WE ARE BAD WITHOUT RELIGION?!

RELIGION AND MORALITY: CONNECTED?

"Without God, everything is permitted"  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"(The autonomous man will have) developed his own, independent,

long range will, which dares to make promises; he has a sense of power

and freedom, of complete accomplishment" Friedrich Nietzsche 

Can we be good without religion? Do we need to derive our morals from scripture? Questions such as these are often asked when trying to determine whether religion and morality are in some way connected. The answer is by no means clear, and whilst philosophers and theologians have put forward arguments in support of the view that they are linked, there are many who would deny this; they may even argue that they oppose one another. These questions are important: issues raised have challenged religious belief as well as systems of secular ethics. 

DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS

The Bible. Christians believe that God's word is revealed through it.

This system of ethics believes that what makes us moral is God's commands. As an omni-benevolent being, God is the source of all goodness and so his instructions reveal how we should live. But from where do we gain God's commands?

The source of God's authority is said to be revealed through scripture. In scripture, moral commands are written down. For instance, in the Christian Bible contains the Decalouge (The Ten Commandments 'Thou Shalt not kill' etc.), the Sermon On The Mount, where Jesus gave moral guidance, and other moral instructions such as 'Love thy neighbour'. Scripture also recommends how we should lead a religious life, through prayer, through tradition, through rules. Following this ensures we will lead a moral life.

Those who believe scripture truly reveals God's intentions will find this view convincing. But there are problems. One is the more obvious one of whether God exists. If he does not exist, then the source of the morals revealed through scriptures is not God. It can also have the implication that what is written in scripture is reduced in value. 

Even if a belief in God is justified, the problems do not end there. Atheist Richard Dawkins examines some of the Old Testament in the 'God Delusion' and attacks the supposed 'picking and choosing' and also the content of these stories. For instance, he mentions the story of Noah, stating that "God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children and also, for good measure, the rest of the (presumably) blameless animals as well.". He says that "irritated theologians will protest that we do not take the book of genesis literally any more" but "we pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe ,which bits to write off as symbols or allegories." It may be argued that much of scripture is era-dependant (the bloody time in which the Koran was written, for instance) and in parts shocking to a modern reader ,whether it be Lot being seduced by his daughters, or Job's suffering. Are such stories consistent with an an all loving God? 

Other criticisms are related to historical inaccuracies, such as those surrounding Jesus's birth, and by the influence of the author's personal views, such as St Paul's attitude to women. Of course, whose interpretation of scriptures is right? Atheists may even ask, whose book is correct? 

GOD, MORALITY AND THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA

The relationship between religion and morality is one which a religious believer must resolve, even examining the view that it doesn't exist. The scholar R.B Braithwaite argues that to be religious is to be committed to a set of moral values. Religious language, he claims, is the language of morality and that religious believers have committed themselves to particular ways of behaving. One of these way maybe that to believe in God is to live in obedience to his will and law, and the way in which he makes moral commands is crucial to understand. 

However, the moral critique observes that the demands that are said to be made by God lead to absurd, pointless and dangerous outcomes. 

One moral critique and a major challenge to the relationship between religion and morality is Plato's Euthyphro dilemma: Does God command X (any moral command) because it is good, or is X good because God commands it? 

If God's command should be followed because it is good, then goodness is separate from God. He is not its source and his morally good nature isn't perfect. He cannot bring goodness into being other than goodness he access from outside him. If this is accepted, he is not the wholly good God that people may worship. 

If something is good because God commends it, then in principle anything God commands should be followed as it always good. However, how do we respond if a command from God goes against our sense of right and wrong? The story of Abraham almost sacrificing his son is an example that immediately comes to mind. Was the command given to Abraham, to test his faith, a good command, although it may have led to a horrible conclusion, and may lead to the image of malevolent God? Or is such a view superseded by the virtue of faith?

A.C Grayling

MORALITY WITHOUT RELIGION? 

The scholar A.C Grayling argues that "...religion is precisely the wrong resource for thinking about moral issues in the contemporary world, and indeed subverts moral debate". He suggests that modern society values freedom, achievement, saving money, insuring against the future and being rewarded for success,  and religion is not consistent with the modern times. His view is that others should be seen as intrinsically valuable, and this should be a source of our morality.

