A pro-choice inconsistency

Most people I've talked to are neither 100% pro-life nor 100% pro-choice. They all make exceptions under some circumstances. A pro-life person might make exceptions in the case of rape or incest. A pro-choice person might make an exception in the case of viability.

Arguments from bodily sovereignty are the strongest arguments the pro-choice side has going for them. As an honest pro-lifer, I have to admit that they carry some weight. I think we do have a right to bodily sovereignty. The question for me is whether that right is absolute. In other words, are there exceptions to it, and is the preservation of human life one example of an exception?

An inconsistency I've seen in a number of pro-choice people is to insist that the right to bodily sovereignty is absolute, but then to turn around and argue that abortion is morally permissible and should be legal up to viability, but it's immoral and should be illegal beyond viability. If abortion is something a woman does with her own body, and the right to bodily sovereignty is absolute, then to be consistent, shouldn't a pro-choice person who subscribes to these ideas advocate for the morality and legality of abortion right up until birth?

If you think Judy Jarvis-Thompson's violinist argument (or one like it) is a sound argument, then you're essentially saying that abortion would be permissible even if the unborn are full members of the human family. But if you make that argument, then it's inconsistent to turn around and say you think viability should be the cut-off point, and abortions should not be permissible beyond that.

Reasons vs. Justifications vs. Excuses vs. Rationalizations

I was just thinking about these things on my way home today while reflecting on a YouTube video I saw recently. It was a police interrogation, and the person who posted the video would pause it every now and then to give his own commentary. Although I don't remember anything else about the video, one part of it jumped out at me. The person being interrogated explained why he did whatever it is he did. The YouTuber paused the video and commented by saying something like, "He tried to justify his actions by saying. . ." Wait a minute I thought. All he did was explain his reason for acting. He didn't offer that reason as a justification.

As I was thinking about that on my way home, I began to recall times in my life where I've tried to explain why I did something only to have somebody respond by claiming I was making an excuse when that wasn't my intention at all. So I was thinking about the differences and similarities between reasons, justifications, excuses, and rationalizations, and thought, "Hey, I could blog about that!" So that's what I'm doing.

A reason for why you did something is nothing more than an explanation. You can explain your behavior in terms of your desires, your motivations, or whatever. If my reasons for committing a murder is so I can collect insurance money, and I'm open and honest about that, it doesn't mean I'm trying to justify it. I'm just telling you the reason I did it. Everything we do on purpose, we do for some reason, whether we had a good reason for it or not. So you can't automatically assume that if a person is explaining their reason for doing something that they are trying to justify it.

A justification is a kind of reason, though. Hadley Arkes talked about this a lot in his book, First Things. He thought the whole enterprise of morality was rooted in giving reasons for our behavior that are meant to serve as justifications for our behavior. A justification is a reason that's meant to explain why what you did was either good or at least not bad.

Rationalizations are like justifications. They are also reasons that are intended to serve as explanations for why what you did was right or at least not wrong. I think what makes something a rationalization instead of a mere justification, though, is in whether it's being offered honestly. When a person explains that they did something with some supposed good purpose in mind, but the person knows good and well that the purpose they had doesn't really justify their behavior, then it's a rationalization. It's a pretend justification. Sometimes the rationalization is just as much to convince ourselves as it is to convince others. Knowing that we are in the wrong about something makes us feel uneasy, especially if it involves a behavior we really like. It makes us feel even more uncomfortable if somebody else knows about it. So we attempt to rationalize in order to save face in front of others and in order to supress our own feelings of shame and guilt.

An excuse can be a justification or a rationalization. It all depends on how we use it. After all, there are good excuses and bad excuses. The word is mostly used with a negative connotation, though. For example, when somebody says, "That's just an excuse," they mean, "That's just a rationalization." After all, you'd never say, "That's just a justification." If it's legitimate justification, then we take the word, "just," out, and say, "That's a justification."

It's not always easy to tell when somebody is rationalizing and when they are offering a good justification. I sometimes even have to check myself on that. As I said, we all rationalize because none of us are perfect, and we all have a conscience. Most of us don't like to own our bad behavior. We want to find some kind of justification for it that lets us off the hook. But how do we know if we're being honest with ourselves about it? I guess that's just a matter doing some soul-searching and reflection. I think it is possible to fool yourself--to be persuaded of the legitimacy of your own rationalization as if it really justified your behavior.

I have more to say about that, but I think I'll save it for another post another time.

