Saturday, January 29, 2022

Arriving at ethics from opposing directions

By Mathew Goldstein


There is a non-theistic and a theistic approach to ethics. While the different approaches will sometimes reach the same destinations, they will sometimes arrive at opposing conclusions. We have different and opposing starting points for defining ethics. The different conclusions are an inevitable result of the opposite direction paths we take to reach our conclusions. I am not impartial here, I very much endorse the non-theistic perspective. 


Both the theistic and non-theistic approaches recognize that ethics needs to be anchored in our factual conclusions about how the universe functions. The sequencing of how we go about achieving this match are reversed. Theists start by prioritizing a fixed set of pre-specified ethical goals. Non-theists start by prioritizing the facts regarding how the universe functions.

 

The non-theistic approach to ethics takes epistemology seriously. Over the past several centuries humanity has built up, and continues to further build up, an increasingly comprehensive and detailed understanding of the how the universe functions. It is here, with our empirical and reason based conclusions about how the universe works, that we can have the most confidence in the validity, and therefore the objectivity, of our conclusions. Empiricism provides us with a practical success versus failure measure to filter out the falsehoods that far outnumber the facts. On this basis we reach the conclusion that our universe is entirely indifferent to our fate, that it functions within material, mechanical, physical constraints. Ethics is needed in our own collective self-interest to push back against this factual indifference so that the overall outcomes for humanity are better than they otherwise would be. Therefore ethics selectively operates against those facts that run against humanities enlightened self-interest at the same time it is grounded in the facts. Modern technology gives us increasing capabilities to act in ways that impacts our lives for better or worse. Therefore ethics continually becomes more important for the fate of humanity.


From a theistic perspective (as perceived from my non-theist perspective), we start with the ethics that are revealed to us by a deity. Therefore we must believe in the deity as a fact. To convince ourselves that the deity is a fact we rely on faith. Possessing faith in the fact of the deity is therefore itself a virtue. The deity monitors our compliance with our ethical obligations and ensures that the final outcomes for everyone are ultimately ethical. A conclusion that our universe is ultimately ethical with the help of a supernatural realm (despite superficial, here and now, appearances otherwise) is the foundation upon which ethics rests.


Theists are dismayed, or alarmed, by people who lack or reject the “faith fact” of deity because they assume that non-theism will result in our behavior being unreliable and untrustworthy. They claim that theistic ethics is uniquely objective because it is derived from divine command. Non-theists are dismayed, or alarmed, by the fictional grounded “ethics” of theists who are actually being unethical when their actions are evaluated against the empirically derived facts about how the universe functions. For us, objectivity and subjectivity are a continuum, in practice they are not one or the other absolutes because we ourselves are not all knowing and all present deities. Humanity is dependent on competent epistemology to obtain objectivity. Good epistemology is an initial ethical obligation since a non-fictional ethic more generally is dependent on getting the facts right and a fictional ethic is unreliable and untrustworthy. It is theistic ethics that suffers from being too subjective because it is more likely to attach itself to bad epistemology.

Sunday, January 23, 2022

What happens when families can choose ethics instead of religious education?

By Mathew Goldstein


In Germany all public schools were required to provide religious education. Families of children who were not baptized could opt out their children from the religious education classes with a free time alternative. There were two categories of classes, a Catholic class and a Protestant class. The content of this “education” (in quotes because there is a mutually exclusive conflict with the goal of a genuine education) was dogmatic, with teachers selected by the church for the purpose of teaching that church’s doctrine. High school students spent about 1000 hours in religious education class. Opt-outs were rare, but then became more common in urban areas. 


Starting in the 1970’s, eight of the eleven West German states transitioned to providing a secular ethics education alternative. The question is what demographic outcomes changed that arguably can be attributed to the partial replacement of religious education with secular ethics education? A recent study from the international platform of Ludwigs-Maximilians University’s Center for Economic Studies and the ifo Institute in Munich addresses this question. See “Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education”. Their answer is yes, there were demographic changes that they claim correlate with the change in education policy. 


I do not doubt that the demographic changes they cite occurred around the same time, but I suspect the reduction in religious belief was a pre-existing trend that may have occurred anyway given that it was the increasing number of opt-outs that triggered this education policy change. This study, however, provides another of a growing collection of evidence based conclusions that ethical behavior is not dependent on religious belief as advocates for religious belief too often claim without providing adequately correlated supporting evidence. The number of people, the frequency of their commentary, the names and backgrounds of the people, who assert a conclusion, such as the assertion that religious belief is needed for ethics, does not replace or substitute for evidence when determining if the conclusion is true. And in any case the religious beliefs that are claimed to be needed for ethics are false so they are a rickety basis for grounding ethics.


Thursday, January 06, 2022

Consciousness maintains homeostasis

 By Mathew Goldstein


More on consciousness, this time from the viewpoint of neuroscientist Antonio Demasio, the author of a number of books for the general public, including a new book titled “Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious” that explores the origin and evolution of consciousness. Maintaining homeostasis is posited here as the primary reason for consciousness. Because both consciousness and homeostasis are biological functions this sounds more plausible (at least to me) than claiming the former is about countering entropy. Homeostasis is not synonymous with slowing down the overall universe context (non-biological) rate of entropy increase. Antonio Demasio answers five questions in an interview published by Science News.