Called to do the irrational

Lately I've been thinking about the story of Abraham and Isaac. For those who are unfamiliar, or need a refresher, here's the story in the first part of Genesis 22 (emphasis mine):

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

The reason I bring this story up is because I want to highlight an important contrast, one I've been struggling with. Faith and reason do not seem to belong together. In fact, I don't think they can speak to each other at all. You can't honestly ground religious faith in rationality (including philosophical theology), nor can rationality exclude it. Something is amiss about comparing them. A blind person would not call a song yellow, nor would a deaf person say a painting is out of tune. The inapplicability of the one to the other does not mean that either is deficient in any meaningful sense. We don't say sight is deficient for not being able to hear a melody. Rather, we don't think hearing applies at all to our sense of sight. I think something like this may be going on with faith and reason, though saying this does give me pause.

Kill Isaac. Sacrifice him. This is what God commanded Abraham to do. Under no circumstance, short of some absurd utilitarian justification, could this ever be the morally right thing to do. God commanded Abraham to sin, but sinning is disobeying God. Nothing about that makes sense. No rationalization makes it okay for Abraham to kill Isaac, nor does it seem right for God to ask him to. Yet, strangely, I still believe that Abraham did as he should, even if what he should have done was not right. This is where I'm struggling. If God says φ, you φ. If φ is morally wrong, what does that make God? I realize that theologians have been thinking about this story for centuries, and yes, I plan on revisiting my favorite Christian existentialist soon, but I do think there's something to be said about puzzling this out on a personal level.

Part of my struggle has to do with, in general, squaring up my faith with stuff I encounter in philosophy. Philosophers worship reason, in a way. I hesitate. Reason is fantastic, but it can't be enough. You can't be complete if that is all you have. We've been talking about reasons for action in class quite a bit, and it worried me that people may not have a reason (independent of themselves) to do the morally right thing. What is that about? But on the other hand, something is missing from morality if it really boils down to what is rational for a person to do. And then there's this other dimension where both reason and morality are subordinate to faith, something totally unjustifiable yet simultaneously authoritative. You believe in what you do not see, and you act accordingly. What can that mean? Reason can't speak to this, for or against. It's a whole new dimension.

I like being reminded of Abraham and Isaac whenever I start rationalizing God. God says do this because ... x, y and z. God would only have commanded this for x reason, etc. Something is wrong about that. If God is anything like who we think he is, then he's way above whatever we could possibly comprehend. He says φ, I φ. There's something liberating about that, but scary at the same time. There's a deep level of trust there. That's what Abraham had, trust. Abraham didn't ask God how his sacrificing Isaac would bring the greatest aggregate utility to society, nor could Abraham will that every father sacrifice his son. Abraham trusted, and then what happened? God provided. There is something really cool about that, something I can't understand.

God didn't make Abraham kill Isaac. But God sacrficed his son. For us, for a bunch of selfish slackers. That is irrational. That is grace. Grace surpasses the right. Grace surpasses reason.

(excuse the ramblings today. mulling this all over is difficult. since it had been so long, I figured I'd take a few minutes to type out the thoughts, just so I don't completely fall out of habit --and this forces me to think more about it. some political philosophy soon!)

New layout

So I may be toying with the layout/colors for the next few days. If white on black is hard to read, let me know, and I'll make it easier. I just wanted to somehow incorporate this picture I have (now in the title) of some mountains in the alps that were covered by clouds. It seemed fitting.

Obama on Religion and Politics

Watch this video of a speech given by the new President Elect:





The speech is from 2006, transcript here, actually, you really should just read it all. Whoever edited the video took out a lot of good stuff (perhaps because the video on youtube is titled: Obama versus religion). But even edited it'd be hard to come to that conclusion. Here is a good part not in the video:

In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they're something they're not. They don't need to do that. None of us need to do that.

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I," resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal...

...[Conservatives] need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

The part in the video about translating religious values into something universally acceptable makes me think someone has been reading Rawls (or, I suppose, almost any modern political philosopher). Do I think doing this compromises religious belief? Not at all. In fact, I'm glad of it. I've written about the role of religion in political life before, esp for Christians. This isn't new, though sometimes I struggle with just how much my personal convictions should influence how I participate in our political system (the short story: I care when there is negative interference with non-consenting others, where others can be human or, more broadly, animals and the environment). In essence, I think we are called to stand apart from society, not take it over. We are to be lights, not tyrants. We are to love, not discriminate or spread hatred. Etc.

