Rene Descartes

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Von Goethe

I feel like this book is the first emo album, the beginning of youth culture, the precursor to Schopenhauer & Nietzsche. All the art I enjoy finds a predecessor in The Sorrows of Young Werther. It is tragedy without the chorus, subjective and thus distinctively modern. A world without any security or guarantee of social status for those who do not please the accepted ways. One where women have gained power over men, but where men haven't been able to accept it. Our newfound freedom and accompanying alienation tries to be channeled through marriage and career, to find the socially acceptable good natured partner. A world which has been built on renunciation of instinct, but still hasn't found productive outlets. A world with one step in the past and another in the present. Where the morally disposed of the privileged class fear those beneath them. Where ignorance is bliss, knowledge is without assurance of truth. Those on top have a vision of the future, but it is one where they are not as necessary.

This is a book on the end of the old ways as it enters the modern era where it's presuppositions are under the assault of uncertainty. This book may become a relic as those who truly share the sorrows of young Werther may dwindle. The sorrow depicted is of a very particular kind, of a particular society.

None of what I have said condemns this book. To the contrary this book is essential for human understanding. But it is so disturbing that we should aim for a society which doesn't have so many Werthers. Let the Sorrows of Young Werther disturb and challenge us! We shouldn't like this book, and that is why we need it.

This book is for a world hopefully in the birth pangs of a new era, of a collapse of the old and the prospect of something new. Let this story inspire us, even as we identify with its tragic logic.

Self-Ownership

I had an assignment in my Senior Seminar class where you write, minimum of 250 words, answering a single question usually related to politics but general in nature. One question was whether someone should be able to sell their own kidney for their own gain, even if somebody else possibly related to them needs it to live. This is what I wrote:

Yes off course you should be able to sell your own kidney. It is your body, your kidney. What claim does somebody have towards your person? You're parents did create you in the sense you inherit their genes, which created your kidney as well as raised you. But you are not just your genetic endowment or environmental influences. If you were, you wouldn't be the same person today as you aren't the same person physically throughout your life. Almost every cell in your body changes every single year, yet you are the same person. How is this? It is because you have memories of your past selves. Your identity is your stream of consciousness, a continuity of experience which belongs to you, not everyone else. That is why you own your body, nobody created you. You are you by virtue of continuing to exist, persisting through space and time as an objective real entity. Nobody experiences the world exactly as you do. That private aspect of human nature, even if we can all know or empathize about, belongs to you. It is you who uses that kidney to maintain your life and felicity. You may do as you please with it for your own good to further your goals. If others want it, then they ought to convince you to fork it over. The argument that you are allowing someone else to die by not giving your body part assumes what it denies, that a person has a right to live and do what they can to secure it. Well, so do you. Whose life and happiness is more valuable? There is a danger of that question becoming an arbitrary decision of government. Who will live and who will die.

The Justification of Theories

Laws are descriptive. They do not say why something is the way it is. Newton's laws of motion describe the motion of physical objects, but they do not say why things in the universe move as they do. Laws only apply to what they apply to; they may not like theories allow us to gain new knowledge, once their boundaries are discovered.

Theories are the most interesting to explore as they can explain new and different things. Theories can change and can be subject to confirming or disconfirming evidence for claims. Looking at what can justify theories can tell us more about the nature of philosophy. The "how" and "why" about what we can know to be true.

A theory is a general understanding of phenomena which can be applied to any of the relevant phenomena. A theory is made up of statements which support each other, and can go on to explain the phenomena they purport to explain. A theory is a body of knowledge which is supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts.

The tricky aspect of theories is that they attempt to go beyond the factual value of their claims and assert something else. Theories derive conclusions about new information from certain assumptions, and if they work together the theory continues to be useful. This is where theories are more useful than laws, we can derive new knowledge about things. That something else is a relation which ideally can be an explanation. From theories we derives hypotheses, which relate to the specific phenomena the theory covers. 

All theorizing involves language, which essentially is the intentional manipulation of symbols to assert something about the symbols or a relationship between symbols themselves. Statements are simply assertions about the symbols, this is this or this is that, this is not that etc. It is the connection between symbols and phenomena, the connection itself explained in symbols, that theory works with.The rules governing statements derive from non-contradiction, that "this" is this and cannot not be this if it is this. One can assert this is not that, this is that and so on because these are relationship between different things. As will be explained later, just because something is not contradictory doesn't mean it is meaningful. Something can be true as a tautology or have the possibility of being true.

The something else which is the aim of theory can only be understood by looking at what constitutes theories, which are statements. What makes a statement true? Well, what is a statement? A statement asserts or denies a relationship between a subject and a predicate. A subject is supposed to be a particular aspect of some larger general concept, which is a predicate. Both are connected by the copula asserting a relationship, universal or particular and affirmative or negative, between subject and predicate.

A is B.
A is the subject, B is the predicate. B is supposed to apply to all instances of A by the copula is.

