Wednesday 13 September 2023

Is political polarization in democratic societies a result of civilizational collapse?

I generally try to avoid succumbing to the temptations to catastrophize that I am prone to these days, but the United Nations recently reported that the earth is "well outside the safe operating space for humanity."  As reported in the Guardian "The assessment, which was published in the journal Science Advances and was based on 2,000 studies, indicated that several planetary boundaries were passed long ago." These boundaries include categories like biosphere integrity, land use, climate change, fresh water, nitrogen and phosphorus flows, synthetic pollution, and ocean acidification. The scientists suggest that 6 of 9 major boundaries have already been surpassed and the others soon will be.

(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find and  https://youtu.be/X-FJvzgrM00?si=JDCyILh3YhvcRx0L)

And of course our society continues to struggle with growing social crises such as the opioid epidemic, which according to the Lancet has killed over 30,000 Canadians since 2016, the Covid-19 pandemic, mental health crises of various sorts, such as anxiety, loneliness and depression, all amidst a declining health system. There is also the housing crisis, increasing family debt, stagnant family incomes for over 4 decades, the ongoing impacts of automation leading to deindustrialization, not to mention the nebulous oncoming threats of "AI."

(Klaas Van Egmond, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289977166_Sustainable_Civilization)

And yet in the face of such crises we also find our society increasingly politically polarized and riven by "divisiveness" (https://youtu.be/vRV_6XQrMoI?si=DFHGerT7NLkjtZGk), which undercuts our ability to respond effectively through democratic institutions. My talk today is a speculation about the root causes of this divisiveness, which concludes with some political recommendations for addressing it that goes against the grain of the suggestions made by many contemporary commentators.

Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt and their recent New York Times bestselling book Tyranny of the Minority have garnered some prominence and can serve as an example of one mainstream view. They blame American political institutions, which they see as skewed by the founding fathers too heavily against preventing tyrannies of the majority and too little against the obstructive powers of minorities. But as Zack Beauchamp argues in a review of their book, there are other countries with “crises with root causes strikingly similar to America’s, such as Israel and Hungary," not to mention other global examples such as the Philippines, Brazil Argentina, Bolivia, Slovakia and Poland, which work against an American exceptionalist explanation. But then again, Beauchamp proceeds to argue for his own explanation of growing extremism as based in “entrenched racial hierarchies” and their weakening place in American society.  It is unclear how this hypothesis applies to Israel and Hungary and other global examples.

(https://www.vox.com/23873476/america-democracy-authoritarianism-tyranny-minority-levitsky-ziblatt)

My alternate hypothesis about the root causes of polarization grows out of the work of anthropologist Joseph Tainter and his theory of civilizational collapse and the elaboration of that theory by political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon.  According to Tainter, societies collapse when they reach a point of cultural/technological development where the energy available to the system is no longer sufficient to respond to the major social and environmental problems thrown up by that system. (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse)

In other words, as Homer Dixon describes the process, major problems arise as by-products of the current technological system taken as a whole, which that system is fundamentally energy deficient to address. Of course, major new sources of energy or efficiencies can allow for such problems to be addressed. But if the ingenuity required to open up such sources or to provide the needed efficiencies is unavailable or practically out of reach then a society will be unable to respond with new levels of complexity and will face what he calls an "ingenuity gap." He is doubtful that currently proposed new sources of energy and proposed efficiencies will be able to provide the new levels of required energy.

The inevitable result is some kind of contraction of the civilization in terms of complexity (i.e. its level of progress). Dixon argues that such contraction need not be catastrophic. There can be strategic walk-back of certain aspects of the technological system that can set the stage for future growth, but often civilizational collapse results where the unravelling of complexity takes the form of a cascading collapse of interconnected aspects of complexity triggered by "energy overshoot."  The system needs to rise to new levels of complexity in response to consequences of its current operation but can't.

As such failure unfolds major derivative crises occur (environmental and social) that are the more obvious manifestation of the more fundamental lack of energy. Such crises as symptoms of collapse are identifiable by their intransigence.  They are obvious, but the solutions are not, because there is fundamentally a lack of extra energy.  So, they will go unaddressed.  Lip service might be able to be paid to solving them, overblown panaceas can be floated, promises can be made, but in real situations of civilizational collapse nothing substantial will be able to be done because the society has maxed-out its energy budget supporting its existing level of technological complexity.

For Tainter and Homer-Dixon energy is the "master resource" because it cannot simply be skirted around by way of technological development in general, only developments that expand access to energy sources will address the crises. In other words, technology itself is not an energy source.  It is only a facilitator of access to energy resources in nature. It is those resources that determine all technological possibilities, including those of accessing new energy resources.  This aspect of the dynamic is known as the concept of EROI or Energy Return on Investment. It is ultimately this ratio that determines the amount of progress possible for society.  In brief, all civilizational collapses are just energy crises masquerading as an array of more manifest crises.

In situations of energy overshoot, one would expect that democratic leaders would have an especially hard time of it. In times of excess energy, which has been our experience for the last 200 years, societies can always simply add new forms of complexity, typically in the form of new public services, if new problems arise.  Politicians can simply propose these new forms of complexity to get elected because there is unused energy available to the system. They might still lie for selfish or strategic reasons and make promises they know they can't keep, but this will not be a necessity.

But once overshoot begins to take hold (I think of this as us collectively riding down right side of "Hubbert's Peak" (aka the "Peak Oil" curve represented as a giant roller coaster) and if ingenuity gaps manifest themselves, it will become increasingly tempting for politicians to become mendacious.  Barring some kind of major energy revolution providing new high EROI sources of energy to replace the high EROI oil and coal that have fueled progress for the last 200 years, solutions will be limited to strategic compromises of existing aspects of progress, which will inevitably alienate some existing constituency.  Since easy solutions that simply involve adding complexity will be increasingly less available, there will be an acute increase in the level of leadership skill needed to fashion political consensuses. Whether from necessity or fecklessness or both, the temptation will be for leaders to oversell panaceas, reach for desperate and extreme solutions, focus on issues where non-energy intensive moral victories can be achieved (possibly as a kind of distraction), or use nefarious rhetorical tricks to maintain themselves in power.

As choices for addressing problems diminish, voters will become increasingly disenchanted and political apathy will increase.  Also, since little substantive difference in terms of addressing problems will manifest itself, the act of voting will increasingly become an exercise in random selection. If choosing one way or another makes little practical difference, there can be no actual rationale for choosing in one direction over another. Non-rational, essentially random features of human psychology, personality and circumstance aggregated across vast populations will become the deciding factors for how people select political parties. Political life will increasingly become an arbitrary exercise of "team picking", even as voters become splintered into ever finer and increasingly less-rational factions.  In democracies, which must ultimately always filter choices through majority parties or coalitions, the teams will tend towards the mean (50% going this way, 50% going that way). Such a process will likely involve much scapegoating, blame-laying and intensifying vilification and demonizing of the other team as a psychological relief-valve for the persistent failure of their growing concerns to be addressed.

In short, political polarization in democratic societies would likely be an effect of, and sign of, those societies being in a process of collapse.  Could such a process be happening to us?  Certainly not if we take the perspective of many commentators on polarization, who often suggest that polarization itself is a cause of potential social breakdown.  For example, Morgan Kelly, an author at the High Meadows Environmental Institute observes:

As social interactions and individual decisions isolate people into only a few intractable camps, the political system becomes incapable of addressing the range of issues — or formulating the variety of solutions — necessary for government to function and provide the services critical for society.

