REPLIES TO TOM REASONER
Pardon the long hiatus: I've been between jobs, relaxing out in the suburbs. Did you miss me?

A few remarks on what's going on at Tom Reasoner's blog. Most recently, he has a post about morality. He makes what I think is the sound (though I believe quite controversial-- does he think so?) point that we cannot think about morality without addressing the issue of the end of man:

When we talk about morality, we're not just referring to any old system of right and wrong, we're referring to a system of right and wrong towards a specific end.

This point resembles the one made by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, my favorite book about ethics, where he argues that it is possible to derive an "is" from an "ought" (which Thomas Hume denied, thus doing much to undermine the belief in objective morality in the succeeding couple of centuries) if we have in mind some (as Tom puts it) end of man, in the same way that we can derive statements about good and bad watches from facts about whether they keep time. Tom's conclusion leaves me less satisfied:

Now we're at the end, the end of man. The end of man is to act within his nature, just like everything else. It is natural for man to ask questions, seek answers, and create answers, even in the absence of rational justification. It is natural for man to act in his own self-interests, and to determine what those interests are, even those that may require a personal sacrifice. Above all, it is natural for man to propagate, both physically and intellectually. That is the sum of it. All of human morality can be derived from these ends. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to discover how.

To ask questions and seek answers I consider admirable. To create answers even in the absence of rational justification, though certainly a common characteristic of mankind, I consider morally wrong, or at any rate dubious. Tom leaves an unresolved tension between "self-interest" and "personal sacrifice"-- maybe a good thing, since what looks at first glance like self-contradiction is often a recognition of complexity. "Above all, it is natural for man to propagate, both physically and intellectually." The "physically" seems to recommend an African moral universe, where the chief is polygamous and measures his success in the quantity of his offspring relative to his rivals: not, I feel, a good ethical ideal. The "intellectually" (slurred together with "physically" by a clever sleight of hand, luring the reader into a strange and unwarranted feeling that man's propensity to discussing, believe and philosophize is somehow an extension of the physical process of reproduction) I can sympathize with-- that's what blogging is all about!-- but what does it mean, after all, to "propagate intellectually?" If I convince others to believe what I believe, have I propagated intellectually? Is that my end? If so, do I fail to achieve my end when I become convinced that I was wrong and someone else was right? I think, on the contrary, that I benefit more by abandoning my own false belief and adopting someone else's true one, than by persuading someone else to adopt my false belief, or even my true belief. "Intellectual propagation" is not the end, but truth, to which "intellectual propagation" is a means when and only when I have (or think I have) truth that others lack.

My most serious objection is that "the end of man is to act within his nature, just like everything else." Man's nature contains both good and evil, and morality is a struggle within his nature. Moreover, the analogy implicit in "just like everything else" is invalid: man's nature, let alone his ends, have no comprehensive or even particularly close analogy in the natural world. Language, thought, belief, feeling, all have no counterpart whatsoever among things mineral or vegetable, and only the dimmest analogy even in the animal kingdom. Morality applies to man, and only to man, and sets him apart from nature (along with the soul, but that is another discussion.)

My own idea of the end of man is Christian in inspiration, and full of irony. Man has spiritual ends that are largely at odds with the ends that arise from his bodily nature. Through truth, service and faith, he can come to participate in the love and grace of God, and thus both feel joy and radiate it to others, although, like the geode, this inner glory will be masked by a facade of humility.