Who Knows wrote:Has he/she responded to your post yet?
Not directly, though he has clearly modified his position to accommodate some of my objections. Notice his most recent position statement:
"I'm just asserting that those atheists who believe in [moral realism], along with two other things, reduce down into moral nihilism. I provided ample argument for that. Relativists like Jak escape the problem, but only with the cost of being moral relativists: a widely disrespected view that differs little from nihilism proper in practice."
Compare this to his original position statement: "Atheists who believe in moral truth must be nihilists."
The difference should be obvious. AliD is now tacitly acknowledging what I pointed out in a previous post:
1) You neglect to note that your title is true only if the atheists believe also that aggregative value theory is true and that future time is infinite.
2) You use the imprecise term "moral truth" rather than the technical philosophical term "moral realism." I suspect that many people here would affirm a sort of socially-constructed "moral truth" but that they would have real problems with any kind of "moral realism." In fact, moral realism is a perspective rarely encountered among atheists. Most atheists are moral relativists who understand morality as social convention.
...
You may argue that atheism necessarily leads to nihilism, or that atheism is inconsistent with the idea of a meaningful life. But even if you're right, that does not make the atheists here nihilists....to call some atheists nihilists just because that's the logical outcome of their beliefs is a misrepresentation until they actually affirm nihilism themselves. A nihilist, by definition, is someone who affirms nihilism.
He has, of course, now turned his guns against moral relativism, arguing that it is functionally equivalent to nihilism. But, thankfully, we seem to be making at least a little progress. He does acknowledge that atheists who believe in moral relativism thereby escape being nihilists. And he at least implicitly recognizes that those who disbelieve in aggregative value theory and infinite future time will also escape nihilism. And instead of arguing that said atheists are nihilists, he now merely says that they "reduce down into nihilism." (This last point is only a partial improvement; I'm sure there are some atheists who will not eventually "reduce down" into nihilism, even if that
is the logical consequence of their beliefs-- and even that is debatable.)
I should digress for a moment to explain what aggregative value theory. Here is a definition given in one philosophical paper, to which we shall return in a moment because of its pertinence to the thead topic:
Call a theory of the good—be it moral or prudential—aggregative just in case (1) it recognizes local (or location-relative) goodness, and (2) the goodness of states of affairs is based on some aggregation of local goodness. The locations for local goodness might be points or regions in time, space, or space-time; or they might be people, or states of nature. Any method of aggregation is allowed: totaling, averaging, measuring the equality of the distribution, measuring the minimum, etc.. Call a theory of the good finitely additive just in case it is aggregative, and for any finite set of locations it aggregates by adding together the goodness at those locations. Standard versions of total utilitarianism typically invoke finitely additive value theories (with people as locations).
http://web.missouri.edu/~umcasklinechai ... Theory.doc
In other words, according to aggregative value theory, "goodness" is an actual, measurable, local phenomenon that can either increase or decrease, and we can add together the local units of goodness over a given area or period of time to determine the total goodness in that area or period. The article Ray quoted in the OP assigns the goodness values to units of time and argues that if future time is infinite, increases in value are meaningless. We might express it this way:
A puzzle can arise when finitely additive value theories are applied to cases involving an
infinite number of locations (people, times, etc.). Suppose, for example, that temporal locations
are the locus of value, and that time is discrete, and has no beginning or end. How would a finitely additive theory (e.g., a temporal version of total utilitarianism) judge the following two worlds?
Goodness at Locations (e.g. times)
w1:..., 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, .....
w2:..., 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, .....
Example 1
At each time w1 contains 2 units of goodness and w2 contains only 1. Intuitively, we claim, if the locations are the same in each world, finitely additive theorists will want to claim that w1 is better than w2. But it's not clear how they could coherently hold this view. For using standard mathematics the sum of each is the same infinity, and so there seems to be no basis for claiming that one is better than the other.
http://web.missouri.edu/~umcasklinechai ... Theory.doc
Of course, this argument only holds if the units of value are assigned to moments in time rather than, say, to human beings. The article I cited notes that "Standard versions of total utilitarianism typically invoke finitely additive value theories (
with people as locations)." Obviously there is not an infinite number of people, and the human race will come to an end at some point in the future. If we assign units of value to human beings, then, we are working with a finite rather than an infinite number, and Smith's (and also Ray's) argument fails. In other words, Ray's argument succeeds only if we adopt Smith's peculiar
formulation of aggregative value theory. (To read up on utilitarian ethics, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitaria ... er_species)
So it actually is possible to hold some form of each of the 3 views Smith mentions without nihilism being logically entailed.
What's more, the article from which I have been citing defends the idea that one can even affirm Smith's particular formulation of aggregative value theory without nihilism being logically entailed! Give it a read:
We shall argue that such theories can and should judge some worlds with an infinite number of locations as better than others. