An Empirical Case for Naturalism

This is quoted verbatim from Keith Augustine. I liked it so much I had to repost it. All credit goes to Mr Augustine.

Throughout human history, supernatural causes have been invoked to explain droughts, earthquakes, thunderstorms, comets, the spread of disease, mental illnesses, mystical experiences, the orbits of the planets, the origin of living things, and the origin of the world, among many other phenomena. As the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries flourished, appeals to supernatural causation ultimately gave way to successful scientific explanations of various phenomena in terms of natural causes. Ever since its inception, science has increasingly strengthened the plausibility of naturalism by providing informative accounts of a wide range of phenomena in terms of natural causes. The more science has progressed, the less room there has been for postulating supernatural causes within a scientific account of the world. Using past experience as a guide, the failure and rejection of supernatural explanations will probably continue into the future. This trend has led many to conclude that there probably are no genuine instances of supernatural causation. As science explains more of the natural world around us, appeals to supernatural causation become less plausible.

Many philosophers and scientists have concluded that the best explanation for our ability to develop successful scientific explanations for such a wide range of phenomena in terms of natural causes is that there are no genuine instances of supernatural causation. Barbara Forrest, for example, describes naturalism as "a generalization of the cumulative results of scientific inquiry" (Forrest 2000, p. 19). In other words, the best explanation for the success of science is that naturalism is true. Given the proliferation of successful scientific explanations for phenomena, Forrest concludes that there is "an asymptotic decrease in the existential possibility of the supernatural to the point at which it is wholly negligible" (Forrest 2000, p. 25). If naturalism were false, there would be some phenomena that could not be explained solely in terms of natural causes. However, because science can explain all of the uncontroversial phenomena we have encountered in terms of natural causes, there probably are no phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of natural causes. Therefore, naturalism is probably true. Of course there are many phenomena that still lack explanations (the origin of life, the origin of the universe, black holes, dark energy, etc). But supernatural explanations of them don't look like likely solutions.

This success of science argument rests on a crucial inductive premise--that we can infer that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes from the ability of science to explain all of the uncontroversial phenomena we have encountered in terms of natural causes. Even if we accept the validity of this inductive inference, we still have to establish that all the uncontroversial phenomena we have encountered so far can be explained scientifically. Since there certainly are uncontroversial phenomena for which we lack successful scientific explanations--consider the prevalent gravitational influence of some unknown form of dark matter in the universe--I will defend a related but stronger argument for naturalism. This argument does not require us to have a successful scientific explanation for all well-established events in order to provide evidential support for naturalism.

A likely candidate for a supernatural event is not necessarily the result of supernatural causation given that meeting the criteria for a likely candidate is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for actually being a supernatural event. Thus, if naturalism is true, it does not necessarily follow that there will be no likely candidates for a supernatural event--it is possible, however unlikely, that a naturally-caused event would also meet the requirements for a likely candidate for a supernatural event. For example, suppose that a subject can induce out-of-body experiences at will in a laboratory setting. During several experimental trials, after this subject has induced an out-of-body experience, infrared cameras capture the outline of a person moving toward a bell which begins to ring in a room adjacent to the location of the subject's normal physical body. If such events occurred today, they would meet all of the criteria for a likely candidate for a supernatural event. Nevertheless, such events might be the result of entirely natural causes which could be understood only in terms of some future science not yet available to us. For example, one might postulate that human organisms possess natural astral bodies made of some unknown form of exotic matter which can detach from normal physical bodies in certain circumstances. In the absence of successful scientific explanations for such phenomena, however, uncontroversial instances of likely candidates for a supernatural event would make supernaturalism more likely to be true than not relative to a background scientific picture lacking natural categories for such events.

Regardless of such possibilities, if there are any events within nature that have supernatural causes, these events will be likely candidates for a supernatural event. Thus, if naturalism is false, there will be events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event. Even without a definitive set of criteria for identifying a supernatural event, we can see the beginnings of an argument for naturalism:

(P1) If naturalism is false then there are events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event.

(P2) There are no events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event.

(C) Therefore, naturalism is not false (i.e. naturalism is true).

Or, to put the argument in another form:

(P1) If there are no events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event then naturalism is true.

(P2) There are no events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event.

(C) Therefore, naturalism is true.

The argument above forms the basic foundation of my defense of naturalism. As stated above, it is too broad to be useful; the crucial second premise simply cannot be established in the absence of omniscience. However, we can modify this argument into a more practical lack of evidence argument:

(P1) If after an intensive search of the natural world scientists and historians have found no uncontroversial evidence for likely candidates for a supernatural event then naturalism is probably true.

(P2) After an intensive search of the natural world scientists and historians have found no uncontroversial evidence for likely candidates for a supernatural event.

(C) Therefore, naturalism is probably true.

The lack of evidence argument assumes that if supernatural causation does occur, prima facie we should have uncontroversial evidence for events which are likely candidates for a supernatural event. There is no reason in principle why the occurrence of such events could not be established conclusively. On the other hand, if supernatural causation does not occur, we should expect to find no uncontroversial evidence for a likely candidate for a supernatural event. If naturalism is true, we will not necessarily fail to find uncontroversial evidence for a likely candidate for a supernatural event. However, we probably will not find such evidence. In other words, if we do find uncontroversial evidence for a likely candidate for a supernatural event, it is more likely than not that supernatural causation does occur and thus that naturalism is false.

Now that I have laid the groundwork for a defense of naturalism based on the lack of uncontroversial evidence for events which would probably have supernatural causes if they occurred, it is time to elaborate upon and defend the premises of the argument. First, since I have already used the crucial phrase without defining it, I want to clarify what I mean by 'uncontroversial evidence'. Uncontroversial evidence is not necessarily replicable experimental evidence, although that would certainly qualify as uncontroversial evidence. By uncontroversial evidence for a proposition I simply mean evidence which would lead any reasonable person to conclude that the proposition is true. For example, we have uncontroversial evidence that slavery was prevalent in 19th century America, that the continents have drifted apart over hundreds of millions of years, that the evolution of species has occurred, and that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. What these propositions have in common is that they are accepted by a consensus of the experts doing research within the relevant empirical subject matter. Uncontroversial evidence is evidence that generates consensus among the experts in the relevant field.

One might object that science could never falsify naturalism because scientific explanations are never cast in terms of supernatural causes. However, while scientific explanations are inherently naturalistic, scientific discoveries could strongly suggest that an event has occurred which could not plausibly be explained in terms of natural causes. For example, had human beings been the only life to appear on the planet Earth immediately after it was habitable, with no evidence of evolution from previous ancestors and no fossils of extinct species ever found, this would be a scientific discovery which would strongly suggest a supernatural cause of the origin of human beings. Science has undermined the credibility of all forms of supernaturalism not because science assumes that only natural causation occurs as a methodological principle but because science has been successful in using that assumption. There simply are no gaps in our scientific picture of the world which seem to require an appeal to supernatural causes. The simplest and most straightforward explanation for the success of methodological naturalism as a scientific strategy is that metaphysical naturalism is true.

A Skeptic's Morality

When I say "morality", I mean a personal and cultural set of values, codes of conduct, and social mores that distinguish between "right" and "wrong" thoughts, speech, and actions by individuals and groups. The point of morality (which I use here, for right or wrong, more or less interchangeably with ethics) is help us regulate our lives in our interactions with society at large, individuals in our community or family, and our own selves, while at the same time maximizing whatever version of personal flourishing we value for ourselves as individuals. I am not going to split hairs, distinguishing between normative ethics, individual morality, and the various other branches of these fields. I am going to discuss how we decide on what is "right" and "wrong", and why we tend to value doing the "right" thing. I put quotes around these words, because a big part of the discussion is determining what those words even mean.

I started really thinking through this chapter when recently, a friend repeated a version of an old existential cliché, "I don't believe in any real moral code. I would be a good mass murderer. I could just go out and kill people". First of all, this statement came from one of the most thoughtful and peaceful people I know. He was trying to make a point, however clumsily, about moral codes. It was basically this: if there is no "absolute" and "objective" (i.e., externally imposed) moral code, then all morals are relative, which means one moral standard (or lack thereof) is as good as any other. In other words, if we cannot deduce or "prove" a universal morality, and if no god has given us one, then we are allowed to do whatever we want, right? Dostoyevsky's character, Ivan Karamazov said in The Brothers Karamazov the same thing, "if there is no god, then everything is permitted".

Frequently, that is the first, superficial reaction many people have to their own personal, nihilistic and existential discovery that "god is dead". They think, then, that chaos reigns - the mice will play while the cat's away - we can all just make our own rules, or even have no rules at all.

However, just a cursory understanding of what the Existential philosophers, such as Sartre, were trying to accomplish shows exactly the opposite. It is not an argument for anarchy. In their view, because there is no god, and because there are no externally imposed rules we must follow, we (as individuals and communities) have to shoulder the entire responsibility for our actions. We can't share that burden with god. We are free, but with that freedom comes responsibility. As Eric Fromm wrote, our attempt to "escape from freedom" (existential freedom) can become a retreat back to mindless conformity, submission to authority, or self-destructiveness. Fromm urged us instead to accept and embrace our freedom, to live life fully, to choose our moral paths consciously and deliberately, to fulfill ourselves while also helping those with whom we share the world find fulfillment.

Because, in the Existentialist view, there is no a priori good, and because there is no a priori standard for humanity, and because there is no god, we alone must take control of our actions, both individually and as a community. Sartre's moral imperative was not unlike Kant's: to "Act if and only if in acting you desire that all men do likewise." Sarte believed that we made a moral choice, we were not only choosing for ourselves, but through that choice, willing that all men would choose similarly. It was not to climb a bell tower and shoot people just because you can.