Once we have statements, we can make claims about other statements using arguments. An argument takes at least two statements about the world and derives another (a conclusion). which follows from the original statements (premises). A basic argument is the syllogism, which has three statements in which two statements support a third. Each statement has a subject and predicate related by a copula and are related by which term is distributed throughout the argument. In a syllogism there is a major term, a minor term, and a middle term. A major term is the predicate found in the conclusion, the minor term is the subject in the conclusion, and the middle term is predicated in both premises and links them to the conclusion. 

All carp are fish

All fish are found in water

All carp are found in water

Major-found in water

Minor-carp

Middle-fish

This is a valid syllogism since the middle term (fish) is distributed at least once in the premises and the predicate distributed to the conclusion (found in water) is also in a premise. 

Given the truth of an statement, we can establish the truth of other statements involving the same terms. The truth values of syllogisms are represented in what is called a square of oppositions. Starting with one of the four corners of the square (A for affirmative universal statements, E for negative universals, I for particular positives, and O for negative particulars) one derives the relation between the chosen kind of statement and what it means for the truth value of another statement. Note the direction of the arrows. If an A statement is true, then an E or O statement cannot be true (among the same thing of course). If an A statement is true, an I statement is true. If all bachelors and single men (A), then some bachelors are single men (I). But it cannot be that no bachelors are single men (E) or some bachelors are not single men (O).



Logic has developed much since Aristotle's syllogisms. For the purpose of theories, the syllogistic structure is a useful demonstration but quite unwieldy in practice. We have to know the relationships between subjects and predicates for the arguments to be true. A practical tool called Occam's Razor became popular after the Middle Ages to simplify the amount of assumptions we should make. Occam's Razor states that we should not multiply explanations without necessity. The more simple explanation is more preferable among valid explanations. Two big problems we run into with theories are underdetermination and overdetermination; explanations are either not sufficient by themselves (under) or are all sufficient (over). Which one should we pick? Occam's Razor tells us to favor the explanation with fewer assumptions since there is less to prove and less that can be disproved, go "wrong" as an explanation. This isn't an absolute law since the opposite is true, that we shouldn't simplify explanations if a more complex explanation is needed. The razor is a useful tool, but more of a practical nature.

An important logical tool which can cut down the number of syllogisms we have to do to prove something is the identity of indiscernibles. Also called Leibniz's law, the law states that two things which share the same properties are the same thing. If everything about A can be said about B, then they are the same thing. If A is identical to B, then we can replace the symbol A in any statement with B and mean the same thing. A is B and B is A.

Instead of
All A are B
All B are C
All A are C 

we can just write all A are C, since A and B are the same.

This limits the amount of true sentences to only four, rather than having to prove each statement one by one.

The first two Aristotle accepted
1) A=A
2) A is B, B is C, A is C. "All men are mortal...Socrates is mortal"

Leibniz added two more
3) A is not not-A (excluded middle). This is a considered by me a tautology, but with Leibniz's law we can get a more exact idea of what is indistinguishable from A so that it also applies.
"If Socrates is mortal, then Socrates is no immortal" By Leibniz's law, If P(Plato) does not share mortality, then he isn't the same as S(Socrates) .

4) A is B= not-B is not-A
"Socrates is a man, if you are not a man then you are not Socrates" By the converse of Leibniz's law, both S and P are mortal means the same as immortal P is not S.

The result is that the truth of syllogistic arguments is due to the meaning of their terms, not just their form. We can dismiss arguments based on the meaning of terms and not have to go through the syllogism. 

Leibniz liked to use the proof by contradiction, aka reductio ad absurdum. One goes about assuming a statement to be true and following the consequences to see if there is a contradiction. If there is a contradiction, then prima facie the argument cannot be true. This argument doesn't prove the statement, but only demonstrates that it is possibly true. Non-contradiction is a law governing thought, but doesn't demonstrate that something is true, just that it isn't inherently false. Shared terms may mean both statements mean the same thing, and so doesn't tell us anything.

Also different today is the notion of existential import, which further limits the power of purely logical arguments. A statement has existential import if its truth depends on the existence of members of the subject's class. Propositions including "some are" or "some are not", I and O in the square, have existential import. They are true or false based on the existence of at least one existing member. But does the truth of statements about all or none members entail the existence of these members?

Put another way, if all unicorns have a single horn is true by definition, does that entail that some unicorns have horns (subalternation)? Well no, because there are as of yet no instances of unicorns. But then how is all unicorns have horns true? It is true, but it does not have existential import. One cannot infer the existence of something based on logical necessity. This complicates traditional arguments for the existence of God based on the necessity of a prime mover (cosmological argument) or as the explanation for the idea of God (ontological argument). In any case, syllogisms are not the only way to prove arguments, and can derive absurd conclusions. 

Here is George Boole's square of opposition with existential import. There is no subalternation (one implies the other) from A to I or E to O. The contrary relation between A and E does not hold as both can be true without existential import. There are subcontraries between A and O and E and I. If O "some are not", then A "all are" can't be true; if I "some are" is true, then E "there are no" can't be true.

