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.

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.

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.

Is SARS-CoV-2 a Wuhan lab modified virus?

 By Mathew Goldstein

The book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Alina Chen and Matt Ridley is currently highly rated on Amazon. I am not convinced obtaining a definitive answer to this question is as important as Michael Shermer and Matt Ridley claim in their discussion of the book. Yet it should be of concern that when virology labs collect potential pathogens for study, despite good intentions, there is a risk they will accidentally initiate a pandemic. If you are interested in this topic then Matt Ridley explains clearly, competently, and concisely in this interview why the possibilities that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after it was modified to more easily infect humans, or was spread by people traveling between the lab and the horseshoe bat caves in southern China or Laos to bring samples to the lab for testing, merits being taken seriously: Matt Ridley on the search for the origin of COVID-19.

Consciousness from life’s push against entropy

By Mathew Goldstein

Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He was recently interviewed by Quanta Magazine. The interview has a link to his very good TED talk regarding what consciousness is about which has been viewed over 12 million times. The interview and the TED talk overlap, but to understand his argument it is better to consume both. The TED talk demonstrates that what we believe impacts what we perceive (and vice versa), with perception described as a useful “controlled hallucination”. He argues that consciousness arises from within life’s essential property of self-regulation in opposition to entropy and that as we identify the set of properties and mechanisms that underlie consciousness the “hard problem” of consciousness will dissolve much like the “hard problem” of life dissolved as the set of properties and mechanisms that underlie life were identified. 

A short, interesting article by him was published on August 2020 by the Institute of Ideas and Arts “Catching sight of your self”. He argues that our sense of self, our sense of free-will, etc. are perceptions like our perception of color. They are all “forms of experience” that “represent really-existing things or processes in ways that are useful to the organism.” He has a web site https://www.anilseth.com/ and a blog https://neurobanter.com/. 

Are atheists a meaningfully distinct demographic group?

 By Mathew Goldstein

Is there a significant difference between the religiously unaffiliated or between agnostics and atheists? People who are skeptical that we have knowledge about a judgmental deity tend to live their lives much like atheists. Nevertheless, a December 2017 New Age beliefs Pew poll result indicates that there is at least one significant difference between self-described atheists on the one hand and self-described agnostics and other religiously unaffiliated “nones” on the other hand. Self identifying atheists as a religious belief related demographic are unique in their tendency to consistently reject New Age beliefs.

My guess is that atheists tend to be better grounded and more consistent in recognizing the significance of the distinction between properly justified beliefs and fictions than other people, including other “nones”. Being agnostic or unaffiliated suggests having a skeptical outlook, which is good, but skepticism by itself, while it is a requisite component for critical thinking, is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinking recognizes, seeks out, and firmly adopts as dictates, conclusions which are best fit overall with the available empirical evidence, it is not compatible with a pluralistic, all beliefs have equal standing, perspective. Knowledge and ignorance are meaningfully and substantially different, it is a distinction that underlies competence versus incompetence. Not respecting that distinction can be as insidious as, or even more insidious than, getting the facts wrong

At the same time, individuals can be wrong about many things, including ontological or metaphysical supernaturalism, gods, and New Age beliefs and still do fine overall. There are also the questions of whether the goals of socially and psychological navigating life each day successfully conflicts with the goal of critical thinking about more distant concerns and, insofar as there is a conflict, why the latter should be deemed more important than the former. That is more of a personal issue, so the answer will be different for different people and can depend on the individual context and circumstances. It is unfortunate that we have this tendency to mix these different goals that we too often perceive as being in conflict and sacrifice the integrity of our identification of what is true about how our universe operates goal to our other goals.

Walter Plywaski won atheists’ their right to become citizens

 By Mathew Goldstein

Walter Plywaski died this January, about 66 years after he, with the backing of the ACLU, won his legal challenge against an arrogant denial of U.S. citizenship to any atheist who refused to falsely publicly identify themself as a theist. See a recently published article in The Conversation for an argument why Walter Plywaski’s legal victory is with remembering.

Reconciling activism with evidence based policy making

By Mathew Goldstein

There is an ongoing concern, which appears to be well grounded, that some manifestations of activism are in conflict with important humanistic principles. We can, and should, be advocates for “social justice” without sacrificing the basic principles of “science, reason, and consistent liberal ethics” with a focus on “the human, the universal”. These are constraints. Activism has a tendency to prioritize the pursuit of outcomes over such constraints, particularly when the constraints are perceived as getting in the way of obtaining different outcomes that are needed ASAP. This tension results in anti-scientific orientations and the prioritization of theories that are not well evidenced ahead of empirical evidence. Yet we do need measures of the problems that the activists claim exist and of the effectiveness of the remedies that the activists advocate. The question is: When there is a conflict will we recognize and acknowledge this conflict and will we side with a consistent liberal ethics?