tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post207795703542535985..comments2024-03-22T06:22:08.010+00:00Comments on Stephen Law: Further case against Ibrahim's positionStephen Lawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-16046605847388820742007-12-13T09:52:00.000+00:002007-12-13T09:52:00.000+00:00"You offer support for this claim by saying: “Some..."You offer support for this claim by saying: “Someone who goes out and kills on the instruction of a religious or some other moral Authority does not thereby avoid moral responsibility for what they have done. “I was only following the instructions of my expert” is not an excuse.”<BR/><BR/>You do not appear, however, to supply any reasons for this conclusion which would confirm your ‘intuition’."<BR/><BR/>Is this reason enough? Suppose I authorize Mr. X to go out and kill you and he does so, Is Mr.X absolved of all responsibility of his crime just because he did it on my authority? Does his being hired/authorized by me give him an excuse?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-36311932327959530762007-12-13T02:00:00.000+00:002007-12-13T02:00:00.000+00:00I think the Stephen's argument is fairly clear. We...I think the Stephen's argument is fairly clear. We choose our moral authorities, and we must do so based upon our own moral judgement. Why choose one religion over another? One interpretation over another? Why choose religious judgements over secular or legal judgements? This choice is always, ultimately, made by the person who accepts that authority.<BR/><BR/>And yet, I have observed in discussions with believers a recurring theme; they deny their own role in making this choice, and any and all attempts to point this out seem to be incomprehensible to them. Your comment, Ibrahim, fits perfectly into this mold. In fact, I would go so far as to posit this denial as a universal trait amongst believers who hold their chosen moral authority to be absolute. This systematic blind spot is necessary to protect the claim to divine authority of their system of beliefs, because the moment that personal choice becomes involved, the authority is no longer divine, but personal. The claim to absolute authority always hinges upon the authority of the claimant, and his or her own decision to affirm the authority of those who support this claim. Only by denying the very possibility of that personal choice can the believer defend the absolutism of his or her moral system. The result is that arguments like Stephen's become incomprehensible. <BR/><BR/>And yet, the fact remains that it is we who must decide, out of all possible available views, which one we shall accept. No matter which belief one holds, one could have chosen a different set of beliefs. There is simply no way to sidestep this. So cloaked in the guise of divine authority is the claim to personal authority, and indeed, the divine authority of one's own opinions. Bluntly stated, it is the believer in an absolute authority who transcendentalizes his own opinion to the status of the divine. It is the believer who is playing God.<BR/><BR/>To claim, as you have, that it is God who decides who will believe correctly or not, alleviates everyone of responsibility, and makes divine punishment a matter of pure malevolent caprice. If God decides what I shall believe and do, then it is God who is responsible, and God who should be punished. So, either God himself is evil, or your choice to believe as you do is a personal choice, and therefore as susceptible to human error and frailty as you are. This means, ultimately, that any religious system of ethics is also subject to human error, and must be questioned no less critically than any other system of ethics.Elentarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01154655677150832098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-22373370481216025902007-12-11T19:24:00.000+00:002007-12-11T19:24:00.000+00:00Stephen, while I work on a reply to the main thrus...Stephen, while I work on a reply to the main thrust of your argument, may I offer the following comments on this particular posting, entitled ‘Further case against Ibrahim’s position’?<BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>I was struck by the apparent fact that in your section on why moral authorities are different, I was hard put to find any actual argument, as distinct from mere assertion.<BR/><BR/>You say that the suicide bomber who takes her moral authorities word for it is “intuitively not” blameless.<BR/><BR/>You offer support for this claim by saying: “Someone who goes out and kills on the instruction of a religious or some other moral Authority does not thereby avoid moral responsibility for what they have done. “I was only following the instructions of my expert” is not an excuse.”<BR/><BR/>You do not appear, however, to supply any reasons for this conclusion which would confirm your ‘intuition’.<BR/><BR/>Your next paragraph implies that ‘freedom’ has something to do with it (perhaps that we are free to make moral choices, must therefore (?) exercise that freedom and are therefore responsible for those choices?) but this is not explicitly claimed or argued for. It might be helpful to enlarge on that idea. You then go on to simply re-assert your position that moral responsibility cannot be abdicated.