Finally. Thank you for an intelligent, objective, analytical and unhysterical view of the Papal statement Adriana. Certainly it is something that has been missing from much of the blogosphere, the DTP (dead tree press) and other media for the past few days.

"God," he [the emperor] says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats."

Put all of Manuel II Paleologus' statements into context with modern (in particular) events and we see clear examples of exactly what he wrote and, dare I say, foretold. What is particularly of interest to me is how Paleologus' rationale that "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature." is rebuffed by the Persian simply using the Inshallah 'coverall', i.e. God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Putting it simply how do we, as a people educated to question everything, deal on equal terms with a religion that places every action and occurrence in life with the rather simplistic view of "It is within the will of God".

As a close friend of mine has recently observed,

Dealing with Islamicism is rather like playing chess with an opponent who randomly moves pieces about the board in the sure trust that a deity will confound his opponent.

I think you've got to the heart of the matter, although, from a purely theological point of view it's not clear to me that "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature" is true. For a start it leaves one saying that earthquakes that kill thousands of innocent people happen not simply 'for a higher purpose' but as the result of some kind of rational thinking by God. I'm unconvinced.

I dimly recall (_really_ dimly) that at least some of the great medeival philosophers considered God to be essentially unknowable, although curiously they did consider him to be constrained by logic (if not by reason) - thus he could not create thing that was unequal to itself etc.

"His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."

That, to me, sounds like a much easier position to defend - reason is an extremely human construct. It's hard to consider reason in the absence of, say, the passage of time. Since God is generally felt to exist simultaneously in all times at once, it's hard to see how he would act with reason as we can conceive of it.

If people would stick to these esoteric theological and doctrinal questions, and leave off blowing each other up, we would be better off. It is a sign of weakness in the muslim faith that they get so sensitive about these things...

Adriana, your final quotation requires specification, even though I agree that it is more damning a statement, at least from a rationalist's point of view. The quote comes from a commentary by Theodore Khoury, which is paraphrased by the Pope.

I share your analysis up to the point where you don't reflect that the Pope talks of different kinds of Reason in his lecture. He rejects critical rationalism (because it has pushed faith into the subjective sphere?) only to advocate a reason which is to be based on faith - which is contrary to my point of view. But this transparency of argument is exactly the reason why his lecture is valuable, even though in more ways than foreseen by the (infallible??) author.

J, the links within the post should go some way (not all) towards dispelling the dimness around your recollections.

You may be recalling Thomas Aquinas, who married Aristotelian philosphy with Christian theology. However, it was him who explored the relationship between faith and reason and provided the basis for one of the Catholic dogmas that God is knowable through reason in his Summa Theologica.

What I think you find unpalatable about God's 'rationality in the face of natural disasters is called theodicy, the problem of evil. This covers a different theological debate from the nature of God and our ability to fathom the divine. Onwards and forwards, Google is your friend when it comes to esoteric (although not obscure) theological arguments. :)

Chris, I tried to make it clear that reason that the Pope is invoking is not the one used by positivistic Western approach. It is also linked in the post, so I found it redundant to go on about it as it's clearly argued by the Pope himself.

I do agree with you on why the lecture is meaningful, not only an address by a Pontiff. :)

"This is a far more damning statement than the one that caused all the commotion."

Yes, but not from the Muslim perspective. That's just standard theology. I'd give you the quote from a standard work on Sharia law, Reliance of the Traveller (Umdat al Salik wa Uddat al Nasik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al Misri), but it's even longer than the book's title! Section a1.3 considers the role of reason in divine law and morality and concludes it can play no part. Because different people disagree on the rightness of actions, and individuals may be ambivalent, it is impossible for all to be right in the eyes of Allah, and so human reason cannot be relied upon. Therefore the only sure path to moral knowledge is the literal content of scripture. Deductions can be made from what is said explicitly, but Koran, Haddith, and Sunnah cannot be contradicted by reasoning external to them. No Muslim will find much wrong in this.

I think it's worth mentioning at this point that, technically, conversion by force of Christians and Jews is forbidden in Islam, although historically it has often been practiced. Officially, the options to avoid attack are conversion or humiliating submission to dhimmitude, after the attack women and children are automatically enslaved, men may be killed, enslaved, ransomed for money, prisoner exchange, or free release - whichever the Caliph thinks most beneficial for Islam. Thus, there are survivable alternatives to conversion, and this the Muslims say is therefore not compulsion. Islamic dominance, on the other hand, was most definitely spread by the sword.

I'm quite sure the Pope knew this, but it's a bit of a long piece of pedantry for what was supposed to be a subsidiary point.

In any case, I do not believe the mobs are objecting that Benedict forgot the Pact of Omar. Or maybe, in a way, they are; one of the most important restrictions laid on non-Muslim dhimma by the Pact is not to criticise Islam or the Prophet. The penalty for doing so, as you might expect, is death.

"after the attack women and children are automatically enslaved, men may be killed, enslaved, ransomed for money, prisoner exchange, or free release - whichever the Caliph thinks most beneficial for Islam"

This has less to do with Islam and more to do with an atavistic tribalism,thousands of years old,stemming from the early nomadic history of the human race.

Adriana,

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

I read the full transcript and I thought that was the dynamite statement. I'm glad you spotted it and posted it. An irrational God is a nonsense. Benedict XVI continued to say that if God is not constrained by reason and logic even idolatry is required if that be God's will. Well, that's a theological Enola Gay for Islam because of course idolatry (& the related polytheism) is like sin #1 for the Koranimals. Hoist on their own petard by a far more sophisticated theologian than Qom will ever produce.

No wonder they're taking it badly. It's not like they have a counter argument do they?

J,
Reason and the passage of time. You a Socinian?

BTW I'm an agnostic. But I've always had a lot of time for the Catholics. I admire their rigour and scientific outlook. It's just their views on... Well you can guess the rest can't you?

I find it amusing that none of the figures that turn up on the BBC or C4 to protest the Pope's comments have actually offered a rebuttal, only complaining of the offense caused.

Why is that I wonder?

For a start it leaves one saying that earthquakes that kill thousands of innocent people happen not simply 'for a higher purpose' but as the result of some kind of rational thinking by God.

It suggests nothing of the sort. Rationality is a 'human thing', natural disasters just... happen.

J,

it's not clear to me that "not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature" is true.

It is a typical Deist view that to discover and obey the laws God created (gravity, a body in motion ..., e=.., and others we think we know) is, itself, the very definition of 'rational', and to deny them is the complete definition of 'irrational'. By this belief, to not act in accordance with reason is indeed to act contrary to God's nature.

“Pope Benedict XVI knew very well what he was doing”. Amen to that one! Parsing the detailed inferences and nuances of language are very dear to the Roman Catholic heart.

Islam, on the other hand, doesn’t take enough care about meaning and a sense of conscience in responses to western commentary and notions. The lethality of Muslim interpretation of a smidgen of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech is unsurprising and, even less surprising, are the quixotic results of more Moslems dying than infidels following those choice words. Go figure?

I wish I could care more about it, but I don’t. It is all now so predicatable for Islamic fundamenlists to behave unreasonably. We are, after all, infidels and therefore our opinions don't matter. Debating them is quite simply pointless.

Well, that's a theological Enola Gay for Islam because of course idolatry (& the related polytheism) is like sin #1 for the Koranimals.

They react to idolatry because, like exposing the barbarity of Mohammed, it is their guilty conscience spiking them. Allah the moon god. Allah the rock in the Ka'aba. No wonder it is covered - it is (people suspect) a rough, pagan stone circle with the rock god Allah sitting there propped up on the edge like some Humpty in the set of Play School.

Muslims are also told no prophet above others and yet, what do they do? More hypocracy! More unreason! It is a neat trick - BBB - so hatstand that the average Mo cannot reason it out (who could?) and so they keep schtum and wonder at the glory and subtlety and how ignorant and lowly they are. Insecurity built upon insecurity and ignorance. Start to shed light on that and the anger is not surprising.

This has less to do with Islam and more to do with an atavistic tribalism,thousands of years old,stemming from the early nomadic history of the human race.

Sorry, but I completely disagree with this, mostly because in islam it is fully codified and therefore transcends the tribal 'this is just the way we do it'.
When you produce a fully thought out join-the-dots system, you've made a conscious decision to act as you do.
As regards the convert, dhimmify or die thing, there is the curiously unspoken option of 'fight back'
I believe it was Patton who said' use those bastards guts to grease the treads of your tanks'. It is my belief that only by applying the brutal logic of the battlefield to ALL our dealings with islam will we ever know peace.
While I will happily accept correction on this, I do not believe there has ever been a situation where islam has compromised or backed off, save when they were badly beaten or outgunned in some way.
As one who is a confirmed hanger and flogger, and also a 'run them over with a tank while laughing maniacally' er, I believe our difficulties will not only continue but worsen, until we start kicking back - hard.

On a side note, the idea that G-d is knowable through reason is patently absurd. All reason acts upon sense experience, G-d is (if He is anything) is not open to sense experience. Indeed claiming you can discover the mind of G-d through reason esentially means that you can make up whatever god appeals to you and worship it. It is worship of the self and/or idolotary.

Sola Scriptura buddy.

Just a thought - the Pope's oblique invocation of Byzantium and its downfall at the hands of the Islamic barbarians is perhaps intended in part as Catholic outreach to Orthodoxy, like the Vatican's previous apology for the sacking of Constantinople (by the very crusaders who were supposed to be defending the Eastern Christians from Muslim invasion). The great Greek-speaking 'Roman' civilisation of Asia Minor was destroyed in large part due to the failure of Catholicism and Orthodoxy to overcome their petty political / theological differences in the face of the real enemy - a historical lesson of which the current Pope is clearly keenly aware.

Certainly no historically literate Greek (or Balkan Christian generally - or Armenian or Assyrian Christian for that matter) will have missed these implications.

Obviously any hint at Muslim culpability for the devastation and enslavement of the ancient Byzantine Greek civilisation is going to enrage the proud 'modern' upholders of the barbarians' legacy - and most especially the Turks, who still hold the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and the rest of their ill-gotten gains in Asia Minor by force of arms, having expelled or massacred most of the Greek inhabitants (the most recent pogrom in Constantinople itself having occurred as recently as the 1970s).

Of course the pope meant to mix it with the Islamistas. He has started a debate long overdue. Billions of people around the world have read that damning quote and it's the equivalent of flicking on a light switch and exposing the sheer horror | for all to see.

Now the genie is out of the bottle and the foam flecked ones will never put it back.

Radio five at 9 am today was full of callers saying critical things about muslims I certainly have not heard expressed thus far.

From the other side. Well, not quite the other side since he himself is quite critical of conservative Muslims.

All reason acts upon sense experience

Nope. We cannot experience more than a small portion of reality via our senses, which is why we understand Quantum physics (for example) by using our reason rather than just our senses. Coming to the conclusion that there is a God is no different (I just happen to have come to the opposite conclusion personally but that is neither here nor there).

Unless I'm very much mistaken looking at empirical evidence taken from, for example, a particle accelerator is recieved into the mind via sense experience. The only 'science' that doesn't make use of sense experience in such a manner is made-up stuff like string theory.

In any case I'd question whether anyone truly *understands* quantumn physics, which is why it is also described in terms of analogies, or something we can envisage (tiny balls orbitiing other tiny balls). These are images that we can understand because of sense experience (I have seen balls, I have seen small things and I combine the image).

To clarify. In all fields we use reason AND our senses. Seeing as none of, except prophets, are capable of sensing G-d, the only sense-evidence we have, so to speak, is scripture.

The idea that we can understand the mind of G-d by thinking about it hard enough and referencing Aristotle was nothing more or less than the idea that the church can understand G-d (because they were the most educated), hence they can tell everyone what to do. So if, by exercise of reason, they discover G-d wants everyone to give them shedloads of money, then everyone else has to pay up.
It's like Hegel's crapolafest. Shoddy argumentation designed for a political purpose and STILL people actually believe it.

Gabriel, Sola Scriptura is a protestant idea, the chatholics and orthodox don't go for it.

"This has less to do with Islam and more to do with an atavistic tribalism,thousands of years old,stemming from the early nomadic history of the human race."

Yes and no. The razzia was a bedouin custom, that led to much division and strife in Arabia and kept them all poor and relatively harmless - like in the bucket-of-crabs analogy. Muhammad's great achievement was to turn that outwards and channel it, by forbidding raiding, looting, and enslaving except in the cause of spreading Islam. It brought the Bedouin on board, motivated Jihad and indeed conversion as a source of vast wealth, security against being enslaved oneself, and created ever more followers who accelerated the process. It is almost certainly a deliberate and very clever strategy - a self-promoting meme.

Slavery was not uncommon, but the positive feedback resulting from restricting it to outsiders was something new for the area, and expanded the religion and its economy exponentially. Islam was not just successful because it had a charismatic leader or got lucky, but because it had happened on one of those structural tricks that drive exponentially more complex societies. It brought organisation to the Arabian slave trade.

Gabriel, I can't tell if your initial incomprehensible diatribe was aimed at me or someone else. If it was addressed to my comment, then the only intelligible interpretation I can make of it is of a strawman, countering a case I never made.

You make the statement - "G-d is (if He is anything) is not open to sense experience".

I presume this is a claim for which you have proof?

The case I was describing, that you apparently reject, is that, (if) God created all that we perceive, then the more one learns of the laws of science (creation), the more one learns of God. And if our interaction with existence is not a "sense experience" where are you coming from?

Pope Benedict XVI started turning Catholicism towards a critical approach to Islam over a year ago. Only those inside the Church who were *really* paying attention noticed. He is not now launching attacks on Islam. What he is doing is laying the groundwork for a rediscovery of the christian struggle in the East and *that* rediscovery will arm us all with the tools and knowledge to win.

Who here had even heard of Manuel II Paleologos? Why not read up on him and his cruel fate? When he penned those now controversial words, he was on military campaign *with the Sultan* being forced to fight as a vassal for him, to even fight fellow christians in order to stave off collapse of Byzantium for just a bit more.

You can't understand the words properly without context. But how many have even made an effort to read the man's biography?

"On a side note, the idea that G-d is knowable through reason is patently absurd. All reason acts upon sense experience, G-d is (if He is anything) is not open to sense experience. "

God or transcendance is knowable through reason when reason acts on reason and deconstructs the categories it needs to function.

Gatha gatha parisamgatha, buddy

BTW, leaving the vowel out of "God" is poor English. It's culturally inauthentic.

Context, context, context.

JP2 spent an enormous amount of time and energy in the struggle against an atheist totalitarianism which he believed posed a dire threat to people of faith, esp. RC's in Europe and Latin America. He also regularly criticized western, secular, materialist culture for its spiritual flaws.

JP2 set an activist model for the papacy in the world arena of moral/political/cultural debate, and was revered by much of the Catholic world because of it, and many in the non-catholic world as well. Benedict was closely associated with all of this as a cardinal.

Now Benedict looks around the world and sees another threat to Christendom in the form of Islamic fanatacism. He is an accomplished theologian, and the spokesman for a very specific religious viewpoint which makes no bones about being THE correct and only true church.

I believe his purpose is twofold. One, to confront Islam with the self-destructive weakness of its absurd reliance on violent confrontation with a world that is only restrained from eliminating the problem by its own moral inhibitions, and 2, to remind the west that salvation lies in faith, not secular materialism.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with either or both of these propositions, it is clear that B will be an activist in his own way, and is willing to provoke in order to be listened to. The danger is obvious, but Christians invented martyrdom, not muslims.

With every violent response, Islam weakens itself by alienating a little bit more the very tolerant western people who are willing to restrain themselves from a cataclysmic response. At some point, if the violence continues, that restraint may finally end.

These foolish people in their masks and protests and slogans don't begin to understand what savagery is.

Be polite everyone.

Sure we use our senses to inform our reason, but I can understand the concept of ultraviolet and infrared by using my reason without ever actually seeing them.

In any case, everything we know is a falsifiable theory (and of course some of those theories are exceedingly robust ones, such as when I drop a pen, it will fall... bloody good theory), and we use reason to come up with the best theories to explain reality all the time... forming theories as to the nature of God is no different (for example, I have used my reason to form a critical preference for the theory that God most likely does not exist other than as a psychological artifice).

The only 'science' that doesn't make use of sense experience in such a manner is made-up stuff like string theory.

Even this part of science should (eventually) be subject to some sort of test that relies on perceptible physical effects to verify. Gabriel has the right idea about what sense-perception is - i.e. not just that which we can experience directly, but also that whose effects we have to study through a medium which we can experience directly. The existence of ultra-violet light, to continue an example, was hypothesized through reasoning over acquired sense data and then accepted by applying physical tests to confirm. We know it is there because we study its physical effects.

However, there is a whole tradition in Philosophy which purports to "know" there is a God by reasoning - and this reasoning crucially depends on things which are not physically-verifiable knowledge. So, for example, that the causation principle holds (in the case of Acquinas) or that "I am" (in the case of Descartes). Each of these approaches takes as its starting point something which is known directly and not through the sense. (Whether one believes in such knowledge is, of course, up to the individual - but this is the sense in which theologians tend to mean "reason" when they use it in their writings - not reasoning about sense experiences, but reasoning about fundamental truths that we know a priori to all sense experience).

In any case, everything we know is a falsifiable theory.

Naked Popperism! Falsifiability is a very useful heuristic in science but science isn't everything and a very useful heuristic does not all of science make.

Occam's razor is also a very useful heuristic in science.

But as I once heard a biologist remark, "In my subject Occam's razor is likely to cut your own throat".

Perry, read Tom Kuhn.

Nah, Kuhn is too much a positivist, and I regard logical positivism as a complete intellectual train-wreck. That said, I (sort of) agree with the notion of paradigm shifts, but that is an observation, not a philosophy :-D

The fact that Benedict referenced a Byzantine emperor is, probably, in part an outreach to the Orthodox. It is well known that JP2 and B16 were and are both interested in reconciliation with the Easterners. After almost a millenium, it is overdue. The mutual threat we face from the Muslims only heightens the urgency. There has been much interesting speculation in the Catholic blogosphere about initiatives that Benedict may take. All very interesting. It is also true as Mr. Lutas notes that Benedict has been willing to ramp up the level of response to the islamic threat, though this not been widely noted. Not aminute too soon, either.

Wouldn't be much of a house of God if the Catholic church follow every whim and fancy of public opinion, no?

Evidence of the senses is poor evidence. Optical illusions can be seen by everyone, without actually existing.

For a scientific analogy to God, I prefer the value of money. It clearly does not exist in any physical or objective sense, except as a social convention. It is a shared illusion of something that only 'exists' precisely because everyone shares the illusion. Circular reasoning - everyone values it only because everyone values it.

However, even scientist act as if cash had something attached to it, like charge or baryon number. You can measure it and study it and it obeys immutable laws. There are even people who worship the stuff...

There is indeed a conflict within Christianity over whether God supports what is right or whether something is right because God says it is.

The traditional position of Calvinists (and some others) is that whatever God does or orders is right - because God has done it or ordered it (this leads to legal positivism of course - something is law because the legislature has made it, and we must obey it because it is the law).

The mainstream Catholic position is that reason can find what is right and God supports what is right (i.e. there can be no conflict between divine will and reason, not because reason does not matter but because God created and supports reason).

As in the old doctrine of most of the School Men that "natural law is God's law, but if God did not exist natural law would be exactly the same".

Sadly Islamic thinkers tend to support the postion that whatever God does or commands is right BECAUSE God does it or orders it.

Those within Islam who supported natural reason - morality (and with it agency) lost many centuries ago.

Actually Karl Popper did not hold that "everything we know is a falsifiable theory" - he was fond of listing a whole string of metaphysical beliefs that he held (which he did not hold were falsifiable).

The Vienna Circle of logical positivists may have held that everything is either "science or nonsense", but Popper believed that everything is either "science or non science" which, as he often pointed out, is quite different.

Now I might not agree with Karl Popper's definition of "science" (basically the scientifc method of the phyisical sciences - thus denying the word "science" to any subject for which this method is not suitable), but that is a very different argument from implying that Popper thought that anything that did not follow the scientific method (as he understood that method) was silly - he never held that.

1) Jim, I write G-d because I'm Jewish, if that offends you go burn an effigy of something.

2) Midwesterner. My incomprehensible diatribe was aimed at no-one in particular except the Pope. I don't even know what you wrote that I am supposed to have replied to.

3) Steph, well yeah that was rather the point.

4)"However, there is a whole tradition in Philosophy which purports to "know" there is a God by reasoning - and this reasoning crucially depends on things which are not physically-verifiable knowledge. So, for example, that the causation principle holds (in the case of Acquinas) or that "I am" (in the case of Descartes). Each of these approaches takes as its starting point something which is known directly and not through the sense. (Whether one believes in such knowledge is, of course, up to the individual - but this is the sense in which theologians tend to mean "reason" when they use it in their writings - not reasoning about sense experiences, but reasoning about fundamental truths that we know a priori to all sense experience)."

This is the tradition I was attacking. The tradition the Pope holds to and I do not hold (primarily because I'm English - but also because it's absurd.)
There is a good Hume quote which sums up this point, I'll look it up tomorrow and post it.

5) "but science isn't everything"
Some people should get that tattooed on their arm.

6) "this leads to legal positivism of course - something is law because the legislature has made it, and we must obey it because it is the law"

An unfortunate thing, but a real one nonetheless.

7)"As in the old doctrine of most of the School Men that "natural law is God's law, but if God did not exist natural law would be exactly the same".

Which in practical terms means "whatever the church decides to be correct (the practical definition of natural law) is the will of G-d."

"When the nature of the thing is incomprensible , I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible I can not acquiesce in the authority of a schoolman"
T. Hobbes

Gabriel, regarding "7)",

Which in practical terms means "whatever the church decides to be correct (the practical definition of natural law) is the will of G-d."

You are taking a statement of philosophy and rewriting it as an obeservation of error.

Religion's role in understanding natural law is no different than anyone else's. It is one of discovery, not revelation. To the extent the church filters it through it's own interpretations of revealed law to the detriment of observed facts, it is not natural law that they are following. They did this infamously with Galileo, placing their interpretation of revealed law over observed nature.

They are exchanging the inherently flawed understanding of natural law for the imagined perfection of revealed law. Your conclusion amounts to a statement that 'natural law = revealed law'. Nonsense.

The Galileo affair, or indeed anything to do with scholastics, has precious little to do with revealed law. The Schoolmen rarely referenced scripture and, if they did, it was to support some conclusion they had previously derived from reading Aristotle or Galen or some other Greek.

The Church's tete a tete with Galileo had nothing to do with "revealed law vs. natural law" and everything to with "arguing from empirical evidence vs. arguing from reason based upon plausible sounding first principles".

Anyways the Hume quote, although it's not nearly as good as I remember it, is this
"To be a philisophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step in being a sound, believing Christian."

6) "this leads to legal positivism of course - something is law because the legislature has made it, and we must obey it because it is the law"

An unfortunate thing, but a real one nonetheless

On the contrary, the law is just the product of a political process and if that product is unjust, we should try not obey it.

However if we are compelled to, we must not fool ourselves or others that our actions are anything other than the consequence of threats. There is nothing moral about obeying an unjust law just because it is the law.

I don't have the choice of obeying the laws I like and not the others. Unless I'm willing to accept the consequences of life as an outlaw, which I most certainly am not, then I am duty bound to obey whatever the law happens to be.

Or, to put it another way, I don't want someone else to decide that it is just to rip out my liver, so I can't, in all good conscience, decide to break the laws which I find unjust either.

I don't have the choice of obeying the laws I like and not the others. Unless I'm willing to accept the consequences of life as an outlaw, which I most certainly am not, then I am duty bound to obey whatever the law happens to be.

That is what the state would like everyone to think, and it does its best to enforce its writ whenever it can, but I for one accepted no 'duty' to obey a law I regard as immoral. Rosa Parks comes to mind.

Or, to put it another way, I don't want someone else to decide that it is just to rip out my liver, so I can't, in all good conscience, decide to break the laws which I find unjust either.

I would not wish to live in a society where the only reason people do not rip out my liver is that it is illegal. I mean no insult but your position is a cop-out. If you are willing to delegate the determination of what is and is not unjust to am imperfect political system, then I wonder if you lived in Chiana today, will you 'do your duty' and report your neighbours to the authorities if you discover they are members of the banned Falun Gong religion? I assume you take the view that even though you disagree (for purposes of argument) with religious persecution, the law is the law and if the law says you must report your neighbours, you have a duty to. Do you agree?

If not, then sure you are indeed prepared to disobey a law you regard as unjust.

Or would you say you must report them but if you disagree you should work to reform Chinese communism according to the rules (i.e. join the party, work yourself up in the heirarchy and make things better when you can via political action).

What say you to those notions?

If I lived in china I may very well decide that the bad consequences of becoming an outlaw are outweighed by the bad. In blighty I don't think we're anyway near that stage.
In any case the analogy is slightly confused by the evident fact that the Chinese government doesn't operate by the rule of law, so I can't really decide whether to live under it or not. I could decide to live under the arbitrary will of whatever party functionary had power over me, but that's a whole different matter.

"I would not wish to live in a society where the only reason people do not rip out my liver is that it is illegal."

"All humans naturally desire liberty and dominion over others." T. Hobbes
This seems to me to be pretty accurate, just look at what happens when individuals are given licence to do what they want, be it in Somalia today or Russia circa 1930.

Well Somalia today or Russia circa 1930 is what happens when (respectively) no rational civil society exists (contrast Somalia with Somaliland, the stable and kritarchic 'state' to the north of Somalia) or in the case of Russia, the state nationalises morality and destroys what civil society remains... when the state disappears, people decide they can do anything because their is no law and the only reason they did not do anything was that they feared the state... and that is a natural consequence of the attitude you are espousing.

As former Samizdata contributor Natalija once said to me regarding life in Croatia during the collapse of Yugoslavia, the reason most areas which fell into anarchy did not fall also into chaos was the influence of the Catholic Church's morality (and she, like me, is not a religious person). But the vast majority of people in Croatia did not start killing and robbing (the ethnic conflict was quite another matter of course) when the state simply collapsed, because most people felt such behaviour was wrong, not for fear of the law... there was no law, at least for a while.

States, like laws, come and go, they wax and wane... it is having a viable civil society that really matters because that is really what makes people less likely to rob and kill each other. I am not saying laws do not matter at all, just that it is foolish to allow so imperfect an institution as the state to nationalise your ability to act on the basis of what is and is not moral.

I used to take a pretty positive of human nature, but every time I study a historical period I get yet more evidence that humans, all humans, are capable of untold evil whenever the lid is taken off. The size of the state is not so important in this regard (which is why I chose Russia and Somalia as my examples), it is simply that when people are told there is no law to hold them back, they surprise everyone with the evil they commit, especially themselves.

I certainly would never deny the importance of civil society or religion (indeed I subscribe the antiquated view that only a religous people can be free), but I deny they are sufficient. Considering your example, Catholic morality was, perhaps, able to stop people from murdering and raping their neighbours, but, as you say, it proved singularly incapable of stopping them from wholesale murdering people of different ethnicities and culture.

Returning to your original claim, which as I understand is, that you are justified in breaking any and every law that is immoral. First, you cannot grant yourself a right that you do not grant to everyone else, so everyone is equally justified in breaking any immoral law. Now, leaving aside the question of whether there is an objective morality, it is abundantly clear that different people have different ideas of what is and isn't moral. It is just as clear that some, if only very few, think these include murder, robbery, pederasty (that would be 1.3 billion Muslims in fact). It is also the case that all humans are prone to err and will from time to time commit actions that, most of the time, they find to be immoral, even grossly so. Thus, by reserving the right to break laws you find unjust, you have given the right to others to break laws you think are just.

The law isn't the same thing as morality or justice, but it is the law and the only law we have and that alone is reason enough to obey it. When your house gets robbed and, one hopes, the case makes it to court, judge and jury aren't going to rule based on whether the thief acted immorally (although he certainly did) or unjustly (same again), that is absolutely none of their business. They will rule based solely on whether he disobeyed the law. If you think that you have the right to break the law, then so does the he. He may be bad, he may go to hell, but there's flip all you can do about it.

Gabriel you stress that you are Jewish. Well (in spite of family name) I am not - but I have always been told that the natural law tradition is as much part of Jewish thought as it is of Catholic thought.

Spinoza may have been born a Jew - but his doctrines are not part of Judaism, and he was (rightly) rejected by the Jews of his time. Determinism (and other such) run opposite to the central principles of agency ("free will" or moral responsibility) and right reason which are central to Judaism.

Something is not "the law" just because the ruler (be that ruler one person or a group of people) say it is - this legal positivism is the position of the great defender of tyranny, Thomas Hobbes.

What do you think that a "Student of the common laws of England" (to use Hobbes' name for his enemy in his work a dialogue between "A Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England") is trying to do? Or a scholar in the tradition of the Talmud is trying to do?

Just find what previous people said (or judges ruled)?

No, a thousand times no.

They are trying to apply the principle of justice to the circumstances of time and place.

That is "the law".

Otherwise such terms as "the rule of law" or "respect for the law" would be absurd.

If the law is whatever ravings the people with the most armed force (the one person or group of people in control of this armed force) happened to produce then it would be the duty of people to oppose this "law" not obey it.

The change in understanding of the High Court of the Monarch in Parliament into a "legislature" that somehow "makes" law is one of the great things that led the Founding Fathers of the United States to break with Britian (Jefferson and the others rejected Blackstone's claim that Parliament could do whatever it liked and held to older opinions, not that Blackstone had any idea what use would eventually be made of his doctrine).

That is why ALL the Founding Fathers (even Hamilton) held that a jury had the right and duty to "nulify" a statute (by finding the "guilty" person innocent) if this stature violated natual law.

Of course today most "law" is not even the product of Parliament - it is a matter of arbitary regulations (statutary instruments) created by ministers and civil servants (this was first noted, in Britain, by Chief Justice Hewitt in his "The New Despotism" 1929).

