Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems

Another clip from a friend's blog:

As far as I can tell, however, atheists and theists are equally entitled to believe in moral imperatives, because in both cases the argument should come down to the same premise: it is a fulfillment of man's nature (or "telos") to be moral.

Athiests look at things which are ordered and say, "No, this isn't a sign of God's handiwork, it's spontaneous evolution, or it's chance." Evolution gives a compelling account of why organisms have developed behaviors and traits which allow then to pass on their genetic code. Evolutionary theory may be able to explain altruism - the person who helps others is more likely to receive help when they need it. However, evolutionary theory is also likely to show that there are cases where immoral actions, like theft and murder, can be adaptive. If I can't get enough food any other way, stealing might allow me to survive and reproduce. If human telos is the result of evolution alone, I would expect that human telos would include some things that we consider moral, but others that we'd consider immoral. Sometimes the propegation of our genes may be served by moral behavior, but other times immoral behavior might be more effective.

A friend of mine writes on her blog:

I cannot agree with the statement that man/woman has an original tendency towards hatred. To begin with, I have never been aware of a violent or passionate form of hatred that did not arise from a sense of having suffered injustice.

From this, it seems like the cause of hatred is always some prior act of injustice. But what motivated the prior act of injustice? Where does the evil ultimately come from? For Platonists, evil arises when the Demiurge tries to create the best possible world, but because he's working with chaotic matter he can only do a mediocre job. For Rousseau, society is the ultimate source of evil. For Marx, the economic system causes evil. For at least some atheistic materialists hatred is caused by the desire to destroy or incapacitate whatever might prevent us from passing on our genetic material.

But maybe I should be reading more carefully, since what's written is, "sense of having suffered injustice" rather than simply, "having suffered injustice." In that case, my issue is with the fact that people so often have a sense of having suffered injustice, even when they haven't been wronged. The child who freaks out because Mom won't give him the thing he wants or the man who feels that it isn't fair that all the Latinos have moved in and taken all the jobs. It seems that the tendency to feel wronged comes from our self-centeredness and our tendency toward tribalism.

Also, hatred isn't the only sin. How about the tendency to eat too much, to have sex with people we don't care about, and to use our money to purchase luxury instead of helping others? It seems that very often our desires are out of wack with what's actually the right thing. Just to use the eating example - food is good, but we desire more of it than is good. With self-centeredness, we are concerned about our own needs, which is good, but aren't sufficiently concerned about the needs of others.

I don't think we are born radically evil. But I also don't think that our desires always line up with what is really best. If these desires are continually indulged we can become truly monstrous.

The thing that disturbs me most about the author's perspective is that it doesn't seem to do sufficient justice to the reality of evil. Evil isn't just, "I want what's mine, and I'll do what I have to do to get it."

I consider that it is a form of self-hatred to think of oneself as "a sinner"--i.e. as primarily evil. I would also bet that most people have more good in them than evil.

When Catholics refer to themselves as sinners, they don't mean to say that they are "primarily evil." I'd like to hear why you think this is what we mean when we call ourselves sinners.

From Christianity and Classical Culture

If it be true that Nicea put teeth into Christianity, it is equally true to say that, with Athanasius, the Church showed she could bite the hand that fed her.

What We Learn When We Learn Economics

"Parkin’s warning, however, turns out to be surprisingly difficult to heed. Neoclassical economics smuggles a great many normative wares underneath its positive trenchcoat, both in its assumptions about how humans operate—as individuals rationally maximizing their utility—and its implied preference for “markets in everything.” Because neoclassical economics always presents itself as a value-neutral description of the world, its ideological commitments can be adopted by those who learn it without any recognition that they are ideological. Parkin’s warning, however, turns out to be surprisingly difficult to heed. Neoclassical economics smuggles a great many normative wares underneath its positive trenchcoat, both in its assumptions about how humans operate—as individuals rationally maximizing their utility—and its implied preference for “markets in everything.” Because neoclassical economics always presents itself as a value-neutral description of the world, its ideological commitments can be adopted by those who learn it without any recognition that they are ideological."

I was actually talking about this with a friend a few months ago... we were talking about the labor theory of value (things get value from the effort used in making them) and the subjective theory of value (things are valuable when they are useful and scarce). We noticed that the labor theory of value is a statement about how we should value things, whereas the subjective theory of value is a statement of how prices are determined in a free market. The labor theory of value is a normative statement (an incorrect normative statement), while the subjective theory of value is a statement of fact (a correct statement of fact). No sane person will argue that people will pay a lot for things they see as being really useful (useful broadly defined, to include useful as a status symbol) and are very scarce.

But often times this factual statement is treated as having normative significance - not only will people pay a lot for useful, scarce things, but the government shouldn't try to influence with prices. Often, I'd agree with this. But how about drugs? They are perceived as useful, and they are sometimes scarce, so people pay a lot of money for them. But does this mean they are valuable? Also, people often systematically overvalue their short-term happiness and undervalue their long-term happiness – like when they don’t put enough into savings. The subjective theory of value doesn't have anything to tell us about what to do when individuals misunderstand what is truly useful to them.