But the existential approach is just one of many. I won't use this chapter to try to outline all of the major moral philosophies. There are quite a few, those that address how society should act, how individuals should act in society, and how individuals should lead their own lives. Among these many competing theories, some of which have been around for millenia, no one of them has been "proven" to be the one right one. Morality is not the type of thing that can be deduced as we could derive a mathematical law or be discovered as we might discover a new element or star.

Although a later section will discuss "objective morality", I lean towards morality not being "out there" in the world in the sense of existing independently of us, as does a solid object. It is not a presence like a physical object that everyone can observe and agree that they all see the same. Although it lacks that kind of objective existence, people do recognize rules that they call moral laws which are more than simple "etiquette" or custom. It is objective in the sense that morality, across all human cultures, has roughly the same set of fundamental purposes - to strengthen the community, to reduce strife, chaos and lawlessness, to bind the members closely to its history, to promote behaviors that further its goals of prospering and thriving, and of encouraging conformity and unity of purpose from its members, and in many version, to nurture individual growth and happiness.

However, the implementation of moral systems do differ from society to society, and within a society, from person to person. As a species, we generally adopt moral rules that promote individual, family, tribal, community, national, or cultural flourishing and well-being (in varying proportions, from culture to culture). Different groups emphasize different aspects or moral "pillars" (this idea is expanded further below). Examples can be given of acts that are so abhorrent and vile that we would have difficulty believing that they are not "objectively" evil. But a desire for morals to be objective and external to our minds may itself be a human psychological preference that we, particularly in the western world, want to be true. There is no independent "rule" that a fundamental, external moral/ethical framework exist (unless your rulebook is the bible).

Types of Moral Systems

Anyone can search through Wikipedia or some other philosophy website and find descriptions of ethical systems, and I recommend doing just that. Other people have done a much better job of defining these than I can or even want to do. The branch of philosophy called "Ethics" deals with moral issues, and "Normative Ethics" deals with what we "ought" to do. For the purposes of this chapter, I will summarize some of the more well known ones very briefly:

• Virtue ethics emphasizes the role of one's character and the virtues that one's character embodies for determining or evaluating ethical behavior. It is the type of ethical systems recommended by Plato and Aristotle.
• Deontology judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. It is sometimes described as "duty" or "obligation" or "rule-based" ethics, Kant's "categorical imperitive" was of this type
• Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.
• Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
Obeying the rules of god (e.g., the Ten Commandments) is yet another form of a deontological moral system, as is Christ's advice to love one another.
• Consequentialism (of which Utilitarianism is one type) looks at outcomes of actions and judges the rightness or wrongness based on whether the general well being of some target group is enhanced or diminished. From a Consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as "The ends justify the means".
• Role ethics is a variation or specialization of Virtue Ethics, but focused on the role of the individual with respect to the community, and the individual's responsibilities to that community, rather than on the individual alone. Examples are Confucianism or other East Asian family/community-based moral systems.
• Pragmatic ethics takes a more scientific approach to ethics. Fundamental to this view is that progress is possible in ethics, just as it is in science, law, technology, medicine, or any other evolving feature of modern civilization. Pragmatic ethicists believe that society can and has progressed morally in much the way it has progressed in these other fields.

The difference between these approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral dilemmas are approached than in the moral conclusions reached. For example, a Consequentialist may argue that lying is wrong because of the negative consequences produced by lying—though a Consequentialist may admit certain consequences might make lying acceptable. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any potential good that might come from lying. A virtue ethicist, however, would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie says about one's character.

Hypothetical ethical scenarios can show the weaknesses in each of these systems. None are able to embrace all aspects of morality - each has one or more deficiencies or blind spots. For example, a true utilitarian consequentialist would consider rescuing his own child from an imminent danger to be less important and "consequential" than rescuing two children living a continent away, but if we witnessed a parent making this moral choice (allowing his child to be killed while sending a generous check to Unicef), we would consider that person negligent, or even insane. Deontology can be so mindlessly duty-bound that its followers would make decisions that violate all common sense (not tell a lie even to save a life, for example). A committed Virtue Ethicist may find himself with competing and conflicting virtues (what if the virtues of kindness and honesty collide, and one must violate one to honor the other?). Virtue Ethics also lacks any particular social focus, emphasizing the individual character above the good of others - in other words, it can tend towards the selfish, as well as being highly subjective about what constitutes virtue. And it also is notably incapable of answering many of the most pressing ethical questions such as those involving abortion, war, economics.

Rejection of Radical Moral Relativism

There are, and there have been, many cultures that have engaged or still engage in ritual and sanctioned cannibalism, bestiality, child predation, murder, sacrifice, mutilation, mass killings, honor killings, and torture. In their world, these were not immoral. And in the past, our own societies have embraced behaviors and norms that we, today, judge to be highly immoral (slavery, child abuse, torturing animals for entertainment, cruel and unusual punishments, discrimination, oppression of minorities, and even genocide, for example). Some actions we perform today (eating animals, allowing poverty and starvation in the 3rd world, polluting the environment, changing the climate, abortion) may be considered immoral in the future. Our ancestors and these other cultures didn't consider themselves to be evil, and they probably had high moral standards in the context of whatever they took to be their moral frameworks. However, it is not improper for us to say that some elements of their moral standards were mistakes. Unless one is a radical moral relativist, which I am not, we cannot sanction wanton abuse of another's autonomy as occurs in torture, rape, murder, and genocide. We cannot sanction the "morally retarded" views of otherwise enlightened leaders like Theodore Roosevelt who thought "the only good Indians are the dead Indians", or Winston Churchill who was on record as strongly in favor of using poison gas against "uncivilized tribes". As Steven Pinker wrote:

Though they were surely decent people with perfectly functioning brains, the collective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was as primitive by modern standards as their mineral spas and patent medicines are by the medical standards of today ... They never took the mental leap that would have encouraged them to treat the people of other races with the same consideration <as their own>.

It is not out of bounds to say that some cultures (including our own) have had some rather bad ideas in the moral arena, and we should not be ashamed to admit this. We have no qualms about judging other acts of past cultures as mistakes:

• Dumping raw sewage in the street, as was done before the advent of modern sanitation.
• Performing surgical procedures in unsanitary conditions, as was done before modern hygienic procedures were invented.
• Using poisonous lead pipes for plumbing, as did the Romans.
• Destroying the environment through deforestation and other abuses leading to societal collapse, as the Easter Islanders did.
• Hunting mammoths, camels, lions, sloths, and other large animals to extinction, as did the prehistoric American Indians.
• Torturing and murdering suspected witches and sorcerers (as happened in Europe and America centuries ago, and still occurs today in Africa).

Assuming that public health, personal health, ecological conservation, and cultural survival are objectively good ideas (that is, axioms that we can agree on regardless of our emotions and opinions), these were all objectively bad decisions because they subverted those axioms and goals. There is nothing logically inconsistent or invalid with, instead, preferring self-destructive health care treatment, poisonous plumbing, cleansing the earth of interesting species, or committing cultural suicide. However, these actions are incompatible with our intrinsic, evolved, self-interest as human beings and as civilizations. They are incompatible with life, and self-defeating. Of course, these people didn't know any better. But that still doesn't turn them from bad ideas into good ideas. We can see from our current vantage point that they should have chosen to act differently, and might have done so if they had our resources and knew what we now know. In the same way, because of our access to better information and a wider range of view, we should not shrink from pronouncing some moral ideas as better than others, and some as outright bad ideas. Specifically, several centuries of experience implementing Liberal, Scientific, Democratic, Enlightenment, Utilitarian ideals in countries around the world has resulted in previously unimagined levels of individual and group rights, opportunities, and achievement of happiness, safety, prosperity, and fulfillment (in those fortunate countries) that puts past generations to shame. Several centuries have clearly shown that new and better ideas in the moral landscape have been discovered. They are better in the same sense that living on clean streets is better than wading in sewage, and avoiding infection is better than losing a limb to gangrene, and enjoying a diversity of animal life is better than nature without those animals. It is better not to be hung as a witch, better not to be exterminated through genocide, better to not be drawn and quartered for minor crimes. In this sense, some moral choices are objectively better than others, but they all rely on underlying assumptions and values. To quote Steven Pinker,

Has the world seen moral progress? The answer should not depend on whether one has a sunny or a morose temperament. Everyone agrees that life is better than death, health better than sickness, prosperity better than privation, freedom better than tyranny, peace better than war. All of these can be measured, and the results plotted over time. If they go up, that’s progress.

Still, if we respect the lessons of history, we have no choice but to conclude that morality is human dependent: a set of choices and judgements and preferences that we make as societies and as individuals. We choose to obey these rules - to honor, and even to regard them as sacred and inviolable. We feel them deeply - they are more than abstract intellectual abstractions. We choose for ourselves, and we allow the society to choose for us if we desire to remain members in good standing. We "will" (wish) that these choices be regarded as true, even "absolutely" true. Although it may be uncomfortable to consider this, they are not "absolutely" true, but they seem to work better if we believe that they are.

Some, though, conclude (incorrectly, I think) that if they are not absolute, in the sense of existing outside ourselves as fundamental properties of the universe, then they don't exist at all. This is Moral Nihilism.

Moral Nihilism

There is a problem with naive moral nihilism - the belief that moral/ethical laws are illusions, that they don't really exist, that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral. This moral philosophy assumes a false dichotomy exists: Since there is no objective, independent, externally imposed meaning or objectively constructed values, then there is no meaning or values at all! However, it is not a given that morality must be wholly external or wholly illusory. In fact, this actually leaves a lot of room for alternative views of meaning and value. There is such a thing as ethics, and there is such a thing as meaning in life. However, both morality/ethics and meaning in life have human and social sources. That makes them contingent on human affairs and human nature, not absolute and abstract. But it doesn't make them arbitrary.

But, simply because there is no transcendent rule-giver doesn't mean that all of the moral systems, and all of the meanings we construct here on Earth are all equally valid and workable. Human beings are a particular type of social and biological animal, with certain innate capabilities, characteristics, desires, strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. Our many ethical systems tend to be designed to promote individual and group flourishing, prosperity, and well-being. These words - flourishing, prosperity, well-being - are perfectly suited for underlying the diverse ethical systems found throughout the world precisely because they are so vague. They accommodate many different variants of the same basic ideas. Very few people will think that flourishing means living a life of pain, suffering, starvation, and cruelty. Those rare and few individuals who do believe this, and who act on their belief to bring misery and pain to others we call insane, and they are treated as criminals, as they should be. We can, I believe, stipulate that moral systems are designed to promote well-being, rather than to destroy it, and in that sense they are absolute and objective. They are as objectively true as it is objectively true that living beings should eat, should breathe, and should reproduce. Individual and group survival, and thriving, depend on all of these.

Moral Foundations Theory

Jonathan Haidt, in his fascinating book, The Righteous Mind brings centuries of moral philosophy together with modern empirical research and presents a description of how diverse social groups can differ in their moral frameworks, while still basing them on the same fundamental underlying moral pillars. Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists (including Jonathan Haidt) to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. See "MoralFoundations.org".

In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world. Moral Foundations Theory is supported by extensive experimental results as well as having synthesized moral philosophies from Kant, Hume, and Bentham through Peter Singer and a lot of international anthropological studies of both modern and primitive societies (2nd and 3rd world peoples have unfortunately been left out of moral philosophy studies until just the last 20 years or so).

The foundations are (I remember these with the mnemonic, "CFALLS"):

1. Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, compassion, gentleness, and nurturance.
2. Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, fairness, proportionality, and autonomy.
3. Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.
4. Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
5. Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions and institutions.
6. Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination, as well as by the near universal tendency to find objects of worship. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants, and elevated by discipline, self-sacrifice, and a "pure" lifestyle (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

This theory accounts for the enormous differences in moral outlook between liberal, conservatives, and libertarians. Liberals tend to use the Care/Harm and Fairness/Cheating foundations for their judgements of right and wrong, and very little of the others. Conservatives employ those two pillars in equal measures with the loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, liberty/oppression, and sanctity/degradation pillars. Haidt proposes that the reason that conservatives traditionally have an easier time pulling the emotional heart strings of the voters is that they appeal to a wider spectrum of these moral "tastes" (the author himself is a committed liberal). Of course, Libertarians emphasize the liberty/oppression dimension more than either liberals and conservatives.

As an example of how flexibly these foundations can be deployed, each group utilizes liberty/oppression differently: Liberals see capitalists as oppressors of the weak and poor, which interacts with the care/harm pillar. Conservatives see foreign countries and ideologies (Communism, Socialism, Godlessness) as oppressive and threatening to our nation and its institutions. Libertarians see our own government as oppressing its citizens, subverting their autonomy and individuality. The same is true with the fairness/cheating pillar - Liberals tend to see fairness and "equal sharing", where Conservatives tend to see it as "getting what you deserve".

Anyhow, because these groups differ in their fundamental moral premises, and how they implement moral systems based on these premises, they end up talking past each other, each thinking the other has a poorly formed sense of right and wrong, or is evil, or insane, or just plain ignorant. And each group views the others as being morally blind (conservatives think liberals are sacrilegious, subversive, and disrespectful, while liberals see conservatives as selfish, lacking compassion and empathy). In terms of simple plausibility, it is probably not likely that an entire half of our nation is insane, ignorant, or evil.

Also from Jonathan Haidt's book:

I was particularly drawn to a new theory of morality Shweder had developed based on his research in Orissa. They found three major clusters of moral themes, which they called the ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity. Each one is based on a different idea about what a person really is.

The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages.

The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous — a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends.

The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted. People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.

Moral Animals?

I think that humans are hardwired to be "good", to value goodness in others, and to hate "evil" (i.e., people who cause harm, are unfair, treacherous, oppressive, subversive, and disrespectful). Even other animals demonstrate what could most parsimoniously be interpreted as moral (or possibly "pre-moral") behaviors. Franz de Waal, an expert primatologist, has described in books like Good Natured, and others, that gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees, dogs, and many other intelligent mammals show the basics of what, in humans, evolved into a moral code. They are either born with them, learn them, or are born with the ability to learn them. They care for their injured, show generosity, have patience, experience grief at the death of kin and friends, rejoice by themselves or with friends, can be kind, be protective and nurturing, work on their reputations, appreciate the reputations of others, recognize injustice, and become upset by unfair situations. They recognize strange and deviant behavior, and will attack and drive out members of their own species that violate expectations and norms. You probably have seen how a poorly socialized dog, who was not brought up with other dogs, has trouble throughout his life accepting and being accepted by other dogs. A poorly socialized dog is a "dog nerd" who doesn't follow the norms that well socialized dogs adopt - they are breaking the rules, the animal rules which in human society evolve into our moral and ethical codes.

So, I think that human hominids, like their ape cousins are implicitly moral, or have a moral instinct. Because of our higher intelligence, language, and complex societies, we have created sophisticated laws, customs, taboos, and rituals to teach and enforce common moral codes. Complex societies motivate the creation of complex moral systems - they are the glue that hold the society together. Philosophies have sprung up to rationalize and explain the morality, but the pre-logical, innate moral sense came first. As in religion, (to paraphrase Hume) reason is the slave of passion. The desire for goodness and to be recognized as being good (however we choose to define it) drives the rational systems that explain it. Without the underlying desire, there would be no motivation for doing good or for doing evil. Again Hume: "It is not against reason that I should prefer the destruction of half the world to the pricking of my little finger." It is the desire for the good that drives good action. Again, "good" is not an absolute term, but interpreted by each individual.

Objective Morality?

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, host of the podcast, Rationally Speaking, says that moral reasoning is similar to, though not exactly the same as, mathematical reasoning. Both depend on the premises that you start with. For example, if your premise is that the ultimate moral value is to cause more happiness for more people, or to fulfill people's preferences, as opposed to causing more unhappiness, then Utilitarianism is probably going to seem very reasonable to you. If, on the other hand, your basic value is to respect individual rights and autonomy above everything else, then Objectivism is going to suit you. If your value is to obey the commandments in the bible, or the laws of the land, or otherwise follow what you conceive of as a god's or a government's instructions, then you would probably adopt Deontology for your moral framework. If you value character development and cultivation of personal excellence, then you would likely prefer Virtue Ethics above the other moral philosophies. If the scope of your moral concern is your immediate or extended family or a close-knit group, then you may reason that you should treat those around you well, and let others fend for themselves. Some may choose to extend the "circle of moral concern" (see Peter Singer) to other races, nations, and even to animals.

The reason there is no one, single "best" moral philosophy is because we all start with different premises, and those premises are based on our value systems. There is no logical proof that one value system is superior to another. Values are givens - they are the axioms and premises of morality. Sometimes we choose our values, but frequently we simply have them, just as we have tastes and preferences for different music or food - they precede and trump any sort of logical justification.

Ethics is really, then, a form of applied logic. You can start with different premises to come up with completely self-consistent, coherent, moral frameworks, none of which is superior to the other but offer different solutions to the "moral problem", and none of them refutable on purely theoretical grounds. We can easily see that different branches of geometry are not superior or inferior to one another, but reach different conclusions because they start with different axioms. We can see that one type of geometry may be far more useful and applicable in the real world in which we find ourselves than another. The same is true of moral systems. Although we may not be able to apriori judge one superior to another, some are very probably far more able to be successfully applied to human and social environments than others.

Regarding "objective morality" (I interpret this to mean the existence of moral standards independent of humans and their moral preferences, and contrasted against purely relativistic morality), I see this as is a false dichotomy. Having to choose between moral relativists and moral absolutism is too limiting. There doesn't have to be just two choices on the menu. Massimo Pigliucci says there is a third way, which is to apply "moral reasoning". It is probably not correct to say "X is universally right / wrong" (objective moral absolutism), and it is not correct to say "X is right / wrong within a particular culture at a particular historical moment" (moral relativism). You can always find extreme cases that make each of these extremes seem totally ridiculous. What works better, and is probably more aligned with what we actually do when we take the time to make calm moral decisions, is reason: "If assumptions A/B/C are accepted, then X is right / wrong." In other words, it all starts with premises and values, and from them you can reason your way to moral conclusions. So, for example, as far as cheating on an exam goes, if we accept the premise that "everyone should get a fair shot at taking this test", then cheating is wrong. As for murder, if we can accept the premise that personal autonomy, self-determination, health, and happiness matter, then murder is wrong. What if a potential cheater or murderer doesn't buy into these premises? Then they don't get to be a part of the society that has formed around the premises (expulsion/imprisonment/punishment).

I reject the forced absolutism/relativism choice for the same reasons that I would reject an argument in favor of a one, "true" geometry. The choice of a geometry or of moral system all depends on the starting premises. Euclidan, Hyberbolic, Riemann, and other geometry systems are all "true", but each starts with different axioms. The same idea applies to moral systems. They are "true" in the sense that they each follow logically from their founding premises - given their starting points, they are internally consistent, coherent, and well-defined. In ethics and morality, there probably is no fundamental value or axiom that is clearly superior to the others. There certainly are, and have been, unworkable, low quality premises, such as "murder and mayhem is a core value", or "exterminating all undesirable people is virtuous". There are, and have been, some people and nations that held these values. But values such as these are incapable of serving as the foundation of a coherent, sustainable moral system. In those unbalanced moral systems, the value that works for you today can be turned against you tomorrow (you may wake up one day and find yourself to be an "undesirable"). Core values such as these lead to degenerate and failed moral systems, full of contradictions, are self-limiting, and which cannot allow the people who practice them to even survive for the long term (Nazism, anarchy, and vicious and bloodthirsty regimes in some less developed countries, for example). Likewise, one could (and this has happened before) devise geometric axioms that are mathematical dead ends incapable of producing a useful geometry, or are incapable of application in the real world of human concerns.

There are many internally coherent moral/ethical systems that don't suffer from internal contradictions and which serve the goals which are embedded in the premises that underlie them. However, moral systems have to be anchored to the factual aspects of human nature, and the nature of society. If they are not, then they are entirely abstract and irrelevant to human interests. They become the equivalent of a mathematical model which has no application in reality. You can do math in that system, but you can't do physics with it. Ethics, as an applied discipline, has to deal with human beings and human culture, not with abstract notions. This requirement reduces the set of viable ethical systems down substantially, but still leaves room for a large variety of very diverse approaches. There are a number of alternatives that are perhaps equally reasonable and perhaps equally defensible. But those alternatives are not infinite in number - they don't represent the entire set of logical alternatives. They are tethered to the actual realities of what it means to be a human being living in a human social environment. If we were birds, or wolves, or any other type of being we wouldn't even be having this conversation, or if we could converse about this, our radically different natures would cause us to adopt a very different type of ethical system.

What is really meant by the argument for moral relativism? I don't think its proponents are in favor of "anything goes" or "if it feels good do it". They are saying, I think, that moral systems depend on culture and history. I would agree. They also agree on human nature. Since we are all humans, and we all experience the limitations of our human natures and bodies, many of those underlying features of our human natures are the same. We all want to survive, even to thrive and to prosper. We want the same things for our families and communities. We want safety, security, respect, love, and all the rest. Sometimes we want to survive and prosper, even at the expense of others. Most moral systems implement rules that make it possible to achieve these common goals. But. we obviously see many different moral systems. That probably is a reflection in our different cultures, histories, and different weightings of the various components of our shared human natures (some systems value individual freedom, some family unity, some community, etc). So, yes, moral systems are relative, but bounded - they are not relative without limits. Examples of fundamental values that serve as the basis for different moral frameworks are described by Jonathan Haidt (these are outlined in more detail in a previous section). His moral spectrum included these moral "pillars" (axioms):

1. Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm.
2. Fairness/cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions
3. Liberty/oppression, characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized.
4. Loyalty/betrayal to your group, family, nation. (He has also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
5. Authority/subversion for tradition, elders, and respect for legitimate authority.
6. Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He has also referred to this as Purity.)

Likewise, individuals may put their highest value on individual autonomy, group or cultural prosperity, or divinity and sanctity of some object of worship. Each set of values would lead those who hold them to arrive at different "solutions" to ethical problems. People in different cultures, and even people from different sub-groups within a culture, will adopt some combination of moral premises, and will be attracted to moral frameworks that supports their value systems. Some people might value individual rights, others would put a premium on the health of the family or community or nation, others on the respect for the bible, the constitution, the legal system, traditional ways, or some set of established rules. Others might put the ultimate value on the environment, or on "Gaia", or on a god or gods, or on providing support for the weak and disadvantaged. Moral systems will follow from those premises.

The world of morality can be split roughly into two camps: Moral realism and moral antirealism. Moral realists believe that objective morals do exist, independent of humans or collections of humans. For example, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is "out there" in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape). In other words, computer programs and stylized cooperative "public goods" games that simulate human social interactions can demonstrate that incorporating certain sets of moral rules generates optimal outcomes both for the individual and the communities of which they are a part, while other rules are destructive to both. Obviously the antirealists do not subscribe to an externally existent morality. One type of Antirealists is the "Emotivist" who believes that talk of morals is no more than emotional talk, expression of preferences, whether we do or do not like something, whether something pleases us or disgusts us. Noncognitivists would say that talk about truth within morality is a type of Category Error. Examples of Category Errors would be arguing about what kind of cheese the moon is made of, or whether ducks are conservative or liberal, or how the color blue smells. Moral values do not lend themselves to having a "truth value" any more than ducks have a political affiliation. According to noncognitivists (and I consider myself among them) moral systems don't have a truth value, either - they are only instrumental in helping us achieve outcomes that are consistent with our moral values. In other words, moral rules are not, by themselves "good", but they are good for something. Psychologist/neuroscientist Joshua Greene (famous for the "Trolley Car Problem") thinks that morality and ethics spontaneously arise (self organize) when people begin to try to live in groups. They are emergent concepts that don't exist outside of that context.

One could argue that there are objective moral truths, but that might be playing a little fast and loose with the word, "objective". I will try to avoid drifting into the sin of postmodernist redefinition of words to suit my purposes, at the same time trying to clarify the word so as to (hopefully) remove some ambiguity.

"Objective" is a strange word - it lends itself to many interpretations. I use it here to mean "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice, based on facts, unbiased and unprejudiced". By this definition, if one wishes to cross the street, it is objectively better to wait for the "WALK" signal than to wander into oncoming traffic. I don't use the word to refer to some external, transcendental truth.

Morality exists between humans in a culture, and in the relationship an individual has with himself (in the form of self respect, purity of the body, purity of thought and action, cultivation of the virtues, living up to one's personal ideals, etc). Biology and Anthropology teach us that because all humans are the same kind of animal, we can reasonably assume that the same things nourish us and other things harm us. We all have the same basic needs and all avoid the same basic set of dangers. For the most part, the same kinds of things give us pleasure (nourishment vs starvation, comfort vs. torture, air vs. suffocation, hydration vs. desiccation, acceptance vs. rejection, success vs. failure, etc). With some variations across cultures, the same glues binds us together in a society. These are objective facts that can't really be disputed. They are scientific facts that have to do with the kind of animal that we are.

If we can stipulate that a person values the continuity and strength of the culture to which he belongs, and if he values his own prosperity and survival, then it is objectively true that certain behaviors and moral codes will apply (i.e., will make those outcome more likely). If one does not value the community, or himself, and wants to engage in self-destruction, excommunication, and exile from his community as a sociopath, then that person, of course, is free to reject all morality and to walk away from any sort of moral constraint - to walk into the wilderness and perish. To argue about some values, though, is really borderline ridiculous and hardly worth considering. To say you do not value human life, or prosperity, or making those who you live with happy rather than miserable, or having a good character and reputation, it is arguable that you are objectively wrong to want to be a liar, cheat, traitor, and outcast. To want to cause suffering and to bring destruction on your community, would indicate (and Aristotle and his contemporaries would agree with this), you are objectively wrong. You are as wrong as a squirrel who refuses to collect nuts for the winter, or the lion that refuses to hunt. Aristotle would say that you are socially and morally ill - you have a moral disease; you are morally insane.

To have a fatally flawed moral value is analogous to having a fatally flawed survival instinct. For example, it would be "wrong" to insist on walking around with a compound leg fracture. To pedantically argue, "what if you want the bone to protrude further and to increase the infection, pain, and bleeding?" is not worth considering. You would be sick and insane and on the road to personal extinction to do that. To argue that the correct course of action depends on your values, is to engage in a silly conversation. Our nature as human beings precludes a value system that endorses that kind of action with regard to a leg injury, just as it precludes excessively deviant and destructive moral systems. To quote Steven Novella,

"To be a critical thinker is to be comfortable with uncertainty and with the limits of human knowledge and to be aware of the many flaws and limitations of human intelligence — and, therefore, to be flexible in the face of new ideas or information, but to not be afraid to acknowledge that some ideas are objectively better than others."

In other words, it is a bad idea to value making a compound fracture worse, just as it is a bad idea to ruin your life (and other lives) through choice of self-destructive morals. Given the reality of the kind of biological animal that we are, when we are injured (either physically or morally), our goal should objectively be to get better rather than to commit physical or spiritual suicide by continuing in error. Anyone who would argue otherwise, that it is a matter of perspective and personal preference, is a person who is on their way to individual annihilation, which would (for them) render the moral question moot. Some "incorrect" moral choices are poor answers to the question "how should we live our lives" (which was the original question asked by the early western Ethical philosophers). It would be wrong to walk on a compound fracture, and it would be wrong to be a murderer, thief, traitor, deceiver, or tyrant, to cultivate the anti-virtues of lying, stealing, betrayal, and murder.

We can say that objective morality does exist in this sense - "if we want to flourish as individuals and as a society, it is objectively true that certain moral laws will encourage that outcome (like generosity/kindness), and others will not (like genocide/rape). In this sense, relative to human goals, morality is objective. Outside of individual and culture interests, it doesn't appear possible for morality or moral problems to actually have any existence.

Which Moral Framework to Use?

So, we have these many ways of viewing moral (or ethical) problems and behavior. In this chapter, I'm not attempting to decide which approach is best. I think most people probably adopt a moral system that meshes best with their worldview, their desires, their beliefs, and their values. The question I am most interested in is, "why should we bother choosing among them at all? Why be moral?" A deontologist would argue that the reason to be moral is to please god or conform to society's mores. Consequentialists would argue that you are achieving a non-optimal outcome by behaving immorally, and a virtue ethicist would say that acting immorally shows a lack of character. Someone who subscribes to the Moral Foundation Theory, or a similar evolutionary psychological approach would say that we evolved to be moral. But again, what is wrong with displeasing god, damaging overall well-being, lacking virtue, or rebelling against an evolutionary quirk in our makeup? Are we compelled to have some sort of morality though our individual and group evolution? I think the answer is yes - if we are individually "immoral" (do things we believe to be "wrong") or immoral within our groups, we become personally miserable and unhappy as well as being ostracized, shunned, and condemned by our community. I believe that cultural and genetic evolution have molded us to choose to be moral because it enhances our lives and odds of survival, while developing a reputation for lacking personal morality (cruelty, dishonesty, disloyalty, untrustworthiness) creates a dangerous and unstable environment for the moral rebel, reducing his psychological stability and even his odds of survival.

Utilitarianism is sort of an objective "moral algebra". You can use it to generate an algorithm for deciding on the right action in various situations. It, probably more than any other moral system, is responsible for ushering in the "Rights Revolution", as Steven Pinker calls it in The Better Angels of our Nature. This objective analysis which had its roots in the 18th century Enlightenment forces us to see that the rights of others unrelated to ourselves, of different races and genders, are just as important as our own rights. However, its extreme objectivity makes it sometimes a little "heartless" (like its conclusion that you should harvest organs from a healthy person to save several sick people, or push the fat man onto the tracks in the trolley car scenario). I think it is interesting that many believe that Jeremy Bentham (one of its founders) suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, which we know causes people to have a disconnect with the feelings of others and to treat them sort of like objects. Sometimes I think utilitarianism objectifies people (by coldly quantifying their happiness), allowing you to "score" their well-being and total it up like one would during a warehouse inventory. No surprise that Mr. Spock on Star Trek was a utilitarian ("The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few").

Unfortunately, human experience is colored with all sorts of fuzzy shades of gray and subtle nuances that such an algorithm doesn't always fit. For Utilitarianism, as with all the moral systems, one can devise hypothetical situations that make them underperform. But in general, I think the choice of utilitarianism is a great process to apply to most situations just to see how they fare. Probably in the vast majority of cases, it succeeds in pointing us to the "right" action.

We all know the problems with deontology - it is basically a mindless and dogged following of rules (except, maybe for a deontology like Kant's Categorical Imperative). But certainly the Ten commandments is such an example of empty-headed rule-following (the first four of which define how to worship god correctly). And virtue ethics has the problems of (1) sometimes being pretty selfish, (2) unclear goals (what is "well being", sometimes called eudaimonia). It can range from wild self indulgence to gentle and wise philosophical living, and (3) it can contradict itself - virtues that may appear compatible can occasionally lead you to an action that violates one or the other.

Morality/Ethics is not a "solved" problem - people continue to debate it. One way of thinking about it is like this:

There is a valid form of logical reasoning called “denying the consequent” (aka “modus tollens”) which can be used to show that moral problems do not, in general, have easy, pat answers that you can just look up in your moral handbook:

If P, then Q.
Not Q.
Therefore, Not P.

Substituting for P and Q:

If "there is a clear, best, moral framework", then "we would    not still be debating it".
But it is not true that "we are not still debating it", even after    2500 years.
Therefore it is not true that "there is a clear, best, moral    framework"

In other words, we will probably not see a convergence in moral outlook in our lifetimes! I expect the same (or similar) debates will still be going on long after we all are dead.

I usually consider all of these moral frameworks to be "tools" in my moral toolbox. For challenging moral situations, I intuitively run through all of them to see which helps me generate an action that "seems" (I know, very subjective) to be the right one. And there is the almost subconscious "gut check" to test how a possible action compares against my intuition. No matter how a moral framework crunches through the situation, one can't really follow through with an objectionable result that offends our innate sense of right and wrong.

Rigid moral frameworks can and do occasionally result in what appear to be absurd conclusions. Regardless of what the moral code requires, we rebel at it and will probably refuse to follow that rule. Instead we will continue looking until we can justify an action that is in rough agreement with our intuitions. James Ladyman, author of Understanding Philosophy of Science, said this about the conflicts that can arise between an ethical system and our intuitive beliefs about right and wrong.

...it is clear that, as in other areas of philosophy, we need to reach what is known as a ‘reflective equilibrium’ between our pre-philosophical beliefs and the results of philosophical inquiry. Consider the following analogy; in ethics we inquire into questions about the nature of the good and the general principles that will guide us in trying to resolve controversial moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia. However, ethicists would reject any ethical theory that implied that the recreational torturing of human beings was morally acceptable, no matter how plausible the arguments for it seemed. In ethics we demand that accounts of the good do not conflict with our most fundamental moral beliefs, although we will allow them to force us to revise some of our less central moral views.

In other words, even a moral system that we believes works can recommend that we do something our intuition rebels at. We may want to allow Dexter (the TV serial killer who only murders other killers) to continue killing for utilitarian reasons. Or we may tell a murderer where his next victim lives to avoid lying, for deontological reasons. Or we may want to kill an unhappy person, which the virtue of charity would encourage, but another virtue of justice would forbid. We almost have no choice but to do a reality check using reflective equilibrium to test if we believe (intuitively) the act that our moral system advises us to do.

My Own Moral Framework

I subscribe to a combination of several moral frameworks - a cafeteria approach - because it doesn't appear that any one moral philosophy can effectively address all the situations in my life. I was inspired by Massimo Piggliuci's short blog entry in which he very briefly describes his moral system ("Massimo's ethical system, an introduction").

I accept that morality is motivated by biological and social drives, and does not originate outside ourselves. I also assert that it is not purely arbitrary, and "anything goes" is an incorrect conclusion to draw based on the absence of a divine law-giver. I am not concerned with god's displeasure or upsetting any other giver of moral laws, but I do find that I am comfortable conforming to rules of conduct when they are not too onerous (I would not dance on the table at a restaurant, or start shouting in a crowded elevator). These are society's rules, and I try to follow them because it would be uncomfortable for me and for everyone if I didn't. So, I confess I am a rule follower some of the time, because it is convenient, requires little effort, and helps smooth the way when interacting with others. Plus, due to my upbringing, I would personally feel uncomfortable taking my shirt off at work, or giving a stranger a backrub on the street. There is nothing inherently wrong with these actions, but they conflict with conventions I have accepted, would cause needless strife, and I choose not to fight them. As mentioned previously, even animals recognize and reject "deviant" behavior.

I don't believe there is any evidence of a universal moral code, and plenty of evidence against such a thing. Kant's categorical imperative (a deontological rule), phrased in two ways in the previous chapter of this blog, are guidelines that I try to integrate into my choices:

• Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.
• Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

I value and respect the virtues of courage, honesty, cool-headedness, compassion, generosity, humor, patience, objectivity, understanding, kindness, resourcefulness, and many others. I wish I could integrate more of them into my habits (and as Aristotle pointed out, virtues must be practiced as you would any other skill). And, like most people, I want to cause more good than harm (a Consequentialist goal). So, I have assimilated content from several of the major Ethical frameworks, which is probably not unusual.

I don't require a god to religion to set up a moral code for myself. Just having grown up in a society which mostly valued harmony, honesty, and good will, I have internalized much of my moral code, so that it is second nature. This means I don't have to perform a moral calculation when faced by situations that would benefit from moral insight. Like most people, it comes to me naturally. This is well illustrated by an exchange between the comedian, Ricky Gervais, and a Christian who could not understand his lack of faith. He was asked, "If you don't believe there is a God to answer to why don't you go round raping and murdering as much as you want?" His response: "I do, which is not at all"

When thinking about how I would respond to hypothetical situations, I frequently turn to Virtue Ethics and find myself evaluating my potential responses in terms of how they reflect on my character, or others' characters, when performing them. I value virtuous thinking and behavior in myself and others, striving towards excellence, achievement, and effort. I am pleased when I see myself living up to this standard, and disappointed when I fall short. Regarding the "six foundations" described by Haidt, I see evidence of all of them in my makeup, but would tend towards more towards the liberal end of that spectrum, especially with regard to the Authority/Sanctity pillars, though I do hold sacred the gift of life that we have and consider it shameful to waste and degrade ourselves and the life we have the good fortune to be living. And I am probably more individualistic than group focused.

Eudaimonia

I believe that it's not conventional success in life that is its most meaningful measure, but the process one goes through in the drive towards success, and how a person deals with failure: their resilience. I borrow much of my moral framework from Aristotle and Epicurus - I seek out that which causes me to thrive and to flourish. I try to practice the virtues of honesty, kindness, patience, objectivity, understanding, hard work, curiosity, openness to experience, humor, focus, generosity, flexibility, etc. And by extension I "will" (I wish) that everyone adopt these same values (in the spirit of Kant's Categorical Imperative). For each of us, our flourishing and our thriving manifests differently - what helps one thrive varies from person to person, and from situation to situation. These are those things which makes your life "complete" in the Eudaimon sense - the ancient Greek sense of being fulfilled, virtuous, autonomous, and complete - of our life having been a "good project". Success is not the acquisition of objects or power, or the direct "pursuit of happiness", but is living life well, using our limited time and resources in ways that are productive, purposeful, important (at least to ourselves), and satisfying, doing interesting, creative, relevant and helpful work for ourselves and for others, having friends and being a good friend, of having deep relationships, and helping others achieve similar success in their lives. If happiness is to come, it would come as a result of living life this way, rather than by actively seeking it. Identifying the exact contents of such a life is difficult, and is not the same for each person. Everyone who chooses to pursue this type of life would have to discover what helps them flourish, and how to avoid that which impedes their thriving.