In the United States all nine Judges of the Supreme Court in 1935 ("liberals" and "conservatives") did not rule that the "regulate interstate commerce clause power" did not apply to the Jewish butcher that the National Recovery Administration tried to apply it to - (that was not the issue) they ruled that a bunch of adminstrators could not just make up any set of rules they liked and call it "law" (under the vague "enabling act" that was the National Industrial Recovery Act). I know that a modern Supreme Court might not rule the same way - but that is what makes jury nulification (the refusal of ordinary people to support tryanny) all the more important.

Are you saying that the "majesty of the law" applies to every arbitary dictate of every civil servant in the United Kingdom? Is this what was meant by the "rule of law"?

If that is so such men as Hampden lived and died in vain.

Law is not a matter of "will" - it is a matter of right reason, of applying the principle of justice (that someone may not violate the body or goods of other folk, and so on) to the circumstances of time and place.

As for religion.

As even Kant pointed out, the order to Abraham to murder his son could either not have come from God or was not meant to be obeyed.

For God is good, NOT "whatever God wills is good".

That is not Jewish any more than it is Catholic.

As for David Hume, the opinions of an athiest on religious doctrine do not carry great weight with me. Nor do (in my opinion) Hume's rather tongue-in-cheek argument about the nature of law - I notice that he did not go and live in a nation where there was arbitary government power.

Remember David Hume also argued (at various times) BOTH against the objective nature of the external world AND against the objective nature of the reasoning "I".

In short (if one takes him at his word) neither I nor the world exist. The world is just impressions in the mind - accept the mind does not exist either.

David Hume did not really believe any of this. He just wanted to wake people up - to get them thinking about why they believed in the materiial world and in their own existance.

Men like Thomas Reid (and the rest of the Common Sense tradition) took up the challenge (although they might have better to just say to David Hume "stop playing silly games").

But whatever the strength or weakness of the tradition from Reid and many others in the 18th century (and before him right to Aristotle - though he might not have liked to be told that) forward to Noah Porter and James McCosh in the 19th century (and Harold Prichard and Sir William David Ross in the 20th century), it is much better than the so called "main stream" of philosphy ("mainstream" only after World War II).

Sir William Hamilton had many faults, but his philosophy was much better than that of John Stuart Mill who claimed to have refuted it (just as Richard Whately's Aristotelian logic was much better than Mill's logic, and J.S. Mill's Political Economy of 1848 was a massive step backward in such things as the theory of value from what such men as Whately and Bailey [and many others] had taught in the 1820's and 1830's).

The logical positivists (at least in the British representative A.J.A. - of "Language Truth and Logic") claim to take Hume seriously (which I think would have amused Hume) and they "argued" (or rather ruled out of court) against all the basic elements of right reason.

As C.E.M. Joad (of "A Critique of Logical Positivism" 1950) and many others, have pointed out, logical positivism (if examined carefully) is self refuting - as it undermines the basis for any rational argument at all (indeed of rationality itself).

Gabriel, Perry and Paul

I'm following this thread closely because it is something that for me personally is not satisfactorily resolved yet. My rational opinion is with Gabriel based on (my own reason, not necessarily his) the principle of a constitutional government as a contract between many people. Viewed this way, tolerable laws that I view as immoral like income taxes, wage laws, and various compliance laws, are something I accept as part of the contract with the other citizens.

I believe there are degrees of immorality and when there is a law, or laws that exceed my threshold, then the appropriate response is to withdraw entirely from the government (constitutional contract). I think a rational case can be made that to sellectively obey laws is to steal from other constituents. For example, as a contractor, when some other contractor decides his taxes are immoral and cheats on them selectively, he is stealing money from me, a tax payer when he underbids me and doesn't pay his taxes. I've had customers try to talk me into not reporting income so that they can get a better price. I'm positive a lot of contractors do.

When a government violates enough of it's own constitution, then I view the contract as unilaterally broken. At this point I still see the advantages of US citizenship as far and away exceeding the downside so I obey all laws. I hope this thread addresses my reasoning's soundness. If it's flawed, I want to know.

You cannot assign moral value to moral systems; it is a confusion of levels of abstraction. Morality is defined within a moral system, as legality is within a legal system. Every consistent legal system is entirely legal by definition. Every consistent moral system is entirely moral by definition.

The error of moral relativism is that while it is obvious that there is more than one moral system, it cannot consistently be said that it is 'good' that this be so, except from within another moral system not included in the judgement, as arbitrary as the rest.

To claim that judging between good and evil is wrong is the equivalent of the liar paradox. Judgement is as instinctive as language. Moral judgement is distinct from self-interest.

Game theory may tell you when obeying the laws is advantageous in the short or long term, but do not look to it for advice on when it is 'right'.

Catholic morality was, perhaps, able to stop people from murdering and raping their neighbours, but, as you say, it proved singularly incapable of stopping them from wholesale murdering people of different ethnicities and culture.

You have a very crude understanding of the war in the Balkans, which I might add I saw first hand over several years. In an ethnic conflict over land, Catholic morality does not say "allow the other side to take your land and kill you". I also met Serbians serving in the Croatian Army and Croats serving in the Bosnian Army, so clearly ideas beyond doing what the laws of states demanded and beyond a Hobbsean chaos were at work here.

Returning to your original claim, which as I understand is, that you are justified in breaking any and every law that is immoral. First, you cannot grant yourself a right that you do not grant to everyone else,

Indeed.

so everyone is equally justified in breaking any immoral law

That is exactly the point I have been making!

Now, leaving aside the question of whether there is an objective morality,

No, lets not, because that is at the very core of my views. Moral theories need to be based on objective reality, and although theories about the true nature of that objective reality may be conjectural, they are not simply a matter of subjective whim. So I do indeed take the position that things can (and usually are) objectively moral or immoral.

If you think that you have the right to break the law, then so does the he. He may be bad, he may go to hell, but there's flip all you can do about it.

No, I can shoot them or hit them over the head with an brick or hire someone to kick their door in and get my stuff back. Why? Because I am objectively in the right and he is not and I do not need the law to conform or deny that (though obviously I would rather it did). Just because we both think we have a right to do something that does not mean we are both correct, and if the law fails to do what I need of it and is not realistically amenable to change, it is of no use to me and I will seek satisfaction from whoever has agrieved me via other means. People do it all the time.

There are indeed degrees of badness - for example a regulation that holds that one should not paint one's house pink, is not as bad as one that holds that all people with brown eyes must be shot (not as odd as it sounds - after all many nordic parts of the world, such as Sweden at one time, once had regulations that people with brown eyes be sterilized).

And (of course) how to apply the principle of justice (the nonviolation of the bodies and goods of others) in the circumstances of time and place (i.e. the law) is a matter of legitimate disagreement.

Someone might indeed say to themselves "well I do not agree that theft of X amount of money should be punished by Y time in prison - but it is a judgement made by a constitutional government so I will go along with it". Although one must remember that the contact view of the state is not credible (surely I do not have to go into the drill of saying "show me where I signed" and so on - nor is "you were born here and do not leave so that means you consent" a real argument).

The very term "THE law" at least implies that there is something worthy about the law (that it is not just the arbitary acts of will of those with power), and there are times when the statutes of even an elected government must not be accepted as law.

For example, if one was serving on a jury and someone was on trial (with the threat of death) for believeing that the world was not flat.

The statute is plain - someone who believes that the world is not flat is to be executed.

And the government was elected (big majority of the popular vote - and the proposed statute clearly stated during the election campaign).

The evidence is also clear - lots of written documents in the handwriting of the accused giving his opinion tha the world is not flat.

It would, of course, be absurd to convict this person - as the statute clearly violates natural law. So jury nulification (accepted even by Alexander Hamilton - as well as all the other Founders) would have to take place.