(https://environment.princeton.edu/news/like-a-natural-system-democracy-faces-collapse-as-polarization-leads-to-loss-of-diversity/)

In short, it is people's personal dispositions that create polarization, not wider forces affecting society that influence those dispositions.

However, in subsequent remarks Kelly points to other factors based in the new media as potential culprit for these negative personal dispositions. His comments, and those of many other popular commentators on the issue, raise the possibility of what Marshall McLuhan called, in the regrettable culturally insensitive terminology of his time, the "tribalizing" effects of new media or what theorists drawing on his work now call "narrowcast" media, such as the social media platforms with their tendency to create "echo chambering" in public discourse. McLuhan would also add that such media also, paradoxically, embody possibilities for increasing exposure to negative and critical viewpoints, which he described as "the global village" effect, which can lead to a disruption of the development of a sense of personal identity.  He observes that situations of the loss of identity either individually or in societies almost always result in violent responses. Such complex effects are real, but I would argue that they might only feed off and accentuate a process of polarization like that described above.

My reason for questioning the suggestion that the echo chambering effect is the primary cause of polarization is because this suggestion only explains increasing insensitivity and decreasing tolerance of public discourse, not the increasing sense deadlock and decreasing confidence in political life.  As reported by the Carnegie institute, several trends developing in democracies seem to characterize polarization in Both North America and Europe, such as:

  1. popular confidence in political institutions has plummeted
  2. U.S. and European voters are disenchanted with mainstream political parties
  3. High levels of partisan polarization, especially in the US (https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/06/21/comparing-democratic-distress-in-united-states-and-europe-pub-76646)

The last point's connection to the prior two is somewhat baffling. Why, if confidence is so low in institutions and parties, would substantial numbers of voters be inclined to cling more ardently to parties?  Why would others choose to move to extreme groups rather than simply, as has always been the tendency in democracies, nudge dominant parties to take up new policies and transform them into mainstream policies?  Instead, we find societies increasingly split. For example, in the last Canadian election the victorious Liberals won 32.6 percent of the popular vote, whereas the Conservatives actually won the popular vote with 33.7 percent (https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html). It seems increasingly that elections hang on knife edges. In the U.S, Trump only pushed over the top because of the archaic state-elector system and recent elections in Israel required new levels of coalition building. There seems to be an increasing tendency in democracies for a lack of clear mandates.  Instead, slim minorities often determine major shifts in political direction, such as in Brexit. What can explain this phenomenon of oscillation around the middle?

If the effect of echo chambering was main cause of polarization, the effect would be to coarsen debate between existing party constituencies as they increasingly lose contact with each other. But this hypothesis alone does not explain the growing sense of gridlock. Indeed, if new media and their echo chambering effect decrease the awareness of other groups, we should expect that the effect would be to simply to solidify existing groups at the numbers that existed before their effects took hold. But what we seem to find instead is societies gravitating towards equally balanced fundamentally opposed pluralities.

Such a tendency for oscillation around the middle of the political spectrum might be what causes the sudden major flips on issues with only the narrowest of margins, as in Brexit, or the paradoxical victories parties who lack popular support, but who eke out victories due the arcane minutiae of electoral systems. This split at the middle of the spectrum does not seem widely discussed by commentators on polarization. Rather, the focus is on the vitriol and extremity of groupings making up the coalitions of left and right (https://youtu.be/x_Q9ynm2Rfg?si=j6_z83RbH2NJzby8).

As Kelly's comment exemplifies, commentators frequently point at personal tendencies of thought and communication as the main causes of polarization. In a TEDx talk titled "That Open Secret About Political Polarization" Jake Teeny points out, for example that surveys indicate there is an increasing tendency for people to report feeling reluctant to engage in discussions with political opponents because of an "expectation of being unheard." In response he presents some practical suggestions for overcoming and managing such feelings. 

Tainter and Homer-Dixon's analysis suggests a different explanation for why people might be having feelings of being unheard. They suggest that it could be the inherent intransigence of the problems in situations of energy overshoot and the encouragement such a situation creates for exploring desperate measures. Such desperation and the inevitable fruitlessness of addressing side-effects could be the cause of an increasing sense of frustration with political discourse, at least in democratic societies.

In contrast, as Homer-Dixon and the historian Ronald Wright explore in some detail, in authoritarian societies one might simply find increasing inequality between marginalized groups and elites as elites leverage their power and privilege to preserve and even expand their interests in the lead up to collapse. Wright in his Short History of Progress discuss actual empirical evidence of this, such as can be found in surveys of the bone density of skeletons of different classes in societies that have experienced collapse, such in meso-American societies like the Maya. Such inequality will undoubtedly also manifest in democratic societies, but conceivably to a lesser extent. Instead, polarization might be the primary political effect.

If Tainter, Homer-Dixon and Wright’s portrayal of civilizational collapse is accurate, societies experiencing it will need to focus their leadership expertise on addressing the root causes of this kind of situation. Priority must be put on seeking radically new energy sources, major new efficiencies in current usage and possibilities for walking-back non-essential aspects of so-called "progress," to allow for controlled forms of "collapse" in the meantime.

Attributing blame to who is being most intransigent will not be helpful.  Nor will seeking ways for ameliorating polarization directly, such as suggestions like that of Henry E. Brady of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy who recommends better "civics courses."  If polarization is largely a symptom of a largely unrecognized dynamics of collapse, viewing civics as a "giant killer" of the phenomenon might be a mere panacea, no matter the intrinsic value of such educational activity.  Instead, what will be critical will be civic activism focused on the fundamental energy and technological systems dynamics feeding collapse. Think of the case of the recent American government shutdown, where an ultra-conservative minority held a slim balance of power that allowed it to hold the operation of the entire U.S. government hostage. Many in both the right and left news media were happy to portray that minority as mere ignorant attention seekers. Far too few were inclined to look for deeper causes for why conservative people were increasingly behaving like political nihilists and anarchists.

So instead of seeking to lay blame we must unrelentingly demand of our political leaders to explain what they are doing to find new forms of energy, and energy efficiency and what existing technological system they think are not as vital as most believe. As a catch phase we would need "innovation and discrimination about innovation." Political leaders and our own political discourse must be judged in terms of these priorities, until civilizational collapse has been managed or fundamentally averted, if collapse is indeed occurring.


Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank all those who provided feedback on my presentation of this piece at the Atlantic Regional Philosophical Annual Meeting in Charlottetown and especially Dr. Will Sweet and Dr. Pamela Courtney-Hall.

Sunday 9 January 2022

Is the Rhetoric of AI just a Cover for Big Tech?

The Guardian published an opinion piece recently:

Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?

Does the advent of machine learning mean the classic methodology of hypothesise, predict and test has had its day?

by Laura Spinney

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/09/are-we-witnessing-the-dawn-of-post-theory-science


This piece by Spinney strikes me as sensationalism that is exploiting common anxieties and misperceptions about AI loosely connected with some legitimate concerns about the declining momentum of scientific progress ("The End of Science" a la Horgan and the challenges of "Big Science"). One remark in particular makes me question the author's judgement:
particularly a form of machine learning called neural networks, which learn from data without having to be fed explicit instructions.
The highlighted part is overstatement. All machine learning(including "neural networks") begins with basic assumptions and methods, and specific goals ("end points"). These starting methods just allow for their own refinement and alteration through the processing of large amounts of data, which the digital revolution has made available. This is simple feedback, which has been a part of programming from as far back as Ada Lovelace. But it is made so much more "sensational' when buzz words like "neural network" "AI" and machine learning are used instead of mundane programming terminology. 30 years ago, we used terms like "self-modifying code" for such mundane techniques of software development.

