Tag Archives: Morality

“On accident” or “by accident”? Word choice and objective morality.

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Which sounds better: “I took your book by accident” or “I took your book on accident”?

We may want an objectively correct final arbiter that can define words and settle questions of usage with authority. This authority would always be correct and would be above human messiness, but this ultimate arbiter doesn’t exist. New words come into popular usage and definitions of old words change through a crowd-sourced negotiation.

It’s like morality. There is no final moral arbiter—not a Being, and not a book. The buck stops with us.

Oddities of English

To explore this parallel between words we define and morality we define, let’s first poke around some of the oddities of English.

What does peruse mean? Does it mean to look over in a cursory manner? Or does it mean the opposite: to study carefully? Yes, it does—both definitions are valid (go look it up; I’ll wait). If you get cranky seeing new definitions given to old words, note that “look over in a cursory manner” is the new definition.

Speaking of words that have two opposite meanings, there are lots of these contranyms. The Devil’s Dictionary (first published in 1906) defines infidel, “In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.” Here are a few more words that have two contradicting definitions:

  • Dust: dust a cake with powdered sugar vs. dust the furniture
  • Off: turn a light off vs. the bomb went off
  • Screen: screen from view vs. screen a movie

Is the change in words and language usage hopelessly messy and confusing? I think the opposite is true.

Word stories

So then what does peruse mean?! It means what we say it means, acknowledging that “we” don’t speak with a single voice. We can consult a dictionary, but in the case of peruse, it’ll just verify that these two opposite definitions are both valid, leaving to us the choice of one definition over the other or to find a synonym without this ambiguity.

Let’s peek under the couch cushions of English to find more interesting word stories.

  • Does decimate mean to destroy a tenth? Or to destroy almost all?
  • Do you get as annoyed as I do when “beg the question” is used to mean “encourage or invite the question”? It actually means “assume the issue we’re talking about”—in other words, to use circular logic. I hear it used in the first way almost exclusively … but of course that means that the public has spoken and I’ve lost, and this upstart new definition is the primary definition in the dictionary.
  • Regionalisms are words that vary based on location. For example, what do you call a soft drink? In the U.S., soda, pop, and coke dominate in different parts of the country. Is mayonnaise two syllables or three? Is it y’all or you guys? Is it puh-JAH-muz or puh-JAM-uz? Maps illustrate this tug of war.
  • Esquivalence is an invented word added to the 2001 New Oxford American Dictionary as a copyright trap. Here’s its invented definition: “Deliberate shirking of one’s official duties.” We could ask if esquivalence is a real word, but what more is a word than its spelling and definition? That’s enough to communicate, and it’s even in a dictionary.
  • Speaking of invented words, have you heard of this word origin? The story goes that in the late 1700s in Dublin, one man bet another that he could have a completely new word on everyone’s lips within 24 hours. That night, the man who’d made the boast enlisted street urchins to paint the word all over Dublin—on curbs, walls, sidewalks, and more. The word that everyone was talking about within 24 hours? Quiz.
  • William Shakespeare invented many words and was the first to put many more on paper. Some credit him with almost 2000 novel words, including accommodation, critic, fitful, lapse, obscene, and pious.
  • The new St. Paul’s cathedral, rebuilt after the 1666 Great Fire of London, was called by the king, “amusing, awful, and artificial.” That sounds odd until you realize that those words meant amazing, awe-inspiring, and artistic. Definitions drift.

Is the change in words and language usage hopelessly messy and confusing? I think the opposite is true. It’s crowd sourced, which means that the people who create the change are the consumers of that change.

On accident vs. by accident

Let’s return to on accident and by accident. The logic of on accident is that it parallels its opposite, on purpose. It’s also more popular among young people, which suggests that it will eventually win out. On the other hand, it is rarely used outside the U.S. (Of course, you can sidestep the confusion and just use accidentally.)

Where does meaning come from?

Imagine someone creates an upstart word and starts using it. The purpose of words is to communicate, and that happens when we share definitions. If they use their new word so that others can infer the meaning (or they take pains to define it), it might catch on like a meme.

In an extreme, someone can make up whatever words or definitions they please, as Humpty Dumpty did in Through the Looking Glass, but they’ll communicate better if they use well-known words and definitions.

This is how language works. It sounds haphazard, and yet we communicate easily. No natural language has an absolute source.

Concluded with a look at how Christianity plays with words and the logic of objective morality.

“When I use a word,”
Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—
neither more nor less.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (Part 2).