An extreme example - certainly.

However, take the example of a silly regulation that will bankrupt a business (there are tens of thousands of such regualtions - see, for example, Christopher Booker's writings on such things over the last twenty years).

A governement official decides to enforce the regulation (perhaps out of personal dislike for the person targeted). The businessman has done something which violates the regulation (most likely there was another regulation commanding him to do the thing that the other regulation forbad him to do - that is the way of the modern system).

This violation of a regulation in no way violates anyone (neither their body nor their goods, there has been no force or fraud - no violation of the principle of justice at all).

Does one convict the person and destroy their lives? Of course not - one finds him innocent (as juries often did in the 18th and early 19th centuries) because the regulation is absurd.

The slavish idea that "any regulation is the law and we must convict" leads (logically enough) straight to slavery.

After all there are a vast number of regulations, no doubt we are all "guilty" of violating some of them. So if they are all "the law" which (if on jury service) we must convict on the basis of - then we are all "criminals" and only the mercy of the all wise state keeps us all out of prison.

It would be nice if the elected government confined itself to passing statutes that tried to apply the principle of justice to the circumstances of time and place (i.e. if it tried to pass only statutes that were in line with the principles of law - rather than vague Enabling Acts that allow Ministers and Civil Servants to pass a vast range of regulations that members of Parliament have never even read let alone voted on) - but that is not this world.

In this world (if one were to take all the regulations seriously) most things are either forbidden or compulsory (and some things are BOTH forbidden and compulsory).

I say again it would nice if government were to mend its ways - but as it will not, one (on jury service or whatever) must act in accordance with the principles of law (not treat every arbitary act of will, regulation or statute, as if it were "the law").

If this was 1866 (not 2006) I might go along with the idea that one can trust the government not to produce a vast number of absurd statutes and regulations - but it is not, and one must deal with reality as it is.

"We must wait till government reforms itself" - I see, so if your daddy does not buy you a hat you let your head freeze.

"contract view of the state" not "contact view of the state".

And so on.

Paul, your post is (very) long so I'll try to adress the most pertinent points.
1) As regards Judaism and Natural Law. As I've understood it, this is a Greek concept which is thoroughly alien to Judaism. We are, what Mr Ratzinger calls, one of the un-hellenized religions and proud of it. G-d is completely 100% transcendent and he created rationality as a facet of human nature. Now there's some fairly intricate interpretations of Genesis 3 that can be added here, but I think that's probably going too far off topic. I know nothing about Spinoza so I really can't comment.
2) I used to think Hobbes was persona non grata, but I read Oakeshott's introduction to Leviathan, then the work itself and it really chaged my view. I still think that the doctrine he is most famous for, that all power must be vested in one man or body of men, is dead wrong, but I don't think it follows from his other arguments at all. As an surveyor of human nature and the rule of law, he is good. (his scriptural commentary, whilst erratic, is always entertaining and erudite too).
3)Are you saying that the "majesty of the law" applies to every arbitary dictate of every civil servant in the United Kingdom? Is this what was meant by the "rule of law"?
No, it refers to laws expressly written by the legitimate legislative body.
4) Kant's view, assuming it is what you say, on the binding of Isaac, is perverse. Kierkegaard gets much closer to the truth.
5) As for Hume on law, I'll take your word for it. As for religion whether he was, in his heart, an atheist is not really important, I maintain that only revealed religion or atheism is consistent with empiricism. I have no doubts as to what side I am on.
6) Talmudic "law" is a totally different beast from the Rule of Law. I would neve want to live in a country where talmudic law was backed up by coercive force, NEVER.

Perry No, lets not, because that is at the very core of my views. Moral theories need to be based on objective reality, and although theories about the true nature of that objective reality may be conjectural, they are not simply a matter of subjective whim. So I do indeed take the position that things can (and usually are) objectively moral or immoral

You think you are both clever and moral, that's fine so do I. The unfortunate thing is everyone else does as well. As it happens I do believe in an objective morality, but I am not foolish enough to believe everyone else will abide by it . Nor do I have any wish to live in a state which is organised as a moral community, I'd prefer to form them myself.

No, I can shoot them or hit them over the head with an brick or hire someone to kick their door in and get my stuff back. Why? Because I am objectively in the right and he is not and I do not need the law to conform or deny that (though obviously I would rather it did). Just because we both think we have a right to do something that does not mean we are both correct, and if the law fails to do what I need of it and is not realistically amenable to change, it is of no use to me and I will seek satisfaction from whoever has agrieved me via other means. People do it all the time

I've never met you, so you may be the the 21st century's answer to Goliath, but I'm guessing you're not so it's more likely (in the real world-the province of civil philosophy) that he'll hit you on the head and take whatever he left in the original robbery. What you are advocating is nothing more than a war of all against all which will only resove itself in a thousand unlimited tyrannies of the strong over the weak. In a situation when all there is to bind is morality, the most immoral will always come out on top.

The great thing about the Rule of Law is that it provides a minimum (and it should be minimum!) set of limits on how human beings can behave in relation to any other human being in the commonwealth, that doesn't require any level agreement or friendhip. From then on we can set about setting up all the moral associations (or civil society, if you prefer that term) and enterprise associations we wish on the basis of voluntary exchange.
Most errors in political philosphy stem from trying to turn the law of government's into something it is not. Worst is when people want to turn it into the rules of an enterprise association [collectivism], but trying to turn it into the rules (or laws) of moral association is just as dangerous.
Oakeshott says all this way better than me in an essay handily entitled "The Rule of Law"

Paul, thank you for answering many of my questions. I'm way outclassed in this discussion. All three of you have a much better command of what philosopher said what, when. Back when I was in highschool and learning to think, and quickly concluding against revealed knowledge, I had a two or three year bout of existentialism and read every thing I could find that Kirkegaard et el wrote. I ultimately rejected it but cannot begin to remember exactly why.

Regarding "the contact view of the state is not credible": Rationally, it is impossible to avoid the acceptance of "implied contract". While we are undoubtably going as a society in the direction of every single possibility having to be covered in a signed waiver of liability, this course pursued to its logical fulfilment yields an absolutely untenable result where we would even need to sign a contract before shaking hands. I use that example because I once had a friend who thought to was funny to squeeze a hand offered to shake until the recipient was in pain. It was absurd but being a big strong guy, he could seem to 'get it' and continued to do it. The problem didn't stop until I spent a summer vacation from highschool milking two cows by hand twice a day. I got fore arms like Popeye and returned the treatment to him that fall. To the best of my knowledge, he never did it again. This was Perry's method of conflict resolution (see his comment at 2:11AM) but I think it more reasonable that if this guy had broken someone's hand he would be financially liable for the consequences. Contract or not. There is a definite expectation of how someone will treat your hand if you offer it to them.

By this same reasoning, as we accept the benefits of a particular government, we are entering into an implied contract. Everybody has the right to not enter into a contract, or to opt out if entered without their express consent, but by accepting the protections of the armed forces, the laws (such as they are) and all the rest of government, one is at least for the time being, accepting the contract. If someone is going to opt out of part of a government's laws that one opposes, I think they are obligated to opt out of the ones they find beneficial also.

Regarding jury duty: I regard that as acting as an officer of the government rather than as a subject of it, therefore I would restrain government from doing something I thought was immoral in that situation. I would, however, make certain that the court was aware of my belief before placing me on a jury. For example, while I have no philosophical qualm with the death penalty for murder, I do not trust the government with the power of execution. (I grew up in a state where people were discovered to have been sent to death row after being framed by officers of the government. Woops, the government's officers were found not-guilty after the government paid over 7 figures in their legal defense fees. Hardly the kind of defense any of us could afford. In just the last few years in that state 18 death row prisoners have been released!) Therefore, I would have to make clear to the court that as a matter of moral conscience, I could not take any action that may enable an execution.