Aristotle described the eudaimon life life is one of “virtuous activity in accordance with reason”, and Epicurus described it similarly - having pleasurable experiences, good friends, and a meaningful, philosophical life. For Epicurus, "pleasure" was not purely self-indulgent (though, technically, he was a hedonist), rather it involved living modestly, gaining knowledge of how the world works, and learning the limits of one's desires. A life spent in this way would lead one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear. He said, "It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life." A Eudaimon life is not achieved through the direct pursuit of "happiness", but by living life a certain way. Happiness may result from such a life, but it would be a side effect of the more direct focus on the elements of Eudaimonia rather than as an end in itself. Viktor Frankl, a contemporary of Freud, wrote,

"It is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy'. But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'"

Along the same lines, Eleanor Roosevelt said,

“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

This is not entirely dissimilar to the Buddhist Eight-fold path:

• Right view: looking at life, nature, and the world as they really are
• Right intention(or right thought): aspiring to move away from that which is wrong and immoral, or as Kant would say, having a "good will"
• Right speech: abstaining from lying, divisive or abusive speech, and from idle chatter and destructive gossip
• Right action: morally upright in one's activities, not acting in ways that would be corrupt or bring harm to oneself or to others
• Right livelihood: not to engage in occupations which, either directly or indirectly, result in harm for other living beings
• Right effort: making a sustained effort to abandon wrong and harmful thoughts, words, and deeds
• Right mindfulness: be mindful and deliberate, making sure not to act or speak due to inattention, fickleness, or forgetfulness
• Right concentration: basically, practicing meditation
• Right knowledge: seeing things as they really are by direct experience, not as they appear to be, nor as the practitioner wants them to be, but as they truly are

I am not a Buddhist, but I do like their guide to virtuous living. I think that if more people followed these very practical and obvious guidelines, our lives would be much more harmonious.

So far I have described my own personal ethic - how I live my own life. But regarding how I live with others in society, I subscribe to a general form of utilitarianism, meaning we should do things that maximize the well-being (eudaimonia) of the largest number of individuals. Of course, I realize that one can come up with degenerate cases where the maximization of happiness for the majority causes suffering for a few. Life is tough - this is going to happen sometimes. Not everyone can be made happy, and sometimes we will all be the cause of some unhappiness. In general I would try to avoid being the principal agent of harm, as this would would contradict Kant's imperative, and it would not make for a virtuous life.

Regardless of my choices, or all of our choices for our own moral codes, I agree with Haidt in thinking we have laid on a veneer of ad hoc rationality on moral issues which hides a much deeper motivation - we humans want to be moral; we want to do the "right" thing, whatever we conceive that to be. I think it is our nature, it's in our genes and culture, it's in how we evolved in tribes and communities. I would further say that only sociopaths truly don't care about being "good" (in fact, that is almost a circular statement, because lack of caring is a primary part of the definition of sociopathy).

So, as individuals, we must decide on our values and priorities - what do we want? As Kant defined it, do we want to have a "good will", the desire to do good and to wish well to others? If so, then we will be choose to be ethical and moral, according to whatever model of goodness we believe in. If we do not (and I think that very few people fully reject this in their lives, though some do) then there is no particular need to choose a moral path. However, if one chooses to live with other people, he will quickly find that is impossible to succeed without an ethical framework that conforms in most important respects with that of his community, even in a community of outlaws and outcasts. If one's desire is to be part of any community, then one must have a moral code consistent with the mores and standards of that community. Any other path would yield only discouragement and failure.

A religious skeptic's view of the world

Not only am I a non-theist (or atheist) but can also characterize myself as a Realist, also known as a Philosophical Realist. I believe that "truth" is measured by the mind's correspondence to reality, to the "state of affairs" in the world, which we are able to indirectly perceive through our senses and instruments we build to augment our senses. I am also a skeptic (in the modern sense). The pre-modern definition of philosophical skepticism included doubt about the existence of external reality and our ability to really know anything (Descartes was of this school), and that no proposition could be shown to be any more likely than any other. But that is not generally what modern skepticism is about, nor is it what I am about. The Greek root of "skeptic" is to seek, or to examine, and that is exactly what skepticism in the modern sense is - an inquiry. Modern skeptics accept that they don't have certain knowledge, but they look for the best, most reliable knowledge they can find. Lack of complete certainty doesn't imply that we can't have greater degrees of confidence in some proposals than others. As Steven Novella wrote,

To be a critical thinker is to be comfortable with uncertainty and with the limits of human knowledge; to be aware of the many flaws and limitations of human intelligence, to be flexible in the face of new ideas or information, but to not be afraid to acknowledge that some ideas are objectively better than others.

We acknowledge that we can't know things for sure, in the sense of having 100% certainty, but we can increase our confidence through evidence and through reasoning. So, keeping that in mind, I accept that the world is pretty much like our senses, and our science shows it to be. To anyone who would make a counter-claim, I ask that they give me good reason to accept their alternative. Barring such evidence, I see no reason to seriously entertain an alternative.

I am also a Philosophical Naturalist - I think that the observable universe is all there is, is all there is evidence of, and is all that we need to concern ourselves with. Other metaphysics (Idealism, Subjectivism, Relativism, Solipsism, Dualism, Monism, etc.) so blatantly contradict common experience or are so obscure and ad-hoc that I can't accept them. The philosophical choice which the evidence of our experience best supports is Realism. When we look both ways when we cross the street it is because at our core, we are all realists.

Epistemology

Regarding how we come to know the world and ourselves (my epistemology), everything we know comes from outside through our senses and inside from our minds (which is really just our minds sensing activity in other parts of our minds). There is no special revelation from supernatural entities, or miracles performed by them to get things done in the world. The real world exists without their help, and although we may be constrained in our ability to experience it by our limited senses and minds, it is out there, and we are in it. It is widely held that the most powerful support for Realism is the "no-miracles argument", according to which the success of science and realism would be miraculous if scientific theories were not at least approximately true descriptions of the world.

The nature of reality

To those who say we can't experience "ultimate reality", I question if this is even a meaningful concept (what is it other than the "actual reality" we find ourselves in?). If we can't experience it, what indication is there that it is even a real thing? I would assert we are living in "ultimate reality" - this is it. This is the only reality for which there is any evidence. Every one of our cells is constrained to operate in the 4 dimensional space-time web which constitutes reality. In fact, we can't escape it - where else would we go? Proponents of the idea of an unreachable "ultimate reality" have become enthralled by the invigorating possibility that something lies beyond our mundane world. But simply desiring and being able to conceive of such a thing in no way causes it to exist, any more than Anshelm's belief that there is a perfect god means that such a being really does exist. The desire to "transcend" and believe in a transcendent reality probably appeal to our human natures more than they refer to an actual "other" existence. As Karen Armstrong said,

The word, transcendence, means that which goes beyond our normal experience. Throughout human history, men and women have experienced a hidden sacred dimension of life which is beyond their normal thoughts, ideas, and experiences. We seek ecstasy. We seek to go beyond ourselves and experience this other, this dimension of "something else". And if we don't find it in religion, we look for it in other activities - in art, in sport, in sex, in drugs even (mistakenly). This is the way we are constituted. We are, as human beings, able to have experiences and to conceive of ideas that go beyond what we can grasp. This is part of the human condition.

It is true that we experience the universe through the filter of our senses and what our instruments tell us, and is constrained by the structure of our mental processes. What we see and know of the universe may only be an approximation of some more "high-resolution" view of reality, but every new scientific observation brings us closer to understanding it, and allows us to see deeper and farther into it. That journey towards greater understanding has not come from religion or mythology, but from controlled observation, experiment, and theory. If there is anything else that is knowable, it will probably come about as a direct result of the continued investigations of mathematics, the sciences, engineering, exploration, and creation (both scientific and artistic). Already science has shown us a universe trillions of times larger and infinitely more intricate than anything conceived of by the religions and myths of pre-scientific societies.

Do things exist which aren't material - yes, of course. It really depends on what we mean by the word, "exist", which is probably too weak and non-specific a word to encompass what is we refer to when we say it. As Dale Horvath said in a "Walking Dead" TV episode, "Words can be meager things - sometimes they fall short." Frequently "existence" is applied both to material objects and to non-material entities: processes, flows, relationships, behaviors, evolution, and other dynamic aspects of complex (i.e., more than one object involved) systems. Obviously, emotions and feelings "exist". We humans (and probably other animals) clearly have inner lives. Love, hate, loyalty, treachery, and all the other human emotions "exist", using a loose definition of the word. They exist more in the sense of how relationships or processes exist. There are no emotional "atoms" that can be weighed and measured. But it is probable (neuroscience and evolutionary biology are very close to showing this) that the human emotions that give us reasons to keep on living are outgrowths of physical processes in the body/brain system. That doesn't make them any less important, just as knowing how a rainbow, opera, flower, or sonnet works doesn't make them any less beautiful. To those who would say, "if you can accept that love and loyalty exist though you can't hold them in your hand, then why can you not also accept god?". Unlike love and loyalty (which are internal, personal mental states), there is no evidence of a external god outside the mind. There is no reason to believe in this type of god any more than there is a reason to believe in the infinity of other concepts that can be thought of which also don't really exist. If we can limit our definition of god to a personal, internal, mental or emotional state that might be more acceptable. But that is not generally what believers in god intend when they argue for his existence. Knowing that a few immaterial "things" exist (emotion, change, the future, the past) is no argument for thinking all immaterial things exists. Each requires its own rationale and reason for deserving our belief. One cannot conclude that every immaterial thing exists because some immaterial things exist!

Our mental model of the world

Material objects (including ourselves) are in the world. Those objects interact - they have relationships to each other and influence each other. Processes and phenomena occur, objects change internally and with respect to each other through time. Because of our cognitive apparatus, we create models of both the objects of the world, their relationships, and how both of these evolve through time. We see the universe work as it does, and build intricate mathematical and logical systems that correspond to the world.

"Embodied mind" theories hold that mathematical and logical thought is a natural outgrowth of the human cognitive apparatus which finds itself in our physical universe. For example, the abstract concept of number springs from the experience of living in a world where there are discrete objects that can be counted. I think it is quite probable (though no means certain) that if the universe did not have this feature (separate, countable objects), that the theory of number would probably not have come about. Although it is not the dominant theory, I think that logical systems are a result of the human propensity to create mental models of their experiences. We construct, but do not discover, mathematics. Embodied mind theorists explain the effectiveness of mathematics by arguing that mathematics was constructed by the brain in order to be effective in this universe. It is part of our natural "model making" cognitive functioning. With this view, the physical universe can thus be seen as the ultimate foundation of mathematics: it guided the evolution of the brain and later determined which questions this brain would find worthy of investigation. It is possible that because Mathematics is an enterprise whose purpose is to describe and manipulate many types of logically consistent systems, and because our world is one such system, it should be no surprise that there are certain branches of mathematics that can describe (and predict and explain) phenomena in our world. Is our world logically consistent? Of course - if it were not, it would implode in a giant flash of improbability!

Seriously, when our theories contradict each other (such as is the case with the wave/particle theory of light or the breakdown of relativity equations inside a black hole) it is an invitation to further research, not a threat to reality. These apparent internal contradictions are more likely to indicate our inadequate or incomplete physical models rather than an actual incompatibility of reality with itself. Case in point - when James Faraday saw electric current moving a compass needle at right angles to the current, he didn't question the sanity of the universe, but concluded (correctly) that there were new laws yet to be discovered.

But we also have within mathematics many concepts that do not correspond to any real things in our world. In this view, the domain of concepts which mathematics can address includes and goes beyond the world we find ourselves in. It can describe realities which don't actually exist. There have been branches of mathematics which, for decades, were considered useless and inapplicable dead ends, only to find correlates in the external world at some future point (Boolean algebra had no immediate use until Russel used it in an attempt to find a foundation for all of mathematics, and it found even greater use later for circuit design and software development).

Emergence and the Laws of Nature

Regarding "laws of nature", I group them together with mathematical and logical objects. The "laws of nature" do not cause the universe to be as it is. The universe is already as it is, and the laws are our human attempt to organize these experiences in ways that we can describe them, explain them, and predict them. An apple doesn't fall from the tree because Newton came up with the formulas for gravitational attraction, the formulas describe (and predict) how objects fall, and how they will fall in the future.

I am not a reductionist, in the sense that I don't think all phenomena and processes can ultimately be reduced to their lowest primitive elements (physical laws). The ultimate in reductionism would be to claim that quantum theory should eventually be able to explain not only how subatomic particles behave, but how atoms and molecules form, how cells come into being, now animals work, and finally how humans and human societies work. No, I am an "emergentist". I think new properties and behaviors spontaneously emerge as complexity increases. The characteristics of water (its wetness, its freezing point, boiling point, and chemical properties) spontaneously emerge as water molecules form from hydrogen and oxygen. We cannot "average" the characteristics of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom to predicts what their chemical combination (H2O) will be like. Nor can we look at any of its components (hydrogen and oxygen) to predict phase changes and it "wetness". The properties of water emerge as water (a more complex thing) is built from oxygen and hydrogen (less complex things). As molecules form, organic compounds are created, life emerges, intelligence evolves, and civilizations are born and die, new properties and behaviors spring into existence with each change in structure and complexity. The ultimate in complex properties - consciousness, intelligence, and human culture, exist in ourselves and our civilizations. Some physicists think that the lowest level of complexity - the subatomic particles themselves - may also be emergent entities that are born from the interaction of fields that pervade space (as discussed in Every Thing Must Go, by James Ladyman).

Instead of god...

Reading the above chapters should make it clear that I don't have any faith or belief in an external, omniscient, all powerful, anthropomorphic god. I also see any figurative characterizations of god as being a state of mind, or all around us, or inside us, or beyond human comprehension, as poetic exercises, not statements of how things actually are.

We have all heard versions of the aphorism, "people believe what they want to believe". That statement is cynical, but not completely false. What people want, what they value, does influence what they choose to believe, and I am no exception. Ultimately most of us center our beliefs on something that, to varying degrees, satisfies and harmonizes with those values and desires. Some people crave salvation, so they seek a god who can save them. Some want inner peace, so they are attracted to a religion that can help them achieve that. Some desire community, so the social aspect of religion is what they focus on. Some value tradition and ritual, and there are plenty of religions that offer those. Many people want certainty and removal of doubt, so they look for an authoritative god who tells them "the answer" and who seems to have a plan for them. Others seek enlightenment, so they practice meditation and transcendence exercises. And still others want to feel that someone or something is watching out for them, so they believe in angels and a caring deity. What people want guides their very rational search for a god that works for them. As Hume said, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions". We use reason and logic as tools to help us achieve what we already want. This doesn't mean that logic is arbitrary or relative, but it does mean that without a starting point of desire, logic can't motivate or move us to action or decision.

So, what do I value, what do I want? I don't care about salvation - I never think about it. And I know it sounds crass, but I also don't really care about maximizing my inner peace - I'm suppose I'm basically at an "OK" peace level, neither too anxious nor too relaxed. Sure, I would like to be happier, but (to be brutally frank) I'm not really motivated to work very hard to make that happen. I don't want to be "blissed out", and I don't think a god is going to make me happy, anyway. How about the welfare of others and making the world a better place? Of course, who doesn't want that? But to judge by my actions, I sure don't put much effort into it - no more than most, and less than many, I suppose. I would like to be a "better person" in the sense being more virtuous (in the Aristotelian manner - having more talent, intelligence, courage, humor, wit, kindness, etc). What I want, and what I value (as far as god-focused thoughts go) is to believe true things, and to disbelieve false things. I want to stay firmly footed in reality. It matters to me that my beliefs have a high correspondence to what actually exists and not refer to imaginary entities. I don't like being hoodwinked, and I don't want to be a sap. In other words, I am a hard core Realist. I want to have "justified, true beliefs (I want to believe, for the right reasons, things that are true and which can be shown to be true). Given that, I have considered and rejected the arguments for god's existence, which include these and many others:

• The argument from design is primitive and childish.
• God of the gaps is an embarrassing failure of ignorance.
• Arguments from personal revelation are unbelievable, contradictory, and weak.
• Appeal to consequences arguments are self-serving and irrational.
• There is no need for a god to define values and morality. Plato's "Euthyphro" dialog showed how we know morality without a god showing it to us.
• God as a creator of the universe begs the question, "who created god?". If one is comfortable with "he has always existed" or "he created himself, ex nihilo", I have three responses:
  1. How could you claim to know how God came into being? No one knows this! You may have faith in an ancient story about god and creation, but that is all.
  2. If you are comfortable postulating an entity that either springs into existence itself, or which can create itself, then let's just take god out of the equation and say that one of those methods is how the universe was created. Reduce the number of unexplained creations events by one.
  3. In fact, we don't know exactly how the universe came into being. Of those things we don't know, we are wiser to admit our ignorance rather than invent wild religious claims and "just-so" stories to explain them.
  God as creator is a useless, redundant, and unhelpful concept.

Do I know for a fact, with utter certainty that there is no god? Of course not. For entities of the type people refer to as god, "you can't prove a negative". We can't prove Bigfoot doesn't exist, we can't prove alien abductions don't occur, we can't prove there are no fairies in my garden, we can't prove Russell's teapot is not orbiting the Sun. However, using induction and "inference to best explanation", I have chosen among the available set of possible explanations for my experience in the world, and god is not part of it. The most economical (i.e., parsimonious) explanation, the one requiring the creation of the fewest entities, is that we live in a naturalistic universe, and that the observable universe is all there is. Most importantly, that is the only explanation which is actually supported by testing and evidence. Of course I understand that there is dark energy, dark matter, etc, etc. Depending on your definition of "observable", you can't really see these things. But we know they exist because we see their impact and how they interact with the rest of the universe. But god didn't show us those things - we found them ourselves without a god's help. As I wrote in the chapter on Atheism:

For all past generations no clear evidence [for god] has been presented (short of personal testimony, questionable documentation, and muddled reports of miracles). We have no reason to anticipate any new compelling evidence is forthcoming anytime soon. Therefore, we are probably justified in inferring that god probably doesn't exist.

...To paraphrase from Stephen Jay Gould's description of scientific facts, atheists can't have "absolute certainty" of god's non-existence. They can only say that it is "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."

If I had to commit right here, right now, I would confidently go with the "doesn't exist" option.

I am keenly aware that god's domain of influence is systematically being whittled away as we learn more about how the world actually works, rather than relying on how we wish it worked. Centuries ago, he was credited with practically everything - births, deaths, miracles, floods, good and bad harvests, etc, etc. Every time that religious apologists have been sacked behind their scrimmage line, they cede the lost territory, and simply move the goal post further back, claiming more and more esoteric ground for their god. The few remaining areas in which they claim god's influence is unarguably dominant are consciousness, morality, life, the creation of the universe, natural laws, life after death, and the like. But as we have seen, even those formerly impregnable mysteries are being unraveled by scientific investigation. If the past is any predictor of the future, many of these will also fall by the wayside as human ingenuity whittles away at those riddles. I have very little doubt that whatever most people intend when they envision some kind of external deity is riddled with ill-formed concepts, the kind of misconceptions which fuel Ignosticism.

So, I don't need a god. I don't need to invent one (or more than one) to balance my life and peace of mind. I am comfortable knowing that there is no master plan, and that it is not true that "everything happens for a reason". So, what do I believe? I believe that any meaning or significance that comes into our lives enters through our relationships, our inner lives, and how we interact with the world we live in. Our purpose, and "why we are here" is all an inner issue. There is no externally imposed purpose, no "primary purpose" for us individually or as a species. The whole idea that species have a purpose is called teleonomy, and it's been abandoned by biologists for a long time. If you are talking about a biological purpose, then I suppose our purpose is to reproduce. But that is not what most people intend when they question meaning and purpose in their lives. I think that "purpose" and "meaning" are human constructs. Therefore we make up our purposes at the individual level and the societal levels as aggregations of individuals. But you can't point to any external source or reference and say, "Yes, the purpose of the human race (or for me individually) is to do this or that". Of course, we can ask if it would be a "good idea" to put our individual and group resources to work in those directions to achieve those purposes. Is it a good idea for humankind to spread life into the lifeless places in the universe, or is it good to expand our understanding and knowledge of the world? Is it good to save humanity from suffering and increase the general wellfare? Is it our purpose to live a full and satisfying life? Well, maybe or maybe not. However, I wouldn't call any of those "Purposes" - they are more like "Projects".

Humans use god as a metaphor, a cognitive and cultural symbol and tool for coping with our individual thoughts, and for helping our societies and cultures bind and work efficiently. Across all cultures, the mind slips naturally to an anthropomorphic god who cares about us, thinks like us, but is more powerful than us in all ways. We appear to need a heavenly parent figure to fill the psychological void left by the demotion of our real parents to mere humans as our minds develop and experiences show them to not be super-human. An external god does not exist, but the idea of it certainly does exist in individuals and groups.

So, how to respond to those who think a rejection of god results in a meaningless and purposeless universe? My answer: You create your own meaning. Many people believe that meaning comes from outside, or that there is some external standard or set of goals that is created for them (religious, material, experiential, political). But ultimately, individuals decide which of these or other goals and aims they will integrate into their lives.

As Paul Kurtz wrote in his book "Affirmations" (you can watch him read this section at Paul Kurtz video.

The meaning of life is not to be found in secret formulas discovered by ancient prophets or modern gurus who withdraw from living to seek quiet contemplation and release. Life has no meaning per se; it does, however, present us with innumerable opportunities, which we can either squander and retreat from in fear or seize with exuberance. These can be discovered by anyone and everyone who can energize an inborn zest for living. They are found within living itself, as it reaches out to create new conditions for experience.

Eating of the fruit of the tree of life gives up the bountiful enthusiams for living. The ultimate value is the conviction that life can be found good in and of itself. Each moment has a kind of preciousness and attractiveness. The so-called secret of life is an open scenario that can be deciphered by everyone. It is found in the experiences of living: in the delights of a fine banquet, the strenuous exertion of hard work, the poignant melodies of a symphony, the appreciation of an altruistic deed, the excitement of an embrace from someone you love, the elegance of a mathematical proof, the invigorating adventure of a mountain climb, the satisfaction of quiet relaxation, the lusty singing of an anthem, the vigorous cheering in a sports contest, the reading of a delicate sonnet, the joys of parenthood, the pleasure of friendship, the quiet gratification of serving our fellow human beings—in all these activities and more.

It is in the present moment of experience as it is brought to fruition, as well as in the delicate memories of past experiences and the expectations of future ones, that the richness of life is exemplified and realized. The meaning of life is that it can be found to be good and beautiful and exciting on its own terms for ourselves, our loved ones, and other sentient beings. It is found in the satisfaction intrinsic to creative activities, wisdom, and righteousness.

One doesn’t need more than that, and we hope that one will not settle for less. The meaning of life is tied up intimately with our plans and projects, the goals we set for ourselves, our dreams, and the successful achievement of them. We create our own conscious meanings; we invest the cultural and natural worlds with our own interpretations. We discover, impose upon, and add to nature.

Eric Fromm, the author of Escape From Freedom saw it the same way. The way to become "free" as an individual, he said, is to be spontaneous in our self-expression and in the way we behave. This is crystallised in his existential statement "there is only one meaning of life: the act of living it". At the same time, he said we should be in touch with the needs of those with whom we share the world so that they, also, can live their lives and find their own meaning.

Clearly, Kurtz and Fromm use the word "meaning" in a different way than one uses it when discussing the meaning (or definition) of a word as you would find in a dictionary. Nor is it the type of meaning that a phrase or sentence has when it is spoken or interpreted. It isn't the type of meaning found in a poem, story, or novel. If one interprets the question, "what is the meaning of life?" using one of these forms of "meaning", then the question doesn't even make sense. Life cannot be looked up in dictionary or in some instruction manual. It would be futile to expect an answer to the question using that form of "meaning". What type of answer would even be constitute a satisfactory response? Before attempting to answer the "meaning of life" question, I would challenge the questioner to come up with a useful answer to "what does a stone mean?" or "what does an ant mean?". When reduced to this kind of simple form, the absurdity of the question becomes clear. Ants and stones have no meaning - they just are, they exist for whatever reason they found themselves in their current locations, and they do what stones or ants do.

The question might be better expressed as "What is the purpose of your existence? Why are we here? What gives your life purpose? What drives you? What do you live for and strive for? What are you passionate about? What motivates, what thrills you? What gives you peace and satisfaction? What gives your life color, direction, and significance? What do you spend your time on when you can choose exactly what you would like to do?" These are questions that can actually be answered, and each answer will make sense and be relevant only to the person answering. The "meaning" for each person comes from themselves, regardless of whether they believe they have received a meaning from outside or are answering to a higher calling. Even when they have adopted the goals, purposes, and intentions of the group to which they have joined, ultimately the individual chooses the meaning.

I mostly agree with Kurtz and Fromm - we create our own meaning/purpose, and in living life we encounter many opportunities to find meaning. However, I myself, and I think most people go through much of their daily living without close inspection of their reasons for living, and purpose for being alive. We do what we do, and we keep doing it day after day. Only occasionally do I become introspective and ask myself questions like this. But the last time I did it I realized I hadn't really made any progress in coming up with a coherent answer. I was always answering the question from scratch. So, this chapter puts it all together in one place.

Camus' raised the question: If life has no purpose, then isn't suicide preferable than living in a world without god and meaning? He posed the question only to show that this would be a coward's way out - suicide is the rejection of freedom. He concluded that in a world without god, we are free to make our own way. He thought that fleeing from the absurdity of reality into illusions, religion or death is not the right way out. Instead of fleeing the absurd meaninglessness of life, we should embrace life passionately. This is the secular way, and it is my way. Here are a couple of quotes that sum up my view and reflect Paul Kurtz's philosophy:

"Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer." - Joseph Campbell

"I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got." - Hermann Hesse

But what about the missing religious sense? Religion can give its practitioners a wonderful feeling of security and comfort. That false sense of security is factually baseless (there is not going to be an afterlife - sorry). But to the faithful, believing the lie feels terrific. Wouldn't a secular philosophy that offered no such security and hope for eternal life be dry and passionless? How can such a life lacking belief rise above somber and sober participation in mere physical processes, in a dreadful daily grind of continued purposeless existence? How can such a supposedly "empty" life compete with the awe, the thrill, and devotion a believer gives to his god? Well, sure, there is not much in the secular worldview that will make you feel quite as great as thinking you will be playing a harp in god's orchestra up in the clouds for eternity, that you have won the celestial lottery. Instead of putting my belief in an outrageous falsehood, I found my answer in something I talked in an earlier chapter - a naturalistic spirituality.. This worldview replaces traditional religious submission and worship with awe, wonder, inspiration, and reverence for the beauty and magnificence of life and of the sheer fact of existence. An exuberant embrace of life, living, loving, and engagement fills the need for connection to something larger than one's self. It requires a 21st century reinterpretation of obsolete religious sentiments, a new language and conceptualization of the immaterial, transcendent aspects of being alive. Confidence that we have one life in front of us, and that we have one chance to make the most of it is a marvelous motivator to focus on living one's best life.

As I wrote in a previous entry, the new sense of "spiritual" in this language is not supernatural, but instead connotes the immaterial, indefinable, non-rational aspect of being human. Instead of referring to immaterial spirits or souls, it looks instead to the ineffable, more fundamental aspects of human experience. Lacking belief in spirits, ghosts, and gods does not strip one of the shared human experience of transcendent joy. It only frees them from superstitions, allowing them to see more clearly how the world really is. It truly is lifting the scales from our eyes. We no longer believe that everything we don't understand is due to the actions of some god or the other. Instead, we look forward to being part of a living force that moves gradually, unevenly, but unstoppably, toward gaining that understanding ourselves, through our own efforts and abilities. We draw inspiration from nature, answers from reason and experience, comfort from friends and family, and morality from our own inner voices. We see no need for superstitious belief; it only misleads and divides us.