There is a popular argument for theism which is based on the claim that ultimate moral reality is dependent on. or best explained given, God. In this post, I want to explore what can be made of this argument and what the best way to understand this dependency relation is. Duly note that I am not particularly sympathetic to this argument, so this is as much an exercise in trying to understand as anything else.
First, what kind of dependency relation should we take this to be? First off, note that this is supposed to be an apologetic argument, so it cannot be simply the claim that all of reality depends on God for its being. No, something more must be meant here. A closer relationship between God's existence and moral reality is being supposed. The most popular way of making this out is that divine law requires a divine law-giver. This is sound as far as it goes, but many ethical views are reasonably coherent without claiming that there are any such thing as moral laws independent of our own existence. An Aristotelian view, which bases morality on what is good for creatures like us, does not require more than a recognizable human good (does this require God? Maybe. We'll come back to this).
Next, what about God as the best explanation for the existence of a moral reality? This is generally placed as an argument against an impersonal universe. So, this is the argument that random matter in motion could not give rise to moral realities. There are two possible reasons for this. On the one hand, one might view the processes which give rise to organisms on such a view as inherently incompatible with those beings having moral responsibilities or duties. On the other hand, one might think it unlikely that beings with the particular attributes which ground moral responsibilities and duties could have arisen in an impersonal universe. The former strikes me as conflating the ends involved in evolution with the ends of the organisms produced by evolution--simply because a being arose through selfish processes does not mean that the organism cannot have selfless motives itself. The latter sounds a lot like the simpler argument that consciousness could not have arisen in a consciousness-less world, which some atheists accept (many panpsychists are atheists: David Chalmers and Tom Nagel, off the top of my head).
So far, we have not made a very strong case for the argument in question. I promised to come back to the question of whether a recognizable human good requires the existence of God, however. This is where the argument has some strength. If you take all your goals and ask why you take them to be good goals, you must refer them to some further goal. At some point, one or more of your goals must stand by themselves, without reference to further goals. If there is no heaven nor any eternal guarantee that there there will be conscious beings into eternity, then our innate disposition to try to make the world better for those after us eventually runs out at the end of consciousness. If we make ourselves our final end then we will have to advocate a kind of selfishness, however well it may try to be self-effacing. If God or heaven exists, then our goals can reach an end in increasing the flourishing of consciousness. An alternative, and more orthodox, final end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, recognizing that communion with him is our flourishing.
But does this really show that God is required for moral reality? No, not quite. It does appear to show that some account of human flourishing as constitutively involving an other-focus must be true to ground moral reality--that is the form the orthodox final end takes. This may require God, but it may simply depend on our being communal beings.
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Merleau-Ponty and Incarnation
We are embodied. This is not a generally contentious claim, but its implications are not well thought out. In this post, I want to sketch an argument for using Merleau-Ponty to fill in this claim and its impact on ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty is famous for returning the body to philosophy, particularly in the existentialist tradition. His arguments push against scientific reductionism without holding the mental to be independent of the physical. This emphasis on our intimate connection to our bodies as lived allows us to use him to think through how our embodiment has and provides value.
Merleau-Ponty views the body as the center-point from which we live and discover the world. It is the condition of our awareness of the world. On the other hand, the body as center-point is dependent on the world--it must be an opening on a world, or it is nothing. The body and the world are thus correlates. We therefore must discover them together.
This is an important point: once we have accepted our embodiment, we must accept that our awareness of ourselves as active and perceptual beings (more accurately: active-perceptual beings, as there is little distinction) depends on our awareness of the world. We discover both ourselves and the world through engaging the opening onto the world which we are with the world which we open out onto.
In this active-perceptual engagement the world and our bodies arise for us as significant--having significance. The world offers us options in relation to the body, which offers us correlated capacities. The options the world offers others are options we know through intersubjectivity--our awareness of others--which, Merleau-Ponty argues, occurs through our bodies. We subtly use our own bodies to understand the activities of others.
This centrality of the body and its capacities for knowledge of the world and others entails that differences in embodiment result in different ways of understanding the world. Furthermore, the body as condition of action presents itself as a Good without which we could do and know nothing. The body constrains our way of being toward the world, and thus, while Merleau-Ponty agrees with other existentialists that we have the ability to construct our identities, and that what we do produces us, he nevertheless leaves the initial substrate outside our ability to choose. The restraints of nature, and particularly body and the culture we are born into, provide a basis on which to stand when choosing. These restraints do not inhibit agency but rather enable it. This at the very least puts the question of the validity of sex change operations into question: is it a way of developing the bodies we are, or a way of bucking the very condition of our freedom? The same kind of question may be asked of other transhumanist technologies, whether reproductive or otherwise.
