2006_12_01_archive

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.

posted by Brandon | 9:12 PM | |

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