In response to an argument Martin and I were having about the Moral Law.
Extracts from a book I have read recently.
To understand the Moral Law, it is useful to consider how it is invoked hundreds of ways each day without the invoker stopping to point out the foundation of his argument.
Disagreements are a natural part of our daily lives, some are mundane like a wife criticizing her husband for speaking rudely to her friend, while some arguments take on larger significance. For instance, some argue that the U.S has a moral obligation to spread democracy throughout the world, even if it reqires military force, whereas others say that the aggressive, unilateral use of military and economic foce threatens to squander moral authority.
Notice than in these examples, each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law, an it's existence in each of these cases seems unquestioned. What is being debated is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. Those accused of having fallen short such as the husband usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondant say, " To hell with your concept of right behaviour."
Is this sense of morality an intristic quality of being human, or just a consequence of cultural traditions? Some have argued that cultures have such widely differing norms of behavior that any conclusion about a shared Moral Law is unfounded. C.S Lewis, an oxford scholar and a student of many cultures, calls this"a lie, a good resounding lie.
If a man will go into a library and spend a few days withthe encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, he will soon discover the massive unanimity of the practical reason in man. From the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the laws of Manu, The Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian aborgines and Redskins, he will collect the same trimphantly monotonous denunciations of opporession, murder, treachery, and falsehood; the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the yound and the weak, of almsgiving and impartiality, and honesty."
Let me stop here to point out that the conclusion that the Modern Law exists is in serious conflict with the pos-modernist philosophy, which argues that there are no asolute rights and wrongs, and all ethical questions are relative. This view faces a logical Catch-22s. If there is no absolute truth, can postmodernism be itself true?Indeed, if there is no right and wrong, there is no need to argue for the discipline of ethics in the first place.
Others will object that the Moral Law is simply a consequence of evolutionary pressures. This objection arises from the new field of sociobiology, and attempts to provide explanations for altruistic behavior of its positive value in Darwinian selection.
Consider a major example of the force we feel from the Moral Law, the altruistic impulse, the voice of conscience calling us to help others even if nothing is received in return. Not all of the requirements of the Moral Law reduce to altruism, of course, for instance, the pang of conscience one feels after a minor distortion of the facts on a tax return can hardly be ascribed to sense of having damaged another identifiable human being.
On Altruism. Oskar Schindler placed his life in great danger by sheltering more than a thousand Jews from Nazi extermination during WW2, and ultimately dies penniless, we feel a great rush of admiration for such people.
Sociobiologists such E.O Wilson have attempted to explain this behavior in terms of some indirect reproductive benefits to th practitioner of altruism, but the arguments quickly get into trouble. One proposal is that repeated altruitic behavior of the individual is recognized as a positive attribute in mate selection, but this hypothesis is in direct conflicts with observations in nonhuman orimates that often reveal just the opposite- such as the practiceof infanticide by a newly dominant male monkey, in order to clear the way for his own future offspring.
Another argument is that there are indirectr reciprocal benefits from altruismthat have provided advantages to the practitioner over evolutionary time; but this explanation cannot account for human motivation to practice small acts of consciene that no one else knows about.
A third argument is the altruistic behavior by members of a group provides benefits to the whole group. Exampples are offered of ant colonies, where sterile workers toil incessantly to create an enviroment where their mothers can have more children. But this kind of "ant altruism" is readily explained in evolutionary terms by the fact that genes motivating the sterile worker ants are exactly the same ones that will be passed on by their mother to the siblingsthey are helping to create. That unusually direct DNA connection does not apply to more complex populations, whereevolutionists now agree almost universally that selction operates on the individual, not on the population.
The hardwired behavior of the worker ant is fundamentally differentr from the inner voice that causes me to feel compelled to jump into the river to try and save a drowning stranger, even if I'm not a good swimer and may myself drown in the effort.
Furthermore, for the evolutionary argument about group benefits of altruism to hold. I would seem to require an opposite rsponse, namely, hostility to individuals outside the group. Oskar Schindler's agape belies this kind of thinking. Shokingly, the Moral Law will ask me to save the drowning man even if he is an enemy.
If the Law of Human Nature cannot be explained as cultural artifact of evolutionary by product, then how can we account for its presence? To quote Lewis, "If thre was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe- no more than the architect of a housecould actually be a wall or staircase in that house. The only way we could expect it to show itself would be inseide oursleves as an influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourseleves, surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?"
Extracts from a book I have read recently.
