Notes and Links

* Dale Jamieson, When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists. The opening paragraph:

The contrast typically drawn between utilitarianism and virtue theory is overdrawn. Utilitarianism is a universal emulator: it implies that we should lie, cheat, steal, even appropriate Aristotle, when that is what brings about the best outcomes. In some cases and in some worlds it is best for us to focus as precisely as possible on individual acts. In other cases and worlds it is best for us to be concerned with character traits. Global environmental change leads to concerns about character because the best results will be produced by generally uncoupling my behavior from that of others. Thus, in this case and in this case and in this world, utilitarians should be virtue theorists.

* Jean Paul Serre lectures on How to Write Mathematics Badly.

* Benedict XVI discusses natural law.

* A fictional church-sign dialogue on Lent.

* This chimpanzees with weapons things has been going around. I was a little surprised at the reactions, since we have known that certain primates use tools for quite a while now; the only thing new here is the formation of hunting tools. A number of people have claimed that this shows that people who want to say that our distinctively human feature is tool use are wrong. This is, of course, a non sequitur. People who identify tool use as distinctively human aren't committed to there being no other animals that occasionally use tools, but there are no other animals whose lives involve pervasive tool use. That was never a particularly good defining characteristic, anyway; but it was hardly so crude and primitive that it can't handle a few non-human primates with jabbing spears. The reasoning seems to be based on the false view that a uniqueness characteristic cannot be approximated. Of course, it can, and virtually any such characteristic will be, since it will always be a characteristic differentiating from similar things. What makes it a uniqueness characteristic is not that others can't have things like it, but that they don't have that very same characteristic.

* Also reading John Hutchinson & Gerd Gigerenzer, Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioural biologists might meet (PDF); and George Landow, Typology in Victorian Non-Fiction. (hat-tip to The Little Professor for the latter)

* Since this is in some ways the Year of William Wilberforce, I thought that it might be worthwhile to make clear exactly what we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of. In great measure through Wilberforce's perseverance over several decades, the Slave Trade Act finally passed its second reading and became law in February and March of 1807. This outlawed the slave trade in British dominions. It is important to note that the abolition of the slave trade is not the same as the abolition of slavery. Over the next decade or so Wilberforce and others worked to extend this abolition of the slave trade worldwide -- largely through treaties. One of the means of enforcing the ban on slave trading which Wilberforce worked for was the creation of a Slave Registry, which would make a clear distinction between slaves bred and slaves bought, and allow the government the means to guarantee there were none of the latter. In the course of fighting for this it became clear to Wilberforce that the abolition of the slave trade was simply not enough to handle the sorts of abuses he was trying to stop. It was only in 1818, if we go by the judgment of his two sons in their Life of William Wilberforce, that he began actively working not merely for what he called Abolition -- the elimination of slavery as a trade -- but what was called Emancipation -- the elimination of slavery as a status. This is not actually surprising. We tend to lump these things all together, but Abolition alone was a massive task that had taken quite literally decades of continual pressing and organizing even to accomplish; and when it was done, there was still required similar ceaseless work over many years to consolidate and extend this victory. The elimination of slavery was not a matter of a flick of a pen; the whole nature of society had to be reconsidered and transformed, against considerable resistance. Despite the pressing importance of the matter -- and we only have to read the writings Wilberforce has left to see how clearly he recognized its urgent necessity -- everything had to be done in slow, ponderous steps. What is remarkable is not that Wilberforce advocated the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Many people did that. What is remarkable about Wilberforce is that he never stopped advocating it, despite defeat after defeat; when he had finally done it, he did not rest on his laurels but continued the long, hard work of consolidating it; and when consolidation was proceeding apace he took the next step to start what was a completely new stage of the fight. And all this while doing many other things relevant to his parliamentary work and social action with a more than common diligence. Not bad for a man whose diaries show him regularly reprimanding himself for wasting time, failing to do as much as he thought he should do, and failing to be as Christian in his actions and words as he should. The work of progress is never easy work; if you find it easy to progress you should immediately become suspicious, and investigate whether you are really progressing at all. For the genuine work of progress is the work of reordering civilization itself; and this is never easy.