The biggest metaphysical commitment I see in Merleau-Ponty is to the value-ladenness of things prior to our choices. Perception is, for Merleau-Ponty, the activity of answering a question from the world. The world offers us puzzles which demand solutions, and those solutions must form the world into a comprehensible form. The solution is demanded by the world, and includes the values of the things seen, its potentialities for reception of activities of various sorts. There are occasionally multiple viable solutions, yet not just any solution will do: it must guide our interactions with the problem of the world productively. The solution must, as it were, harmonize the world's witness. This means that form is necessary to the world's existence--it must be viewed as formed--yet form is a perceptual category, and so the world must be viewed as given perceptually, not as though the real world were a world of imperceptibles.
Once we have attuned ourselves to this notion of form, of self-sustaining orderings, we can begin to recognize much of our work as the work of producing form. This is the aim of every valid institution: to be formed in a way which harmonizes and preserves its parts in order to exhibit its form by seeking some telos. Likewise, we can see the environment and our bodies both as forms whose structure is self-sustaining and not to be violated without good reason. We will have to recognize the fact that we deal in these and many other cases with systems which are complex and which seek their own continuance until they cannot, and which then tend to decline rapidly.
Hopefully this post has shown how Merleau-Ponty may be useful to Christian thought on how to think about ethics in light of our embodiment, which we must insofar as we think of ethics in light of Christ's incarnation. There will, of course, be much to think through about what Merleau-Ponty gets wrong in virtue of denying the existence of a sovereign God, but there remains much which is profitable for our thought, and even where he goes wrong, he will offer a sympathetic interlocutor on many points.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty is famous for returning the body to philosophy, particularly in the existentialist tradition. His arguments push against scientific reductionism without holding the mental to be independent of the physical. This emphasis on our intimate connection to our bodies as lived allows us to use him to think through how our embodiment has and provides value.
Merleau-Ponty views the body as the center-point from which we live and discover the world. It is the condition of our awareness of the world. On the other hand, the body as center-point is dependent on the world--it must be an opening on a world, or it is nothing. The body and the world are thus correlates. We therefore must discover them together.
This is an important point: once we have accepted our embodiment, we must accept that our awareness of ourselves as active and perceptual beings (more accurately: active-perceptual beings, as there is little distinction) depends on our awareness of the world. We discover both ourselves and the world through engaging the opening onto the world which we are with the world which we open out onto.
In this active-perceptual engagement the world and our bodies arise for us as significant--having significance. The world offers us options in relation to the body, which offers us correlated capacities. The options the world offers others are options we know through intersubjectivity--our awareness of others--which, Merleau-Ponty argues, occurs through our bodies. We subtly use our own bodies to understand the activities of others.
This centrality of the body and its capacities for knowledge of the world and others entails that differences in embodiment result in different ways of understanding the world. Furthermore, the body as condition of action presents itself as a Good without which we could do and know nothing. The body constrains our way of being toward the world, and thus, while Merleau-Ponty agrees with other existentialists that we have the ability to construct our identities, and that what we do produces us, he nevertheless leaves the initial substrate outside our ability to choose. The restraints of nature, and particularly body and the culture we are born into, provide a basis on which to stand when choosing. These restraints do not inhibit agency but rather enable it. This at the very least puts the question of the validity of sex change operations into question: is it a way of developing the bodies we are, or a way of bucking the very condition of our freedom? The same kind of question may be asked of other transhumanist technologies, whether reproductive or otherwise.
The biggest metaphysical commitment I see in Merleau-Ponty is to the value-ladenness of things prior to our choices. Perception is, for Merleau-Ponty, the activity of answering a question from the world. The world offers us puzzles which demand solutions, and those solutions must form the world into a comprehensible form. The solution is demanded by the world, and includes the values of the things seen, its potentialities for reception of activities of various sorts. There are occasionally multiple viable solutions, yet not just any solution will do: it must guide our interactions with the problem of the world productively. The solution must, as it were, harmonize the world's witness. This means that form is necessary to the world's existence--it must be viewed as formed--yet form is a perceptual category, and so the world must be viewed as given perceptually, not as though the real world were a world of imperceptibles.
Once we have attuned ourselves to this notion of form, of self-sustaining orderings, we can begin to recognize much of our work as the work of producing form. This is the aim of every valid institution: to be formed in a way which harmonizes and preserves its parts in order to exhibit its form by seeking some telos. Likewise, we can see the environment and our bodies both as forms whose structure is self-sustaining and not to be violated without good reason. We will have to recognize the fact that we deal in these and many other cases with systems which are complex and which seek their own continuance until they cannot, and which then tend to decline rapidly.
Hopefully this post has shown how Merleau-Ponty may be useful to Christian thought on how to think about ethics in light of our embodiment, which we must insofar as we think of ethics in light of Christ's incarnation. There will, of course, be much to think through about what Merleau-Ponty gets wrong in virtue of denying the existence of a sovereign God, but there remains much which is profitable for our thought, and even where he goes wrong, he will offer a sympathetic interlocutor on many points.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Authenticity and Identity
If authenticity is to be a guiding moral ideal, we must have some notion of what a self is and how to identify who we really are. Introspection, by all accounts, is inadequate, even misleading. There are three basic approaches:
1. The existential option: We may observe the narratival pattern of our lives thus far and creatively extend it, calling future actions authentic when they help produce a coherent narrative.