<BR/><BR/>You next introduce two senses of the word ‘authority’: the authority of (empirical) knowledge, and the Authority of power. (Can we say that the first depends on reason, the second on something more? I would like to return to this later.)<BR/><BR/>You go on to assert that we are required to be our own Authority (our own God) - “ we inevitably have to rely on our own moral compass” – without offering any justification for this claim, although you continue, “This is at least a part of the explanation…” and conclude that “the responsibility for making a moral judgement cannot be avoided”.<BR/><BR/>Next, on the basis of the assertion that “Moral responsibility is indeed like a boomerang” you conclude “This is precisely why “You cannot absolve yourself of responsibility for having committed some atrocity”. <BR/><BR/>You finish by saying that you can’t, “unfortunately”, transfer responsibility for making a moral choice to someone else.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps I have missed something. I am not saying that I disagree; only that I am not sure why you think this as you have not apparently offered any explanation.<BR/><BR/>Since I suspect that the issue of ‘Authority’ is what is central to this phase of our dialogue, I think it is worth being clear what we understand about how this works.Ibrahim Lawsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17335717256865416340noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-40258520641180395572007-12-11T11:33:00.000+00:002007-12-11T11:33:00.000+00:00We can tighten up the case considerably.For the sa...We can tighten up the case considerably.<BR/><BR/>For the sake of precision, I think it makes sense to differentiate between <I>expertise</I> and <I>authority</I>.<BR/><BR/>A lawyer is an <I>expert</I> on Constitutional Law, but the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court are <I>authorities</I> on Constitutional Law.<BR/><BR/>We are justified in going to experts about matters of fact and provable truth. We are justified in doing so because we have a reliable way of knowing whether someone really is an expert: it is logically and physically possible an expert can be proven right or wrong by natural means, therefore an expert is someone who has been proven right often enough and proven wrong seldom enough.<BR/><BR/>Indeed one reason we can trust experts in matters of fact and truth is that any number of people are <B>critically examining</B> their work.<BR/><BR/>So long as it means something definite and in-principle knowable for an expert to be proven right or wrong, we can build several layers of abstraction around expertise, reliability and reputation, because all the layers reduce to statements about having been proven right or wrong.<BR/><BR/>But I cannot even in principle evaluate someone who claims to be a <I>moral</I> expert. It doesn't mean anything for a moral expert to have been <I>proven</I> right or proven wrong. It's vacuous to apply the standard that they have given answers that are compatible with my own moral intuition; were that the case, I would by definition find their expertise unnecessary; I could just consult my own moral intuition directly.<BR/><BR/>To call religion moral <I>expertise</I> is to misuse the word expertise.<BR/><BR/>An authority in this sense is someone who <I>defines</I> something; it would be contradictory to ever say the could be <I>mistaken</I>; one could say only that they disagree. The majority of the Supreme Court cannot be mistaken about what the Constitution means, since, in a legal sense, the Constitution by definition means what the Supreme Court says it means. Not even the minority can even be said to be <I>mistaken</I>: they simply dissent from the majority and fail only to be authoritative.<BR/><BR/>It is noteworthy that intuitively, we take anyone who assumes <I>personal</I> moral authority as a tyrant. But how are we to evaluate someone who assumes moral authority supposedly on behalf of a god? How are we to evaluate such a claim? And why would an omnipotent, omniscient god do its moral work through the agency of a fallible, corruptible human being?<BR/><BR/>Since we have no way to distinguish between a person who "truly" or "falsely" claims to be speaking for a god, we cannot draw any distinction between a person who claims to speak for god and a person who assumes personal moral authority. Therefore we are entitle to call both tyrants.<BR/><BR/>With regard to Islam, we are doubly in the dark: We have no way to evaluate whether Muhammad was truly speaking (through the agency of the Angel Gabriel) to Allah, and we have no way to distinguish between correct and mistaken interpretations of the Koran or the Hadith. (Worse yet, there is considerable controversy even within Islam over the historical accuracy of the Hadith.)Larry Hamelinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08788697573946266404noreply@blogger.com