A Level RS

“Kantian ethics are too abstract to be helpful when it comes to sexual ethics.” Evaluate this statement. (40)

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Kant never married, there is no evidence that he was romantically involved with anybody and his ethical writings contain few direct references to sex. Because of these well-known biographical details, it is unreasonable to suppose that Kant would struggle when it comes to sexual ethics. Yet, as this essay will argue, his approach to ethics is far from being too abstract to be helpful when making decisions about sex.

Firstly, Kantian Ethics are of clear relevance to making decisions about sex because they concern how we choose to treat people. Kant argued that reason demands that we treat human beings, whether in the person of ourselves or another, always as an end and never as a means to an end. For Kant, human beings are “pathologically loving”, recognising that it is rational to treat other people as we would wish to be treated. This means that in any moral situation – and sex is most definitely a moral situation because it affects human wellbeing like little else – we must consider and protect the interests of all persons equally. This rules out using somebody for pleasure, whether through heterosexual or homosexual intercourse, and only allows sexual activity that is consensual and supportive of both parties’ long-term wellbeing. Marriage would be the obvious (though not necessarily the only) way to ensure properly informed and enthusiastic consent, including as regards possible children, as well as mutual commitment to the others’ wellbeing. Adultery would be ruled out by the impossibility of universalising breaking promises. Casual sex could be as unacceptable as rape, because it is probably underpinned by the same un-universalisable maxim. This means that Kantian Ethics would helpfully reinforce common norms of behaviour, supporting marriage and discouraging adultery, promiscuity and of course sexual abuse and violence. On the other hand, for Kant there is no essential moral difference between heterosexual and homosexual sex, meaning that Kantian Ethics could be more useful than Natural Law in the 21st Century.

Secondly, Kantian Ethics are far more helpful than is Utilitarianism when it comes to making decisions about sex. Act Utilitarianism demands that decisions are made situationally relative to the predicted consequences. Nevertheless, as even the utilitarian Peter Singer admits, it is often not possible to predict consequences accurately. Also, making an objective decision when affected by lust is impractical. As St Augustine rightly observed, lust makes us incapable of doing what we know we should do. It also makes us lie to ourselves to get what we want. For example, if somebody was making a utilitarian calculation about having a one-night-stand, they start by making the assumption that this is a one-night-stand (which might not be the case) and then attempt to calculate their own feelings and that of the other party during and after sex. Quite obviously, these calculations might be inaccurate. Can they know whether they, or the other party, has an STI or mental health condition? Can they know that no conception will occur? Even where extensive discussion has taken place, the facts may turn out to be other than was thought. Further, such detailed discussions are not always practical in the real world. It follows that Act Utilitarianism is not really very helpful when it comes to making decisions about sexual ethics, only encouraging to individuals in pursuing their selfish pleasure. Further, Rule Utilitarianism is little improvement over Act Utilitarianism in practice. Few Rule Utilitarians propose imposing absolute rules other than perhaps “do not murder,” so people are permitted to break such rules as exist when they don’t seem useful. When it comes to sex, it is all too easy to see one’s situation as exceptional, leading Rule Utilitarians to become Act Utilitarians when it comes to sex. The exception might be John Stuart Mill, who famously kept his relationship with the married Harriet Taylor platonic, even though she was separated from her husband and the world assumed her to be his mistress. Mill respected the institution of marriage on utilitarian grounds, placing the happiness of society ahead of his own, and Harriet’s, pleasure. Yet would his utilitarian decision have been the same today, with easy divorce and different sexual mores? Utilitarians have to make decisions relative to the situation as it is, including social attitudes and laws, and today neither the law nor social attitudes impinge so much on individual sexual ethics as was the case in the mid 19th Century. It follows that today Kantian Ethics offers a more helpful guide than Utilitarianism when it comes to sexual ethics, because it reminds people to consider every person as an end and to act on universal principles rather than to give in to lust.

Of course, Kantian Ethics has its weaknesses. Some Utilitarians will suggest that Kantian Ethics rules out consensual promiscuous behaviour, which has the potential to produce a great deal of pleasure. As an absolutist system Kantian Ethics imposes general rules which reduce legitimate opportunities for happiness which might be allowed by a more flexible consequentialist approach. In addition, arguably Kant’s concern for reason controlling the animal instincts and for the damaging effects of making selfish decisions even once might rule out using pornography, even that which is computer-generated. It might also rule out masturbation. Again, Utilitarians would criticise Kant for this, suggesting that his absolute rules have reduced net pleasure unnecessarily. Nevertheless, it is Kant’s difficulty with the institution of marriage that presents a bigger problem to the usefulness of his ethic today. As Christine Korsgaard has observed, there is a potential issue with marriage for Kant, both because of the potential of the whole institution for using women as a means to an end and because of what it actually consists in. If marriage is, as it has long been, an instrument for the legal subjugation of women then no Kantian could allow that a woman could freely AND rationally agree to it and, if the woman did not agree both freely AND rationally, no man could freely AND rationally agree to it either. It is not possible to universalise agreeing to a contract which has either been forced on or not been understood by the other party; to do so would surely use them as a means to an end? Further, could a Kantian choose to marry when marriage represents an unbreakable promise or contract in the words… “Immanuel, will you take Christine to be your wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and protect her, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?” The implication of this wording could be that each partner promises to put the interests of the other partner first, even ahead of their own interests. Could such a promise be made freely AND rationally – or would entering into such a promise bar one from having a good will, which requires that all persons are treated strictly equally and not preferred on any grounds of personal preference, relationship… or presumably legal pre-contract AKA marriage? Korsgaard suggests that these issues can be overcome in the 21st century because legal obstacles to marriage being between equal partners have been dissolved and because the wording of the marriage service need not be interpreted – or even spoken – in this way. As Marcia Baron suggested, marriage-partners need not agree to prefer each other morally and in fact as rational and free people would resist any idea that they should do so. Nevertheless, using the sort of extreme thought-experiment beloved of Kant in the Groundwork, imagine that a newlywed couple is caught in a hotel fire. The bride escapes out of the third-floor window, maybe abseiling to the ground using her cathedral-train, and has the choice of helping her husband to make a safe descent or leaving him hanging as smoke billows from their window to run to reception and raise the alarm for the other guests. Who would think that her promise to love and comfort him did not cover such situations or that she would be justified in abandoning him to fate, provided that she did her duty by unknown others? WD Ross, in many ways influenced by Kant, argued that people have a prima facie duty to family members – including husbands or wives – but like Kant offered little clear guidance on how to resolve clashing duties beyond suggesting (again like Kant) that rational intuition should be our guide. This is the biggest difficulty with applying Kantian Ethics to issues arising from sex – that clashing duties are common and that Kant is not particularly helpful when it comes to helping people to resolve them. Saying that negative duties always take precedence over positive ones is not convincing or useful when family-members are concerned. Would anybody in the real world allow their wife or baby to starve rather than steal a loaf of bread and still have any expectation of having their good will rewarded?

In conclusion, despite being abstract, Kantian Ethics are more helpful than alternatives such as Utilitarianism and Natural Law when it comes to sexual ethics. In particular, Kantian Ethics is useful in encouraging people to focus on treating people as ends and not as means to an end. However, there are still significant problems with Kantian Ethics and the guidance it offers, particularly when it comes to how to resolve clashing duties, and these difficulties are not reserved to sexual ethics, but beset the application of Kantian Ethics more generally.

Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God! Discuss (40)

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Religious experience, whether that is the general experience of living a religious life or specific, direct experiences of the divine, is very commonly cited as the basis for religious faith.  Nevertheless, William James and William Alston have both argued that although Religious Experiences are reasonably authoritative for the people who have them – and for those people may serve as more than a pointer to the existence of God – because of plausible non-religious explanations there can be no duty on other people to accept the authenticity of religious experiences or see them as pointers to anything supernatural. Richard Swinburne went further, noting that whether one accepts religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God will depend on one’s assessment of prior probability.  Responses to the claim “Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God!” depend to some extent on one’s own relationship with religious experience(s), whether one has had a direct experience or must rely on others’ reports, but depend mostly on one’s world-view.  Atheists and materialists are unlikely to accept the claim, even if they have had an experience that might otherwise be categorized as religious, whereas those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds are more likely to accept the claim, even on the strength of anecdote.

Direct religious experiences are notoriously difficult to define or categorise.  William James identified four marks that most experiences seem to have – transiency, a noetic quality, ineffability and passivity – and yet there are well-known experiences which do not have these marks.  Thomas Merton had relatively regular experiences over a long period.   Teresa of Avila’s experiences were sustained and seemingly the result of practices designed to provoke them.  Further the Religious canon is packed with descriptions of religious experience.  Other scholars have defined religious experiences in different ways.  Scholar of mysticism Rudolph Otto took a more general approach, saying only that authentic religious experiences are those of mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  In some ways Otto’s definition accords with Martin Buber’s description of religious experiences as I-thou encounters.  Walter Stace excluded classic visions and voices altogether and argued that genuine religious experiences are non-sensuous and mystical in character.  Richard Swinburne, on the other hand, listed five different types of religious experience in two categories, public and private, in an attempt to be inclusive. The difficulty in defining religious experiences is a seemingly insuperable obstacle to using them as the basis for an inductive argument for the existence of God.

Direct religious experiences are also open to alternative, non-religious explanations. Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud both noted how religious belief tends towards wish-fulfilment.  Some religious experiences fit in most conveniently with the wants and needs of the person who has them and could be explained as creations of the subconscious mind. For example, Joan of Arc’s experiences fit in with the French nationalistic mood of the time and provided Joan with a credibility that she could never otherwise have had.  Might she have invented the experiences – or have interpreted them creatively – for her own (side’s) political advantage?  The Emperor Constantine’s vision before the battle of Milvian Bridge and the visions leading to the discovery of the True Cross on the First Crusade could be seen in similar terms. Alternatively, other religious experiences might be explained in physiological terms.  It is more common for those experiencing extreme physical stress or hormonal change to claim religious experiences – could the physiological changes associated with puberty or the suffering involved in a life-threatening illness be causing out-of-body sensations that are later interpreted as religious?  Julian of Norwich experienced visions while close to death, St Paul seems to have been an epileptic subject to grand-mal seizures and many other visionaries and mystics have exhibited physiological symptoms which might account for their altered state.  Of course it is difficult to disprove religious experiences in these ways – not least because an account of HOW the experience might have happened does not rule out God as the reason WHY it happened.  Nevertheless, the existence of non-religious explanations for religious experiences does undermine their status as a good pointer to the existence of God, both individually and otherwise.

Although Swinburne incorporated an argument from Religious Experience into his cumulative case for God, set out in “The Existence of God” (1991), he accepted that unlike accepting the natural observations that other inductive arguments start with, accepting religious experiences as even a pointer to the existence of God depends on prior probability.  People who already accept the possibility of God’s existence will accept that religious experiences are a feature of the world which require explanation while those with an atheistic world-view will reject religious experiences as delusions or at least claim that psychology and/or physiology explain away the phenomenon without any need to suggest a supernatural cause. It is fair to say that religious people, or at least those who are open-minded, will be more likely to accept that Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God than those who are committed to an atheist or materialist world-view and this suggests that there will always be disagreement on whether Religious Experiences constitute a good pointer to the existence of God that is little to do with the experiences themselves or what causes them.

Swinburne went on to argue that it is reasonable to accept reports of religious experiences – defined very broadly so as to include both public and private experiences – and to take them as pointers to the existence of God because of the principles of credulity and testimony.  In everyday life we believe what we see or experience ourselves and believe other people unless we have a good reason not to.  Why should these principles not apply to religious experiences?  Given the large number of people who claim to have had experiences that might be classed as religious experiences – around 1 in 3 people according to Alister Hardy Centre research – they need to be explained.  What reasonable grounds are there for dismissing either the occurrence of these experiences or the explanation proffered by those who have had them when we have no clear reason to doubt?  Nevertheless, Swinburne’s principles do little to advance his argument beyond prior probability.  Those with an atheistic or materialist world view are likely to respond to Swinburne by arguing that the very fact that somebody claims to have had a religious experience is evidence of their irrationality and good reason to be suspicious of their testimony. As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – by their nature religious experiences are out of the ordinary and demand more rather than less evidence both to support their authenticity and their interpretation.

In conclusion, the claim “Religious experiences are good pointers to the existence of God” will only be accepted by those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds and is unlikely to persuade non-religious people of God’s existence. As Anthony Flew wrote in God and Philosophy (1966), responses to religious experiences… ‘seems to depend on the interests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anything separate and autonomous…” Take AJ Ayer’s conversion experience.  Even the medically documented experience of a committed atheist and expert Philosopher is explained away in physiological and psychological terms by those who see it as impossible. Ayer eventually denied his own experiences, attributing them to the effects of cerebral anoxia or shock, rather than change his prior assessment of probability.  In “The Blind Watchmaker” Richard Dawkins wrote that if he witnessed a marble statue waving its hand at him he would prefer to check himself into the nearest psychiatric hospital than accept that he had witnessed a miracle. What better demonstration can there be of the effects of prior probability on the likelihood of people accepting religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God?

Further Reading

Richard Gale on Swinburne’s Argument from Religious Experience

 

Irenaeus successfully defends God against charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering. Discuss (40)

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The problem of evil and suffering continues to trouble all those with conventional Christian faith.  If God is, as Christian doctrine suggests, both omnipotent and omnibenevolent then why would evil and suffering exist within His creation?  David Hume pointed out an “inconsistent triad” of beliefs underpinning Christian faith and in the 1980s JL Mackie went so far as to call anyone basing faith on the propositions

  • P1: God exists and is omnipotent (and omniscient)
  • P2: God exists and is omnibenevolent
  • P3: Evil exists

“positively irrational.”  Because of this it is of the utmost importance for Christians – at least those with propositional faith – to address the problem of evil and suffering and defend God against the charge of creating or allowing either.  Such defences have traditionally been called theodicies, from the Greek words for God and defence.  One attracting attention in the past few decades is the Irenaean theodicy, as developed by John Hick and more recently by Richard Swinburne.  However, while the Irenaean theodicy might offer Christians ways of reconciling their faith with the real experience of suffering, Irenaeus’ original arguments offer little to the modern believer because they are unsuccessful in defending the concept of God that most Christians uphold. 

Back in the 2nd Century AD at a time of persecution and pogrom St Irenaeus was one of the first Christian writers to attempt a theodicy and explain why God would allow good people to suffer along with – and often more acutely than – sinners.  In Against Heresies, published around 186AD, Irenaeus argued that human beings were created by God in an infantile state and had to grow and develop through experiencing suffering, to fulfil their God-given natures.  In Book IV Chapter 38, Irenaeus explained how

“created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated.”

It seems that Irenaeus conceived of a God whose omnipotence does not include the ability to do what is logically impossible.  Atheist philosophers like JL Mackie would dispute this and ask why an all-powerful God could not create a world in which the laws of logic ran differently, especially if doing so would make the world a better place?  Of course, Irenaeus would not be alone in arguing that God could not create a world that is so substantially different from this one. St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas would both agree that because God’s creation must have been single and simple and this world exists it follows that God would not have created multiple different types of world.  Further, if God is perfect it follows that God would only have created worlds of the best-possible type and as this world exists, this world must be of this type.  Nevertheless, the atheist objection to the supposed compatibility between God’s omnipotence and his being constrained by the laws of logic still seems persuasive.

Irenaeus continued by arguing that as mankind depends on God, human beings are contingent and necessarily less than perfect.  It is fair to say that this point betrays Irenaeus’ anthropomorphic understanding of God and His act of creation.  He wrote…

“Because, as these things are of later date, so are they infantile; so are they unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect discipline.”

For Irenaeus, God’s creations are like God’s children and are affected by the type of imperfections that we know that children are affected by.  While this is appealing on one level, it is difficult to maintain the idea that the atrocious suffering of the 20th century could be justified as consequences from childish mistakes or opportunities to develop resilience.

To push the analogy that Irenaeus suggests, what sort of parent would allow the Holocaust to happen… whatever message it might send to their children about making sensible choices? Surely there are limits.  Irenaeus has difficulty in accounting for the extent of suffering in the world without supposing that inequalities in our experiences could be made right through the afterlife.  John Hick later develops this aspect of Irenaeus’ thinking, but even in his account it is difficult to accept that the appalling and apparently pointless suffering of a young child with an agonising cancer or animals undergoing vivisection can be justified as part of some lesson that God is trying to teach people. Any amount of heavenly bliss would be inadequate – if the person or animal in heaven remembered their former agonies then an eternity in heaven might be a continuance of their suffering and if their memories were erased then it is difficult to see how heaven could be any sort of mitigation for the unjust pointless suffering that individuals experience.  If a wrongly-convicted prisoner was told that somebody else would be compensated for their suffering – or that they would receive compensation only after they had advanced dementia and could not connect the compensation with the miscarriage of justice – they would hardly be satisfied.

Irenaeus argued…

“For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, [but she does not do so], as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this [perfection], being as yet an infant.”

The implication is that God could have created human beings perfect but chose not to because human beings could not cope with the weight of perfection.  This makes little sense.  If it was within God’s power to make man perfect from the start, should it not be within God’s power to create man with the capacity to receive perfection?  God is supposed to be omnipotent and not just like any human mother. Either God is as limited as anybody, in which case He is probably not worthy of worship, or God is culpable for the consequences of creating substandard human beings.

John Hick, in his “Evil and the God of Love” (1966) argued that Irenaeus’ writings offer the germ of a Theodicy which might satisfy modern Christians better than the traditional Augustinian Theodicy.  It might be argued that Hick’s development of Irenaeus’ ideas shows that they might offer a successful defence of God against charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering.  However, Hick’s “Irenaean Theodicy” draws on Origen and Schleiermacher as much as on Irenaeus and anyone who takes the trouble to read Against Heresies for themselves will see the distance between what Irenaeus argues and what Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy argues.   Irenaeus focusses on God’s justice and the idea that human beings deserve any amount of hell-fire and is far from being the gentle, comforting writer that Hick was.  For Irenaeus, life is less a “vale of soul making” than an annealing process, the human body being like iron quenched in fire and icy water to make it hard. In its original form, it is probably fair to say that Irenaeus’ Theodicy is at least as abhorrent as Augustine’s to the modern reader.

In conclusion, it seems that Irenaeus fails to defend God from charges of creating or allowing evil and suffering.  Firstly, unlike Augustine, Irenaeus leaves the nature of evil open and fails to head off the argument that God actively created evil.  Secondly, Irenaeus offers no convincing explanation for the inequality in our experience of suffering or for its pointless and unjustifiable extremes.  John Hick had a good go at reawakening interest in Irenaeus, but that interest is unlikely to survive the process of going beyond Hick’s account of Irenaeus to the original work.

Further Reading

Irenaeus: Against Heresies (New Advent)