Logical arguments are now more about the connections between statements rather than shared terms. A proposition must itself be true for us to derive anything from it. The syllogism reflects the essentialism of classical thinkers, that there are necessary attributes for every true subject. The syllogism worked within a hierarchical taxonomy of things, be it forms or species, with essential characteristics. A horse is a mammal, a mammal is an animal, all animals are mortal etc. The distributed terms making things the same are part of a higher category in this chain of being. Leibniz's law is so vulgar, judging identity by properties rather than "real" qualities. Of course there is no total agreement about what makes things more real than others (are things more or less real..?). Today's categorization of things like species or race has pretty much done away with essentialism as it became dogma against new discoveries and changes in social values (i.e. politically incorrect). Scientific realism only requires that the concepts refer to something in the world, relating to facts.

Leibniz's innovations change how we individuate and how we categorize things. For the scholastics, things were individuated by number alone, "solo numero." Medieval scholasticism had it that different things like individual humans are still the same because of certain essential traits belonging to the higher category of "man." Differences were divided into essential and accidental. Differences in height, weight, hair color etc are not essential differences, they do not individuate us. The radical take of Leibniz's law is that any differences things have are what make them different. That human nature is a collection of various attributes around a mean number. Categories must be based on factual similarity, not on some specific similarities. Without existential import we cannot make inferences from a generalized humanity to all individual humans unless all people have these traits (this is called the ecological fallacy). 

Today we use quantifiers to simplify things so we can get these answers. There are two big ones: existential and universal. The existential quantifier is there exists at least one, so the statement is true. Rather than saying black swans exist we say there is at least swan which is black, which makes the statement black swans exist true. The universal quantifier is "for all"; the property applies for all members so that the statement is true. For all dogs, the statement all dogs are mammals is true. This statement is true or false based on whether all dogs are in fact animals. This quantification makes it so what we are talking about can have definite answers. 

Summary: formal logical arguments aren't enough to justify a theory. Many arguments require an assertion between different things which either exist or do not.

All of this Leibniz law, reductio ad absurdum, existential import, and quantification brings us to a simplification of the kinds of two kinds of statements which are true. Statements can now be true which do not refer to anything actually existing, due to the relations of language and thought. So long as something is not contradictory it is not absurd, but it is not necessarily true. What is conceivable without contradiction is not necessarily true, but possibly true. A correct statement is one where the subject and the predicate are related, but their relation can either be true by definition or by fact, referring to itself or to reality. These two truths are analytic truths and synthetic truths.

Analytic truths are true by definition, as essentially tautologies. Analytic statements are those in which the subject is contained in the predicate. The subject is a particular, while the predicate is the universal. To say All Men are Mortal is to say the particular phenomena Men is contained in the universal concept Mortal, which they are. Analytic truths are true because they don't assert anything new. They can clarify our concepts, but do not offer any new inferences than what is contained in the concept. A true analytic statement is such that the opposite of that statement cannot be true.

Synthetic truths are true because their meaning relates to something about the world. All birds are yellow is only true if both concepts, bird and yellow, correspond to observation. The subject is not contained within the predicate, the nature of a bird does not require it to be yellow. Synthetic truths are true by example, not by demonstration. The opposite can be true without contradiction.

Further, analytic truths are a priori; they do not have to refer to anything that actually exists in the external world. That a square has four sides can be demonstrated by thought alone, we don't need to look for squares in nature which have five sides. Synthetic truths are a posteriori, they depend on empirical verification. That all single men are lonely is only true so long as single men are observed as being lonely. Immanuel Kant derived a third category, the synthetic a priori, though such judgements are true because of how the mind conditions reality. It's complicated, but most or at least a lot of philosophers accept Kant's third category.

                                       

"All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic ...discoverable by the mere operation of thought ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing."- David Hume

The distinction summarizes the advancements made in logic since the syllogism, and whether theories can be proven true or false. The very first test is whether the theory's claims are mutually contradictory. If they are not, then the theory is possibly true. If the claims can be verified factually, given clear parameters, then they are true. But we cannot derive new knowledge from necessary truths. Once we have defined the phenomena laws apply to, such as Newton's second law F=MA to speeds not approaching the speed of light, they cannot give us new knowledge.

Hume's little distinction also means that theories can be judged on a descriptive basis and on a moral basis. Some theories of human society like Marxism mix both together because they determine right behavior based on facts or in Marxism's case see humans as creating their essence (I guess). But there is a leap from fact to value that isn't itself factual. Ought implies can in Kant's famous formulation; right action involves a choice. If I can do something or not, a moral command does not describe the fact I did or am doing something but judge that fact or action compared to what could be done otherwise, be it good or bad. Theories therefore have descriptive and prescriptive elements.