Richard Dawkins speaks of a Darwinian explanation for our morality. In speaking of a gene ensuring its own survival relative to other genes, it may be that these genes influence organisms to behave altruistically. These 'altruistic genes' promote four different kinds of behaviour:

 Richard Dawkins

i) Kin altruism where an organism acts to favour their genetic kin. Being good to one's children is an example and Dawkins also explains how certain organisms have evolved societies where elder siblings take care of the younger ones, such as bees, wasps and ants.

ii) Reciprocal altruism, the principle of 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'. He explains it as such "The principle is the basis of all trade and barter in humans too. The hunter needs a spear and the smith wants meat". It works "because of asymmetries in needs and in capacities to meet them". It is greater he claims, between different species as the "asymmetries are greater".

iii) Altruism which has the benefit of developing a reputation, for instance of kindness and generosity.

iv) Altruistic deeds which are an advertisement of dominance and superiority. In terms of Anthropology this is known as the Potlatch effect, named after custom where rival chieftains of North- Pacific tribes attempt to outdo each other through generous feasts. 

He goes on to explain that "Through most of our prehistory, humans lived under conditions that would have strongly favoured the evolution of all four kinds of altruism" for instance in villages, or in roving bands. You would be closely related to your group, and may have come across other groups, and due to this, he argues, it is easy to see how all four evolved. 

What Grayling and Dawkins are trying to show is that we do not need God or religion to understand the roots of morality or even as sources of morality.  Numerous other explanations of how we gain our morals and our ethics also exist and some of their authors have attempted to show, such as the two examples here, that religion and morality are independent of one another. 

Sources: 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins
               'A2 Religious Studies' by Sarah Tyler and Gordon Reid

MUCH OF WHAT WE SAY: MEANINGLESS?! (PART 2)

In part 1 (http://phenomenal-philosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/much-of-what-we-say-meaningless-part-1.html), we introduced the Logical Positivism movement and its main idea - the Verification Principle. An apparently impressive idea, its critics exposed its weakness to such an extent that the theory was discredited by the 1970's. In part 2 we will discuss these weaknesses.

OBJECTIONS

1.A major problem with the Verification Principle is that it is self refuting: 'A statement is only literally meaningful if it is a tautology (analytical statements) or can be empirically verified', yet we cannot verify this proposition empirically nor is it a tautology. Could we even verify it in principle (remember Ayer's hills on the moon?)? I found this funny video while attempting to search for the answer, do take a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ags_M3ILszo 

2. Another major issue is that it rules out historical statements, as even though there is evidence (books, letters, official documents etc) there is no way of empirically verifying them. To say that 'the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815' is a meaningless statement as there is no one alive who could claim to have experienced it.

3. Think about the statement 'I love you'. It is an unverifiable emotion, and would be ruled out as meaningless. We could not definitely define what it means to love someone, but when we make the claim it is understood as meaningful, so it meaningful in principle.

4. Ethical and moral statements are said to be meaningless. No sense experience could verify the statement 'do not kill'. However, such statements influence the shaping up of religious and secular laws and some of these statements are considered for the most part universalisable.

5. We cannot absolutely verify the laws of science. No finite number of observations can conclusively prove that 'Gravity causes an object to fall back to the ground'.

RESPONSES: DOES THE THEORY WORK?

A.J Ayer in 'Language, Truth and Logic' suggested a 'strong' and a 'weak' form of the principle. Strong Verification deals with statements whose truths raise no doubt 'A circle is round'. Weak Verification involves statements where there is no absolute certainty, only but there is a strong likelihood of truth due to evidence existing e.g. the sun rises every morning. The philosopher in you might say that separating the principle into two forms help deal with 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' forms of truth. The idea of verification in principle (hills on the other side of the moon) would also be used as a response. 

None of this however solves the problems. One objection that could be raised is that the positivist might see religious language as meaningless but the scholar John Hick has argued that many religious claims are historical, and since weak verification would allow historical statements due to the existence of evidence, then at least in principle a statement such as 'Jesus rose from the dead' is meaningful. 

If we knew what would in principle verify a statement, then we could say it is meaningful. However, we can object to this because in theory virtually any statement could be verifiable if it were known, in principle, what would verify it. Thus, much of what the movement claimed as meaningless, such as Metaphysics, may be shown to be meaningful, it is just that we cannot know what will verify it. 

You could also accuse Logical Positivism of assuming that you could apply the scientific principle of empirical observation to the use of language, saying that a proposition must make a claim that observation could verify. This denies that human beings use language in a rich variety of ways, such as creating great works of literature; we don't just use language to evaluate what is right and wrong. It also assumes that observation best verifies a statement, but you could easily object to this claim, as we can easily be deceived by our senses. Richard Dawkins talks about the power of the brain*, processing information and creating an image which could easily be misleading, quoting the illusion of the **'Necker's Cube'

The Necker's Cube

Perhaps the biggest problem is that accepting the theory's criteria makes the theory itself meaningless. We have no way of showing that it is meaningful, no statement of logic, no piece of empirical data, no hypothesis we can test. It is an example of the kind of statement which the first positivists wished to evaluate the meaning of; statements which were accepted almost axiomatically (self evident truth which need no proof). 

Thus the movement failed to the extent that even A.J Ayer later said that most of what was claimed by this movement was 'false'. It still retains an important place in the history of Analytical Philosophy due to its large impact and because it influenced further movements. 

For both parts Sources: 'Language, Truth and Logic' by A.J Ayer

                                     'A2 Religious Studies' by Sarah K. Tyler and Gordon Reid  

                                     'The Thinkers Guide to God' by Peter Vardy and Julius Arliss

                                     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Necker_cube.svg

                                     http://askaphilosopher.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/does-the-verification-principle-fail-by-its-own-criterion/

                                     

*In the God Delusion, Dawkins talks about the power of the brain when objecting to the view that Religious Experience justifies belief in God.

** Find out more about this illusion http://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/supersenses/necker.htm

MUCH OF WHAT WE SAY: MEANINGLESS?! (PART 1)

Moritz Schlick, Chair of the Vienna Circle

INTRODUCTION

In the 1920's, a group of scholars known as the Vienna circle, with scholars from the Berlin circle met at the University of Vienna. The conclusions that they arrived at were to dominate Philosophy for over 30 years.

These group of people gave birth to a movement known as 'Logical Positivism'. The implication of the theory suggested by the Positivists was to say that much of the language we use, such as in religion, morality and metaphysics is meaningless, as it did not meet certain criteria.

THE PRINCIPLE OF VERIFICATION

The Positivists applied the principles of science and maths to language and argued that language had to be based on experience. The idea was to determine what made a sentence 'literally meaningful'.

The Principle Of Verification states that, for a sentence to be meaningful, it had to be based on experience, in other words by our senses. 

A sentence is also considered meaningful if it met one of the following criteria:

i) Analytic statements: This would include a sentence such as 'A circle is round'. Any statement which is 'a priori', i.e. it has its own verification, as we know a circle is round.

ii) Mathematical statements: These statements can only be wrong due to human error, otherwise they are true.

iii) Synthetic statements: Statements which can be empirically tested to verify or to falsify them are known as Synthetic statements. They are 'a posteriori' statements; they make claims which can tested by observation and can therefore be said to be true or false. Theoretical statements such as 'life exists on other planets' are said to be meaningful, as in the future we could verify or falsify them. The example used by Ayer in 'Language, Truth and Logic' is to say that there are hills on the other side of the moon. At the time he wrote this there could not have been conclusively verified, yet to a Positivist it would have been meaningful.

LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC  

Alfred Jules Ayer

The ideas of the positivists spread to U.S.A after the scholars had to escape oppression. Through the efforts of Alfred Jules Ayer, the work became accessible in Britain. He introduced their ideas in the English language. 

As I am currently reading his book, I will make references to it.

CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS

Ayer starts his book by criticising Metaphysics on the grounds that the statements used by the metaphysician are of no literal meaning. He says that no statement which refers to 'reality' which transcends the limits of sense experience can have literal meaning, 'from which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense'. 

He distinguishes by between practical verifiability and verifiability in principle. A synthetic statement would be an example of the latter, such as there being hills on the other side of the moon. However, if we take a sentence such as 'the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress' it cannot even be verified in principle, 'For one cannot conceive an observation which would enable one to determine whether the Absolute did, or did not enter into evolution and progress.'

Ayer goes on to explain how the statements of Metaphysics come to be made. He talks about the concept of Being. If we take the two sentences 'martyrs exist' and 'martyrs suffer', both consist of a noun 'martyr' and an intransitive verb, which may lead one to assume that both are the same logical type. However, even before Ayer, scholars like Kant and G.E Moore argued that existence cannot be used as an attribute, in the same way that, in this case 'suffer' is being used, 'for when we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists.' Thus, a mistake is made if existence is treated as an attribute; people who assume this 'are guilty of following grammar beyond the boundaries of sense.'

Similarly, a mistake is made if we treat the sentence 'Unicorns are fictitious' in the same way as 'Dogs are faithful'. Dogs must exist in order to be faithful, but to say the same about unicorns is a contradiction. It could be argued that unicorns do exist in some 'non-empirical' sense, 'but since there is no way of testing whether an object is real in this sense' to say that that fictitious objects have some sort of existence has no literal significance and is meaningless. This results from treating 'fictitious' as an attribute.

THE PURPOSE OF PHILOSOPHY

An implication of accepting the Verification principle renders academic disciplines such as Metaphysics, Theology, Ethics and even History meaningless. It also changes the purpose of the discipline of Philosophy.

This a key theme in Ayer's book. In the first chapter itself he remarks 'The most traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful'. From here on we understand that Ayer wishes to create a system which addresses this 'The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry'.

The positivists, including Ayer would have argued that the purpose and method of enquiry of Philosophy is to establish what statements are meaningful and to work with those. Anything else, especially Metaphysics, cannot be shown to be meaningful.

All of this looks impressive, and its appeal made it a major part of Philosophy for three decades. However, the theory was discredited and even Ayer later disavowed his famous work. What's wrong with it? Find out in part 2

ARISTOTLE: THE CREATOR OF SCIENCE?!

Significance of Aristotle 

Aristotle. In this picture his
palm points downwards
and his book 'ethics' is flat,
showing that reality is
within experience.

We all accept without further inquiry that Aristotle was a great Philosopher. Some may even know him because of his Metaphysics. But did you know that because of Aristotle, science was seen as important in the western world? Did you know that he introduced the idea scientific investigation? It was he who, unlike his teacher Plato, wished to gain knowledge from observing the world we live in, instead of looking beyond experience. 

Those who are keen to, observe the world to collect evidence. From this evidence, we can draw conclusions. We may have a hypothesis which could be corroborated or disproved by this evidence, or we may wish to answer a question such as 'What does the universe look like?' It was Aristotle who introduced this discipline to the western world. 

That science plays an important role in our life, few would question. Its basis and usefulness comes from the discipline of observation and the collection of evidence to answer questions. The significance of Aristotle's contribution in making this understood cannot be overstated.

Aristotle the scientist

In advocating the use of observation to reach a conclusion, Aristotle is considered the first western scientist. His entire approach is based on scientific evidence and observation. For him, it is by scientific method that we can work out what things should be, instead of looking out to some heavenly realm of perfection. He was an empiricist, that is someone who relies on experience to gain knowledge. He was the first person to show how truths can be established through scientific method and observation

Aristotle classified many types of animal and plant and considered that each member of different species of living things and every living thing shared a distinct nature. (In that sense he is the father of taxonomy) If something fulfilled its nature it was considered good, and it was considered defective if it did not

Influence of Aristotle  

There is no question that Aristotle's work had a very large impact on Philosophy. In particular, his view of the universe was accepted for thousands of years and combined with biblical teaching, some of Plato's teaching and Ptolemy of Alexandria's cosmology*, was the basis of Christian Philosophy until scholars such as Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo seriously challenged these views.

The idea that God is 'an unmoved mover' and exists outside time and space are also key ideas that theologians use to describe God. In the 13th century St Thomas Aquinas used the idea of Aristotle's God being an 'unmoved mover' as one of his 'five ways' to prove God's existence, with the idea of motion.

Finally, one more point that can be made from this discussion is the idea that if something fulfilled its nature it was considered good, and it was considered defective if it did not. This is the idea of privation, a physical lack of a quality. For instance, blindness is a privation of sight. It is not to be confused with absence. You might say that a horse having no wings is an absence, but a bird with no wings is a special kind of absence; you would say that this is a privation of flight.

The reason this idea is important is because when we consider the problem of evil**, many theologians use the idea the evil is a privation of good when defending the existence of God in theodicies (solutions to the problem of evil). The most famous scholar to do so is St Augustine of Hippo

The world is not a dance of the shadows

Plato argued that true reality lay beyond the limits of human experience, which he expressed in the analogy of the cave and in his theory of Forms

However, Aristotle rejected Plato's approach.

In particular, he argued that we must answer questions by starting from observation of our surroundings - we must look at the world as it really is. In doing so, we must collect evidence: if say, we wish to understand what makes a good person, we must study people. 

The Universe according to Aristotle

The Earth is at the centre of the universe.

He controversially held that the Earth is a sphere, as the shadow cast on the moon by the Earth would be different if it was flat, as it was believed then.The Earth was fixed with the stars, the sun and the moon revolving around it. Aristotle thought that the stars were fixed in circular rings that revolved around the Earth in perfect circles. 

It is important to understand that these ideas were accepted for over a thousand years. As history shows, although he was a scientist, his accepted views actually hindered scientific progress, because whenever scholars like Copernicus or Galileo tried to reject this view of the cosmos, they were often persecuted and dealt with harshly.

Aristotle's God

Whereas Plato argued that the 'Demiurge' creates the universe with pre-existing matter, Aristotle defines God differently. 

He argued that the universe is everlasting and has always existed. The Earth was the centre of the universe, and round the Earth, in forty concentric rings, were the stars. He believed that the circle was the perfect shape and therefore stars revolved in perfect, circular orbits. The first ring of stars was moved by the second ring, the second by the third and so on. The question is, what moves the fortieth ring? 

His answer was that God moved the fortieth ring. This God however did nothing: does not create the cosmos, does not keep the universe in existence, and does not intervene in its affairs. Even so, God causes the fortieth ring of stars to move!

God in a sense is the 'Great Attractor'. To explain how this works, we use an analogy provided by Fr. Gerry Hughes SJ. Imagine there is a room with a carpet and there is a cat at one side of the room and a bowl of milk is placed at the other. The milk does not move, yet the cat will go across the carpet to the milk.

This God is outside time and space and was not an object in the universe

Key terms: *In this cosmology the Earth is at the centre of the universe. It is surrounded by 10 glassy spheres on which the moving planets and the fixed starts were located. 7 of the Spheres were for the known heavenly bodies, an eight for the starts, the ninth which was invisible and moved the others, the final was the abode of the Gods. It was believed that they had circular orbits as circular motion was considered perfect.

**The problem of evil states that if God is all good and all powerful, then evil should not exist. If evil does exist, we must either accept that God is not all good, or all powerful or that he is non-existent. Solutions to the problems, Theodicies, attempt to resolve this inconsistency. 

Sources: 'Religion and Science' by Mel Thompson

              'The Thinkers Guide To God' by Peter Vardy and Julie Arliss

CHAOS AND CONFUSION IN LIFE&DEATH ETHICS

Life and death are major areas within moral philosophy. The ethics of assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF, donors and surrogacy, and at the opposite end of the spectrum abortion, euthanasia (active and passive) and assisted suicide, amongst others evoke strong reaction. These issues are not abstract philosophical problems existing in academic journals; these are issues which apply to the everyday world and have direct consequences for human beings.

In order to further my understanding of this veritable minefield,  I am reading- 'Rethinking Life and Death' by Peter Singer and 'Causing Death and Saving Lives' by Jonathan Glover. In a future blog post I will give a more detailed review of these books, as I am yet to finish. However, I will share some of what they have to say about our approach to these issues. For anyone interested in bioethics and applied ethics, I would highly recommend these books.

Emotion clouds judgement

Glover argues that emotion often clouds our judgement. Whilst we accept the statement 'killing is wrong', he points out that we find it hard to hold onto this principle when confronted with killing in specific contexts: "Very few people are committed to absolute pacifism. Some support capital punishment. There are several different views about abortion." Another issues he raises is the drawing of boundaries when we talk about killing. When, for example is a war justified? When talking about abortion, it could be argued that it is justified if the baby born will be severely handicapped, but these same people will be "appalled at the suggestion that we should kill grossly abnormal children or babies who have already been born".

Glover attempts to answer the question whether we can formulate general principles to tell us which acts of killing can be classed as right or wrong. He divides the book into two sections: The first part deals with method of argument, the second with moral theories such as the sanctity of life.

Singer too raises the point that such issues cause chaos and confusion. His hypothesis however, is that our long held beliefs, mainly the ethic of the sanctity of life, are under attack, and that we must rethink our traditional ethic in light of the advances in modern technology, where people who are considered brain dead have their bodily functions continuously running by life support machines, for instance. He wishes to introduce a new way of looking at life and death (as yet I cannot say what it is!) 

The Sanctity of life under attack

The doctrine of the sanctity of life states that life should always be upheld as it has particular sacredness. Even those who are not religious will argue that there is something special about life and should hence always be preserved. The doctrine is attacked by both authors. Let us first deal with Glover's critique.

Glover: Killing as a direct wrong and the importance of consciousness

If we accept the sanctity of life, we are saying that killing is an intrinsic wrong, that killing is wrong in itself. Glover rejects this, but wishes to say that life is important. How does he reconcile this? 

When we talk about killing being wrong, we often talk about direct and side effects. By side effects we can say for instance the grieving of family. Glover is not concerned with that.  When we speak of a direct wrong, we talk about the negative effect, i.e. consequence on the person killed. It is this view which Glover wishes to retain. He also tries to set a boundary between life and death. 

Moral Philosopher Jonathan Glover 

An instance where this issue becomes important is how we treat a person in an irreversible coma. Is he/she alive? Still a human being? In investigating such an issue, Glover comes to the conclusion that essentially we are dealing with the importance of consciousness. He asks "Do we value life if unconscious, or do we value life only as a vehicle of consciousness?" He answers that life is a vehicle of consciousness. "Those of us who think that the direct objections to killing have to do with death considered from the standpoint of the person killed will find it natural to regard life as being of value only as a necessary condition of consciousness."

He introduces the concept of a 'Life Worth Living'.  Glover doesn't deny that what makes such a life isn't easy to decide. He does however say this "A life worth living has more to it than mere consciousness," which is described as simply consisting of awareness or the having of experiences. When humans have something more than just being aware, then to end such a life is directly wrong. 

Such a view can have dangerous consequences, but Glover is not advocating that we exclude certain people, he is saying that we are only trying to judge whether someone's life is so empty and unhappy as to not be worth living. The attempt  ("obviously an extremely fallible one") is to see the person's life from there point of view and to see what they get out of it. There is no suggestion that we have the right to start killing people if they don't have a 'life worth living'. The point being made is that if this person has such a life, "this is one reason why it is directly wrong to kill him". 

Singer's Critique. 

In Peter Singer's view,  the traditional ethic "has collapsed". He cites the case of Anthony Bland*, a young man who after the infamous Hillsborough disaster** was left in a persistent vegetative state. On the 4th of February 1993 Britain's highest court allowed doctors to lawfully end his life. According to Singer "we are going through a period of transition in our attitude to the sanctity of human life". Such a problem he says, is bound to cause 'confusion and division'. (In the case of abortion, many who do not agree with abortion may well go the paradoxical extreme of murdering doctors who carry out the procedure!)

Bioethicist Peter Singer 

The confusion is further caused by the advances of medical technology. We are now able to keep people who are brain-stem dead for decades. The question is, should we always uphold the Sanctity of life, regardless of the quality and nature of that life? Singer answers "that ethic (the Sanctity of Life) is now being brought undone by changes in medical technology with which its inflexible structures simply cannot cope."

The need for a new outlook is cited by certain examples. For instance the "American Medical Association has a policy that says a doctor can ethically withdraw all means of life prolonging medical treatment, including food and water, from a patient in an irreversible coma. Yet the same policy insists that the 'physician should not intentionally cause death'." 

In summary, if we hold onto an ethic whose views are inconsistent with the medical advances of today, it is bound to create problems. For this reason we must rethink our views on life and death which can cope with these new issues.

Further information

*Anthony Bland- http://www.spuc.org.uk/about/no-less-human/Bland.pdf

**The Hillsborough disaster- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

More on the authors: Peter Singer- http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/

                                  Jonathan Glover- http://jonathanglover.co.uk/

LOOKING BEYOND THE CAVE PART 2

Plato's God

Plato's God is formless and timeless.

According to Plato, there is the world of perfect Forms, which exist beyond time and space and were not created; they're eternal. There is also raw, chaotic matter. It is unordered and constantly changing obeying no set of rules. Plato's God was called the 'Demiurge', literally meaning public worker but also the word used to describe a craftsmen. 