Pieces like this one indicate to me that there is something very strange at work in the lives of computer programmers and software companies today that has led them to develop this rhetoric about AI, machine learning and neural networks. I worry that the "sexing up" of software engineering in the face of the failure of real AI by these folks is being exploited by big IT to act as a cover for its activities of getting lots of people to buy into the inanities of our largely unregulated tech industry.


By even using the terms "AI" and "machine learning" instead of more accurate descriptors like "clever coding" or "data mining" automated programming", members of the public have already ceded the issue of whether these applications should be embraced or avoided, legally limited or left to users to guide completely by themselves.  Who can be apposed to the application of intelligence?  Who would want to limit "a learner".  The reality is that these terms are mere marketing hype which non-programmers should refuse to use.

Thursday 27 February 2020

Does the Trolley Problem Present a Reductio Ad Absurdum Argument Against Utilitarianism?


I have been thinking about the Trolley Problem and the Teselacta from Dr. Who. Typically trolley problems are viewed as thought experiments that highlight competing ways the predominant Utilitarian and Deontological theoretical traditions can go about deriving answers to moral conundrums. In other words, they're meant to provide a focal point for debate between these two traditions. But what I think they actually do is highlight the deficiencies of Utilitarianism.

What Trolley problems reveal about Utilitarianism is that other factors besides happiness/utility are absolutely necessary for moral decision-making. In the problem's simplest form, choosing the death of five people or switching the track to kill one, a Utilitarian analysis, and I would argue, any kind of proper moral analysis should have one try to save the five. The truly interesting debates arise once one begins to add other factors, such as relationships with the other parties involved. In the empirical studies utilizing trolley scenarios people begin to substantially change their answers when other such factors enter in. And this makes sense if other things can also be considered good besides simple "happiness experiencing potential" of the sentient units possibly influenced by one's choices.

A more interesting variation of the trolley problem (this is where the Teselecta part comes in) might be to ask if the tracks had only one individual on each track: Hitler and Gandhi, both appearing through time vortexes immediately before their actual historical deaths. Your action of killing them would make no significant historical difference. Both will be killed and then swept back to their own time as dead bodies leaving the subsequent timeline intact. No further lives will be saved or influenced by the act. The train is hurtling towards Gandhi. Should you change the track and switch it to Hitler?  How should you make choices about such, as my son called them, "micro utilities?"

One might argue that the scenario is null-- One's choice will make no significant moral difference. Leave the train to run over Gandhi, and then let him be swept back in time to have the assassin's bullet hit his lifeless body and subsequent events unfold.  Or switch the track and play a role in "giving one" to Hitler just before he would have given one to himself with his pistol in the bunker. Since there are no significant differences in consequences for history, Utilitarianism might say there is no real moral issue at all. But how would one be able to reach such a conclusion?

If one could reduce suffering even by a tiny amount more, then the maximization of utility in the universe might only be achieved by putting Hitler out of his misery just a few moments earlier. Whereas, killing Gandhi who was conceivably feeling fine before the assassin's bullet felled him, might not be so effected by losing a few seconds of his general equanimity.  How could we weigh those few seconds against each other?  Is eliminating a few seconds of the undoubted anguish of Hitler in his last moments more weighty than shortening a few seconds good feeling of Gandhi basking in the praise of his supporters?  What if he happened to be worrying about something? Which tittle of utility should decide the matter?

And how does my own feeling factor in?  If I might feel good at giving one to Hitler, would this tip the balance?  Clearly it would be needed to be added to the scale.  But what if I experienced discomfort at being forced to make such a decision?  Having to think these potentially weighty matters through, especially under time pressure, might have its own displeasure attached to it.  I should certainly not let that displeasure rise to a level that I would tip the balance of the universe's utility in a lower direction than it might be otherwise. So perhaps I really should simply make an arbitrary decision to avoid such a possibility?  But what of possible regret?  Shouldn't be a problem.  Just try to make a reasonable estimate of the utility in the time allowed and choose (don't be a Chidi Anagonye).

When dealing with such minuscule amounts of possible utility/happiness, we are faced with a complex decision involving a possible return on investment of our moral unease and earnest concern.  Mere seconds at issue with the feelings of the subjects of our decision weighed against our own discomfort resulting from having to take our basic moral responsibility under Utilitarianism seriously.  If  situation were real, such reflections would likely be moot. Aristotle might be right that ethics in real life requires well established habits rather than complex accounting of consequences. It is only when the scenario is hypothetical that we can lavish time on trying to think such matters completely through.

But one thing we can't avoid is at least risking undergoing some uncompensated discomfort from undertaking our duties under Utilitarianism in order to provide the beginnings of an assessment of what the possible return on our own initial moral unease might be versus the possible utility that could be obtained from a possible moral decision. In other words, Utilitarianism demands such an initial investment of our own moral discomfort. We might, after having made such an investment, discern, as I suggest above, that maybe it is simply not worth my discomfort to intensively engage with a specific moral problem, but we can't be guaranteed that we might not overshoot before being able to make that judgement because we can't know what our assessment will turn up before we have undertaken it.  But if we discover that we have suffered more than any possible suffering that we could have prevented (when weighted against pleasure obtained), and then decide to cut our losses, this does not change the fact that Utilitarianism demands of us that we should have undertaken the initial assessment. We always must make such an initial investment of our possible moral discomfort REGARDLESS of the utility that might result.

In other words, seeking to maximize potential happiness cannot be the only criteria worth considering when when it comes to fulfilling our moral responsibilities. We would end up in a infinite regress otherwise.  Should I make the initial investment of moral discomfort to discern whether I should make the initial investment of moral discomfort?  Where could such processes of thought end?  Clearly, I need a principle: One has a prima facie duty to risk reducing the world's overall utility from what it otherwise might be to undertake a basic moral assessment of any situation possibly requiring moral assessment. And I should discern whether Utilitarianism is the right way to frame such questions, which will require undertaking even further risks of possible unrecoverable moral unease, unless I can simply assert that it is impossible in principle for Utilitarianism to be wrong. In other words we have a prima facie duty to engage in theoretical inquiry of a certain sort, regardless of possible maximization of utility. As Krishna say, you have a right your labours, but not the fruits of your labours.

Thursday 28 November 2019

Does Liberalism Lead Inevitably to Cascades of Tragedies of the Commons?


Canadian political philosopher George Grant argues that Liberalism is the political philosophy that makes freedom the absolute value of political life and if deeply embraced, the absolute value of personal life too. If freedom really is the essence of human existence, then based on this outlook one's priority will always be to seek to limit freedom to the least extent possible. But I wonder if this emphasis has a certain kind of fundamental risk to it related to the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons.

John Stuart Mill certainly helped clarify the Liberal approach for the budding Whig and Liberal political parties of the 19th century.  One's freedom should not be limited unless it could be seen to directly cause harms to others. "Liberal" democratic societies, therefore, should continuously experiment with withdrawing limitations on freedom. According to Mill, the happy byproduct of this approach would be a better society for everyone because individuals are better than governments to explore and understand the possibilities (plans of life) that can make them, and potentially others, more happy.

