One of the comments on Mark Satta's recent very hot post about universal salvation has been zooming 'round my brain, and demands, I think, a PEL episode at some point. A comment by our listener Bear stated:
My questions about Atheists wanting to redefine orthodoxies of particular belief systems, be it Christian, Buddhist, Mormon, Islam &c., demanding those within the belief system to accept certain propositions internal the belief system. For example, telling very conservative Evangelical Christians or Buddhists that they must accept and not condemn sodomy, and they must accept what greater society thinks about these things.
This is not an abstract concern, I have seen this regularly.
When does the internal beliefs of a group become public debate? How much can a society demand that a religious group abandon its beliefs and conform to the rest of society?
This is asking the question (from the inside of a religion rather than the outside) that Dylan brought up back in our new atheist episode. Dylan's point as I recall it was that it's less useful (and hence interesting) to argue about the contents of religious belief than to talk about how people with different beliefs can get along politically: how do we make intolerant and exclusionary people "play nice" with the rest of society whatever their beliefs may be? This question itself is a partial answer to Bear's question: we in the rest of society have an interest in niggling into the internal beliefs of a religious community insofar as the religious community is being hostile, intolerant, or insulting. Likewise, of course, those within a religious community have an interest in altering the thinking of outsiders if they are on the receiving end of those attitudes.
This two-way relation alone is sufficient to break down the sanctity of the internal ethical deliberations of any given value culture. I think a good way to think about why this is the case is in terms of different conceptions of ethical relativism. Now, when I use the term "ethical relativism," I don't want us to get lost immediately in the issue of ethical realism vs. irrealism; I'm less interested here in the ontological status of moral facts than what you might call the semantic character of ethical claims: how we actually use moral terms, and when we typically assent to someone else's moral judgment as being correct in some instance.
What you might call actor-based cultural relativism would entail that for an ethical claim about some action to be appropriate, the speaker and the actor require a shared value culture. This is what is normally associated with the term "relativism," and it's pretty counter-intuitive. If people in some ancient culture used to perform human sacrifice or had slaves or had sex with goats, then we outside the culture (according to this type of relativism) really aren't qualified to condemn them. Though closed religious groups today do not, of course, hold cultural relativism of this sort as a legitimate ontological position (i.e. they don't believe there are different moral facts reigning over different communities; on the contrary, they think that there is only one set of moral facts, and they're in possession of them, while outsiders aren't), from a practical, political standpoint, this is how they behave. "We in our tradition share a value culture that dictates our ethical beliefs. You outsiders don't play the same language games we do when it comes to making value judgments, so you can't helpfully engage in our internal debates, and likewise, since we don't share your base moral assumptions, we're not going to be able to usefully enter into your discourse."
An alternative to actor-based cultural relativism (where, again, the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the actor's community, and only by somehow entering into that community can a speaker make correct value judgments about that actor) is speaker-based cultural relativism (and yes, I've made these terms up; if there are more standard technical terms for what I'm talking about, please let me know), which says that the appropriateness of value claims depends on the speaker's value culture, not the actor's (i.e. the target of the ethical judgment). So in this case, an outsider to a value culture can legitimately issue praise or condemnation about those within that culture, and the correctness of the moral judgment is a matter of that speaker's culture. So you and I can legitimately debate about the correctness of the ancient human-sacrificing goat-fuckers, and if I argue that they were just great, you can try to convince me that, "come on, man, you KNOW that's not the case," if I look into my conscience (which is served up by culture, or maybe human nature or even God, but in any case, something that we in the same value culture share). At the same time, we'd fully expect that some far-future goat-fuckers might condemn us for our narrow mindedness about this.