In reference to Perry's example "will you 'do your duty' and report your neighbours to the authorities if you discover they are members of the banned Falun Gong religion?" I will not take the role of an officer of the government to do something immoral. If the government compells me to do something immoral to another person, then I will reject my entire contract with that government. Those kind of actions against another human are in no way equivelent to breaking what one personally believes to be unjust laws of a government for personal gain. To conflate the two is inately self contradicting. Anyone who will not allow himself to be used by the government as a weapon against someone else, cannot with consistency accept benefits from a government that it takes unjustly from others. Yet this is what a tax cheat does while remaining a part of the overall system and accepting any benefits from it. Even one as fundamental as miltary defense.

Gabriel "I maintain that only revealed religion or atheism is consistent with empiricism." I hold precisely the opposite. That only agnosticism is consistent with empiricism. My view seems self evident to me, do you care to explain yours?

I'd be very interested to know what you mean by an 'objective reality' in this context, because I think I probably disagree with this.

Moral theories are based on social realities, rather than objective ones. By far the best analogy to what I am talking about is the parallel between morals and languages.

Each is an instinctive mechanism to enable large social groups to cooperate, like those chemical signals ants use to work as if a single collective organism. The human versions are far more powerful and flexible; it is instictive to have a language, but which one it is depends on context. Likewise, it is instinctive to react morally, but the content of the moral system is only limited by its fundamental function: to promote cooperation within the group.

Most of a language cannot be redefined on a whim. You cannot replace the word 'the' with something else, make all verbs irregular, or make a variety of expletives grammatically compulsory after the name of your favourite enemy. Or even sensible and popular sounding ones like simplifying English spelling. There is flexibility in certain areas and you can coin phrases or use wordplay of various sorts, but meaning is defined by the social context you live in, as it must to serve its function of enabling communication. Likewise, morality is restricted by social context, and while 'dialects' and 'accents' are allowed, radical differences cannot be tolerated.

Moral theories and laws are an attempt to systematise and explain the prevailing morality, like grammar and style guides are for language. Some seek consistency, and form their own artificial systems from the 'best' bits of many others, but this is like speaking Esperanto - they're never actually used. Real moral systems look more like Frankenstein's monster, and resist easy categorisation.

Morals cannot be determined from objective reality, any more than you can determine the "true" name for a physical object by means of scientific instruments. And to say that my morality is objectively correct and his is not is akin to shouting at all foreigners in English in the firm belief that they all understand it really and are just being perverse. Conversely, multi-linguists who believe that everyone can just talk away in their own language and expect for everyone to get along are equally at odds with truth.

Just because there is no objective basis for most of a morality does not mean they are all equal though. Morality has a purpose, and that purpose can be met better or worse by different moralities. I have heard the German is an excellent language for scientific discussion; the French claim theirs is better for expressing emotion. I'll make no comment on that, but I think we can consider the success of the West's cooperative approach as a reflection of its generally libertarian moral system.
(Which is nice, but the only real reason you need for speaking English is that you are an English-speaker.)

This is to some degree (and simplifying grossly) at the core of my own views; that the nature and laws of societies are not set by its leaders, but grow from the "mob". A Dictator is not defined as the one who gives the orders, but the one whose orders are obeyed.

While you are busy watching governments, the rise or fall of society can only come from the ever moving morality of the people.

Moral theories are based on social realities, rather than objective ones.

No, I would suggest social etiquette (in its broadest sense) and laws (which are products of political processes) are based on social realities, morality is quite a different matter.

Moral theories and laws are an attempt to systematise and explain the prevailing morality, like grammar and style guides are for language

Not really, laws are a social device for maintaining order and (ideally) facilitating social interactions, morality is about what is 'right and wrong'... moral theories are what we form to try and determine if something is moral or immoral. Like all theories, they are falsifiable as we operate on the basis on imperfect knowledge and understanding by our very natures. But we form moral theories based on our best understandings of the way things are (i.e. what we understand about the nature of objective reality).

Existence exists, reality is objective, but our understanding of it is conjectural... so we form a critical preference for the best theory currently available to explain reality and all manner of other consequential theories spring from that (such as moral theories).

If there is no objective basis, however conjectural, for a moral theory then presumably one moral theory is much like another and we cannot really judge them in meaningful ways. But I would argue that moral theories can (and are) falsified by examining them against what we think we know about objective reality. The difference between justifiable homicide and murder is not just a social convention, it is based on compelling moral theories and without some objective basis to judge such issues, we slide into Plato's world of morality being whatever society says it is. If society says slavery is OK, then slavery is OK. But if moral theories have an objective basis, then something can be legal, popular and commonly done and yet still be deeply immoral.

Thanks. I'm confident now that you're definition of morality is different to mine, but I still don't understand what yours is.

I understand that morality is about 'right' and 'wrong', as linguistics is about 'comprehensible' and 'incomprehensible' (or '(mis)understood'). Linguistic theories are formed to try to determine the difference, and are falsifiable and based on imperfect knowledge/understanding.

But at this point our paths diverge. I would study morality by introspection (what feels moral to me and how I decide) and by examining the similarities and differences between the moral judgements made by other individuals and societies, just as linguists study language. How do you determine them from the way things are?

Presumably, if morality is based in objective reality, then you could design an instrument or an algorithm to measure good and evil. Such a device would be a tremendous boon to mankind, but I really don't see how you can do it without it making reference to humans and their works.

I would suggest that even without an objective basis, moral theories are not like one another (I have already mentioned how languages can have different advantages, the same would apply to moralities) and socially-based theories may be falsifiable (as they are in linguistics). I would on the other hand agree that this means you cannot judge them meaningfully, at least using 'judgement' to mean 'ascribe a moral value to'. Judgements only exist inside moral systems, and cannot validly be applied self-referentially to the systems or collections of systems as a whole. This is the fallacy of the moral relativists.

(You might consider the moral system containing only the belief that it is good to refrain from judgement. Is this a true moral when applied to itself? If it is not, and it is good to judge, then the rule seems to do just that and we have a false moral making a correct judgement, and its contrary vice versa. If on the other hand it is true, then it judges itself harshly, and we have a bad moral being true.)

Your point about the difference between justifiable homicide and murder isn't clear - what is 'justifiable' is different according to different moral systems - and the complaint about Plato's world looks to me like argument from adverse consequences. Similarly, you give slavery as an example, presumably of legal and popular immorality, but you don't say on what objective basis you determine it to be immoral. It is by no means obvious to me.

Thanks for discussing this with me. This is a really interesting subject - I'm always keen to understand why people believe as they do, even if we don't agree.

Pa Annoyed,

I look at my best understanding of reality, including its potential futures.

I make value choices. These are choices. There is no right and wrong. There is only mine and other's.

What advances the things and future I value are my morality.

What obstructs or destructs things and future I value is my immorality.

My im/morality is continually fine tuned to serve my value choices.

My value choices are continually fine tuned to reflect improvements in my understanding of reality.

WWI was an amoral war. Both sides were relatively similar in both understanding reality and value > moral choices.

WWII was a moral war. Both sides had a good picture of reality, but extremely different values > morality.

Midwesterner

By objective reality I mean (in this context) what governments do - if governments did not produce a vast web of absurd (and sometimes contradictory) regulations it might be practical to treat everything government produced as a law that one must obey and help enforce (the distinction between regulations and statutes, and the natural law would still exist - but it would not be important).

However, this is not how governments (including elected governments) operate. In reality they do (these days anyway) produce a vast web of absurd and sometimes contradictory regulaions (which they have the bare faced cheek to call "the law") which one should certainly not help enforce (indeed with the contradictory ones this is impossible anyway - if one regulation commands an action and another regulation forbids the same action, one can clearly not obey both).