We have lived with this approach being the predominant approach in industrialized countries for last century and a half. With the aid of abundant fossil energy it has produced a global culture of affluence for many. But we also seem beset by a growing array of crises, that seem to have the hallmarks of instances of tragedies of the commons (soil crisis, fish crisis, water crisis, extinction crisis, debt crisis, pollution crisis, climate crisis, energy crisis, democratic deficit, automation crisis, obesity crisis, drug crisis, anxiety crisis, depression crisis).

Tragedies of the commons, as I understand them, occur whenever harms can result from actions undertaken for an individual's own benefit that are not born by that individual alone but are spread among some wider number of morally relevant parties. When such conditions are present, there must be some kind of formal response that can restrict the behaviour in a way that effectively (although not necessarily perfectly) prevents the harms from being offloaded (externalized) onto others. Unless these measures are reasonably effective, "defection" from responsibility will be continuously encouraged (to the point of absolute necessity) and growth of the harms will rise to unmanageable proportions for everyone.

Or, as the logical puzzle "the prisoner's dilemma" makes clear (especially if repeated over many iterations when modelling behaviours), simply pursuing self advantage as a strategy without mutual limits effectively imposed by all those affected by your decisions can never lead to optimal outcomes for all involved, but only sub-optimal outcomes. Reason demands binding rules on all parties negatively affected by each other's actions.

The problem as I see it is that Liberalism encourages us to always "push towards the red line" in terms of our society's allowance of behaviours that can turn out to trigger tragedies of the commons.  The basic approach of Liberalism is always to seek and experiment with the removal of limits in order to discern if suspected harms are not actually real. In economics this takes the form of the goal of reaching Pareto Optimality or the maximally efficient economy in terms of the production that can be wrung from any given natural environment. This approach might not be a problem if human life and human societies are relatively simple. If this is the case then people in such societies could risk being continuously experimental about removing limits because they could relatively easily discern if missteps had occurred and pull back by re-instituting those limits or by creating new binding rules.  

But societies today are not simple-- They are complex and rapidly evolving technological societies, in which new activities are continuously being added to human life in an ever changing and ever complex "technological ecology" as Marshall McLuhan might put it. The negative effects of such changes often take decades to manifest, as we can see with the impacts of DDT and automobiles.  And technologies can interact in ways that can "synergize" completely new and unexpected negative effects, such as we are beginning to sense with various forms of social media.  Running economies continuously at Pareto Optimality means that any declines in ecological conditions leave no room for adjustment.

But since our instinct in liberal societies is to leave people as free as possible and to have faith in democracy and our innovative ability to fix problems (i.e. technology), we generally assume that we will be able to create whatever limits or systems of management that might reveal themselves to be necessary. But might it be possible, if societies are complex enough for this ability to discern the sources of tragedies of the commons to be overwhelmed?  If the number of new behaviours being introduced becomes so high we might reach a point that we cannot discern among the complexity the specific behaviours (technological activities) leading to the harms poised to runaway into tragedy.

Put another way, might Liberalism be a political and personal philosophy suitable only for relatively simple societies in which harms and their sources can be easily recognized (e.g. my fist hitting your nose) rather than the complex globally interconnected technological societies we live in today? In such societies problems unleashed by technological activities and the synergy between those activities might take so long to manifest themselves that by the time we notice they are problematic that they may have become so deeply embedded that they are effectively beyond practical control (cultural momentum/technological dependency).  Perhaps, therefore, it is time for us to consider returning to being a society of laws (harm seekers, lawmakers and law enforcers). A cautionary philosophy, might be the only political philosophy that can adequately deal with the main threats of the present and the future.

But since we cannot name "technology" or our favourite political philosophy "liberalism" (aka neo-conservatism) as problems, we must find people to blame for our growing fears. So we blame immigrants, or we blame the supporters of opposing mainstream liberal/neo-conservative political parties, or we blame prominent public figures (Trump, etc), or nebulously defined sinister groups (terrorists of the right or left). We put faces to our growing fears and then see ourselves as being on the other team.

Evolution has inclined us to respond in such ways. We evolved to manage threats from specific human individuals in small groups, not complex problems unleashed by synergizing technological ecologies and the abstractions of longstanding political philosophies working their way out in globalized societies.  But we must be able to name the sources of the threats we are facing or we will be inevitably drawn towards the personalization of our problems. To "technology" I would add the name "liberalism" as a fundamental source of the growing cascade of unfolding global tragedies that we face today.

Wednesday 6 November 2019

Does Nihilism Provide the Best Argument for Theism?


Is the rejection of nihilism the best argument in support of the consideration of the possibility of the existence of God?  At the prompting of a number of students, I've been watching videos of Jordan Peterson vs. various New Atheists.  Matt Dillahunty was Peterson's latest sparring partner.  It was while watching this video that a thought struck me about these recent defenders of materialist-naturalist-scientific-atheism. Many of them, such as Dillahunty, describe how in the course of their lives they moved away from religious upbringings to embrace atheism. This is so alien to my own experience, since I was raised in a non-religious home, without any encouragement by my parents to believe in God.  Not that I was actively discouraged. There was just a general lack of discussion of any serious sort, except for the occasional critical remark such as that "God was the opiate of the masses" or a "crutch." None of my close friends except for one went to Church.

The result was that for the earliest years of my life I found myself quite happily identifying with a kind of materialist-naturalist-scientific-atheism. In my early teens, I was attracted to Marxism and to the supposedly scientific outlook that Marx felt his outlook was based in. By my mid-teens I was also starting to explore the outlook of nihilism and was reading some Nietzsche. In my late teens, however, I began to question my commitment to nihilism and eventually found myself drawn into the life of a Christian community. That community transformed my life.

What I think many of the New Atheists don't seem to recognize is that their religious upbringing might immunize them from serious consideration of nihilism. Perhaps their religious upbringings, along with the support of lingering religious influences on culture provides an intellectual footing that prevents them from going deeper in their philosophical explorations. Whereas my own life experience started with a certain kind of vague leftist/liberal indifference towards theism, it eventually led to nihilism because one realizes that outlooks like Marxism, Positivism and scientism are not really scientific perspectives but quasi-religious worldviews. Marxism, for instance, is filled with a lingering earnestness for justice that one also hears in the Hebrew prophets. It has saints and music. I still know the words to the Internationale. What drove me towards nihilism was the inability of outlooks like Marxism, positivism, or naturalism to take seriously what committing oneself to a hard-nosed rational empiricism really entails. It involves accepting that only empirical statements are meaningful and capable of being ascertained as true or false. Seeing the world as a material system without supernatural elements means throwing out all the comforting ideas about meaning, purpose, freedom and morality. If one is truly to be a naturalist, this means not accepting subjective beliefs about realities beyond the straightforward operations of matter. As Nietzsche made clear, believing that God is dead must lead one to also wipe away the horizon of meaning which that concept enlightened.

My teenage brain was, of course, filled with certain anxieties about these thoughts. Was life essentially a joke?  A meaningless struggle, with no guarantees whatsoever?  Was morality a mugs game?  Were all human endeavors essentially shams?--  Mere attempts to whistle past the graveyard?  I accepted that the answers to these questions were most likely "yes."  I still find myself sometimes inclining to these conclusions. I felt that scientific discovery shed no useful light on these issues. I was prepared to go forward in life in a stoic way without false and imaginary ideas clung to only to provide solace. This was what I felt all religious beliefs were really about. They were fantasies that helped people in the face of the stark reality of the meaninglessness of existence.

My reaction to folks like Dillahunty and Harris, who so easily spout variations of vaguely utilitarian/natural law outlooks and decry arguments that imply their positions must lead to immorality or amorality, is that they really don't take their atheism seriously enough. I might be one of the few Christians who reject their arguments not because they reject God, but because they reject atheism. They believe that atheism need not devolve to nihilism, whereas I believe that it must. So when they deny that atheism leads to immorality or amorality, I hear Nietzsche whispering in the background, have the courage of your convictions. Sure, you need not, nor are likely to, start killing people, or as Dillahunty quips to "shove Sam Harris off the stage", but don't try to justify still believing in non-empirical realities like "goodness" and "meaning."  Don't suggest that "consciousness" and "freedom" are anything more than mere artifacts of an interesting picture-show of the deterministic operation of your synapses.  If Matt doesn't shove Sam off the stage, admit that this has nothing to do with morality--nothing to do with Sam's worth, or Matt's sense of self-worth-- or the "self-evident goodness of happiness," but is simply the result of contingent biological instincts for self preservation. As Nietzsche jokes, "man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that." If one is prepared to jettison God because there is no compelling empirical evidence, one must also be prepared to jettison these other comforting concepts too. Don't make arbitrary exceptions for ones that you just happen to like or perhaps feel embarrassed to bring into public question.

It would appear that Jordan Peterson thinks along similar lines. You can see him probing Dillahunty in ways meant to prompt him to expose the various junctures in his thought where he holds empirically dubious commitments such as belief in free will, the intrinsic worth of human beings, the importance of being earnest as opposed to straightforwardly self-concerned, etc. One is left wondering why it is so important to ditch God but leave all these other non-empirical aspects of human life and thought untouched. Dillahunty is highly selective in his supposed empiricism and "rational" thinking.  People's reports of their religious experiences are simply discounted, as are apparent somatic effects of such experiences, but their reports of consciousness, freedom and value and their supposedly amenable effects on societies (including science) are left untouched.

So I guess my argument is simple. If you are going to be a materialist-naturalist-scientific-atheist, you really must be a nihilist too. Non-nihilistic atheism unless *intensively* philosophically considered too often simply ends up being an incoherent mishmash of the cultural lingerings of moral outlooks that have grown out of essentially religious metaphysical commitments. The argument here is not that atheism necessarily leads to immoral behaviour. I think there are lots of instincts and social pressures that will keep most of us in line most of the time, and will likely continue to do so for quite some time, if not possibly indefinitely. The objection here is not about such practical matters. It's about whether one has an intellectually coherent metaphysical outlook that can make sense of one's desire for and respect of these instincts and social practices. But many of the New Atheists seem to wish to avoid such wider discussion of foundations, or what Charles Taylor calls "frameworks" of meaning. They are focused only on the issue of God, but seem uncomfortable and uninterested in discussion of other metaphysical beliefs (metaphorical substrates) and abstract issues of contemporary epistemology that inform critical aspects of their outlooks (including their respect for science).

Maybe the best way to proceed in a defense of theism is not directly by way of a defense of the existence of God. Maybe what one must first do is understand why nihilism is not acceptable. If this can be done, then the issue of faith might simply boil down to making a choice between nihilism vs. Non-nihilism (Anihilism?)  If nihilism doesn't make sense, then one must find another outlook, with theism being one of the many possibilities to consider. Perhaps such consideration, if carried out honestly and sincerely over a lifetime, might be enough to allow one to count oneself a theist.



Thursday 24 October 2019

Is the Issue of Revelation Inescapable, Even for Atheists?


As a theist and member of a Christian religious community I cannot avoid the issues of divine revelation and scriptural authority.  The issue of revelation is generally thought to pose questions of whether and how a God might communicate with us.  It therefore seems to be a derivative issue of the issue of theism versus anti-theism. The reasoning behind its apparent derivative nature would seem to emerge naturally from the assumption that the question of whether and how a God might communicate with us presupposes an answer to the issue or whether there is a God or not.  If there is no God, then one would have no need to consider the issue of whether and how such a being might communicate with us. What I want to argue here is that such an assumption is not well founded and is likely largely a byproduct of habits of thought born of the the long standing influence of theism on our society.  Instead, I will argue that the issue of revelation is really centred on the question of whether there is a possibility for any meaningful insight to emerge from reality about the ultimate purpose and meaning of existence. "Revelation" in this sense can be seen to simply refer to the possibility for truths to emerge about these issues from our experience of existence.  Given this definition, having a position on revelation is unavoidable.

If one believes there is a possibility for meaningful truths to emerge (manifest themselves) about the ultimate purpose and meaning of existence, then by my definition of "revelation," one can be described as a believer in revelation. This position can grow out of or be clarified by a position of theism, but it need not. Under such a view, it would be even possible to be an atheist and a believer in revelation. There is a minor grammatical issue here that must be addressed. In English the verb "to reveal" might typically suggest the operation of an agent of some sort, thus skewing the discussion inadvertently towards theism. However, it is certainly the case that one can write about an earthquake causing a rock to roll away "revealing" a hidden cave.  It is that objective sense of "reveal" that I have in mind when I speak of revelation.  Given these stipulations, the contrasting position to being a believer in revelation would be nihilism (the position that there are no ultimate purposes for or meanings of existence) or an extreme positivism (a position that only empirical statements are capable of being judged true or false).

It is unavoidable for a reasonable thoughtful person to have some kind of position on this issue.  As a nihilist or positivist one believes there is no possibility for such propositions ever being determined to be true, or one believes otherwise, either in the form of the possibility of such truths or that one has actually ascertained such truths. To recast this schema onto the debate about theism, it would seem to me that agnostics in their suspension of judgement about the issue of the non-existence or existence of God, commit themselves to the position that there is some possibility that God exists-- either perfectly balanced by the rational possibility that God does not exist, or that the exact balance of rational proof cannot be, as yet, determined. An agnostic might argue that her position is really the absence of a position and that suspension of judgement, as such, cannot convey anything of substance about the issue, but is not this just an evasion?  If one's agnosticism is to represent anything more than an arbitrary decision not to participate in the discussion, in effect simply to put one's fingers in one's ears when theists and atheists are about, then one accepts some possibility for the existence of a God. And if one accepts such a possibility, one also accepts the possibility that truths about the ultimate purpose of existence might manifest themselves and thus would be a believer in revelation by my definition. Even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he cannot be absolutely sure that God does not exist, and he has spoken eloquently of how people can find meaning in life through the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

By my definition the only way one can avoid being a believer in revelation is by way of a defense of nihilism or positivism.  If one accepts revelation in this sense, then the only question remaining is what kinds of answers one can expect to find about the issue of meanings and purposes of existence.  This brings me to the issue of "scriptural authority" that I also mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Can the answers to questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence be found in particular records of religious thought about such questions? This question is dependent on the secondary issue of revelation: How does it work?  For some traditional theists, the answer is that God directs the thoughts and activities of certain individuals, such that they record God's thoughts directly in written form--so called "Automatic writing."  More liberal groups, like my own United Church, generally teach these days that God communicates with the conscience of certain individuals. These individuals then write about their experiences.  Under this view, written revelation is always a "secondary" witness to a "primary" experience in the mind of an individual.

