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Christmas Price Index

A rather fun little bit of economics is PNC's Christmas Price Index. The Christmas Price Index has, for the past 22 years kept track of the cost of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The True Love gives a very diverse package of gifts -- from goods like a partridge in a pear tree to services like nine ladies dancing -- so it tends to mirror the actual trends of the economy better than you might think. This year the cost of the True Love's 364 gifts reached an all-time high of $75,122.03. With fuel costs (which play a major role in the price of the harder-to-find birds) levelling off, goods did not rise very much. However, services rose considerably, with only the maids a-milking, who receive minimum wage, not becoming more expensive. The partridge in the pear tree saw the greatest increase over last year, due to a surge in the price of pear trees (related to an increase in construction, which has increased demand for ornamental pear trees). While gold is more expensive this year than last, the price of gold rings was stable due, apparently, to jewellers absorbing the increased cost in the face of lower demand for luxury items.

The Christmas Price Index for this year is $18,920.59, a 3.1% increase over last year. The PNC website has all sorts of interactive charts and games for those who like to play around a bit with numbers. It's also a good way to introduce children to basic economic concepts.

Thoughts on Ritual

PZ Myers claims that he gets along without rituals. As several commenters point out, this claim highly implausible, but the arguments given need a bit of fine-tuning. Early on the suggestion was made that something like (say) morning coffee would be a ritual; and it was (rightly) pointed out that this need be nothing more than a habit, and that a habit does not a ritual make. It should also be said that not all rituals are habitual or routine, either; you can engage in a ritual only once. One of the commenters suggests that people would react strongly to the notion that their attending a special Mass each each year was only a habit or routine. But, of course, attending a Mass regularly is only a habit or routine. The ritual is not attending Mass but the things in which you participate when you attend (whether you attend regularly or not).

Another mistake that seems to be made occasionally in the discussion is the confusion of ritual and ceremony; the latter being a public forum for a particular sort of ritual activity. For instance, a graduation ceremony is a forum for the ritual activity of receiving one's diploma -- symbolically receiving it, since it doesn't matter whether they actually hand you your diploma or just a blank paper standing for the fact that you will be receiving one. A wedding cermeony is a forum for rituals pertaining to marriage, of which there seem to be quite a few -- saying "I do," wedding rings, kissing the bride, and so forth. Ceremonies are in some sense constituted by rituals. But the reverse is not true; without any ceremony at all you can engage in some very common rituals -- giving a toast, for instance, or shaking someone's hand as a sign of respect. It would be exceedingly trying to have to undergo an elaborate public ceremony every time you wanted to shake someone's hand; but that really doesn't tell us much about ritual actions, because you don't need public ceremonies for ritual actions.

So a ritual is (at least) a deliberate action that is both symbolic and has at least a recognizable potential social significance; it shouldn't be confused with habits or routines, nor with ceremonies. Myers is clearly thinking of ceremonies. But it is possible for someone to have gone through life without ever participating (in any way) in an awards ceremony (of any sort), ever doing anything in a marriage ceremony, ever attending a graduation (whether as a student or as a professor or as a parent), ever toasting a friend over drinks or dinner, ever saluting the flag, ever standing during the national anthem (or singing it), ever blowing out candles on a birthday cake or singing "Happy Birthday," ever pausing for a moment of silence, ever attending a funeral, and so forth. All you have to do is eschew any action that is symbolic and that would be recognized as having at least potential social significance. There's nothing impossible about that. It's just extraordinarily difficult for anyone who actually takes the trouble to live in society without being wrapped up entirely in themselves.

Warburton and the Obliger Argument

In the argument to which Cockburn is responding, Warburton is addressing Bayle's attempt to argue that atheists can have, on their own (i.e., without borrowing illegitimately from theists), an idea of morality. So we should be careful in the first place, inasmuch as Warburton's argument is made in Bayle's terms. This sort of situation -- in which one philosopher (Cockburn) is responding to another philosopher's (Warburton's) response to another philosopher (Bayle) who is responding to a common belief -- is a common kind of situation in the history of philosophy; it is also a difficult one to navigate properly, since the context is constantly shifting. In what follows I will be ignoring what Bayle's widely diffused arguments on this were in their original context and focus on the argument, as Warburton constructs it by gathering it together from these disparate sources; then I will look at Warburton's key argument, what I will call the Obliger Argument. This will prepare us to look at Cockburn's response to the Obliger Argument in particular.

The Innocence of Atheism Argument

The Bayle-based Innocence of Atheism argument, as Warburton constructs it, can be summarized roughly along the following lines (as the atheist himself might reason):

(1) While nature is not modeled on the ideas of a workman, she nonetheless produces her diversity in such a way that different species have different essential attributes, independently of us. Thus, fire and water are distinct in themselves regardless of whether we think they are; so on with love and hate, affirmation and negation, and so forth. We learn these natural distinctions by comparing and contrasting. Likewise, even setting aside the question of moral distinctions, there must be natural distinctions between truth and falsehood, gratitude and ingratitude, and so forth. They are naturally separable from each other.