2. The revelatory option: We may depend on Scripture to tell us who we are and what is consistent with so being.
3. The dialectical option: We may enact what appears to us to be our values in order to discover whether they are truly our values.
The existential option does not require there to be any pre-existing fact of the matter as to what we are. We create a self from our actions, and so long as they cohere we can call our actions authentic. Only conflicting actions--ones which pull the narrative flow of our lives in different directions--can be called inauthentic. Which action is inauthentic in such a case, moreover, cannot always be determined beforehand. It may be that narratival unity can be preserved by disowning either action, in which case authenticity will not guide one's choice. In other cases, one action stands out against the backdrop of one's life as out of place.
The revelatory option has a major flaw as an account of authenticity for anyone who cares about the usual conception of authenticity. If we look solely to Scripture, then what is revealed about us is not individual. Each of us is shown to be the same so far as Scripture's account of our deep nature goes: sinners in need of redemption, created in the image of God, and so on. Nowhere does it say what I, now, in my particular situation, am to do with my unique self. It provides bounds and principles, of course, but that does not fit with the main point of an ideal of authenticity.
The dialectical option is essentially an experimental approach to authenticity. On this account, we have a deep nature which is revealed in situations. We discover who we are by doing things and seeing how they turn out for us. This is very similar to the existential option, except it presumes that there is some pre-existing fact of the matter about who we are, so that we can be true to ourselves or not. Yet, this fact is concealed from us and only comes to light as we act on what we seem to know about ourselves thus far. There is thus an interpretive spiral regarding ourselves on this view. We start with some view of ourselves, act on it, then alter our view in accordance with what our actions expose about ourselves--our talents, desires, values, abilities, etc. We repeat this over the course of our lives, changing course a little bit with every action. Each account of ourselves being merely a hypothesis to be tried or theory in the works.
It will come as no surprise that I think elements of each of these three views are correct. Scripture does reveal who we truly are, and if we are to be true to ourselves we must, minimally, be true to the nature we share with all humanity. To get a fuller picture of ourselves to be authentic to, however, we must observe ourselves. We must observe what we have shown ourselves to care about and the traditions out of which we live. We should ask how we see someone with this life history going on to live, interpreting our life histories--which extend to before our births, to family histories and traditions of thought--through the lens of Scripture. We should then live into a preliminary picture of who we appear to be, ready to change course as it becomes apparent, whether through our own dissatisfaction or the advice of others, that the course we are on does not fit us.
1. The existential option: We may observe the narratival pattern of our lives thus far and creatively extend it, calling future actions authentic when they help produce a coherent narrative.
2. The revelatory option: We may depend on Scripture to tell us who we are and what is consistent with so being.
3. The dialectical option: We may enact what appears to us to be our values in order to discover whether they are truly our values.
The existential option does not require there to be any pre-existing fact of the matter as to what we are. We create a self from our actions, and so long as they cohere we can call our actions authentic. Only conflicting actions--ones which pull the narrative flow of our lives in different directions--can be called inauthentic. Which action is inauthentic in such a case, moreover, cannot always be determined beforehand. It may be that narratival unity can be preserved by disowning either action, in which case authenticity will not guide one's choice. In other cases, one action stands out against the backdrop of one's life as out of place.
The revelatory option has a major flaw as an account of authenticity for anyone who cares about the usual conception of authenticity. If we look solely to Scripture, then what is revealed about us is not individual. Each of us is shown to be the same so far as Scripture's account of our deep nature goes: sinners in need of redemption, created in the image of God, and so on. Nowhere does it say what I, now, in my particular situation, am to do with my unique self. It provides bounds and principles, of course, but that does not fit with the main point of an ideal of authenticity.
The dialectical option is essentially an experimental approach to authenticity. On this account, we have a deep nature which is revealed in situations. We discover who we are by doing things and seeing how they turn out for us. This is very similar to the existential option, except it presumes that there is some pre-existing fact of the matter about who we are, so that we can be true to ourselves or not. Yet, this fact is concealed from us and only comes to light as we act on what we seem to know about ourselves thus far. There is thus an interpretive spiral regarding ourselves on this view. We start with some view of ourselves, act on it, then alter our view in accordance with what our actions expose about ourselves--our talents, desires, values, abilities, etc. We repeat this over the course of our lives, changing course a little bit with every action. Each account of ourselves being merely a hypothesis to be tried or theory in the works.
It will come as no surprise that I think elements of each of these three views are correct. Scripture does reveal who we truly are, and if we are to be true to ourselves we must, minimally, be true to the nature we share with all humanity. To get a fuller picture of ourselves to be authentic to, however, we must observe ourselves. We must observe what we have shown ourselves to care about and the traditions out of which we live. We should ask how we see someone with this life history going on to live, interpreting our life histories--which extend to before our births, to family histories and traditions of thought--through the lens of Scripture. We should then live into a preliminary picture of who we appear to be, ready to change course as it becomes apparent, whether through our own dissatisfaction or the advice of others, that the course we are on does not fit us.
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