Although this more modern way of expressing the nature of revelation is more in keeping with my own view, it is not fully satisfactory to me.  I am too much of a naturalist materialist of a certain sort to find such a description to be helpful. It requires one to believe in a God of "magic" who arbitrarily interferes in the operations of nature and the inner conscious lives of only certain individuals. For me, revelation, if it is not to be arbitrary, must respect the law bound character of nature that we observe.  And it must not grant "privileged" access to God. I think there are good moral reasons for avoiding both of these forms of arbitrariness on God's part. I think the New Testament expresses a similar position when it asserts that one of the ongoing gifts of the Spirit is the gift of prophesy:
And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets (1 Corinthians 12:28).
Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:1).
Similarly, the Calvinist tradition of which I partake also emphasizes the absolute authority of God over all of creation.

With these points in mind, I would say for me that God's revelation manifests itself in every aspect of creation. The creation as a whole is God's communication to conscious agents within that creation.  Every atom and its motion is a part of God's work and thus a part of God's ultimate plan and purpose for creation. This is why the study of science is so important.  I agree with Galileo that there is a "book" of nature. So what does such an expansive view suggest about the other book?  Am I such a liberal Christian that I hardly can grant any authority to scripture written by human hands?  No I would grant it more.

Like all the material aspects of the world scriptures represent the direct work of God. But scriptures also represent an account of an ongoing conversation among people about the issues of ultimate meaning and purpose (their experiences,  imaginative leaps and debates drawing on such sources--which is what I mean by the process of "reason"), including their interactions with people of radically disparate viewpoints from their own.  For theists, this conversation focuses on purported perceptions of God's works. The most ancient scripture reflect some part of these metaphysical discussions going back millennia into the oral traditions of various communities.  Since I am also a follower of Socrates,  for me the operation of reason demands the interaction of a multiplicity of viewpoints defending their positions in consideration of each other, with the most reasonable discourses being those that have taken into account the greatest number of the disparate points of view as possible.  "Dialectic" is the fancy Greek-derived word for such processes.

For me the primary reason for looking to ancient writings as authorities is because they put us into contact with the views of others whose views might be the most radically different from our own.  Someone living 2500 years ago is only available for me today as a potential interlocutor on issues of ultimate meaning in the form of the record they might have left, in some small part, through their influence on the creation of human writings like those we call "scriptures."

Works like the Vedas, the Dharmapada, the Tao de Ching, the Analects of Confucius, the Torah and the prophets and writings of the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament or the Koran, are important to read because they put us in touch with the thoughts of people from long ago about these issues.  I can go talk to any living person, or consult the millions of books published since the invention of the printing press, but if I want to consult people radically different from those who have lived since the 15th century on issues of ultimate meaning I must generally enter the realm of the great religious writings.  This is a duty, because Socrates shows us how our arguments are only as good as the strongest criticisms they have been able to stand up to, and one finds the strongest criticisms by consulting people with radically different experiences and positions from one's own.  Ancient people are likely to be the most different from people today as you can get, so excluding them from the conversation based on arbitrary assumptions that their views must be out-of-date, is simply not acceptable.  It is for this reason that they are "mandatory" reading to some degree.

But just because such writings might be mandatory reading for the thoughtful person clearly does not fully encompass what most people mean be the idea of "scriptural authority."  This concept  usually speaks to some special ethical or doctrinal authority one is willing to grant to certain specific writings.  For me, such a notion of authority arises simply from the necessities of logic.  If certain claims conflict logically one simply must choose which claims one will accept as being more worthy of rational consideration.  And when it comes to comprehensives works with comprehensive disagreements, one must be prepared to judge which work one will draw on as a resource when considering ones views in "dialogue" with others on issues of ultimate meaning.  If rationality is as Socrates suggests, always something that can only manifest itself through a process of discourse between disparate points of view, but one, as a mere mortal, cannot read and/or verbally communicate with everyone, then practical choices will have to be made regarding the priority of who one will choose as one's discursive partners.  Most of us cannot just read the Vedas, Dharmapada, Tao de Ching, the Analects of Confucius, Torah, prophets and writings of the Hebrew scriptures, New Testament and the Koran, let alone all the other interesting writings, when we need to make judgments touching on issues of ultimate meaning and purpose.  We certainly can't do so if we find ourselves in a crisis.  At such moments, hard decisions will have to be made regarding whose thoughts to commune with, and in truly dangerous times, whose thoughts to preserve for the use of others in the future, sometimes at the expense of one's own life.

For me scriptures are authoritative because they represent the crystallization of ongoing and potentially extremely ancient conversations (and efforts to preserve such conversations) about the meaning and purpose of existence.  They are authoritative because I need to formulate my own positions in the light of as many disparate views as possible from my own, and the most ancient people are likely to be as disparate as one can get.  The best scriptures, therefore, would be those which are most ancient or draw on ancient sources, which encompass the largest number of disparate views in their formation, and which preserve the greatest diversity of views. This is why I like the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Each tacitly present a diversity of authors, including ones strongly influenced by vibrant oral traditions.  And it is now better understood how even many of those "single" authors represent the work of multiplicity of authors and redactors. The land of Israel represents a crossroads of world cultures.  The great libraries of the Hindu scriptures are similar in these respects.  But ultimately logical judgments must be made between such conflicting sources.  It is simply a matter of logic that I must create an ordering or precedence of trustworthiness. Unless one is simply happy to allow oneself to drift awash among the thoughts of great works, one must begin at some point to prioritize which among them will be one's primary interlocutors. For me my attempt to do so would go something like this:

Mark
Gospels
New Testament
Torah
Job/Ecclesiastes/Amos
Hebrew Scriptures
Bhagavad Gita (Thank you India!)
Vedas
Dhammapada
Pali Canon
...
"Letters Papers from Prison" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine
...
The Koran
...
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
....

I think it might be possible for someone to hold a position that seeking to consider the views of ancient people is unnecessary in one's consideration of issues of the meaning and purpose of existence. But this would have to be based on a vigorously argued position for why such a category as a whole could be lopped off as a whole from the list of one's potential interlocutors.  But one must, regardless of one's judgement, also be prepared for the unfortunate circumstance of having to make decisions about what must be given priority to pass along for the sake of others in the future. This might be less of a pressing issue in the modern age, but the moral obligation to consider this contingency still applies to some extent. This is a more pragmatic reason why the issue of revelation and "scriptural authority" cannot be avoided, even by atheists, or at least for those atheists who are not nihilists or positivists. Indeed such decisions are another aspect of what makes ancient scriptures so precious since it is almost certain that some of their parts had such vital, life sacrificing, decisions made about them so that they were passed along to us. This duty to help "draw the circle wide" in terms of the ongoing human conversation is another part of the process of the crystallization of traditions of discourse about ultimate meaning and purpose, which Christians call the Logos.

There is probably ground for much greater possible consensus to develop on the issues of revelation and scriptural authority, if we abandon the assumption that revelation is phenomenon of relevance only to theists.


Tuesday 4 June 2019

Can Reality Have Meaning Without Something Like God?