To understand the Moral Law, it is useful to consider how it is invoked hundreds of ways each day without the invoker stopping to point out the foundation of his argument.
Disagreements are a natural part of our daily lives, some are mundane like a wife criticizing her husband for speaking rudely to her friend, while some arguments take on larger significance. For instance, some argue that the U.S has a moral obligation to spread democracy throughout the world, even if it reqires military force, whereas others say that the aggressive, unilateral use of military and economic foce threatens to squander moral authority.
Notice than in these examples, each party attempts to appeal to an unstated higher standard. This standard is the Moral Law, an it's existence in each of these cases seems unquestioned. What is being debated is whether one action or another is a closer approximation to the demands of that law. Those accused of having fallen short such as the husband usually respond with a variety of excuses why they should be let off the hook. Virtually never does the respondant say, " To hell with your concept of right behaviour."
Is this sense of morality an intristic quality of being human, or just a consequence of cultural traditions? Some have argued that cultures have such widely differing norms of behavior that any conclusion about a shared Moral Law is unfounded. C.S Lewis, an oxford scholar and a student of many cultures, calls this"a lie, a good resounding lie.
If a man will go into a library and spend a few days withthe encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, he will soon discover the massive unanimity of the practical reason in man. From the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the laws of Manu, The Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian aborgines and Redskins, he will collect the same trimphantly monotonous denunciations of opporession, murder, treachery, and falsehood; the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the yound and the weak, of almsgiving and impartiality, and honesty."
Let me stop here to point out that the conclusion that the Modern Law exists is in serious conflict with the pos-modernist philosophy, which argues that there are no asolute rights and wrongs, and all ethical questions are relative. This view faces a logical Catch-22s. If there is no absolute truth, can postmodernism be itself true?Indeed, if there is no right and wrong, there is no need to argue for the discipline of ethics in the first place.
Others will object that the Moral Law is simply a consequence of evolutionary pressures. This objection arises from the new field of sociobiology, and attempts to provide explanations for altruistic behavior of its positive value in Darwinian selection.
Consider a major example of the force we feel from the Moral Law, the altruistic impulse, the voice of conscience calling us to help others even if nothing is received in return. Not all of the requirements of the Moral Law reduce to altruism, of course, for instance, the pang of conscience one feels after a minor distortion of the facts on a tax return can hardly be ascribed to sense of having damaged another identifiable human being.
On Altruism. Oskar Schindler placed his life in great danger by sheltering more than a thousand Jews from Nazi extermination during WW2, and ultimately dies penniless, we feel a great rush of admiration for such people.
Sociobiologists such E.O Wilson have attempted to explain this behavior in terms of some indirect reproductive benefits to th practitioner of altruism, but the arguments quickly get into trouble. One proposal is that repeated altruitic behavior of the individual is recognized as a positive attribute in mate selection, but this hypothesis is in direct conflicts with observations in nonhuman orimates that often reveal just the opposite- such as the practiceof infanticide by a newly dominant male monkey, in order to clear the way for his own future offspring.
Another argument is that there are indirectr reciprocal benefits from altruismthat have provided advantages to the practitioner over evolutionary time; but this explanation cannot account for human motivation to practice small acts of consciene that no one else knows about.
A third argument is the altruistic behavior by members of a group provides benefits to the whole group. Exampples are offered of ant colonies, where sterile workers toil incessantly to create an enviroment where their mothers can have more children. But this kind of "ant altruism" is readily explained in evolutionary terms by the fact that genes motivating the sterile worker ants are exactly the same ones that will be passed on by their mother to the siblingsthey are helping to create. That unusually direct DNA connection does not apply to more complex populations, whereevolutionists now agree almost universally that selction operates on the individual, not on the population.
The hardwired behavior of the worker ant is fundamentally differentr from the inner voice that causes me to feel compelled to jump into the river to try and save a drowning stranger, even if I'm not a good swimer and may myself drown in the effort.
Furthermore, for the evolutionary argument about group benefits of altruism to hold. I would seem to require an opposite rsponse, namely, hostility to individuals outside the group. Oskar Schindler's agape belies this kind of thinking. Shokingly, the Moral Law will ask me to save the drowning man even if he is an enemy.
If the Law of Human Nature cannot be explained as cultural artifact of evolutionary by product, then how can we account for its presence? To quote Lewis, "If thre was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe- no more than the architect of a housecould actually be a wall or staircase in that house. The only way we could expect it to show itself would be inseide oursleves as an influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourseleves, surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?"
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