If you take this second type of relativism seriously as an ontological claim about moral facts, then it requires a lot of explaining, and you probably get chased into some form of emotivism, or Humeanism, or whatever. But laying the ontological question aside, and again just comparing this to the alternative as a structure for judging the semantic character of ethical claims, it works OK, I think. We outsiders can condemn you insiders, and you insiders can condemn us outsiders... but unlike for actor-based cultural relativism, where the story ends there, for speaker-based cultural relativism, we still have potential grounds for trying to convince each other, based on what shared culture we do possess. Because face it, no value culture is totally insulated from the outside. We are political animals, and if there are other people on earth with us, and we haven't ruled them out as legitimately being people (i.e. worthy of our respect; Aristotle certainly just writes off broad swathes of them), then we want to be able to look them in the eye and speak the same moral language, play the same language games. We just do. Whatever the actual source of our moral sentiments, we WANT to think of them as objective and hence shared, if only the other guy would just admit it.
So I think the reaction by religious groups to "just stop judging us! We have the right to have views that seem assholish to you!" is a very late historical development, a by-product of the liberal society that they claim to reject, and in basic denial of the semantic character of moral judgments, which is to apply universally. You can't both say that all unbelievers are going to hell, or that God hates fags, and then claim that making such a claim is not an aggressive, hostile act, but instead is just a matter of one's personal belief or something internal to the faith. As speaker-based relativists, we aim our moral judgments at each other, regardless of our targets' faith or country or sub-culture. We want those people to share our judgments even as we expect (as relativists) that they certainly won't. By making a moral claim, you are engaging, politically, with the rest of the world, and so the world (insofar as they're paying attention) engages you back in the same way. I think if we recognize this as a case of speaker-based ethical relativism, instead of us just having incompatible absolutist ethical views, that puts us in a better position to attain common ground, by recognizing the common (biological? spiritual? evolutionary?) elements in our moral judgments.
So when a non-believer tries to quote scripture to the effect that Jesus really didn't hate gays after all, or that there's a lot of crap in Leviticus that we ignore, so we should ignore the anti-gay prohibitions as well, he's not being disingenuous and sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong. He's just trying to use the only tools apparently at his disposal for trying to achieve shared moral intuitions with the believer. He's saying "hypothetically, IF you believe what you say you do, then these common moral intuitions that we in fact share should cause you to interpret your scriptures so that you don't end up an asshole." What's important here isn't his competence in textual exegesis in these foreign-to-him scriptures, but his appeal to your better nature to please, stop being such a jerk.
Taking the conflict from the other side, what can we say about, e.g. the current Middle East Muslim demands that we Westerners adopt standards that don't permit defamation of their religion? The fact that many of them are interested in convincing us of this means that they haven't given up either on our capacity to understand their offense, even if we don't share their core beliefs. They're urging us to understand our own creed to respect others' freedom in such a way that we deem it improper to say mean things about their prophet.
Such openness toward dialogue may well not lead to any kind of satisfactory resolution in the short term, but I expect that our common human nature and the way cultural transmission works will in most cases lead to the more cosmopolitan view winning out over time. I would be very surprised, for instance, if circumcision is still around 200 years from now, or if particularly touchy Muslims are still getting upset over cartoons. (Frankly, I'd put meat-eating in that same doomed category, but that's going to take much longer, I think, as that hasn't yet become merely a minority fetish.) Certainly we should not get huffy about someone attempting to start a dialogue over this kind of issue, as if each value culture were an island unto itself with nothing to say to another.
If anyone can name a good reading in this area, I'll take a look at it for a potential episode. I'm sure my sketchy account here could use some seasoning...
-Mark Linsenmayer
I can’t offer up anything to read on the subject but I think it would be a very interesting episode indeed. I have long been fascinated with this whole “you must respect my beliefs” stance. It seems completely crazy to me. What should be respected is everyone’s right to HOLD a given belief but the belief itself shouldn’t be respected if the observer thinks it is ridiculous. Surely anything is up for grabs in the world of ideas and anything should be open for criticism and debate. The completely disproportionate response to the recent “film” is, quite simply, frightening. Even going back as far as 9/11, none of the US administration, past or present, has had the fortitude to publicly notice the fact that religion played a pivotal role in the attack. This is an example of different religions’ unwillingness to criticize other religions, even when they beileve them to be false and in the wrong. Better to stay quiet as long as it’s a religion of some description than to give any fodder to the non-believing heathens.