(2) However, we can attribute the same necessity of nature to the relations between things and to the rules by which we distinguish those relations. The rules of reasoning are an example of this. These rules are independent of us; syllogisms don't work the way they do by our arbitrary fiat, but because they are right and true in themselves.

(3) If there are certain and immutable rules for the operation of the understanding, there must be similar rules for the determination of the will. For these rules are not arbitrary but necessary. The most general such rule is that we ought to will what is in conformity with right reason; it is an evident truth that it is fitting for a reasonable creature to conform to right reason and unfitting for such a creature to recede from that standard.

The implicit conclusion, of course, is that the atheist is not, qua atheist, shut off from morality. Warburton concedes (1) and (2). (3), however, he denies. He takes 'natural essential differences' to have the property of creating a fitness to act accordingly; that is, given that fire and water have different properties, it is fitting for a reasonable creature to take those different properties into account when we act. Moral differences, however, create not only a fitness to act but an obligation, and, Warburton insists, there is no moral difference that does not impose such an obligation, and no obligation that is not due to a moral difference. If this is granted, then showing that right reason alone cannot impose an obligation will show that knowledge of what conforms to right reason does not constitute knowledge of moral differences; and atheists, as such, have no moral obligations if they are right in being atheists. To argue this, Warburton puts forward the Obliger Argument.

The Obliger Argument

This is Warburton on the Obliger Argument:

Obligation, necessarily implies an obliger: The obliger must be different from, and not one and the same with the obliged: To make a man at once the obliger and the obliged, is the same thing as to make him treat or enter into a compact with himself, which is the highest of absurdities. For it is an unquestioned rule in law and reason, that whoever acquires a right to any thing from the obligation of another toward him, may relinquish that right. If therefore the obliger and obliged be one and the same person, there all obligation must be void of course; or rather, there would be no obligation begun: Yet the Stratonic atheist is guilty of this absurdity, when he talks of actions being moral or obligatory.

The key principle here, that obligation implies an obliger, may not seem immediately obvious; but there is quite a bit to be said for it. For one thing, even if it is not always true, it clearly is true for many of our obligations. For instance, your employer obliges or obligates you to do many tasks for which you would otherwise have no obligation; and your employer is himself obliged or obligated by higher authorities; and so forth. And the claim is not merely a cultural relic of Warburton's time. To give just one example: Anscombe makes very much the same argument in her extremely influential article, Modern Moral Philosophy, which should be read in conjunction with the passage from Warburton above.

It needs to be kept in mind that here, as in Anscombe's essay, there is no assumption that everything we call morality falls under the scope of moral obligation. In fact, Warburton has explicitly denied this. He has conceded that atheists can tell the difference between gratitude and ingratitude; and that this difference sparks a tendency in them to act according to that difference. He has also conceded that they can have moral sentiments, i.e., a taste for moral action. They still may think it smart and desirable; but 'smart and desirable' and 'obligatory' can be very different kinds of things. What he is denying is that atheists have any (consistent) reason to think of any part of the morality they know as obligatory.

Cockburn, as we shall see, contests this, and with a very interesting and (I am inclined to think) powerful line of reasoning. I will get to her response in the next post on this topic. But I want to underline the fact that Warburton's argument is far from silly; and that, utterly implausible though Warburton's claim that morality properly speaking is constituted entirely by the will of a superior, it is a claim backed by serious arguments. This is important not only for understanding Warburton, but is even more important for my purpose, which is to understand Cockburn in her response to Warburton.

But He Doesn't

I recently had a search engine hit on the string, "hume thinks metaphysics is crap," and so I can't resist the obvious response, which is that he explicitly defends metaphysics in Section One of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. There he divides philosophy into two kinds: the easy and humane, and the abstruse and difficult, commonly called metaphysics. Aristotle would be an example of an abstruse and difficult philosopher, Cicero of an easy and humane; Locke's abstruse and difficult, Addison's easy and humane; and so forth. Hume notes the easy and humane approach to philosophy has a number of advantages: "It enters more into common life; moulds the heart and affections; and, by touching those principles which actuate men, reforms their conduct, and brings them nearer to that model of perfection which it describes." He insists, however, that we need both, and proceeds to defend metaphysics from those who wish to do away with it altogether. A rough summary of his arguments:

(1) The easy and humane approach philosophy needs the abstruse and difficult approach to achieve "a sufficient degree of exactness in its sentiments, precepts, or reasonings". Hume famously uses the analogy of the artist and the anatomist. The artist can present a picture to the world that is far more interesting (to most tastes) and far more pleasant than the anatomist can; but the artist can benefit from the anatomist to an immense degree. As he puts it, accuracy is advantageous to beauty and good reasoning to refined sentiments.