We got one!

I saw this video clip on YouTube the other day and thought it was hilarious. I laugh a little bit every time I think about it, so I figured it's worth sharing with you.

Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jews for Jesus

Election in Molinism is impersonal

Calvinists and Molinists both subscribe to the idea that God elects people for salvation. The major difference is that in Calvinism, God's election is personal, but in Molinism, it is impersonal. Here, I am reproducing an email I wrote to somebody back in 2015 that I just stumbled across today where I explained Molinism then expressed one of the biggest problems I have with it.

In Craig's view, possible worlds are subdivided between feasible worlds and infeasible worlds. Feasible worlds are worlds that God can actualize, and infeasible worlds are worlds that he cannot actualize. And it is because of people's freedom and the counter factuals that apply to them that God cannot actualize those worlds.

Let's say there are two possible worlds in which Jim meets Bob. Both worlds are identical in everything that happens up to that meeting. In one of those possible worlds, Jim chooses to shake Bob's hand. In the other possible world, Jim chooses to not shake Bob's hand.

In reality, Jim would have the freedom to choose either way. So it's Jim who determines which of those worlds are actual, not God. There are counter factuals about Jim that are true of Jim prior to God actualizing any world at all. One of those counter factuals might be:

If Jim meets Bob, he will freely choose to shake Bob's hand.

If that counter factual is true, then if God actualizes a world in which Jim and Bob meet, then that world will be a world in which Jim freely chooses to shake Bob's hand. So God can't just actualize any possible world. If the counter factual is true, then God cannot actualize a world in which Jim meets Bob but does not shake his hand. It is our free choices that limit which worlds are feasible for God to actualize. What God does in Molinism is to choose between all the possible worlds that are feasible for him to actualize. But as Craig says, God has to work with the hand he has been dealt.

So to answer your question, the circumstances don't determine our choices in Molinism. We are free to choose one way or another. The counter factuals merely describe which choice we will in fact make in what circumstance. God, knowing what those counter factuals are, actualizes worlds containing situations where people choose the way God wants them to choose. But again, God's choices are limited by the counter factuals.

That raises the question of what makes the counter factuals true. It isn't God that makes them true, obviously. It seems to me that it would be us who determine them by what we in fact choose. But one of the major problems most people have against Molinism is that nothing makes the counter factuals true. They're just brute facts with no explanation.

The basis of God's choice is a matter of controversy between Molinists. Does he choose the feasible world that results in the most number of people saved? Or the best ratio of saved to unsaved? Or the greatest good over all? One thing that seems to be clear is that God doesn't choose individuals according to the kind intention of his heart and the good pleasure of his will.

That's one of my main complaints about Molinism. Suppose in World 1, Jim gets saved, but most other people don't. In World 2, Jim does not get saved, but most other people do. If God was trying to save the most people, he'd actualize World 2. Even though God would like to have saved Jim, he ended up having to sacrifice Jim to save the greater number of people. So it isn't individuals that God chooses to bestow his grace on. God doesn't save you or me because he loves us personally. He saves us because we were lucky enough to be among the saved in the particular possible world God chose to actualize.

Politics

Good morning. No, I didn't go to church this morning. That's why I'm writing now. In my defense, I have to pick my brother up from the airport this morning. I think Jesus will forgive me.

I have been really reluctant to write much about politics on this blog, although I guess I have touched on it in a few entries. I don't like politics because it seems to bring out the worst in people. It makes otherwise reasonable and intelligent people act silly, become mean, and throw fairness, reasonableness, and wisdom out the window.

It's ironic, but it seems like the older I get, the more I care about politics. It's ironic because the older you get, the shorter your time on earth remains, and the shorter your time remains, the less stake you have in the world. The less stake you have in the world, the less you should care about politics. Yet the opposite seems to happen. It isn't just me. I see it with other people, too.

I have been really tempted to post some political content lately. I've started three different posts on gun related issues, and they're still in draft. And now I've got things to say about Dobbs vs. Jackson and the politics behind abortion. I've been going back and forth over the last few weeks about whether I ought to say anything about gun related issues. I don't know if I want to go there on this blog, but at the same time, I have a lot to say.

Part of the reason I don't like politics is that I don't like conflict. I know that may seem strange given the fact that half of my internet presence involves argumentative writings, debate, and things like that. I used to enjoy a good debate as long as it happened in writing, but I've even lost my taste for that over the years. I've always disliked conflicts that happen in person.