The role of the Demiurge is to bring order out of such chaos. He uses the pre-existing matter to do so, using the Forms as the model. The creator faces the problem of matter resisting its will. The universe can never be perfect due to the matter it is created from and can never be a perfect universe, and is also always changing because it is in space and time. 

An important point need to be made here. The God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism is said to create the universe 'ex nihilo' i.e. creating something out of nothing. He is all loving, all powerful and a personal God. The Demiurge is not all powerful, and does not create something from nothing. He is morally good as judged against the Form of good. 

Influence

Although I will discuss this in later posts, I need to raise the point that such ideas influenced thought on how God was defined by early Christians and western Philosophers. The idea of something having 'perfection' was defined as something that was beyond space and time, and something which was not contingent on anything but is seen as necessary and eternal. 

The idea that God brought the universe into existence and is spaceless and timeless, and is a necessary being, not a contingent one, was most certainly influenced by such thought. In particular, the Christian Theologian St Thomas Aquinas was to offer such an argument to prove God's existence in his famous 'Five Ways' (But that is another post for another day!)

PLATO: LOOKING BEYOND THE CAVE PART 1

The great philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.E) has undoubtedly been extremely influential to western philosophy. In this post I will discuss two ideas, in this post we look at The Theory of Forms, Part 2 will discuss the 'Demiurge', Plato's God.

Plato, holding the dialouge 'Timaeus'. This particular
picture is representative of his views. For example, his
hand points up, showing the
Forms as the true reality.

The Theory of Forms

Plato considered the world a dance of shadows, that true reality belonged to perfect ideas such as good, love, justice, beauty and so on. All these realities existed above the material world. Taking the example of beauty, we may all find different things beautiful: a young girl, a work of art, or even the birth of a child. All of this beauty we see is merely a reflection of the perfect Form of beauty. The same applies to the other Forms, such as those aforementioned. For Plato, true reality lies beyond the world of experience and our purpose in life is to see through the illusions of this world and to arrive, through philosophy, to a knowledge of the Forms.

The Story of the Cave  

In 'Republic', Plato explains how humans ought to use Philosophy. In the cave analogy, we are asked to imagine that all human beings are in a cave, tied to chairs and facing the wall at the back of the cave. They have never changed from this position and had never left the cave. Behind them is a fire and between the fire and the backs of the people are figures moving backwards and forwards. The people on the seats would see the flickering shadows on the wall of the cave cast by the light of the fire and the movement of the figures between the fire and the wall. They would assume the shadows are real.  

For Plato, the objective of Philosophy is to try and see the world as it really is and not as a dance of the shadows. Through reason, he believed we could be released from the limits imposed by our senses. This is done by a questioning everything. Once we were able to do so, we could turn around, walk past the fire and out of the cave into the light of the sun, which for him, represents the Form of Good.

 Criticism of the Forms

Some of the weaknesses in the theory are present in Plato's dialogue 'Parmenides'. One problem raised is the exact relationship between the form and the particular. How exactly is a particular cat, for example, a resemblance of the Form of cats? How does the perfect ideal intermingle with its imperfect copy is essentially the question.

Furthermore, we have a problem of limits. How many things can we say actually have a Form? It may be that, as Socrates says in the dialogue, there are Forms for beauty, or truth, or virtue, but Parmenides does ask whether characteristics like hair and mud too have Forms? Do all things have a Form, or do only some specific things have a Form? Is it possible to make a distinction?

One problem is that if Forms do exist, they are beyond what we can experience, so how can we be sure that they really are there? The great Philosopher Aristotle, as I will show in a later post, argued that we must examine the world and draw conclusions based on evidence and sensory experience. If we want to know what makes a good tree, we must study trees, if we want to know what makes a human beautiful, we should study humans. Thus, an empiricist would argue with Plato's approach.

Aristotle in his 'Metaphysics' raised two objections to Forms. Firstly, he argues that we must accept that ultimate Forms exist even of things which are negative, for instance evil and suffering. The second problem he reveals is that if something has 'perished', for example a particular animal, since we still have an image of it, accepting the idea of Forms will mean we still perceive a form for it.

Sources: The Thinkers Guide to God by Peter Vardy and Julie Arliss

               http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/thforms.htm

               http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/Theory%20of%20Forms%20Criticism.htm#III. A Critique In Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon Schuster, 1972), pp.126-130.