(2) Even if nothing more were to be gained from metaphysical discussions than the satisfaction of curiosity, there is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, the life of someone devoted to satisfying his curiosity is, at least generally, inoffensive and pleasant, and even if it did nothing more than this, the person who encouraged it would be a benefactor to mankind. Of course, it does, in fact, do more than this, as per (1).

(3) The most serious objection to metaphysics is that it involves a lot of obscurity, cavil, arguing about words, talking about things we can't know anything about, etc. Hume does admit that this is true of a lot of metaphysical discussion. But he very cleverly turns the objection around by noting that a lot of the cavilling is due to vanity and superstition calling up an intellectual fog. But, Hume notes that this is not a reason for rejecting metaphysics: on the contrary, it's a reason for doing it:

But is this a sufficient reason, why philosophers should desist from such researches, and leave superstition still in possession of her retreat? Is it not proper to draw an opposite conclusion, and perceive the necessity of carrying the war into the most secret recesses of the enemy? In vain do we hope, that men, from frequent disappointment, will at last abandon such airy sciences, and discover the proper province of human reason. For, besides, that many persons find too sensible an interest in perpetually recalling such topics; besides this, I say, the motive of blind despair can never reasonably have place in the sciences; since, however unsuccessful former attempts may have proved, there is still room to hope, that the industry, good fortune, or improved sagacity of succeeding generations may reach discoveries unknown to former ages. Each adventurous genius will still leap at the arduous prize, and find himself stimulated, rather than discouraged, by the failures of his predecessors; while he hopes that the glory of achieving so hard an adventure is reserved for him alone. The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these abstruse questions, is to enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects. We must submit to this fatigue in order to live at ease ever after: and must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate. Indolence, which, to some persons, affords a safeguard against this deceitful philosophy, is, with others, overbalanced by curiosity; and despair, which, at some moments, prevails, may give place afterwards to sanguine hopes and expectations. Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

It has been said by others, and Hume argues for it very well, I think, even if he does so cautiously, that you can only get rid of bad metaphysics with good metaphysics.

(4) In addition to this negative advantage of eliminating bad metaphysics, abstruse reasoning can have positive advantages. Even if our metaphysics could do no more than give a 'mental geography', the understanding this would bring would be worthwhile on its own.

The fact that metaphysics is abstract, and abstruse, and difficult, and about obscure and abstruse topics, is a serious disadvantage, one to be surmounted as much as possible. But it's not a knock-down argument against metaphysics like people have often thought. In fact, quite the reverse: metaphysics is still justified even when we give the argument the benefit of the doubt.

Warburton and the Golden Chain

Re-reading Warburton's Divine Legation (Book I, Part I) in order to pin down the original argument to which Cockburn was responding, I was startled to come across a familiar image. Warburton has identified three basic principles of morality: the moral sense, the reasoning faculty perceiving essential differences, and the will of a superior, and argued that each of these has its place, since morality must be palatable, satisfying to reason, and obliging to the will. Each of these will also tend to appeal to a greater degree to people of different temperaments: people of elegant mind and refined sentiments will be incited to morality through the charms of the moral sense, people of especially speculative and abstract disposition through the essential differences perceived by reason, and the bulk of mankind by the authority of another. He sees this threefold help as a sign of providence. He then goes on to make a very interesting set of claims:

To these great purposes serve the THREE PRINCIPLES, while in conjunction: But now, as in the civil world and the affairs of men, our pleasure, in contemplating the wisdom and goodness of providence, is often viewed and checked by the view of some human perversity or folly which runs across that dispensation; so it is here in the intellectual. This admirable provision for the support of virtue hath been, in great measure, defeated by its pretended advocates; who, in their eternal squabbles about the true foundation of morality, and the obligation to its practice, have sacrilegiously untwisted this THREEFOLD CORD; and each running away with that part he esteemed the strongest hath affixed that to the throne of heaven, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw all unto it.

Siris! The allusion is to the same passage of the Iliad from which Berkeley derives the same image for his philosophical work Siris, used to a different end.

It's also an interesting passage in that Warburton explicitly denies that you can do without any of the three -- the people who try to eliminate any of the three as 'excitements to virtue' do so 'sacrilegiously'. So he has a much more sophisticated view than comes across in Cockburn's response to him, since he explicitly rejects the claim that morality as a whole is a matter entirely of the will of a superior. Nonetheless, Cockburn's summary is quite accurate. While Warburton thinks each of the three is equally necessary for moral motivation, he insists very clearly that the will of a superior is the "true bottom" of morality. This is because he thinks the will of a superior is necessary for moral obligation, which is what Cockburn is explicitly contesting. Thus, the point of dispute is not morality in the broad sense (including all our reasons and motivations for being moral) but morality in the strict sense (what constitutes moral obligation).