As an aside, this is the 4th time in the course of 2 days that I've come across the Abraham and Isaac story. Once was after class with a fellow student. And then the chapters I happened to get to in my nightly read through the Bible were about it, and the devotion for the day in My Upmost. I feel like maybe I should be thinking more about it, what do you think? I'll probably try and revisit Kierkegaard's discussion about it too.

So, really soon I will have a post up about Abraham, God, and the irrationality of theism (and for the less religiously inclined, morality). I will try and magically tie it in with a paper I'm working on about Williams' Internal and External Reasons (and a response by Scanlon). I have high hopes.

In the meantime, you should read this if you haven't already. It's a letter from Jim Wallis contra Dobsons' idiodic scare letter (about what America would turn into if Obama got elected). Obama is left of the right, so he's no danger. What I'd really like to see is real wealth spreader in office (wink wink).

Sorry for the absence.

Hi again. It's been awhile since I've done any substantial posting. My apologies. I've just started grad school, and it's been hectic. But I do have some ideas floating around that may or may not turn into posts soon. I've been thinking about things like the difference between moral obligation and moral permissibility, acting from moral duty, and the difficulty of talking morality with a non-philosopher. So many thoughts, so little time.

Why I'll miss Wisconsin

Check this out:


It's the sign from my friend's church in Wausau. Oh how I'll miss this state. For the not-so-sporty readers, famed QB for the Packers, Brett Favre, recently came out of retirement to play for the Jets. So in case you were worried, no, God will not leave you for the Jets. But Favre will.... trader.

Beware of the pickle jar effect...

I'm totally baffled by a recent episode of Oprah that I was watching the other day. I'm still not sure why I was watching it, but when you watch too much tv (like I do) you're bound to catch an episode or two of Oprah. It just happens. Well this is what I learned from her guest Patti Novak, the dating expert:

Allison's take-charge attitude is what Patti calls the pickle jar effect. "We are so successful today, women. We're fabulous. We work hard. We make good money. We parent. Sometimes what happens when we spend a lot of time alone, we forget to let them open the damn pickle jar," Patti says.

"The one thing I don't think is ever going to change on this planet is men still need to feel like men," she says. "So let them open it."

So how does a woman ask a man to do something without compromising herself? Patti says that if he's not in the room, go ahead and open your own pickle jar. But if he's standing there, Patti says it's just as easy to ask him to open it. "And know that you are the smarter, clever one for doing it," she says. "It's about attitude."

You can follow up on that episode here. I'm unsure what to think about advice like this. Is it giving up feminist ideals to submit to (and reinforce, perpetuate) patriarchal social norms? Does it sacrifice the integrity of women? Or, as Patti implies, is this merely a way for women to assert their superiority by use of some subtle manipulation? I'm not sure which is worse. Is it worse for me to "pretend to be incapable" of doing something that I know very well I can do on my own in order to let a man feel like a man, or is it worse to "pretend to be incapable" while feeling smug about my own cleverness? One step, two steps, a giant leap back? No?

This seems too much like those times when girls pretend to be dumber than a boy in school (mustn't damage the ego), or when a woman at work (or in politics) feels like she has tone down her "masculine" attributes (ambition, aggression) that are otherwise rewarded in her male coworkers just because those very same coworkers are threatened by her lack of femininity. It's sad enough to see this happen in the classroom and in the work place... but is it something we should then condone in the context of a relationship? If you can't be yourself with the person you're most intimately connected to... well that bodes ill for women everywhere. Oprah, so many people watch your show, so why are you sending out a message like this?

Don't get me wrong, I caught the part that acknowledged a woman's ability to open the pickle jar herself (metaphorically). That's important. I'm just disturbed by the message that says I must change who I am and hide what I can do if I want to be successful in the dating world. Any type of man that needs to be manipulated and hidden from, well he's not the type of man I'd want to date (or would want my sisters to date, or my friends to date, etc). Maybe it's time for men to redefine what makes them a real man, and not just what society tells them a man ought to be.