I really look forward to this epsiode. I was extremely amused by Dylan’s position in the episode you mention. I wish I could cultivate the same level of disinterest in religion and God that he possesses. Unfortunately it tends to rankle me and I can’t always resist the temptation to engage in debate.
Great podcast by the way.
These questions seem like non starters in a culture that respects liberty. In a free country, isn’t anything eligible for debate between two or more consenting adults? Likewise, in a free country doesn’t anyone have a right to believe whatever they want without any (forceful) demands by the larger society to give them up?
I understand that there may be an interest in the question of whether it is always ethical (or sometimes unethical) for someone to critique the beliefs of another person. But if anyone tells me it is unethical for me to question their beliefs, can’t I tell them that, in telling me this, they are committing the same breach of ethics they accuse me of since my own belief system is that I am obliged to critique beliefs wherever I meet them?
When you have your discussion, I think a very important question is one of the definition of “tolerance”. It seems the definition has broken down in a critical way. Surely ‘tolerance’ means to allow someone their own belief, that is, to not use force to change their beliefs. No inquisitions, burning at the stake, etc. But it has morphed, in our culture, into meaning either accepting all beliefs as equal or at the very least, refraining from critiquing the beliefs of others. Once it is established, as it is in my own mind, that tolerance is certainly something that should be enforced by the state, doesn’t it become apparent how extremely dangerous this sloppy understanding of a simple word (“tolerance”) is to our liberties? Do we really want the state enforcing, or even endorsing, a ‘tolerance’ which means no one can critique other people?
Maybe this could expand into a discussion of how the definitions and redefinition of words can be used as political weapons in both ideological and in culture wars.
Mark, your ability to accurately put issues into words and thus clarify what the issues are, separate from standard jargon (your own is helpful), is consistently and amazingly helpful. Thank You, for all of us.
The issue of a standoff of beliefs, whether religious, philosophical, political, literary, etc. is enormous and apparently infinite in nature. Historically, the effort has been to be correct by being in the political majority (the culturally dominant), then in the intellectual majority (the Enlightenment), then in the uncertain majority (postmodern), etc. I personally am not in favor of anyone standing in judgment of me, or of you, or of us. So, to me the problem is not having the “right” to judge one another, whether of the in group of of the out group, but to stand in humbleness, intelligence, and compassion, not presuming to judge one another, but to explore with one another what may be the truth–perhaps (ala Derrida:)
Did intellectuals of the Enlightenment actually believe they were correct by virtue of being in the ‘intellectual majority’? I get the impression that virtually all of them would affirm that the number of people holding a particular opinion, no matter which segment of the population these people were in, has no relation to the veracity of that opinion.
Sorry, that was unclear. The problem is not with individuals of the Enlightenment, but with the belief that reason would solve all problems, leading to rationalism rather than reason which recognizes the limits of the rational. How does one define truth is what this is all about.
Since we are in no danger of arriving at agreed upon definitions of ‘truth’, much less what qualifies as ‘truth’, I take it that by “how does one define the truth is what this is all about”, you are saying you are more concerned with the processes whereby we attempt to arrive at agreed upon definitions of truth as well as to what is true. Which is also the subject of Mark’s blog post as I read it. Which is also my main concern as well and why I’ve jumped into the conversation.
My main concern is primarily how our being political animals, as Mark mentions, relates to this process. The word politic originates meaning as a member of a polis, that is a citizen, which immediately connotes public policy, that is the law. Which, in turn and of course, is embodied necessarily and most effectively in the Police. My concern is that insofar as someone is a political animals, they see the Police as the primary solution to problems in the polis.
Obviously, in some spheres, we are all political animals, as I have defined the term above. My apprehension is the degree to which the process of publicly defining truth become a matter for the Police. While the Police are a necessary part of the process, the precise nature of this necessity, that is the role of politics (which is nothing more or less then the role of the police) in the process seems to me to be overriding and primary concern of any discussion of the process.