In another post I'll give Warburton's argument, in his own words, for the claim that an atheist, as such, can never attain to knowledge of morality in the strict sense.

Cockburn on Whether Atheists Can Be Moral

The short answer is: Yes. It's the details, of course, that are interesting.

To understand why the question even arises, you have to go back to a text that isn't often read these days, William Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses. Even though it is scarcely read today, it exercised a powerful influence on its time. In the course of the work (Cockburn has in mind the second edition in particular) Warburton advances a particular view of moral obligation. It is with this that Catharine Cockburn (1679-1749) disagrees; and atheists are significant test case.

Warburton argues that morality is not based on perception of the fitness of things (such as Clarke, or Cockburn, argue for). An atheist could recognize the 'natural essential differences' between things; but this is not sufficient for moral knowledge. Knowledge of one does not ground knowledge of the other. (This is Warburton's version of 'Hume's fork'.) What the atheist is missing is that (in Cockburn's summary) "nothing but the will, or the law of a superior, can constitute the morality of actions" (138). As Cockburn argues, this seems to get things backwards. But she also argues against the claim that an atheist could only know the bare 'natural essential differences' rather than moral fitnesses as well. Her argument for this is worth quoting in full.

In order to judge of this point, let us suppose of a society of Atheists, one fallen into a pit, where he must inevitably perish if unassisted; and another of them happening to travel that way, who could with great ease relieve him. Will these two persons perceive nothing, but the natural essential difference between leaving a man to perish in a pit, and helping him out of it? Would not the distressed consider one of these as inhumanity to be detested, and the other as a good action deserving grateful return? Might not the traveler be too conscious, that one of these actions would be better than the other, have a goodness in it more to be approved? Yet we will supose some business or pleasure he is intent upon, stifles this consciousness and prevails with him, to leave the distressed to his miserable fate; and that he afterwards relates to the rest of society, how he had hurried from the melancholy object, in pursuit of his inclinations. Can it be imagined, that they would coldly consider this action, only as not agreeable to reason? Or would they not rather judge it to be wrong, inhuman, and worthy of detestation. It cannot, I think, be doubted, that such a society might be capable of these sentiments. And what is this but to perceive the moral difference of things, tho' they have not discovered a superior will to enforce the observance of them? Or tho' they may think the guilty secure from that punishment, which they must be conscious so great an immorality deserves. (138n)

Thus Cockburn's view is that there is good reason to think that moral differences aren't so wholly independent of the facts as Warburton claims; and since atheists can clearly distinguish 'natural essential differences' -- for instance, the difference between leaving a man to die and helping him to live -- there is no reason to deny that they could see the moral difference between the two -- that one of these is better than the other. She notes elsewhere that this is not a conflation of natural differences and moral differences, but only a recognition that when we recognize natural differences, it creates a fitness for certain types of action, and a lack of fitness for other types of action. And this is sufficient for identifying grounds of obligation.

It is interesting, as a side issue, to think of how Hume is to be placed with regard to this argument. Cockburn's argument is formulated in the terms of what Hume calls 'the abstract theory of morals', which Hume sharply rejects and criticizes at great length at the beginning of Book III of the Treatise and elsewhere. And Hume can at least plausibly be read as accepting some version of Hume's fork (although, as I've noted, there are hermeneutical difficulties here). But Hume, while not a moral rationalist, is a moral sense theorist, and it seems that a moral sense theorist would have to accept some closely similar version of this argument.

So it would appear that we can see a sort of double divide in the ethical disputes of the period. On the one hand, we have what we can call moral positivism, like that espoused by Warburton, found in those who locate morality purely in convention or else in the 'will of a superior'; on the other hand, we have the moral naturalists, and they fall roughly into two camps, the moral rationalists, like Malebranche, Clarke, Price, and Cockburn herself; and the moral sentimentalists like Hume. The latter two are similar in that they both hold that in some sense we naturally perceive the moral status of things; where they differ sharply is in what we should actually mean by 'perceive', and what exactly this moral status consists in. On the other hand, the moral sentimentalists and the moral positivists will both agree that the moral rationalist is failing to observe the is/ought distinction properly; but moral positivists will insists that moral sentimentalists are also failing in this regard, and the moral sentimentalists will insist the same of the moral positivists. Of course, this is very crude and idealized, and one wonders how far it can actually be taken, but it's an interesting line of thought worth further investigation.

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Page references are to Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings, Patricia Sheridan, ed. [Broadview Press (Peterborough, Ontario: 2006)].