This is an unusual post, I'm aware. Feminism isn't typically a topic on my radar often (perhaps because I've been fortunate enough to have good acquaintances/friends/coworkers/teachers etc that don't treat me like an inferior). But when I see the most powerful woman in the world send out a message that I ought to compromise myself for the sake of a man, well I just can't be silent. So there you have it.

Is Batman a consequentialist?

“People are dying. What would you have me do?” Bruce Wayne (Batman) asks his butler. Alfred responds, “Endure. You can be the outcast. You can make the choice that no one else will face—the right choice. Gotham needs you.”

The Dark Knight, what a movie. I'll admit, I went to Batman on opening night at midnight (not my idea, actually, but I'm glad I went). I only vaguely remembered the Batman movies of old, though I was always a fan. The new Batman movie, as you may have heard, is pretty intense (and dark) in comparison to the previous films. What I didn't expect, and this is always a delight, was that this particular summer blockbuster actually had some intellectual food for thought, philosophical issues at that. I was overjoyed. In fact, the movie happens to coincide quite well with a collection of essays that I'm currently making my way through (slowly, but surely, as always). The essays all focus on consequentialism, and for this post, I'll pay close attention to an essay by Bernard Williams called, “Consequentialism and Integrity.” I want to discuss two moral dilemmas in the film, though I'll try and keep the spoilers to a minimum. Take this as a warning, though, so if you don't want to know what happens, I'd stop here.

The first moral dilemma is somewhat comparable to Williams' Indian example, so I'll outline both. In Williams' article, there is a man named Jim who faces a tough choice. He stumbled onto a scene where a government official, Pedro, is about to make an example out of a group of Indians (all names/groups, kept the same as the original story). Pedro has decided that he will kill all of the Indians that are tied up, but he has offered Jim (an outsider) a special privilege. If Jim kills one Indian, then the rest will be spared. If he refuses, then Pedro will kill all of the Indians himself. What should Jim do? What is Jim required to do? What is he allowed to do? The consequentialist will answer this question by comparing the possible end outcomes that Jim could produce. If Jim kills one Indian, then the rest are spared. If he doesn't, then they all die. The latter outcome is clearly worse than the former, on purely consequentialist terms (or more specifically, utilitarian terms-- and yes, I'm skipping the complicated bit about determining which states of affairs are better or worse than others). If picking between preferable end outcomes is our only moral guide, then it seems that Jim has no choice but shoot one Indian. How can that be? Can you be obligated to take a life (or perform any act that is usually considered to be morally wrong)? It seems like there's something wrong with making that option an obligation (though it does seem okay that that option would be morally permissible for Jim). With that scenario in mind, let's take a look at the boat dilemma from the Dark Knight.

There are two ferries floating in Gotham's harbor, and the Joker has rigged both with an explosive device that he can activate. One boat is carrying the who's who of Gotham's elite citizens. The other is full of prisoners. Each boat has detonator that will blow up the other boat, and the Joker gives the passengers a choice: either blow up the other boat before midnight, or he will blow up both boats. What should they do? They can't contact the other boat, and they can't diffuse the explosives. What would a consequentialist moral theory tell us? Well, as a passenger I'd have to take a good look at what I had the power to do or to let happen (negative responsibility is a huge factor in consequentialist theories – you are just as responsible for what you allow or don't stop as for what you actually do, which means you have to factor in the actions of other agents in your deliberation). There are three options: 1) everyone dies, 2) the elites of Gotham die, or 3) Gotham's most wanted die. As a passenger on either boat, what is your moral obligation (or, what are you morally allowed to do?)? You don't know what the other boat will choose, and you have a clock to beat, so time is also a factor. It's possible that both boats could blow each other up at the same time, but unlikely (unless both do it fairly quickly after the Joker's announcement). From a consequentialist standpoint, you have a few considerations: the total number of deaths, and the types of people being saved (if, of course, that can be weighted). Does one boat have a duty to blow up the other, or is it at least allowed to? I have a feeling that the consequentialist would choose to blow up the prisoners (because the city needs officials/leaders to run it), though at a minimum a consequentialist would want to minimize the total number of deaths. So however you slice it, someone has to step up and detonate the explosives for the other boat.

