A friend writes me off-blog to observe that the point I made a couple of days ago in passing, regarding naturalism and moral realism skirts (or maybe doesn't skirt) a difficulty:
If God exists (for lack of a better word), then God IS natural. And there is no reason to take that naturalness as any more grounding than the "ewwww" you posit here as problematic for naturalists. What transcendence do you seek at that point to ground your moral verities?I might quibble with "natural" here, but I think that issue may be a red herring.
Seriously, I think Plato's Euthyphro still shows the gaping chasm of trying to ground morality in God as everyone keeps trying to do.
As to the main difficulty, I don't have an answer to this (and neither, as far as I can see, did Socrates), except to say that as long as the Truth and the Good are kept separate there will always be the question of what the Truth is about the Good, and whether it is always Good to know the Truth.
This is also bound up in the connection and distinction between jnana and bhakti I referred to yesterday. In an earlier post I related these to abstraction and encounter, and I noted that this can generate apparent paradoxes: privileging encounter over abstraction leads to abstractions like "encounter" rather than specific, um, encounters with whoever you are living with and alongside.
I'll add that it is not the "ewwww" recoil which is itself, in my opinion, problematic, but rather the claim that moral indignation reduces to this emotive state. One question that arises is, are there any wrong actions that, in any given setting, don't arouse this response, and ought to? (On can ask this, for instance, with regard to the eating of meat, or the procuring of an abortion, or the continued use of fossil fuels, or the assassination of political enemies. Some aspects of these questions might hinge on epistemic or even empirical issues; for instance, a "climate change skeptic" might even be ready to concede that driving a gas-powered car is wrong under any conditions at all if there is a link between climate change and fossil fuels, but reject all evidence of the latter. But it is also possible (though alas, unnecessary) to imagine someone who shrugs off the moral issue of whether oil consumption and air pollution is right or wrong. Even if such a one decides to drive less, it will be solely for what Kant called reasons of prudence.) This is, I take it, part of Libresco's point that moral norms cannot be merely equated with cultural ones. (see, e.g., here, and other of her posts in the series.)
I think your friend, in saying that God is "natural," misunderstands the point here. To say that God is natural obviously implies some kind of "Nature" that is above, behind, below (or whatever) God. So then Nature is God. What have we accomplished? We are trying to give honor, in doing that, to some ultimate force; which we then call Nature, because nature seems easier to understand than God. But isn't nature, in many ways, supernatural? It would seem that we ought to let the mystery dwell where it began, with he who "created the heavens and earth," i.e., the "Whatever" that is above and behind both nature (materiality, I suppose) and supernature (which holds everything together, instead of everything slipping into decay, like all of our "natural laws" suggest should happen). How does nature, which is heading toward decay, seem to keep increasing in complexity, wisdom, and consciousness of love? I don't doubt looking to molecules might help us understand this; but it's never going to give an answer...
ReplyDeletePer the Good and the True-- don't forget Love and Beauty.
Also, this line is classic: "privileging encounter over abstraction leads to abstractions like "encounter" rather than specific, um, encounters with whoever you are living with and alongside."
All hail the non-abstract encounter of Living Love with all the universe! All hail grace! How good, beautiful, and true it is...
Tim,
ReplyDelete"To say that God is natural obviously implies some kind of "Nature" that is above, behind, below (or whatever) God."
Interesting how one's recourse to prepositions can sometimes bring out the point, no?
I think I see your point but I am not sure one has to go this route. We don't (perhaps) need the abstraction "Nature," just the adjective "natural," which (per convention, per hypothesis) characterizes everything that is. I have a hunch that this is where he was going with this, but I'm not sure. The point would be that in backing up a step, we haven't actually accomplished anything except to start on an infinite regress.
I don't at all object to the spirit of your inquiry; but as to the language you use, "nature is supernatural" is going to invite a lot of queries about coherence (you're going to need to specify how something can be "above" itself); whereas "he who 'created the heavens and earth' " is going to bug people who can't get past the pronoun, and those who can't get past the verb. So you're going to have some 'splaining to do! Which, frankly, may be more than you feel like doing (it usually is for me).
Now granted, you do immediately say, " i.e., the "Whatever" that is above and behind both nature (materiality, I suppose) and supernature (which holds everything together, instead of everything slipping into decay, like all of our "natural laws" suggest should happen)." Leaving aside the cosmological questions here, I note that there are those prepositions again.
I sometimes think that the whole of philosophy, as Claude Royet-Journoud says of poetry, is preposition.
Taking a cue from your jnana mention I would say that we realize morality by our very being but that this essential connaturality is obscured by avidya or ignorance of our nature. The practices of the major traditions help to dissipate this. In reading about Maximos the Confessor recently I came across his defence of dithelism which in short is : Christ shows that human nature can bear divinity.
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