Currently reading ... lots of stuff, actually, for the Norma K. Hemming Award

I'm a juror for the Norma K. Award, which is awarded annually (provided a worthy recipient is found) on the following basis:

The Norma K. Hemming Award marks excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability:

* in the form of science fiction and fantasy or related artwork or media.
* produced either in Australia or by Australian citizens.
* first published, released or presented in the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is given.

This has me reading all sorts of fascinating books and stories that I wouldn't necessarily broach without being prompted. There's a lot of material here that's very impressive, and in a variety of ways. My fellow jurors (Sarah Endacott, Rob Gerrand, and Tess Williams) and I will need to reach a decision in the next month or so, in time for the next national science fiction convention, here in Australia, toward the end of April.

Russian trailer for X-Men: First Class

This has slightly different footage from the first English trailer...

Carroll on Carrier on moral ontology

Sean Carroll posts on this over here. I'm actually going to side with Richard Carrier on an important issue. Sean thinks the following is invalid and requires an extra premise:

• Your car is running low on oil.
• If your car runs out of oil, the engine will seize up.
• You don’t want your car’s engine to seize up.
• Therefore, you ought to change the oil in your car.

I don't think so. I think that Carrier is perfectly right insofar as this is a legitimate way to derive a hypothetical imperative. The hypothetical-imperative "ought" has a meaning such as to allow this as valid practical reasoning (with just a bit of fiddling around needed to tighten up the wording). "Ought" in this sense is about a relationship between desires and facts about what conduces to fulfilling them.

My problem with it is that it's only a hypothetical imperative. We can imagine a rational being somewhere in the universe that, for whatever reason, doesn't care about whether or not its car's engine seizes up, or, for whatever reason, might even want its car's engine to seize up. This kind of reasoning can deliver us "oughts" (and even Hume accepted this). What it can't do is deliver us oughts that transcend our desires, oughts that are objectively binding on us irrespective of our desire sets.

I don't see any reason to think that our desire sets will all be the same, even after rational reflection. Why - without cheating and introducing a concept of rational reflection that is already moralised - would they not be sensitive to our differing initial desires? So even if we imagine a sort of "ought" that is about the relationship between desire-after-rational-reflection and what conduces to its fulfilment, there's still no reason that I can see - other than a leap of faith - why we will all end up acting in the same way in circumstances C.

To take this a bit further, most of us do have a lot of common desires, and there are often ways that we can compromise and come up with collective ways of acting that fulfil a lot of them. Once again, this will set boundaries to what kinds of systems of law and morality societies come up with in practice. These systems are not just arbitrary - i.e, not just any system will do. But that's a long way from saying either that there is just one "correct" system or that everyone has good reasons, after reflection, to go along completely with her society's local system (as in vulgar moral relativism).

Polish version of 50 Voices of Disbelief

On its way in September, apparently.

A little bit more on admirable and contemptible traits

I commented over at The Reason Behind X:


Thanks for taking the trouble to comment on this. As you'll have seen, I take a fairly robust view on this. I.e., I don't look for responsibility all the way down.

There may be extra strands to the story, but I think that the starting point is that we find such traits as intelligence, courage, honesty, etc., admirable, while we find such traits as stupidity, cowardice, dishonesty, etc., the opposite. Generally speaking that's rational, as someone with the former traits will usually be better to have around as a friend, fellow citizen, etc.

We don't generally care all that much how someone got these various traits, though we might admire someone more if we find out that she got the admirable ones partly through pre-existing good traits like self-discipline, industriousness, etc. But even those traits have a causal origin that's ultimately beyond her power.

Likewise, there might be some mitigation of our disdain if there's a special story about how someone came to have the contemptible traits - they can't be blamed on some pre-existent bad traits she had, such as some sort of laxity or laziness, so much as some unusual external influence that might have made her turn out that way even if she started with normal levels of self-discipline and so on.

Richard Carrier on moral ontology

Carrier's post is very long and I don't have time to analyse it in a whole lot of detail, but do go and have a look. As it happens, I agree with most of what he says, even though he claims that his is a moral realist position. In part, this shows how slippery terms like "moral realism" can be. His analysis does not show that two people who are fully rational but start with different desires will end up acting the same way in what is otherwise the same situation. What it is most rational to do for person A with initial desire set X will not be most rational to do for person B with initial desire set Y - or at least Carrier has not shown otherwise. There may be an objectively most rational thing for person A to do - i.e., the thing that will most conduce to her achieving her goals, obtaining her desires, and so on - and an objectively most rational thing for person B to do. But it is a leap of faith to assume that there is a single most rational thing for any person at all to do in that situation, irrespective of her initial desire set.

So the question is this: When someone says that phi-ing is morally obligatory in circumstances C, does she mean, or does her meaning at least include, the claim that phi-ing is the most rational thing for any person to do in those circumstances? If so, an error theory looms because across a vast range of circumstances no such claim is likely to be true.