I submit that the moment politics (the police) supersedes its necessary role, that at that very moment it becomes the greatest threat to the successful pursuit of the process. I further submit that the very existence of an effective police in a society establishes the fact that any worse threats to the process have been eliminated and therefore politics (the police) is the greatest threat.
So, while Mark is correct that we are political animals, this is correct in a certain context. In another context, we can be anti-political animals. I believe, that in a stable civilization, (which implies an effective politics), the pursuit of truth is successful to the degree that the animals become anti-political.
Mark,
it would be good to have an episode on this, to explore this further. One of the dangers is that this is often a very impassioned debate and more heat than light is generated.
This seems to be a discussion similar to free speech – very few people actually believe in unbridled free speech. There are always restrictions put upon hate speech and the spreading of lies, particularly when it damages people. This is true, even in places such as the USA where free speech is constitutionally guaranteed. And it is a good thing, since speech can harm, and can be deleterious to society.
The only thing that I would observe is that if one takes the right to comment about the internals of an ethical community, then one has to be prepared for outsiders to comment about the internals of ones own ethical community.
I think that it might be useful to borrow from Rawls at this point. In deciding how far society can go in setting the orthodoxies of an ethical community, one should consider do thing without knowing where your ethical community will end up on society: whether it is a dominant community, or a very small community whose ethical believes are often contrary to that generally held by society.
An interesting case to start may be polygamy. Christian and Jewish traditions have excluded polygamy. Consequently, throughout much of the world, the state has excluded polygamy and criminalised it. However, in predominantly Islamic countries polygamy is legal because it is not forbidden in Islam. Other religious traditions encourage polygamy as the path to a higher spiritual state.
Since I think that polygamy is socially harmful – both for women and for low status men – I do not have a real problem with it being criminalised. However, I realise consider some of my beliefs in a similar way: everyone has views that may be considered harmful by some groups. So, this is a fairly practical question.
One thing that I did note in your discussion, is the question of taking offence: “You can’t both say that all unbelievers are going to hell, or that God hates fags, and then claim that making such a claim is not an aggressive, hostile act, but instead is just a matter of one’s personal belief or something internal to the faith.”
This is a bit of a clue about what is going on – we shouldn’t be looking to take umbrage when groups of people tell us that we are wrong. So many ethical communities consider my choices to be wrong, sometimes morally wrong. But that does not mean I should force them to change to endorse my actions.
However, I take your point that perhaps they should not promote hate speech or take actions against me because they disagree with me.
There have been some people who have written about this (Medieval writers). Some Medieval Jurisprudence also took account of the ethical community people were from and this lead to some interesting developments. Let me know if you are interested in these things.
Focusing this discussion on religious communities probably shuts it down before it gets started. If a community believes that it has all the appropriate beliefs through divine revelation, no mere human rationalism is going to convince that group otherwise. There is no value for pluralistic appreciation of other traditions in a community that is receiving its dogma and directions from God. Dogmatic religions don’t have ethics as such. They have God given laws. To the extent that some practitioners become secularized through interactions with communities outside their own, these individuals might listen to “speaker based ethical judgments” regarding their community’s dogma. But that isn’t really being true to their community. That is assimilating into the wider liberal secular community.
If instead of a religious community, a closed-minded, hostile secular community is chosen as the focus of the discussion, there might be more space to roam. Say the Ku Klux Klan or the Tea Party or the Occupy Wall Streeters. In that situation, at least the group nominally embraces the values of a liberal Western culture. Their selective ethics allow them to hold the wider community to its highest principles while they pick and choose the values that most closely align with their special interests.
You are still unlikely to have a productive conversation with such a group, because very few people have the time or interest to see beyond their own needs/wants/entertainments. But at least you have a reasonable starting point.
Agreed. Seems like even the inclination to see beyond one’s own needs/wants/entertainments represents an ethical position in its own right. Certainly not a position that’s shared universally.
–R.