In the modern world no business can possibly obey all regulations (there are hundreds of thousands of regulations and many of them are written in such a vague way that it is impossible to understand them - see Christopher Booker, and many other writers, on this). Should one destroy a business (by convicting the owner) when they have done nothing wrong (i.e. they have not violated, by force or fraud, the bodies or goods of anyone) OF COURSE NOT (this should not even need to be said).

Indeed treating every statute and regulation drawn from "enabling acts" as "law" - leads to a general contempt for law.

It is no accident that the areas that have the most "laws"have the most corruption and lawlessness.

No one can live obeying all the "laws" of a modern state so if they really are "laws" why should one obey any laws at all, including the laws against theft and murder?

Only by keeping a clear distiction in one's mind between "law" and law, is an honourable life possible.

Oakeshott (mentioned by Gabrial), for all his dislike of the term "natural law" (and his love of Hobbes) is important here.

If "the law" is to be treated as simply the rules of vast organization (as modern governments treat it) then civil society can not survive. The "enterprice association" conception of law (followed by modern governments) is not compatible with civil society (and was not meant to be, by the thinkers who developed the enterprise conception of law).

Only seeing "the law" as an effort to apply the principle of justice (the civil association principle of the nonviolation of other peoples bodies and goods of others) to the circumstances of time and place is compatible with civil society.

Seeing law as simply arbitary will is exactly what Jewish Talmudic tradition is AGAINST.

I do not care if the term "natural law" is not used - it is the MEANING NOT THE WORDS that I am talking about.

Of course the great weakness of M.J. Oakeshott is that he does not say what we are to do if government decides that it does not want to be the "governor" of a civil society, but prefers to be the manager of an enterprise association instead (perhaps being an admirer of Hobbes means he is at a loss when dealing with any question about what to do if the powers-that-be decide to be nasty).

As for Hume - errr the person who had fun at least playing the part of athiest (as normal it is not possible to be certain what Hume believed, he was a game player, a very clever one, but still a game player,which makes it absurd to cite him on law, religion, the mind, the physical world, or anything else - although it might well have amused Hume that people cite him) was Hume himself.

Indeed a crowd of people gathered outside his window when he was death bed to see whether an athiest would scream as he faced death. Actually Hume faced death calmly (so the crowd has to seek amusment elsewhere).

Hume loved playing games (as I said above), but forgetting that he is playing games is very dangerious.

For example, in his "History of England" Hume says that Chales I was executed because he used armed force against the people (in other places Hume says quite nice things about absolute monarchy - he is Whig baiting).

In fact (as Hume knew perfectly well) Charles did not get killed because he used armed force - he got killed because he LOST (many Kings have not used armed force against people plotting against them - and that has not stopped those people killing them).

However, Hume's "History of England" was one of the favourate books of Louis XVI, and he got in to his head that if refused to use armed force his enemies would not be able use it (hence the order for the Swiss Guard to pull back and many of his other absurd actions) - because of this opinion in his head, Louis XVI lost his head (and so lots of people - and hundreds of thousands of other French people died in other nasty ways).

Of course Hume once said that all government is based on "public opinion" (so there was no difference, in this, between England and the Ottoman Empire) - again he was game playing.

Hume knew perfectly well that many governments are based on terror - but he could have said "well the terror is an opinion, and there is the opinion of the people who the government relies upon to inspire the terror and......"

One either likes this sort of game playing or one does not - I do not, but others do.

However, Hume could make a case (although his objective is simply to make a case, not to find the truth, that is why I dislike him).

"Compatibalism" is the most extreme example of Hume's game playering and paradox use.

Moral responisiblity depends on one being able to choose to other than one has done - for example rape is an evil act because one could have choosen not to rape the victim. Morality depends on the ability to choose - on being an agent a subject (not just an object) on "free will".

Determinism is the doctrine that every event is in a series of causes and effects that could (in theory) be traced back to the start of time - and whilst "it seems" that someone has choosen to do something, "in fact" they could not have choosen otherwise (because of their genetic inheritance, their environment or whatever).

Free will and determinism have been in conflict since the start of philosophy.

So would it not be a jolly game to pretend that moral responbility and determinism are "compatible" - so that one can believe in both at the same time.

It may have been jolly when Hume played this game, but it is not amusing when one comes upon philosphers teaching the doctrine with total seriouness.

Perhaps I am being hard on Hume (his game playing and folk, years afterswards, taking it seriously are two different things). But I still find it irritating.

My reaction to the man is rather like Dr Johnson's reaction to him. I dislike people treating serious matters as a joke.

In my comment above I missed the "benefits" version of the implied contract theory of the state.

No I do not have to (for example) have to hand over someone with brown eyes to be sterilized. And no this is nothing to do with Hobbes' argument that self defence trumps obeying the state (the only exception to obeying the state he ever gives) as I have blue eyes.

In fact my duty is to defend the person being attacked (by the democractically elected government - say in Sweden a few decades ago).

Nor should I help convict a businessman (and destroy his business and his life) because he did not fill X number of forms (most of which he will never have heard of) or because he has done or not done something either commanded by some regulation or forbidden by one (or both). If he has not violated, by force or fraud, the bodies or goods of other folk the fact that that some arbitary regulation says he must be destroyed carries no weight.

As for taxation - that is a separate argument which I will not get into here.

As for my accepting a state education, or walking on a state provided street, or even accepting the help of state policeman if I am attacked - these things in no way change the above.

This gets to the absurd level of "you walked to this court room on a state provided street, so you must ruin this person's life by voting to convict him of violating this [absurd] regulation", to which the correct response is to say "no".

"Implied contact" and so on, is just another version of the contract theory of the state, which is (at least in the case of all nations that I know of) false.

Thank you Paul,

I think it's fairly well accepted that morality is distinct, and at some point takes precedence over law. Law is fairly clearly defined (as such things go), but morality is more controversial. That's why I was interested in Perry's views on an objective determination.

I think I might be able to argue with some of your points on law, but I'm not going to get sidetracked. I'm more interested in how you determine morality.

You say "If "the law" is to be treated as simply the rules of vast organization... then civil society can not survive". You seem to be hinting at another argument from adverse consequences: we must believe morals objective, because we wouldn't know which laws to obey if they were merely rules. I propose this is also a false dilemma; there are other alternatives.

To take my language analogy again; laws are like grammar and style guides: don't split infinitives, don't use cliches, don't say "could of" when you mean "could've". Morals are like how people really speak; the living language. The only time you are really expected to follow the "rules" is in an English exam. Language does not have to be defined objectively for people to know how to say what they mean.

The meta-moral rule that moral responsibility (and hence punishment) relies on free will is common, but not universal. To the extent that the purpose of morality is to guide action, it has no useful function if there are no alternatives; but that has not stopped people holding such morals anyway. (For simplicity's sake, I suspect. Punishment only when useful is on average more profitable, though.)

And supposing free will to be an illusion, morality may still play a role. A computer program simulates alternatives and selects between them based on a calculated utility. It's utility is based on its own wellbeing (simply because programs with such a relationship tends to survive more often). If its simulation knows that certain actions will lead to punishment, it will "tend to" choose other alternatives. (I say "tend to" because of course it has no choice. The outcome it determined by circumstances and the function.) If hard-wired elements of its utility function arbitrarily scores those actions low, the same function is served. A community of programs may thereby interact harmoniously to their mutual benefit. Everything is deterministic, but punishment and sin still serve the greater good.

The 'implied contract' model is mis-named in my opinion. It is not a contract, but an offer to trade. "If you fol