of its potential for showing how people actually attempt to practice, “ethics,” in the world.

The term social contract describes a broad class of philosophical theories whose subjects are the implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order. In laymen's terms, this means that the people give up some rights to a government in order to receive social order.

The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any social order, termed the “state of nature” or “natural state”. In this state of being, an individual’s action is bound only by his or her conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily submit the freedom of action one has under the natural state (their so called “natural rights”) in order to obtain the benefits provided by the formation of social structures (wiki).

I will suggest that almost all human “ethical” decisions are based on this sort of or an implied agreement. And there is no doubt that this is important for the relative flourishing of human society, but this does not either provide a description of what is right or, provide for this worlds salvation. My task is only the first of these two failures of social contract theory, but that will become clearer shortly.

My theory is more like a narrative then an argument. I will insist that anything of value arises out of free will – which is the source of contingency and potential – and is expressed in actuality – which is the result of the actualizing, or realizing, by a will. Free will is a fundamental reality that I do not intend to demonstrate or defend because it, by definition, does not submit to anything but itself. If I am pressed on this point, I would be willing to reconsider.

I will also offer, as the only theory I have currently been offered, and one that I think Matt will hopefully happily agree with, that God is the source of freedom. Additionally, I will submit that God is also the source of actuality. This means that I am not arguing God as the prime mover: there was nothing, and then God spoke into the darkness and there was something. And low and behold, God did not merely express himself in actuality, but did something truly new! Far greater then matter ex-nhilo, was the multiplication of wills. The world now becomes ever more a result of the actualizing of free wills which are not God’s, and the God, limits herself by her own will. Human freedom is the most terrifying truth, but it is true. I believe that I will take freedom, both God and man’s, more seriously then Matt.

To be honest, admitting God as the prime mover (though I do not believe that has been proven, only accepted), I have given Matt the fight. Whatever I say now about morality Matt may point to the beginning and say, “see, God is the source!” And I will happily concede, I am not out to win, but to find the truth. However, I think that Christian theology has led us far enough astray from being able to look at things from a step back, that Matt will find the rest of what I have to say difficult enough, despite the fact that ultimately the battle is his for the taking.

I am going to use the story of evolution as a metaphor, for I believe there is some truth to the story, both historically and morally, though the details may still need to be flushed out.

My account of evolution is primarily informed by Richard Dawkin’s book, The Selfish Gene. Again, before I summarize some of his story, I will set straight a few potential misunderstandings in advance. Richard Dawkin’s book is not a moral treatise. He is in no way arguing that selfish action is what is right. Additionally, he claims that as far as appearances have informed us, humans are actually exceptions to the rules he is laying out. Moraly he is something of a Social Contract Theorist, and might have a position in line with Richard Taylor.

His work is a scientific treatise on the theory of evolution which arises from certain explanations for apparently altruistic actions. Evolution tends to account for apparently altruistic by insisting that these actions are not purely altruistic, but have an alternative explanation (remember that Dawkin’s willingly admits humans as exceptions). One common account for apparently altruistic actions was the, “herd instinct,” whereby a species increases their chance of survival by an instinct to protect others in the herd even if it means increasing the risk of their own survival, and it is precisely this sort of explanation that Dawkin’s finds inadequate.

His story starts with the spontaneous appearance of replicators in some primordial goo. All sorts of things may have appeared and disappeared in this goo, but the replicators are the start of the story because by the merely coincidental fact that they happened to make copies of themselves, when they passed away they left copies behind to carry on the story.

This is a story that we all know, but, a bit like the gospel, it is one many of us misunderstand. For example, here are two facts about these “creatures.” The creatures that are most likely to avoid extinction are the ones that reproduce themselves in a faithful image of the original. This means that chances of survival of any particular species is increased by it’s potential to resist evolution. There is not drive in a species to evolve, rather, the evolution of a species potentially signals the extinction of its predecessor and any predecessor that has a drive towards extinction will never last, and neither will its successor unless it learns to resist mutation and copy itself faithfully.

These replicators to make errors in their replication, and those that do, by pure luck, re...