This isn't really a moral argument for God's existence, at least in terms of the classical moral arguments, but rather an argument for why the issue of God's existence, as it relates to the more general question of the possible meaning of existence, inevitably creates moral conflict between theists and non-theists of a certain sort.  This conclusion runs contrary to Richard Gale's contention that arguments regarding God's existence must not violate "the principle of the universality of moral propositions" (2007).  So it is a possible beginning to a new line of argument in the tradition of moral arguments, but with elements from the philosophy of mind and semiology thrown into the mix. So far, I have not found any moral arguments quite like it (so if you know any, please let me know).

Most people want to think that their lives have meaning. But the human heart can also long for more.  Some don't wish for simply a temporary meaning, significant only for themselves. Rather, they long for a wider and enduring meaning that can make ultimate sense of the individual struggles of their lives. Bertrand Russell might be satisfied with the temporary significance of a "thinking reed" blowing in the wind-- here today-- dried up and blown away tomorrow, but some people prefer to see the puzzle piece of their life fitting into some grander enduring structure of meaning.

But for such a grander structure to "have meaning," in a practical sense, there must be an agent to comprehend that meaning. And for that meaning to be enduring, there must be an agent who (that?) is enduring so that meaning can exist in an enduring way. For meaning to be truly enduring it is not enough that the existence of finite agents might be an ongoing possibility of some infinite natural process. For those wishing for ultimate meaning it would not be good enough that that there is a mere possibility for more reeds to emerge, comprehend and find significance in their finite corner of reality. Rather, if the whole is to have enduring ultimate meaning then one must posit the possibility of an agent capable of comprehending the process in its entirety, and powerful enough that it would be impossible for it to disappear and leave the whole without an agent to comprehend its meaning. In other words, the possibility of the emergence of finite agency is always also the possibility that there might be no further agents and thus the possibility that the meaning of the whole, in practical terms, might cease to exist, possibly forever.

Typically those desiring such ultimate meaning long not just for the world to have meaning, but for that meaning to reflect goodness in some fashion. The entirety, should not just have significance, but that significance should be edifying and worthwhile. It should somehow explain the sufferings of finite agents within the process.  All human beings faced with the inevitable destruction of one's hopes and dreams have had to contemplate such issues. Whether a Neanderthal or modern homo sapien sapien, we all will ponder such questions at some point in our lives. At that point, one is forced to choose between two fundamental options.  Either there is a possibility for agency to disappear forever and any thread of  meaning to be broken.  Or some form of agency must exist that is capable of reflecting on the whole and understanding its significance forever.

Why is an agent necessary for meaning to exist?  Because most of us would accept, based on our own experience, that meaning is something that only occurs for agents. Rocks, plants or air are incapable of comprehension and understanding. They are incapable of ascertaining significance. Only agents, like ourselves can do that. So for meaning to exist, in a practical sense, there must be some form of agent for whom some pattern or story can be meaningful. And for a meaning of the whole to exist eternally there must be some kind of eternal agent (whether single or multiple) who can comprehend it. Polytheists and Monotheists share in this basic conclusion.

Monotheism, as many have argued, is probably just an elaboration of this basic metaphysical conclusion that draws on a sense that morality requires some ultimate authority who can decide between a conflicting views about the good. The axial age discussed by Karl Jaspers, might well represent a period in human history when human societies began to turn against pluralism and began to assert that good must take some ultimately unified form. This conclusion led to the demise of the multiple gods who could bicker and disagree about the nature of good. In their place, new ideas developed of a single God, but a basic role remained-- to bear witness to the meaningful order, which its absolute power could ensure would continue in its significance in an eternal way.

The alternative is to believe in the possibility that reality as a whole can in practical terms cease to have meaning. In nature's coming and goings, it might indeed end up being a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing because in the end there might be no agency for who any significance could register. Clearly nihilists and some atheists believe in this possibility. Many of them feel the evidence points to such a possibility being more likely. They also think it is more noble to simply face up to this possibility and accept that at best only finite meanings for the whole can exist. They might be right.

But human beings must make such a metaphysical judgement without full knowledge of the whole. The arguments for atheism and theism are ongoing. The more practical matter is how do we live in the interim. What attitude should we adopt towards the meaning of reality given the uncertainty of the issue of the possibility for an enduring meaning of the whole?

Regarding this question various defenders of theism have made practical arguments moral arguments for the belief in God. They have argued that adopting a theistic perspective was necessary to help make each of us a better person.  Some theists argue that embracing the postulate of enduring ultimate meaning provides a firmer foundation/motivation for moral responsibility. They worry that the possibility of ultimate meaninglessness might well allow individuals under extreme conditions and temptations to make choices for purely fleeting and selfish goals. Atheists of course, contend that such temptation makes the struggle for moral responsibility more monumental for finite beings and hence more noble when achieved. Ultimately, it remains an open question about how ethical responsibility can be best founded and effectively lived out.

I believe that it is possible for individuals to intellectually grasp the main demands of morality without having fully decided the issue of the foundations of ultimate meaning. As for the issue of how motivation for leading a moral life is influenced by such possibilities, this remains obscured in the mists of sociological research into the influence of religion on individuals and societies, as well as the mists of meta-ethical debate. But certainly each person has a personal responsibility to consider the question of whether they can judge whether they are likely to be a better person given a choice about which metaphysical view they should posit.  But such a judgement is an ethical judgement, not a purely metaphysical judgement.  Since this kind of judgement about oneself, and one's possibilities for goodness emerges from a personal assessment of one's character based on intimate knowledge of one's inner life, it is not a judgment that can be completely open to public scrutiny and assessment.  But such issues of personality and motivation ultimately still boil down to purely moral arguments for God's existence, based in something like the following postulate: If  and only if God exists, am I really obliged to uphold some objective moral principle. In other words, theism is a superior grounds for moral realism.

As Gale notes about this general way of arguing for belief in God, it "violates the principle of the universality of moral propositions" (On the Philosophy of Religion 2007, 136).  If acceptance of the metaphysical postulate of the existence of God is psychologically necessary for a full appreciation of the nature of moral obligation, then perhaps this provides some individuals with a practical psychological and ethical justification of their belief in God.  But as Gale points out then we can have different moral obligations for different people based on arbitrary elements of their psychology.  If they need the boost of belief to do right, then those individuals are justified in believing on moral grounds.  But other people who don't need such a boost, are not justified in believing.  But for Gale the ethics regarding the acceptance of metaphysical beliefs should not be different for different kinds of people, such as those inclined to postulate atheism and those inclined to postulate theism.

However, we must consider the suggestion in Charles Taylor's book Sources of the Self  that morality also has to do with our sense of personal identity and how we view and assess ourselves ontologically: What ought we "to be" for our lives to have meaning, not just what ought we "to do" to avoid doing wrong and compromising my contribution to goodness.  It is the former ontological aspect of ethics that we must consider more deeply.

This aspect is very different from the "apodictic" aspect of figuring out what conduct is obligatory. It must address the individuality of human persons and the value that can be found in that individuality.  Such judgments will not necessarily resolve to simple recommendations for action. Could it be possible for a person, in principle, to carry out all objective moral obligations, but none-the-less to see their own life as lacking significance?  If this is so, then we must consider the possibility that a certain kind of moral argument for the existence of God, based on the issue of the significance and meaning of the universe as a whole, can possibly be detached from the more traditional moral arguments for God's existence.

What can it mean for one's life to have significance or meaning and can this just be reduced to questions about carrying out objective moral duties?  There is reason to consider the possibility that the issue of significance does not just reduce to a question of moral duty.  If it is possible to carry out all of one's objective moral duties, but still conclude that one's life does not have significance or meaning, then the issue of significance is separate from the issue of the foundations of morality.

For meaning to exist, in a practical sense, means some kind of agent must exist.  And therefore for meaning to exist in some enduring way, some kind of agent that is persistent must exist.  This is not an issue of morality, but of pure metaphysical necessity.  The moving parts of the issue draw on the still controversial matters of the nature of agency regarding consciousness and will of the simple sort that we are all subjectively privy too as individuals.  I can't prove my consciousness to you, and you can't prove yours to me.  What even is consciousness?   Even as someone with the experience of agency, it is a difficult question.  But at least we are on known territory.  The question of whether there can be a super agency certainly adds new practical metaphysical issues regarding the nature of that specific kind of agency.  However, we can see that there is a distinct issue in the field of metaphysics about which we can debate, can reality in its totality have enduring significance?

Douglas Adams puts this issue poignantly in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.  Can the answer to "life the universe and everything" be comprehended by finite beings?  What if some finite agent, like Douglas' "Deep Thought" were to actually comprehend the ultimate meaning of the universe understood in its traditional sense of all of reality (i.e. putting the issue of multiple universes aside).  Let's just say that the answer was something simple like "42" and that Deep Thought also eventually calculates the question to which that is the answer. Now, that meaning would exist for Deep Thought, but cease to as soon as that agent ceased to exist. That meaning, as significance, can be lost if all the agents capable of understanding it are lost.

So what would it mean to say that the universe "has meaning" beyond such itinerant meanings?  We should just speak of the universe as having certain meanings at certain points.  And if it should come to be that no agents exist and never will exist again, then we should acknowledge that at such a point, the universe in practical terms would cease to have any meaning.  Its significance would be for all practical purposes lost.  Even if reality were to persist physically, we would have to acknowledge that there can be reality without meaning, for how could one speak of reality as a whole having a meaning while it continued to change in ways that could not ever be comprehended and understood?  If reality as a whole is to have meaning, then there must be an agency capable of comprehending its meaning as a whole.

But consider Plato's dialogue the Meno and his theory of knowledge as recollection (anamnesis). This theory suggests that knowledge can in some sense persist without an agent's conscious awareness, which can always in principle be brought back by a process of reflection.  The mathematical understanding of the slave boy, which Socrates elicits through conversation, is not conscious awareness, but mere implicit knowledge until Socrates helps elicit it..  The theorem the boy comes to understand, is not meaningful to him initially. In a similar fashion, we can speculate that even in a universe without agents and no possibility for agents to ever develop again, the knowledge of "42" as the meaning of the whole might be able to persist, even into eternity, at least in the form of such implicit knowledge.  But could such knowledge really be called "meaningful"?  For something to be meaningful, there must be something for which that meaning can be register as meaning.  Can the universe as whole really be meaningful without agents?

Which leads us to the well-know paradox of naturalistic atheism. Naturalistic atheists can assert that all the parts of reality represent potentially comprehensible systems, the meaning of which can be deciphered understood in coherent scientific terms, except for the existence of the natural system of reality as whole, which is without purpose, significance or meaning.  It is simply a brute fact.  This fact can be taken by naturalistic atheists as one of the reasons that we must reject the postulate of God.  No enduring meaning perceiving entity exists, because the universe simply is not a place capable of having a meaning as a whole.

So atheists and theists can set the issue of the moral implications of belief aside and simply ask the question, does the universe as a whole, in practical fact, possibly have enduring meaning?  In practical terms, unless there is an agent, then the answer is no.  Even if that issue has no impact on one's moral conduct and the objective moral principles that hold true, one must consider what the one's answer to the possible meaningfulness of reality will be.

As Adams notes, people like to think that the universe can some ultimate meaning.  However, if one rejects theism, such a position is not just a rejection of a controversial metaphysical entity.  It also can involve the rejection of the possibility of there being an enduring meaning for the whole.  The entire quest to find such meaning would be rendered pointless by such a metaphysical postulate.  Any sense that one's finite meanings might connect up with some meaning of the whole would be deluded and any quest to find an enduring meaning of the whole would be forlorn.  Which brings us back to the issue of morality.  Such a conclusion about the futility of seeking an enduring ultimate meaning would put one at odds with others who think such a quest can be worthwhile.  What is the correct moral position on disagreements about the practical issue of the utility of the pursuit of an answer to that question?  Is it worth speculating about the ultimate meaning of things?  Can inquiry about such matters have any value?

So there are two views on ultimate meaning that atheists might be defending. They could claim that a meaning of the whole could exist, and be comprehendible by finite beings within reality, but that meaning might cease to exist, in practical terms, if all finite beings were to cease to exist once and for all.  Or, they could be claiming that there can be no meaning for the whole, both in practical terms of there being a being who could eternally comprehend such meaning, or the ability of reality itself  to manifest such meaning.  In other words, in regard to the issue of the meaning of reality there are 3 possibilities:

1. The whole can have a meaning but only in a finite way
2. The whole can have a meaning in an eternal way
3. The whole can have neither a meaning in a finite way nor in an eternal way

Some important things to note:
a. Some atheists could hold 1.
b. If reality were to happen to have purely natural qualities, absent a God, that there always will be finite conscious beings within it who can understand its meaning, this would work out effectively to option 2 absent a God.
d. And finally, if one asserts 3, one will be inevitably and unavoidable in moral conflict with people holding to the prior 2 options.

Conclusion d suggests certain limits to Gale's criticism of moral arguments regarding the existence of God.  If one comes to the metaphysical conclusion that the universe as a whole cannot have an eternal meaning, then one inescapably will run into conflict with others on issues of whether the pursuit of such meanings can be worthwhile and not ultimately wasteful.  If all can agree that it is objectively a moral principle that it is wrong to waste, then this can be combined with the purely metaphysical judgement that seeking after an eternal meaning for the whole is unattainable, and derive the moral conclusion that one should not waste time on the pursuit of such meaning.  The disagreement about such a matter between people of type 3 and those of types 1 and 2, is not really a disagreement about fundamental ethical principles or the nature of primary ethical obligation.  It is a difference of opinion about metaphysics.  However, this differences in metaphysical belief does lead to a derivative ethical conclusion, that the pursuit of ultimate meaning is wrong, to the degree that it promotes any morally unacceptable waste.  But the major moral principle used to derive this conclusion can be agreed on by all parties. The cause of the conflicting moral conclusion, is a result of a difference in metaphysical belief, not basic moral principle.

However, the moral judgement derived from basic moral principle raise interesting moral issues of its own.  Atheists of such a point of view must provide some explanation for how objective morality could lead to the conclusion that non-theistic dreamers and people of faith are guilty of immorality simply in virtue of pursuing a possible answer to the meaning of existence.  It seems a little strange that objective morality should lead to such a conclusion.  If moral propositions regarding our acceptance of beliefs must be universal, then this conclusion must hold for all.  So dreamers and people of faith must conclude that it is intrinsically wasteful and wrong, to some degree, to act on their belief in the possibility of  the existence of ultimate meaning. Or is this possibly a reductio ad absurdum?  If it is, what is the false premise?  It must either be Gale's assumption about universalizability or the metaphysical assertion that reality cannot have an ultimate meaning.