Thought for the Day

From a passage in William Wilberforce's diary for 1812:

Miss E. now going on admirably. Her health and spirits improved, and she very active amongst the cottagers, doing them good. A most useful lesson taught by this; that the best course when any one is low-spirited and distressed with anxieties, is to set them to action in doing good to others. Trust thou in the Lord, and be doing good.

Quoted in Wilberforce & Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, vol. IV, p. 53

Various Poem Drafts

These are just various recent scribblings of varying quality. The second is my half-serious, half-sarcastic musing on the 'liturgy wars' that plague Catholics, but also others; it occurred to me that what some people on both sides are always looking for is not better liturgy but that Unicorn Rite that will make everything good and put everything to right. That's a lovely idea, worth working for. And also an absurd thing to expect or demand prior to Kingdom come.

Icarus

The day will come
when I'll be free
and, like an airborne gull,
sail above the lonely sea;
I'll fly so high
into blue sky,
so far above all sorrow
no darkness could ever follow.

Into the sun
I'll soar so free,
away from this prison-isle
and its hard captivity;
I'll fly so high
into the sky
with wings of light and flame,
renowned above all names.

No more cold sand,
no more cold sea,
only sky and light forever,
glorious and ceasing never,
away from chains and sorrow;
I'll fly so high
into bright sky
no darkness can ever follow.

Catholics of the Unicorn Rite

The Unicorn Rite Catholics are singing their Mass,
lifting their voices to the God of creation,
singing the introit and collect of the day,
today, this day, that the Lord has made,
today, this day, on which they all hearken.
Antiphons rise in a fountain of prayer,
glorias lift up in heartfelt rejoicing;
blessed like balm is the holy union,
like great grace their deep communion;
and every credo is hale and holy
and every word bears the kiss of peace.

Chaos Dreams of Order

Chaos dreams of Order;
Order dreams of God;
God dreams up the borders
that limit human thought;
liminal with glimmer
gleams the twilight of the sky,
but the light grows never dimmer
from the Joyous and Most High.

Collect

Superessential Trinity, glorious in Unity,
grant us your mercy for the praise of your glory;
grant us a spirit of wisdom of revelation;
enlighten our hearts with the hope of vocation;
that we may inherit the fullness of Christ,
that we may be part of the One who fills all.

Just Before Nightfall

The clouds write joyous poems with the gleaming of the sun
as mountains break the glory into a radiant crown
and rivers all catch fire in the aura of the West
to pour like flowing gold, to ripple in the light.
Can dreamers hate a darkness that has heralds so holy-bright?

Body and Bride II

The Anglican Scotist has a partial response to my criticism of his theological argument for the blessing of same-sex union. It's well worth reading, since it's a fairly good response. My original purpose in my previous post was to point out that there was no reason why the conservative Anglican would find the argument convincing, because it seems to be intrinsically flawed. I'm not an Anglican myself, so the issue is a little abstracted from my own vantage point, and I don't know if any conservative Anglicans would actually argue in the way I suggested. I still think, though, that the conservative Anglican can be on very strong ground in rejecting the argument, so I did want to say a thing or two about the response.

(1) With regard to the reply to (A) (for which, see the post), on the eschaton issue, it seems to me that there's a bit of a slide between taking the relation between Church and Christ as its savior as a model of marriage and taking the Church as a model of marriage. And that's an important difference; because none of the reasons for rejecting the latter carry over to the former. This is because the model that is put forward in Ephesians 5 is heavy on Christ's activity, not on the Church's. This is not surprising because the threefold analogy in the passage is characterized in terms of (1) love: Christ's unitive love for the Church, the self's unitive love for the body, the husband's unitive love for his wife; (2) caring service (i.e., serving out of love rather than servility): Christ's service to the Church (in 'handing himself over for her'), our natural service to our bodies, and a husband's service to his wife. Seen this way, the model proposed is one in which marriage is the middle analogue; it's analogous to a union below it (our union with our bodies) and to a union above it (Christ's union with the Church). However many flaws there may be in the Church's relation to Christ, no such flaws arise in Christ's relation to the Church, and it is that relation that is directly proposed as the model for marriage.

(2) There seems to be some confusion on the part of at least one of us with regard to (B). We are told by Paul himself in this very passage that one of the analogues is between self and body. The problem is that argument in question seems to require that the analogue be between self and body-part, because this is the only way we can defend the premise that Christ is in relation R to individuals of the Church, where R is the relation on which marriage is modeled. This premise was emphasized more than once in the original argument. The problem is that the conservative Anglican will be able to point out immediately that Christ is not in relation R to any individuals of the Church, but to the Church, because relation R, on which marriage is modeled, also has to be analogous to the relation between self and body. R is the relation between Christ and His Body. But it's a fallacy of division to assume that because Christ has relation R to His Body that he has relation R to every (or even any) individual in the Body. Now, Bates's response seems to me to start out right (with the point about distributive and collective properties) and then go wrong in the paragraph starting, "At any rate, I take it that (ii) is in fact false: that at the eschaton Christ does enter into a real, reciprocal relation with each individual believer." Because, I take it, no one disagrees with this. In fact, I suspect no one would disagree with the claim that Christ is now in a real, reciprocal relation with each individual believer, however imperfect it may be from the believer's side. What's in dispute is whether there is anything in the text requiring us to regard this relation as the model of marriage. And there is not. In Revelation, the Lamb's Bride is the New Jerusalem; in Ephesians it is the Body, the Church; in neither of these is it the individual. The fact that there is a salvific relation between Christ and individual seems very much like a red herring, because the conservative Anglican can simply deny that this is relevant to the discussion, and it isn't clear why anything said would lead us to conclude otherwise. If by R we meam, "whatever relation on which marriage is supposed to be modeled", we cannot direclty conclude from

(Christ)R(Church)

to

(Christ)R(individual member of the Church)

any more than we can, for any relation S, directly conclude from

(Self)S(Body)

to

(Self)S(Eye);

that would be a fallacy of division. So there seems to be a dilemma: the argument (as a response to the conservative Anglican) seems either to commit the fallacy of division or to require an argument for saying that the relevant relation between Christ and the Church is the very same with a relation between Christ and a member of the Church. The conservative Anglican is not simply going to concede the latter; he has no reason to do so given the texts at hand. And Bates rightly recognizes this; he addresses the issue. But his response only gives us two distinct relations (R and S in the original post, salvation1 and salvation2 in the second), and thus does not give us one relation on which marriage is to be modeled. Given that, the conservative Anglican can easily just take one of the relations to be the model of marriage and deny that the other has anything to do with the matter. What is needed is either an argument that shows that salvation1 and salvation2 are fundamentally the same exact relation (and thus if one is a model for marriage the other is as well) or an argument that Scripture in fact recognizes not just salvation1 but also salvation2 as a model for marriage. Otherwise, we seem to have an equivocation in the original argument: we are not to be able to get from premise 3, which would seem (given its justification) to require that R be something like salvation1, to the key premise 5, since premise 4 requires that R be something like salvation2. If the two aren't the same relation, we have an equivocation; if they are, we need a bridge argument to link premises 3 and 4 in such a way that they yield premise 5.