Moral values using Hume's Fork are not matters of fact or relations of ideas. Morality seems to depend on some kind of responsibility. How can I prove that I am responsible for my right or wrong actions since what happens happens and there isn't a way to prove it could be otherwise? To imagine it otherwise would be a relation of different ideas, which do not have to correspond to reality and do not have a necessary logical relation. If morality involves choice, then it is of what could have been, which is not the verifiable state of affairs. Thus morals are not to be derived straightforwardly from facts. 

Hume's distinctions also cause trouble for inferential logical arguments like modus ponens and modus tollens. 

Modus ponens: If p then q; p, therefore q. 

If it rains I will stay inside. It rains, therefore I stay inside.

Modus tollens: If p then q; not q, therefore not p. 

I didn't stay inside, therefore it rained.

The conclusion of these arguments are only true if the premises are not in error, and the conclusion is only a hypothetical relation between the premises, so they're a step up from syllogisms. But both are still deductive arguments where we must have certainty that the content of premises are accurate. If it is almost raining, I can't conclude with absolute certainty that I will stay inside. If one of the conditions isn't exactly like what is described, then the other condition isn't certain to occur. We must be careful when using these arguments to establish a relationship among different things.

Most of what I've said applies to deductive arguments. Induction promises that as the number of observations increase, we can be more certain about the relationship. That the sun in the past has risen everyday in the east gives us a very high degree of certainty that it will occur tomorrow. We cannot make this inference with complete certainty, but we can expect the event with a high degree of probability. Induction is for most of our questions more useful. 

"These two propositions are far from the same: I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I forsee that other objects which are in appearance similar will be attended with similar effect. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may justly be inferred. But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is I must confess passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it who assert that really exists and is the original of all our conclusion concerning matter of fact." Hume 

To sum up: there is no necessary relationship between different things. Non-contradiction is a law of thought rather than proof. Necessary truths are at bottom tautologous or inductive reasoning disguised by regularity. The first test of a good theory is if it isn't internally contradictory. The second test is if its particular claims are subject to verification or falsification. 

Now to the important part. What makes a theory, the totality of relations between true statements, true? There are I think two ways of looking at justification which aren't just skepticism: whether a theory corresponds to something outside of itself like true facts, or if a theory is internally coherent and is compatible, can adjust, to new facts.

The first is characteristic of "traditional" philosophy like Plato and Aristotle. Truth is true justified belief, our conviction relates to something external, ideally unchanging, and objective of human thought. This conception of truth gave birth to the "laws of thought": the laws of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle. All are based on this: that something is something and not nothing. The pre-socratic philosopher Parmenides is credited with the idea that truth is at bottom non-contradiction. “The great Parmenides from beginning to end testified . . . Never shall this be proved – that things that are not are.” Foundationalism as it is called asserts that there are basic beliefs which cannot be criticized which all correct reasoning is inferred from. These foundations can be logical axioms, empirical facts, or religious experience. This is called the correspondence theory of truth, true belief corresponds to something "in the world". Truth is supposed to transcend a particular time and space and be objective.

The latter theory of justification is called coherentism. A belief is true if it doesn't contradict our other beliefs. There are always background assumptions we have about the world, and these are justified if they are compatible, don't contradict, new information. It can be best summarized in an analogy first made by Otto Neurath.

"We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction."

Coherentism is even better understood by its relation to the infinite regress problem. If everything requires an explanation, then so does any explanation. This is a problem because whatever we assert to be true, that truth relies on another truth. For sanity's sake and to prove that philosophy has any use at all, we want to find a way out of this. There appears to be three:

1) there is no ultimate stopping point, so we can always ask for further justification

2) there are statements which justify themselves

3) truth is circular, a truth is part of its own justification

Skepticism accepts the first solution, foundationalism accepts the second solution, and coherentism the third. The coherentist would accept as true belief that which accords with a person's other beliefs. If I say that god causes school shootings, that belief's truth depends on the truth of my other beliefs like god existing, playing an active role in human affairs, and this god being opposed to secularism in public schools. This is only wrong if some of my beliefs are wrong. The truth of any single statement is based on the truth of an interconnected system of belief, what Quine called the "web of belief".

“Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.”- W.V. Quine

Falsification of a theory won't bring us closer to the truth for coherentism, because each theory we create is built on prior "auxiliary" assumptions we had prior. Individual claims, by theories, can be proven or disproven, but not entire systematic worldviews. The Quine-Duhem thesis states that any seemingly falsifying evidence can always be accommodated by any theory. Theories are never tested in isolation. They require background assumptions in order to make testable predictions. Newton's theory of gravity depends on assumptions about the mass of planets and presence or absence of other forces to make predictions about the world. If the theory is disconfirmed in some instance, the background assumptions remain. What often happens is a theory, like Newton's, explains phenomena so well we change the theory to accommodate inconsistent information. 

Popper's falsification criteria however isn't about the ultimate truth of statements, but a means to demarcate scientific theories from pseudoscientific theories. Falsification means that a single instance (fact, event) could invalidate the entire theory. Religions aren't falsifiable but they have other values than toward scientific discoveries. The problem with strict verification is that a theory which is tailored to fit all facts doesn't give us meaningful predictions as whatever occurs can be justified by making auxiliary assumptions. Marxism is commonly cited as being unfalsifiable because it doesn't give exact dates for when the revolution will happen and when events go against particular Marxist claims, like the collapse of the USSR, the theory is reinterpreted or changed to accommodate these previously disconfirming facts. Science is in the business of explaining facts and predicting new ones. Newton's theories weren't disproven by the discovery of relativity, but were shown to not be enough. And so falsification is a popular criteria for scientific versus unscientific theories, and I suppose could be accepted on a pragmatic basis for coherentists.

I wonder if its possible to combine aspects of foundationalism and coherentism. Theories which are internally contradictory (coherentism) or inconsistent with facts (foundationalism) are prima facie absurd. Such theories can be changed and continue on. Theories can be criticized from the outside by fact and logical analysis, and changed from the inside to meet these criticisms. Theories which have something meaningful to say are those which can both make wrong claims and can change. This follows from the two basic kinds of statements which can be true; purely logical ones and verifiable ones. Theories involve self-justification and empirical data, a fundamental duality. If either are bad or are confused together, then the theory is no good.

Full Summary:
Formal logical arguments aren't enough to justify a theory. Many arguments require an assertion between different things which can be found to either exist or don't exist. One cannot infer the factual existence of something beyond what one already knows.

There is no necessary relationship between different things. Non-contradiction is a law of thought rather than proof. Necessary truths emptied of factual content are at bottom tautologous or inductive reasoning disguised by regularity. The first test of a good theory is if it isn't internally contradictory. The second test is if its particular claims are subject to verification or falsification.

Non-contradiction and verification/falsification are our guides to life. What is conceivable without contradiction is possibly true. There are two kinds of truth: by definition of terms or by reference to experience. A good theory is based in fact and has a coherent internal logic.

On Equality

The U.S. Supreme Court applies strict scrutiny to justify laws that discriminate on race. Strict scrutiny means that the law must be 1) narrowly tailored 2) meet a competing government interest and 3) and use the least restrictive means. Race is viewed as a suspect class, any discrimination is viewed with great suspicion. It is very hard to justify racial discrimination. Gender discrimination is not as hard to justify. The Court uses intermediate scrutiny for gender; the law must be related to an important government interest in a meaningful way. Sexual identity is seen as relating to inherent differences in a way race is not seen today. This means that equality must be viewed in a different way than race is. 

There are I think two different kinds of equality, equality as identity and social equality.

There is equality as identity, a concept in logic and mathematics. A thing is itself, and what something else has in common with that thing is also equal. This is the most basic definition. Equality as sameness. Euclid the founder of geometry defined equality in one of his postulates as “things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to each other”. 

Racial equity is described popularly as “we’re all the same on the inside”. In other words, what is essential to being human is the same regardless of phenotype, races are merely modes of being human. Gender differences do not make male and female humans totally different, but different enough that there is not identity in their interests. Gender equality will as it stands won’t progress if we look at equality as identity.

Social equality is of the power relationships between individuals, it is the result of contrivance not just nature. This equality is granted by social institutions through mutual agreement. Where there isn’t agreement there isn’t any level of equality, much as animals who lack speech only have the rights which humans give them. Social equality is possible because concepts like gender and race though rooted in physical facts are also constructs, they also have meaning through how we have defined them. How we treat race and gender is up to society as well as nature. 

This is where sexuality and gender come into play. There are differences between men and women psychologically and physically. Yet that is no reason to set up artificial levels of inequality, beyond what is necessary. To only allow women to be wives and mothers because that is what women tend to do is somewhat contingent on human choice, not an absolute necessity imposed by nature. Thus the rules we make regarding gender should be those which are for the good of society. 

Determining the common good is an arduous task, so it is better if we give people the benefit of the doubt and leave people alone, that is as they naturally are, unless there is good reason backed with public support. This itself is not sufficient to guarantee the optimal level of equality. The laws we make regarding gender should be general in nature, aiming not to benefit or impoverish certain groups. The law ought to remain flexible, subject to change, and be subject to criticism. 

The rule of law, isonomy, I think is the key to protecting social equality. The law should aim to apply to all without exception, but since we are not all or always the same the law ought to be restricted to those areas where there is identity. To do otherwise is to add inequality not of natural or necessary origin.

A feminist point of view does make us view such issues differently, however I think feminist scholars would be going too far to deny other more established theories on the grounds that they ignored women. I don’t think the more common points of view of war and the like ignore women, but have a very different place for them. Take the realist theory in international relations. Realism portrays human nature as relevant to the state in a more masculine way; aggressive, competitive, and power seeking. These characteristics are certainly more found in men as women are usually seen as more cooperative, passive, and seek social recognition. Women do have a major role in realist theory, they are what the state is trying to protect. 

