Just Curious

Another form of sleight of hand

Another way philosophers, legal theorists, mechanical materialists (like Feuerbach), Critical Theorists (of the Herbert Marcuse stripe) and Vulgar Evolutionists (a term I reserve for individuals like Dr. Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford) perform their sleight of hand tricks is to confuse the boundary between deontological and utilitarian ethics.

Consider the following Dawkinsian statement. "Man is a beast. Like any other beast. He is natural and there is nothing rational or spiritual about his being. Therefore he must not treat himself as anything more than a beast." Such a vulgar creed, in itself, does not have any moral implication whatsoever. Just because we are beasts does not itself provide any moral imperative for us to treat other beasts the same way we treat ourselves. It does not mandate that we afford human rights to other great apes, for instance.

Again, facts do not beget morality. So when a Dawkinsian makes such a statement, our first and proper response should be, "So what?" This should serve as an immediate repudiation to his claim since for him to rebuke us he will have to resort to Ideas of Right and Wrong, which defeat his very proposition that there is no moral life beyond our natural lives; that there is not a Kingdom of Freedom beyond our Kingdom of Nature.

The mere fact that his statement is self-contradictory on the metaphysical level itself shows that at best it is idle talk at worst it contradicts the categorical imperative of morality, much in the same way that breaking a promise does. Therefore we may further conclude that a Dawkinsian is necessarily immoral, depending on whether he takes his own proposition seriously. If he does, then we must consider him immoral.

posted by James Chang @ 2:14 PM