Robert Isaac Wilberforce on the Eucharist

Now it is obvious that a gift bestowed by one party upon another may be important either in consequence of the value of the gift itself, or by reason of considerations derived from the parties concerned in the giving and receiving. The ordinary food, which sustains us, is an instance of the first kind: it has its value in itself; it is the physical instrument of our support. We may find examples of the other sort in the Old Testament. The "ribbon of blue," which the Israelites received as an article of dress by God's appointment, was of no value in itself : its effect was derived solely from the associations to which it gave rise in the minds of the wearers. Here then was a gift, which was only rendered important by the state of the receiver. Again, when it pleased God to put His Bow in the cloud, here was a thing which neither was of value in itself, nor yet derived it from the disposition of the spectator. The Bow had no tendency to prevent a deluge; it only expressed the intention of Him who put it there. So that we have three different ways in which a gift may be important; first, from its own value; secondly, from the state of the receiver; thirdly, as expressive of the intention of the giver.

Robert Isaac Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Eucharist, pp. 32-33.

Wilberforce, at this point in time an Anglo-Catholic, notes that theories of the Eucharist tend to divide precisely along these lines. He later notes that you can get the same division in another way. Take the general statement, "This is X." I could be intending to identify this as X; or mark the fact the fact that this is X by representation. An example of the first is to say "This is Caesar" while introducing someone to Caesar. If we are not talking identity, we are talking representation, and there are two ways that occurs: either their is a naturally rooted likeness, or there is a fiat or intention of authority. For instance, I could say "This is Caesar" of a statue of a Caesar; or I could say "This is Caesar" of a book that Caesar wrote. So it is when we think about "This is My Body":

Thus, then, we have three senses in which the expression, "This is" might be employed. First, it may imply identity ; secondly, it may imply that kind of representation which derives its force merely from the effect produced upon the spectator or receiver; thirdly, it may imply that kind of representation which is dependent only upon the intention of the author or giver. Now, when we proceed to apply this to the case before us, and ask which of these three relations was intended by Our Lord, when He said, "This is My Body"; we are met at once by the fact that these arc the three alternatives, which we have already had before us in the second chapter (p. 34), as the theories, respectively, of the ancient Church, of Zuinglius, and Calvin. The principle of identity is coincident with that of the ancient Church, which supposed that the Holy Eucharist derived its value from the reality of the gift bestowed: that principle of representation which depends upon the opinion of the spectator, is plainly the theory of Zuinglius, who maintained that the Holy Eucharist derived its efficacy solely from the disposition of the receiver: lastly, that principle of representation which depends upon the intention of the author, agrees exactly with the system of Calvin, by whom the decree of Almighty God was affirmed to be its sole consecrating principle.

Robert Isaac Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Eucharist, p. 115.

The Amazing Change

The Amazing Change is part of a modern abolition campaign designed to raise to consciousness the fact that slavery still occurs in this world -- that, in fact, there are more slaves now than there have ever been -- and that there are things that can be done to address this problem.

The Amazing Change has several partner organizations. One of them is the International Justice Mission, an international human rights organization devoted to rescuing victims of slavery and violence. Another organization is Free the Slaves, which takes a more indirect route by trying to reduce the vulnerability of the poor to slavery by establishing ways they can meet their basic needs. A third is ChildVoice International. A fourth is RugMark, which is devoted to ending illegal child labor.

This then provides a number of possible venues for giving.

(1) You can donate to the Amazing Change Fund.
(2) You can donate a dollar to ChildVoice to buy a brick to help put up a ChildVoice center in Uganda. Or you can donate to ChildVoice's general activities through their PayPal page.
(3) You can donate to Free the Slaves.
(4) You can donate to International Justice Mission.
(5) You can donate to RugMark, and also make sure that if you buy any rugs, you buy rugs that have been certified by RugMark not to have been produced with illegal child labor.

All of these things are fairly easy to do; so there's a good set of choices here.

Previous posts in this series
GoodSearch

Sunday of Orthodoxy

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion;
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem.
Rejoice and be glad with all your heart.
The Lord has taken away from you
the oppression of your adversaries;
you are redeemed from the hand of your enemies.
The Lord is a King in the midst of you;
you shall not see evil any more,
and peace be unto you forever.