But Carrier is right that morality takes a reasonably determinate form and is in that sense not just arbitrary. Yes, given the common human desires for a degree of social peace, etc., it's likely that all societies will develop codes of conduct for their members that have a fair bit in common, and it's worth exploring what it might be.

On contempt, admiration, and respect

This is a side issue, but I find the analysis of contempt by Aikin and Talisse very odd. They say:

The view has it that those who are contemptible are not worthy of respect.  This seems true as far as it goes. But notice that to hold a person in contempt is to ascribe to him a capacity for responsibility. Accordingly, we do not hold the mentally deranged in contempt for their delusional beliefs; rather, we see their beliefs as symptoms of their illness. To see religious believers as proper objects of contempt, then, is to see them as people who should know better than to believe as they do. It is hence to see them as wrong but, importantly, not stupid. Thus it is a confusion to regard religious believers as both contemptible and cognitively beyond-the-pale.

This actually seems confused to me. It may well be that contempt is an inappropriate response to someone who suffers an actual mental illness. Some kind of compassion seems more appropriate, and of course we would know better than to get into an argument with such a person. We might humour her, but we would not try to argue with her. Fine so far.

But you can be cognitively beyond-the-pale for all sorts of reasons that fall short of an actual mental illness. Generally speaking we express admiration (or esteem) for people who have qualities that are admirable (and note that judgments about what is "admirable" don't have to be objectively binding on all rational creatures, they are made relative to shared values, purposes, etc.). They are people who have certain excellences, which might, in context, include intelligence, intellectual honesty, courage, openness to new ideas, and so on. We feel contempt for people who lack such excellences or who actually have the opposite qualities. If we find ourselves arguing with someone who is stupid, intellectually dishonest, fearful, and close-minded, it is perfectly appropriate to feel the opposite of admiration - i.e. contempt or disdain - for her.

Someone with those qualities may well be cognitively beyond-the-pale in the sense of being impossible, for all practical purposes, to persuade by rational argument. She may be beyond the reach of reason. We would do well not to waste time arguing with someone who possesses that particular combination of qualities. But that does not entail that we are wrong to regard her with the opposite of admiration. She clearly has qualities that are the opposite of the relevant admirable ones, i.e. she has qualities that merit our contempt.

I conclude that there is nothing at all confused about regarding some people as both cognitively beyond-the-pale and contemptible. Indeed, the very same qualities may make somebody both of these things.

This is kind of tangential, but the Aikin/Talisse passage puzzled me the first time I read it ... and it still puzzles me. I'm not actually arguing that we should feel contempt for anyone in particular. I certainly don't think that we should feel contempt for all religious believers. But I don't accept the claim that "contemptible" and "cognitively beyond-the-pale" are mutually exclusive categories.

It's also possible that someone who merits our contempt - the opposite of our admiration - nonetheless also merits some minimal or residual kind of respect as a fellow human being or a person (in the Lockean sense) or a sentient creature, or some such thing. I.e., the person is due some kind of residual regard for her interests. That opens up a large set of issues about what it is to respect somebody. But this sort of minimal/residual respect can co-exist with the idea that, at least for current purposes, the person is the opposite of admirable and that it's worth expressing that evaluation.

Again, I conclude that someone can both (1) be cognitively beyond-the-pale and (2) have qualities that are the opposite of admirable  - and merit expressions of contempt. Even though this person is still owed some residual regard for her interests, that is a separate issue.

We really have to respect all those religious people

I suppose this could be a Poe. I hope so. On the assumption that it isn't (and I'm here to tell you that I've encountered people like this in real life, so I find it all-too-plausible that this is for real) have a look at this nutjob praising the Lorrrrrd for the Japan earthquake. Apparently it was sent to tell us atheists to change our ways and believe in Teh God Of Teh Bible. She goes on to express her hope and confidence that TGOTB will do even bigger and better things after 40 days of Lenten austerity and prayer.

Does this deserve our contempt? If it doesn't, what the hell does?

Edit: Okay, according to a couple of commenters this was indeed a Poe - someone trying to make a satirical point about fundamentalists. That is also pretty damn sick, in the circumstances. The Japanese earthquake is not the occasion for that kind of dumb point scoring, any more than it would have been the occasion for blaming atheists and praising God. My apologies for thinking this video plausibly genuine ... though they have to be slightly half-hearted apologies, given Poe's Law and given that we've seen forreal examples of this sort of thing with various other catastrophes, for example the Black Saturday fires a couple of years ago.

Ah is revising

I'm currently immersed in final manuscript revisions for my forthcoming book on freedom of religion, to be published in late 2011 or early 2012. Just letting y'all know where this is at the moment.

The books people really read?

Speaking of kerfuffles, there's currently a lively one prompted by a BBC program called The Books We Really Read: a Culture Show Special, as opposed to literary novels that garner critical acclaim. You might think that a large chunk of the program would be devoted to fantasy, horror, and science fiction, given the immense popularity of these genres among general readers ... but apparently they didn't even rate a mention. So what were the program's creators thinking?

Stephen Hunt has a good long (seemingly justified) rant about this (more strength to his arm!), and there's a post by David Barnett on The Guardian's site.