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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist by Geisler and TurekFundamental problems with the Moral Law argument

Geisler and Turek (GT) formulate their moral argument as follows: 1. Every law has a law giver; 2. There is a Moral Law; 3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver. What they don’t mention is that every law giver referred to in point 1 is a material being, but then they switch to an immaterial law giver in point 3. They do nothing to address or even acknowledge the fact that their argument can’t explain the change (thanks to commenter MNb for this insight). The problem with the argument becomes obvious when this is made explicit:

1. Every law has a material law giver.

2. There is a Moral Law.

3. Therefore, there is an immaterial Moral Law giver.

Here’s another variant that also skewers GT’s flabby argument from commenter primenumbers:

1. Moral values come from a mind.

2. Objectivity means independence of a mind.

3. Therefore, objective moral values don’t exist.

And are we even using the same definition of “law”? Yes, morality is related to human laws, which are to some extent codified morality, but while laws are arbitrary (rather than objective), some aspects of morality are innate and (from the standpoint of humans) unchangeable. The Golden Rule or a prohibition against killing without proper justification might be examples. Human laws have law givers, but morality is, in part, programmed and unchangeable.

The analogy and therefore the foundation of the argument fails, but let’s set that aside and see what else GT have up their sleeves.

One of the problems so far has been to nail down what this Moral Law actually is. They imagine objective moral laws, but what does that mean? Starting with objective morality as a morality grounded outside humanity—rules valid regardless of whether anyone believes in them—the definition changed to the morality that we feel. Then, they back away from the idea that we can reliably access this morality, so it becomes morality that we only dimly feel. Expect more reversals as their moral theory chafes against reality.

Let’s return to GT’s moral argument.

We can’t not know, for example, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings for no reason. Some people may deny it and commit murder anyway, but deep in their hearts they know murder is wrong. (page 172)

Uh, yeah—murder is wrong by definition. The natural hypothesis (see part 1 for the natural morality hypothesis that I defend) is sufficient to explain our revulsion at killing innocent people.

Relativists make two primary truth claims: 1) there is no absolute truth; and 2) there are no absolute moral values. (172)

I make neither claim.

“1 + 1 = 2” may be an absolute truth. As for absolute moral values, I’ve simply seen no evidence to overturn the natural explanation of morality. I await with ill-concealed impatience any evidence for objective morality.

GT uses “relative morality” in opposition to objective morality, but because the term has been so clumsily defined by apologists, I prefer to state my position as “not objective morality.” For simplicity in this post, though, I’ll stick with GT’s “relativists” and “relative morality.”

Relativists are absolutely sure that there are no absolutes. (173)

Nope. I’m just pretty sure there are no moral absolutes. I keep doggedly asking for evidence, though I get nothing in response.

Relative morality fails?

GT relate the anecdote of a paper written by an atheist student. The student argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness,” and the professor gave it an F because of the color of the folder it was delivered in. When the student protested that the reason wasn’t fair, the professor asked, “But didn’t you argue in your paper that there is no such thing?” At that point, the student “realized he really did believe in moral absolutes.”

I don’t, and I doubt any student in that situation would. There are absolute morals, and then there are the ordinary kind as defined in the dictionary. The student appealed to the natural morality he shared with the professor.

This is the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT assumes that everyone knows and accepts objective morality. We’ll be seeing more of this.

The moral of the story [about the paper graded F] is that there are absolute morals. And if you really want to get relativists to admit it, all you need to do is treat them unfairly. (173)

Treat relativists unfairly, and they’ll appeal to shared, natural morality just like the student.

People may claim they are relativists, but they don’t want their spouses, for example, to live like sexual relativists. (173)

So you think relative morality is no morality? Your “moral relativists” have morals; they just don’t pretend that the morals are grounded outside humanity.

Actually, I’m happy for my spouse to use relative morality for all aspects of her life, both because I know of nothing else and because the natural morality that we all use works pretty well.

This reminds me of a quote from Penn Jillette: “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.” Natural morality—it’s not perfect, but it serves us pretty well.

GT moves on to the visceral horror we felt from 9/11.

Our reaction reinforced the truth that the act was absolutely wrong. (175)

Another redefinition! We’ve switched to emotional gut feelings, and objective morality is now strongly felt morality.

GT go on to admit that we often betray our moral sense with our actions (the bad things we do), but they claim that the Moral Law is “revealed in our reactions.” Our sense of the Moral Law isn’t good enough to keep us firmly on the right track, but the truth comes out when we react. So now—redefinition!—objective morality is instinctive morality.

GT’s sloppy thinking may work with the flock, but it has consequences. One Amazon reviewer of this book titled his comment, “I don’t have enough intellectual dishonesty to be a Christian.”

Continue with part 3.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on;
by a simple and natural process
this will make you believe, and will dull you—
will quiet your proudly critical intellect.
— Blaise Pascal

Image credit: Megan Studdenfadden, flickr, CC