I have some family members who it seems like never want to talk about anything but politics. And they don't seem to mind that it creates a lot of bickering, unpleasantness, and hard feelings. It makes me not want to be around them. I dread going over to somebody else's house sometimes because I just don't want to deal with it. I feel this way especially whenever there's something big in the news that's bound to lead to a political discussion.

But who knows? I haven't stuck strictly to religion and philosophy on this blog. I've even gone so far as to talk about bow building, knife making, and recipes. So why not politics? At least with politics we are dealing with the world of ideas and differing opinions. Maybe it's just because I don't want this blog to become unpleasant. I don't want it to descend into the muck of political discourse.

This blog is kind of like a refuge to me. I don't have many people in my personal life with whom I can exchange the kinds of ideas I talk about on this blog. If I didn't have this blog, I might explode from keeping my thoughts to myself. I could write about it in a journal, I suppose, and that might help. But since nobody would ever read my journal, it wouldn't be that much different than keeping it in my head.

Writing actually helps me think through things. It is hard for me to keep multiple thoughts in my head at once and to compare them and mull them over. But if I put it all in writing, I can have it all in front of me. This is hard to explain, but writing helps me think. Walking helps, too, of course. I think more clearly when I'm walking than when I'm sitting or lying down.

Writing is also a release. I can wrestle with something in my mind endlessly, but once I write it down, I feel like I can relax. I've gotten it off my chest. It makes me feel unburdened. Writing is a kind of therapy, I guess.

That might all be ruined if I started writing on subjects that just make people angry, especially if I started getting a lot of comments that just vented people's vitriol and didn't produce good brain-stimulating replies.

So I don't know. For now, I think I'll keep those political posts in draft and see how I feel in the future.

Dobbs v. Jackson

I was born in 1973, the same year as Roe v. Wade. Now I wonder if I'll die in 2022 since it has been overturned. Wouldn't that be poetic?

I don't have much to say about the decision today, but it's such an historic moment I feel like I ought to say something. So I just want to leave a short thought about it.

I understand why a lot of Pro-choice people would be very upset about the SC decision today. But I think people should be upset for the right reasons. Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that women have a right to abortion. I don't mean a legal right since that's what's being argued. I mean a natural right that ought to be enshrined in the Constitution.

Even if you grant that such a right exists, it shouldn't be the basis for your objection to Dobbs v. Jackson. The issue being decided today is not whether people ought to have the right to an abortion; rather, the issue is whether that right was implicitly in the Constitution to begin with. A lot of legal scholars, whether they were pro-choice or pro-life, have agreed that Roe v. Wade was decided wrongly.

One of the main objections that even showed up in the dissenting opinion was that it was an example of judicial legislation. The SC's job isn't to create laws. Rather, it's to judge whether a law coheres with the Constitution. But in creating a distinction between three trimesters, and giving states the right to restrict abortions to varying degrees, depending on the trimester, the SC was engaging in judicial legislation. The trimester distinction is nowhere found in the Constitution. Nor was it found in any precedent or tradition. It was created by the Supreme Court. That was the main fault of the decision.

If I were pro-choice, I might be very disappointed that a right that was once protected is no longer protected. But I don't see how I could really think Dobbs v. Jackson was wrong in overturning Roe v. Wade. If women actually do have a natural right to abortion, then the way to protect that right is either through legislation or through a Constitutional amendment. It is not through the Supreme Court making up law where none exists. That is not their job.

Why I find the moral argument so convincing

I just watched this clip from the Unbelievable podcast with Justin Brierly where Richard Dawkins said he finds the moral argument utterly unconvincing, but he thinks the fine-tuning argument is the best argument for God and that if there were any argument that might convince him to be a deist, that would be it.

I found that interesting because for the longest time, fine-tuning arguments (and teleological arguments in general) have struck me as being the least persuasive arguments, and the moral argument has struck me as being the most convincing. The Kalam was a close second for a while there, but that has slipped a little. I've recently started to come around on the fine-tuning argument, but the moral argument remains the most convincing argument to me.

I should say, though, that in my own thinking, I don't take the various arguments for God as stand-alone arguments. I take them more as premises in a whole case for God, which I explained in another post.

But lemme explain why I find the moral argument to be so persuasive. This isn't meant to be a full blown defense of the moral argument, just a bit of autobiography really.

There are essentially two premises in the moral argument. One is that there couldn't be a real moral law unless there were a God. The second is that there is a real moral law. If those two premises are true, then it's inescapable that there's a God. The existence of God would follow necessarily from those two premises.

In spite of everything I've heard to the contrary, the first premise seems almost logically certain. What I mean by a real moral law are prescriptive obligations that transcend societies and cultures. They are objective in the sense that they don't exist merely because we feel a certain way, or becasue we value certain things, or that we've made a pact among ourselves, or even because we've passed certain laws. While they impose themselves on us, they are not a product of us.

I don't see how there could possibly be a particular way that people were obligated to live unless there were somebody who imposed that obligation on them. There can't be a way we're supposed to behave is nobody supposes us to behave that way. There can't be a way we are meant to be if nobody means for us to be that way. I mean there couldn't be traffic laws if there weren't a governing authority, right? You need some kind of an authority behind any prescriptive rule of behavior.

But at the same time, I don't see how any creature could fulfill that role for morality. We have all kinds of authority structures in our world that create rules--governments, parents, bosses, military commanders, etc. But none of these authorities are sufficient to explain morality. If these moral laws exist, then they transcend all human institutions. The government can't make something right or wrong by making it legal or illegal. The moral law is above the civil law. It's what we use to judge whether a civil law is a good law or not. In fact, the validity of all human rules and laws are judged by their agreement with some moral standard.

Since no conceivable creature that originated and evolved somewhere in the universe like we did could possibly have the kind of authority required to impose transcendent moral obligations on people, then the source of the moral law must reside in some kind of autonomous supernatural being, which would be a God.

To me, the fact that you can't have objective moral principles without a God is just as obvious as the fact that you can't have a thought without somebody who is thinking it. That first premise in the moral argument has the same intuitive appeal to me as Descartes cogito which is almost logically certain. Maybe it is logically certain.

So it just comes down to that second premise. Now, I fully admit that I can't prove that second premise. And that second premise is not as obvious to me as the first premise. For me, the first premise comes very close to a logical certainty, but the second premise comes nowhere near a logical certainty. If it's not a logical certainty, but it also can't be proved, then why do I believe it?

I've written a lot on my blog about that (here for example), but basically it just comes down to being perfectly honest with myself. No matter what possibilities a person may raise about the meaninglessness of everything, if I'm perfectly honest with myself, I cannot bring myself to seriously doubt that there are real moral obligations or that what we do does ultimately matter in the big scheme of things.

I have no problem sitting around with a bunch of people speculating about the possibility of there being no real right and wrong save the ones we've made up or evolved to believe. But to me that's no different than when you're a teenager or a young adult sitting around smoking a doobie with your friends and talking about how you might all be parasites in a giant goat's stomach, or characters in somebody's computer game, or maybe even just dreaming the whole thing. When I was a kid, I used to toy around with solipsism all the time, and I even believed I took it seriously. But I didn't, and some time in my mid 20's or so when I decided to start taking philosophy seriously and start being honest with myself, I gave up all that nonsense as just childish playing at philosophy. There's no real reason to doubt the external world, and there's no real reason to doubt morality. And if I'm perfeclty honest with myself, I'm just as convinced of one as I am the other. I don't need it to be proved. In fact, it can't be proved. But I think it more than reasonable to believe and downright nutty to deny it.

I also think most people, whether they'll admit it or not, really would find themselves believing in both morality and the extenal world if they'd just stop playing philosophical games and be honest with themselves. The fact that moral non-realists are rarely ever consistent betrays them. Just as an idealists takes the apparent external world just as seriously as a naturalist or a dualist, so also do moral nihilists, subjectivists, and relativists behave as if morality were objective. This is evident in a number of things, not least of which is the fact that they hold other people to moral standards as if those standards actually applied to those people. I even had a moral nihilist one time tell me he thought it was ironic that a lot of moral objectivists were less moral than their moral relativist counterparts. How could one be worse than the other if there's no standard? This person lacked self-awareness, and I think most moral non-realists probably do as well. They are literally in denial.

So, I don't think it's just me who is hardwired to believe in morality in spite of the fact that it can't be proved. I think every mentally healthy person is hardwired that way. People can deny what they are hardwired to believe, but they rarely live consistently with that denial. If you're one of those people who are in denial about there being a universal objective standard of right and wrong, just stop it. Be honest with yourself. Think about that shooting in Uvalde that happened recently and ask yourself, "In the great scheme of things, can I honestly say there's nothing wrong with walking into a school and shooting a bunch of kids for no other reaon than the fact that you're frustrated with life or that you hate the world"? Be serious.

So that's it. There's a transcendent moral law that imposes itself on us but did not originate with us. There can't be such a law unless there's a God. It follows inescapably that there's a God. If you affirm both of those premises, but you deny the existence of a God, then you're being irrational. The reason I find the moral argument so convincing is because I am forced by the power of logical necessity to conclude that God exists because of premises that I cannot honestly bring myself to deny.

What is compatibilism?

Here's another post of mine I found on reddit yesterday while I was looking for a different post. I thought this one might make a good blog post, too.

Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism are compatible. Of course compatibilists aren't saying that libertarian free will is compatibile with determinism. After all, libertarianism is indeterministic. The same act can't be both determined and not determined at the same time and in the same sense because that's a contradiction. So compatibilists define freedom differently than libertarians.

Freedom, to a compatibilist, basically amounts to the idea that your actions are determined by your own intentions, plans, motivations, desires, inclinations, biases, etc. So, in other words, the more hand your own antecedent mental states have in bringing about your actions, the more free those actions are. The less hand your own antecedent mental states have in bringing about your actions, the less free you are.

Now, you can be less free in one of two ways. One way is if your actions are causally determined by blind mechanistic causes. For example, if you were a puppet on a string, the strings would determine your movement. Your desires would have nothing to do with it. Or, if somebody a lot stronger than you grabbed your wrist, started whacking your face with your hand, and said, "Stop hitting yourself!" you would not be hitting yourself freely because your action would not be determined by your desires.

Another way is if your actions arise spontaneously apart from any antecedent conditions. You have no more control over a spontaneous event than a event that is caused by mechanistic forces.

So you can't be free if your actions are determined the way a puppet's actions are determined, and you can't be free if your actions happen spontaneously the way some say subatomic particles sometimes behave. You can only be free to the degree that you are acting on your own inclinations. That's the compatibilist view of freedom.

Compatibilism is deterministic, but there are two kinds of determinism--hard determinism and soft determinism. Both are deterministic in the sense that given a set of antecedent conditions, only one outcome is possible. The difference is in what is doing the determining.

In hard determinism, your actions are determined by the laws of nature plus the initial conditions of non-sentient particles and things. If you apply a force to a mass, you will get acceleration, so the motion of a particle is determined by the force that acts on it, but the particle doesn't choose to move. It is caused to move. The same would be true of us if we were like puppets on a string. We would see our arms and legs move, but we'd have nothing to do with it. They'd be caused to move by the strings and gravity, and we'd passively watch it happen.

Soft determinism is the view that some actions are determined by mental states, like belief, desire, willing, etc. We are not like puppets on a string because in this case, we are acting on purpose. We are active, and not merely passive. Our wills and volition are engaged in the process.

This is a morally relevant distinction because we all, even libertarians, treat these two kinds of determining factors differently. Everybody agrees that the more physically difficult it is to resist some blind mechanistic cause, the less you can be blamed for your failure to resist it. So, for example, if you can't break through the duct tape that secures you to a tree, you can't be blamed for your failure to walk away from the tree. However, if there's no duct tape, and the only thing keeping you from walking away from the tree is your desire to remain with the tree, then you can still be blamed.

But imagine if we treated desire the same way we treat the forces of nature. It would follow that the deeper your hatred for somebody, the less you could be blamed for harming them since the deeper your hatred, the harder it would be for you to resist harming them. Likewise, the deeper your love for somebody, the less you could be praised for helping them because the deeper your love, the harder it is for you to resist the urge to help them. If your desire to harm somebody was so strong that you couldn't help but give into it, then you couldn't be blamed at all since the desire determined your choice.

This is really counter-intuitive. Moral culpability actually depends on the connection between motives and desires on the one hand, and actions and behavior on the other hand. If you shove an old lady because you hate old ladies, then you are to be blamed. If you shove an old lady to save her from on-coming traffic, then you are to be praised. And we are actually praised and blamed to the degree that our actions are determined by our desires. It is better, morally speaking, to act out of good intentions rather than bad intentions.

So we actually treat desire in the opposite way than we treat the forces of nature. The more our actions are determined by blind mechanistic causes, like gravity, the less we are subject to praise or blame. But the more our actions are determined by our own plans and desires, the more subject we are to praise and blame. It follows that we are most subject to praise or blame when our actions are determined by our plans and desires, i.e. our antecedent mental states.