It could be the case that male bodies are more disposable than women’s bodies. This is the argument of Warren Farrell in The Myth of Male Power. Men are the ones who serve in military, willing sacrificing their life. Whenever there is a fire, it is women and children out first. Men commit suicide at higher rates than women and work more dangerous occupations. If male bodies are disposable, it is because men gain power by using their body. The average male’s worth has been linked to their labor, their physical strength and self restraint. The value of a female body is allowing it to be used for male purposes or for the production and care of children. From an evolutionary standpoint this is due to differences in parental investment for offspring:  male offers his sperm once while a mother must carry the child for nine months. Males should be competitive with one another and women should be more choosy, which in turn increases the amount males need to contribute to females and their offspring.

When chimpanzees our closest animal relatives engage in raids against each other, sometimes they kill the other males and children but keep the women alive. It is because females give birth and care for children far more than males do. Males traditionally are not invested in the rearing of children. So their lives can be sacrificed to either protect women and their children. It safeguards the spread of their genes. I don’t think women are missing, it is that they are what war is partially motivated by in realist and other such theories.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

Just as ideas of "moral relativism" have become more widespread among the public, there has been a reaction from intellectuals who have been starting to argue that morality is universal. The leaders of this movement are mostly members of the New Atheist movement which seeks to challenge religion in public life, transcending just a separation of church and state. The New Atheists want to prove that religion has no intrinsic value, that essentially science can replace whatever benefits religion has, or at least what motivations continue its existence. Fellow traveler Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, described religion as shrinking over time as science has been able to give more satisfying explanations for just about everything. The scientific revolution in the 17th century under Bacon, Galileo, and Newton explained the workings of the universe purely by the natural laws of mechanics, contradicting the claims of medieval science. The 18th century enlightenment gave a basis for political authority by human reason. Darwinian evolution explained in the 19th century how all life including human nature itself was the result of blind natural forces, following geology's contradiction of biblical accounts of the age and formation of the Earth. Today the secularist hope is that morality and the purpose of life too can be explained without reference to God or the supernatural.

These thinkers wish to challenge the notion of non-overlapping magisteria, coined by Stephen Jay Gould. Religion and science are said to each be accurate in their own field of human knowledge. As was said in an episode of the Simpsons dealing with evolution, how would you like scientists giving sermons in church? More broadly, for those secular intellectuals suspicious of science, science cannot answer the only questions which really matter, the moral ones

One of the four horsemen of New Atheism, Sam Harris, has taken up the challenge to the enduring ethical dilemmas brought about by the is-ought distinction and the naturalistic fallacy in a gallant effort to refuse to religion its longtime monopoly on universal morality. Harris' target is also secular moral relativism, associated with fashionable postmodern nonsense, which weakens the claim that morality can be based on a secular, rational basis without religion.

The is-ought distinction was formulated by 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume not as an absolute separation between fact and value but rather that there is something missing between the two. "But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is I must confess passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it who assert that really exists and is the original of all our conclusion concerning matter of fact."- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 1748. Hume thought that it couldn't be shown that there was anything else that could be true except for fact and logical deduction, which led him to a mild skepticism and later developed into positivism.

Harris' argument is pretty straightforward. The is-ought distinction does not mean that science cannot determine human values, only that being scientific in of itself is not enough to be valued. This strict dichotomy is unrealistic as scientists do work with a code of ethics in their field, much as the medical profession does. Science itself is built on a certain moral view, that we should use evidence gathered by repeated observation to improve health and the quality of life. He goes on to his main argument that since all feelings be they right or wrong are dependent on physical states of the brain, then science which gives us knowledge of these brain states can discern what leads to "good" brain states and minimizes "bad" brain states. Because facts relate to the real world, ought is not being conflated with fact but something external, and so the is-ought gap is closed. Harris' scientific realism trumps Hume's positivism.

I agree so far, that is-ought is not an absolute wall of separation and understanding morality is based on what facts tell us. But Harris' next task is to articulate what exactly is the criterion for good and bad. He asserts it to be "the flourishing of conscious creatures" or "the maximization of total well-being for conscious creatures". By well being he means the age old concept of happiness. We should want more of what is good for us and less of what is bad. That certainly makes us happy when the good outweighs the bad. His moral landscape is a thought experiment in which morals can be seen as a landscape of high peaks correlated with the greatest joys and pits of the worst suffering. Harris wants to use science to steer us away from the deepest pits and towards the peaks using the knowledge of science, much as we would use to navigate our surroundings with GPS.

The most important question with The Moral Landscape is, why is happiness good? What makes it so? I can assert that suffering is good and pleasure is bad and not either be in logical contradiction or factually wrong. The happiness criterion of Harris is consequentialism: "the rightness of an act depends on how it impacts the well-being of conscious creatures." Consequentialism, aka teleological ethics, concerns how acts relate to desired ends. The question for the consequentialist is do all people desire the good? The naturalistic fallacy, often mistaken to be the same as is-ought, is that just because something is desirable does not make it good. That is because I can desire what is bad for me and others. I can eat rat poison, I can steal and harm others and enjoy it while I am doing it. That people do want what is good is an old belief going back to Socrates, that all people desire the good and do not intentionally do wrong but for a lack of knowledge. Those who steal may think it is in their benefit, but stealing gives others reason to harm you and legitimizes others to steal, and do you want to live in a world where you can't trust anybody? This seems like an appeal to enlightened self-interest, but it also deals in positive consequences.

Modern economics and much of psychology works on the assumption that everybody pursues what they believe to be in their own interest even if it is not. Morals he too would argue are based on consequences because some people have better lives than other, objectively. Because people don't have free will, and are governed solely by physical processes, they do what they do given their genetic makeup and environmental influences. Presumably the way to a better life is first to gain knowledge about these factors, and then to either develop ways to live with or even change them.

Harris ends up with a sort of Utilitarianism in which we ought to act in the most useful way to maximize everybody's happiness. Utilitarianism in contrast to altruism and egoism is agent neutral, happiness should be for the self as well as other equally. Here then is the additional question of why maximize someone else's happiness? I know the practical benefits this gives, but why not egoism? He gives the Neo-Darwinian account of how altruism became adaptive through inclusive fitness to advance our genes by favoring kin and by engaging in reciprocity; "the biology of our moral impulses, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection explain how we have evolved to be, not merely atomized selves in thrall to our self-interest, but social selves disposed to serve a common interest with others." Inclusive fitness operates at the level of the gene and the general consensus is that genes select at the level of the individual, not for the group, and so is selfish in a way.

Utilitarianism however isn't about pleasing others to ultimately benefit ourselves, which is rational or enlightened egoism, but is the position that happiness is agent neutral, everyone's happiness is the same. Why ought we take the well-being for ALL conscious creatures and not just ourselves, as egoism would entail, or just for others and not ourselves as altruism entails? Harris then has two different challenges 1) happiness is to be desired according to consequences and 2) I ought to maximize the happiness of everybody.

Harris's answer to egoism can be discerned from his philosophical materialism. Harris denies that there is a thing as as an autonomous self with free will that can or even does act independently. Citing neuroscience, brain activity occurs milliseconds before a thought becomes conscious to us. While he is right about that, acceptance of his position on free will as well as his utilitarianism depends on acceptance of philosophical materialism.

Whatever one's ontology is, Harris makes a cogent argument from his own. This is a valuable work just for the relation of scientific realism which most atheists/agnostics hold to ethical realism which not every atheist/agnostic holds given the influence of moral relativism and subjectivity in contemporary thought.

The Problem of Universal Morality

Just as ideas of "moral relativism" have become more widespread among the public, there has been a reaction from intellectuals who have been starting to argue that morality is universal. The leaders of this movement are mostly members of the New Atheist movement which seeks to challenge religion in public life, transcending just a separation of church and state. The New Atheists want to prove that religion has no intrinsic value, that essentially science can replace whatever benefits religion has, or at least what motivations continue its existence. Fellow traveler Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, described religion as shrinking over time as science has been able to give more satisfying explanations for just about everything. The scientific revolution in the 17th century under Bacon, Galileo, and Newton explained the workings of the universe purely by the natural laws of mechanics, contradicting the claims of medieval science. The 18th century enlightenment gave a basis for political authority by human reason. Darwinian evolution explained in the 19th century how all life including human nature itself was the result of blind natural forces, following geology's contradiction of biblical accounts of the age and formation of the Earth. Today the secularist hope is that morality and the purpose of life too can be explained without reference to God or the supernatural.

These thinkers wish to challenge the notion of non-overlapping magisteria, coined by Stephen Jay Gould. Religion and science are said to each be accurate in their own field of human knowledge. As was said in an episode of the Simpsons dealing with evolution, how would you like scientists giving sermons in church? More broadly, for those secular intellectuals suspicious of science, science cannot answer the only questions which really matter, the moral ones. Non-overlapping magisteria was developed by philosophers, and is greatly misunderstood. David Hume formulated an early version, the is-ought distinction. No amount of facts can prove something to be morally right and wrong. Just because it happens doesn't make it good. This itself is a restatement (sort of) of what mothers have told their children. "If everybody jumped of a cliff, would you do it too." Yes it is true that everybody else is doing it, but according to Hume's philosophy there is no certainty that the behavior associated with what you, child, see as good (others do it) necessarily follows. The "good" of their actions depends on something other than the instances of observed behavior. G.E. Moore would expand this idea as the naturalistic fallacy in his Principia Ethica. Reacting against the Utilitarians like John Stuart Mill, he added to is/ought the difference between something which is desired and something that is good. This is important because, going all the way back to Plato's dialogues, many philosophers and psychologists today believe that everybody aims for what they see and as good and do not intentionally do wrong. The Socratic approach is that just as lack of knowledge leads to folly in a given task, lack of knowledge of what is good for the soul is the source of wrong. Modern economics is based on the principle that every individual pursues their self-interest, according to what they desire and how they think they are able to attain it. The problem is that we can desire what is actually bad for us or others unintentionally. If everything desired is good, then there is no way to condemn the sadist because he or she finds what they do desirable.

After is-ought and the naturalistic fallacy where facts about the natural world and feelings of pleasure are not the criterion of moral judgements, what is left? Science appears to be at an impasse, both the natural sciences and psychological accounts of preference cannot account for morality. Neodarwinism can certainly account for how we developed the capacity to make moral judgements and why this ability has stuck around. So science can clarify the facts which are of course used in moral discourse. Much of our arguments about morality do revolve around facts. When I accuse you of stealing, there is the important matter of proving you did indeed steal something. If condemning Barack Obama for saddling our grandchildren with debt, I must prove that he has increased the debt through his actions and describe what those are. And the definitions which we use in moral argument are subject to being true or false. When we approve or disprove of an action, we must explain the basis from which we are criticizing it, whether from an egoistic point of view or an altruistic one. Psychology can explain why we hold certain moral dispositions above others. The methods to convince others of our position can be studied with some objectivity.

What is left is what is important. Why be moral, what makes it moral? My position is that the sciences can go pretty far in explaining reality, but stop short at the most important stuff of thought. Once we figure out what we ought to do, science can take over and do great good. It begins and ends there. We should at the very least acknowledge that ethical propositions are not right or wrong in the way facts are, be it of the natural world or facts about ourselves. This leaves two options. Either morality transcends facts and lies in something like religion or intuition. Or ethical statements are not right or wrong in any sense because they are not based in facts and are just expressions of feeling which add nothing to the truth of a statement. The latter view means the statement you shouldn't kill is just stating the fact you don't like it that some people kill. The ethical part is like adding an exclamation point to a sentence, it doesn't make the sentence any more truthful. This view of ethics, non-cognitivism, would make ethical statements expressions of assent or dissent or commands for others to act upon. I can assert that what is pleasurable is good, but someone else can assert pain is good and not be factually or logically in error. What we are asserting is our preference, even if that preference is say to not live over living. Because all we can talk about are facts, and moral claims are not facts, they are not true or false.

P.1 All we know are true and false are facts
P.2 A moral claim in itself is not a fact
C. Therefore moral claims are not true or false

This position depends on those two premises. If it can be shown that we know more than facts, then my conclusion doesn't follow. But we cannot speak about our knowledge of what cannot proved. What knowledge cannot be proved is private language, accessible to only one person. If you see a slightly different shade of red, and I cannot tell by your observable behavior or physical state, then I must conclude the "fact" that you see a slightly different shade of red nonsense. I cannot describe what it is like to experience color to someone who has been blind their whole life. This is the problem of qualia, purely subjective conscious experience. The way we feel is known to us and can't really be known by others than as an analogy to their own feelings. To say I'm in pain from burning my hand on the stove evokes in you feelings which if I felt them would probably be very similar to what I would feel in that situation. But there is no way of proving this. Quoting Wittgenstein "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

It is with this non-cognitivism, owed to the writings of A.J. Ayer and R. M. Hare which denies moral claims are right or wrong as facts are, that I believe ethics can survive. The non-cognitivist position doesn't necessarily mean ethics is useless and we should become amoral. Rather I believe it forces us to rethink what it means to be moral. Morality is about approval or disaproval of an act. As such most of moral discussion should be about facts. But the stuff of morality lies in our preferences, something which is certainly real, but is outside of being true or false. The preferences we have are just that, preferences. They denote the most important experience we have, perhaps the key to the meaning of life itself. If I do not sound clear on what I mean by preferences or approval being moral, that is my point. Morality is still a problem, because it is only as universal as it is universally agreed upon. Protagoras' quote "man is the measure of all things" is followed by "of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not." There are as many moral positions as there are people. If all humans agreed, morality would not be a problem. Thomas Hobbes described the problem thus:

It is true, that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live sociably with one another and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why Man-kind cannot do the same. To which I answer, 

First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity, which these creatures are not 

Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not from the Private; But man, whose Joy consisteth in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent. 

Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, nor think that they see any fault, in the administration of their common business; whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and able to govern the Publique, better than the rest; and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.

Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is Naturall; that of men, is by Covenant only, which is Artificiall

Because we are not hive minds, because there is disagreement, there is the need for ethics not as finding what we ought to do through ratiocination, but by convincing others to adopt our like and dislikes. All for the purpose of facilitating social life. Universal morality is always going to a problem so long as people are people.

(Update 2/11/17 I still hold a preference view of moral ends, but because I am a scientific realist there are objectively best means to fulfill our preferences. The fact-value/is-ought gap is transcended if facts relate to objectively reality. I´m a moral realist, at least at this point, about means but not towards an ultimate end or preference for our actions.)