Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Moral reasoning (was Re: draft of Identity Task Force statement) Message-ID: Date: 6 Dec 90 08:13:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 121 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Concerning the permanence or otherwise of moral rules, our excellent moderator wrote: > However I argue that rules are subject to change over time. Popper has of course no Christian authority, but I think the following quotation from section 26 of "The Poverty of Historicism" is illuminating. (Sorry to post before my previous followup shows up, but this was too good to wait.) "We now turn to the historicist contention that in the social sciences we must never assume that we have discovered a truly universal law since we cannot be sure whether its validity extends beyond the periods in which we have observed it to hold. This may be admitted, but only in so far as it applies to the natural sciences as well. In the natural sciences, it is clear, we can never be quite certain whether our laws are really universally valid, or whether they hold only in a certain period (perhaps only in the period during which the universe expands) or only in a certain region (perhaps in a region of comparatively weak gravitational fields). In spite of the impossibility of making sure of their universal validity, we do not add in our formulation of natural laws a condition saying that they are asserted only for the period for which they have been observed to hold, or perhaps only within "the present cosmological period". It would not be a sign of laudable scientific caution if we were to add such a condition, but a sign that we do not understand scientific procedure. For it is an important postulate of scientific method that we should search for laws with an unlimited realm of validity. IF WE WERE TO ADMIT LAWS THAT ARE THEMSELVES SUBJECT TO CHANGE, CHANGE COULD NEVER BE EXPLAINED BY LAWS. It would be the admission that change is simply miraculous. And it would be the end of scientific progress; for if unexpected observations were made, there would be no need to revise our theories: the ad hoc hypothesis that the laws have change would ``explain'' everything. These arguments hold for the social sciences no less than for the natural sciences." Now Popper regards "laws of historical development" such as the inevitability of communism as anti-scientific bunk (my phrasing), but affirms that statements like "you cannot construct foolproof institutions" have the potential of being developed into scientific hypotheses. Ethical "laws" can be cast in the form of universal statement that Popper is talking about here. The sentence I put in capitals above and the two following thus have analogues: If we were to admit ethical rules that are themselves subject to change, then change itself could never be explained ethically. It would be the admission that ethical change comes from OUTSIDE the ethical system. And it would be the end of ethical development; for if an inconsistent change were made, there would be no need to justify it: the ad hoc hypothesis that right and wrong had changed would ``justify'' everything. If a community claims to have the power to determine what right and wrong ARE (as opposed to determining how existing moral principles are to be applied in a new situation, or to exhibiting that an accepted behaviour is inconsistent with accepted principles), then that community cannot rationally expect to sway other people to its beliefs by *moral* reasoning, As Lewis pointed out, if a proposed new ethical rule conflicts with my existing ethical principles, I can have no _moral_ reason for accepting it. For example, Hedrick says that he regards extra-marital (with a suitably broad interpretation of "marriage", and there he and I are in agreement, I think) sex as unacceptable. Yet I have met three people identifying themselves as liberal Christians who strongly disagreed, and would regard even his mild attitude as "judgemental". If the underlying rule can change, then it is impossible for these people to have a rational _moral_ argument. One could have a pragmatic argument about the consequences (such as my calculation from statistics that were readily available to me in the USA but not here, being statistics about the USA, that the chance that the woman who got me thinking about all this stuff is now sterile because of a disease she didn't notice catching is about 1 in 50). One could have a social argument "you are out of step with 70% of the USA populace, who regard sex without love as wrong", but that is not a moral argument, for the majority could be mistaken. The kind of argument they can't have is a _moral_ one: "this action is wrong", "No, the world-spirit is moving towards acceptance of this, we are in the vanguard, and the new rule is that it is right". The very example of slavery shows that counting noses at any one point in time is not a reliable way of telling which of two or more opinions is correct. If a change in the rules is discerned by the Holy Spirit moving the community from one state to another via the instrument of prolonged discussion, then some rather uncomfortable conclusions follow: -- because a moral argument for accepting a changed rule that is inconsistent with the existing moral basis is impossible, nobody in the community can change their opinion on *moral* grounds, therefore the change in the community as a whole will not be *morally* based on the old consensus -- because a trend is not a law of nature, it is impossible to *know* what the decision of the community will be (Popper has arguments to show why this sort of prediction is not possible), it is not possible to have rational grounds for adopting the new rule on the *moral* basis of the new consensus until the new consensus actually exists, so the change in the community as a whole will not be *morally* based on the new consensus either -- there appear to remain three possibilities: a) a calculated leap: forming an estimate of how likely each alternative is to become the new consensus, and gambling on the apparently most likely b) a leap based on non-moral interest c) a leap based on the counsel of the Holy Spirit. The last one seems to be what is needed for the kind of "change in ethical basis by consent of the community" to have any kind of _Christian_ validity. But _does_ the Holy Spirit do that kind of thing? I don't recall any promise in the Bible that She[*] would do anything of the kind. "Lead us into truth" is not strong enough to bear _that_ weight. And to revert to the moderator's example of homosexual behaviour just to establish that dissent on a topic may not cease: why has the Holy Spirit vouchsafed this new revelation to one part of the community and not another, and how are those who have not received this insight enabled to determine the authenticity of the revelation to the rest? [*] (Heb.) and (Grk) both have feminine grammatical gender. Paul, by the way, appears to refer to 1 Corinthians as "commandments of G-d"; the word used is the same word used to refer to the Written Law. Sorry not to provide the exact reference, I forgot to bring my Bible in today. -- I am not now and never have been a member of Mensa. -- Ariadne.