What is the problem with that? Well, should anyone ever be morally obligated to kill others (even if it would save more lives)? What about, as Williams argues, the integrity of the person put in this situation (Jim and the passengers)? The consequentialist view is more worried about minimizing damages than dealing with the internal moral struggle of the agent. There is, after all, a difference between what we actually do and what we allow other people to do. Here's what I mean: both scenarios depend pretty heavily upon a bit of knowledge held by the agent that is more than a little uncertain. Will Pedro really kill the other Indians? Will the Joker really blow up both boats? This type of knowledge, key to consequentialist deliberations involving negative responsibility, is highly dubious. How certain can I be, really, that the other agent will act as they say they will act. Sure, in thought experiments we can stipulate certainty, but in real life (and real life does happen to be our actual moral battleground) how sure can we be? If you've seen the movie you know what I'm hinting at: the Joker never blew up the boats. Some high minded passengers prevented their fellow passengers from hitting the button, and the Joker never got the chance to do it himself. That uncertainty makes my inaction quite a different matter from another agent's possible action. [This also reminds me of the Prisoner's dilemma, given the lack of knowledge on all sides, though it's not quite the same.]

Which leads me to an important question: am I really responsible for Pedro or the Joker's morally wrong acts? What responsibility do we have beyond our own actions? Are we responsible for allowing bad things to happen (if it was in our power to prevent them)? I do see what would motivate us to give some moral weight to what we allow to happen. The kid who silently watches the awkward kid being bullied at school is no hero, and he is not morally praiseworthy for his silence... However, he is not to blame, morally, in the same way that the actual bully is. If I sit by and let the Joker blow up both boats, then I haven't myself blown them up (even if their doom was in someway causally effected by my inaction). Perhaps I should act, but must I? The bully example is less clear because standing up to the bully (which may itself incur risks to the agent) does not require me to do something morally suspect (unless we say that the only way to silence the bully is to punch him/her in the face). Killing some people to save others does. There is something that makes one uneasy about following the consequentialist's prescription on this one. Perhaps it would be okay, maybe even good, if I could ignore my moral squeamishness for the sake of the greater good –but I don't think I am obligated to. Perhaps there is a something more valuable than the end state of affairs that isn't captured by your typical consequentialist or utilitarian solution (though sophisticated versions of these theories do try and take the following into account). As a moral agent I have a moral character, and I build and change that character by my moral decisions. It is a violation of my moral integrity to obligate me to do something that (though it maximizes the good) is itself a morally abhorrent act. Even sophisticated consequentialist arguments can't capture this, as Williams argues, because in the end my squeamishness (or my protectiveness over my integrity) is irrational –because it doesn't contribute to the only morally valuable consideration: the end outcome. Maybe our integrity is valuable enough, that it's morally okay (or maybe sometimes morally praiseworthy) to not make a choice that violates my moral character (and by character I mean the principles upon which my normal moral decisions rest). Asking me to toss them aside for the sake of the bottom line might just be too much (again, not that it wouldn't be allowed, but whether I should be obligated to). Or perhaps I'm just too preoccupied by moral agency and purity, maybe I need to get over it (I'm sure if I were one of the Indians I'd want me to). But then again, why should someone else be made the means to another person's survival (cue the now cliché example of slicing up random people for organ donations, etc).

And this leads me to the other dilemma. In this case, Batman understood a thing or two about both the consequentialist solution and moral integrity. In the quote above Batman was unnerved that the Joker was killing people systematically unless Batman turned himself in. Batman's choice was more complex. His inaction led to other people's deaths, but it also allowed him to remain a fighting force against the Joker and his ilk. In the end, Batman knew what needed to happen, and sometimes that meant performing the unsettling act. He knew that it must get done, but he also knew that the regular citizens of Gotham were not the right ones to do it. They needed to preserve their moral integrity (well, some of them). Is he doing the right thing, being the vigilante? Is it better for some “guardian angel” to do the consequentialist-determined “right act” without requiring that of the masses? I'm unsure.

I had more thoughts about the movie and worries about consequentialism, but I'll end my thoughts here. It's all much less developed than I'd like, but there's never enough time to complete my thoughts. Oh well.

For those who saw the movie, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts...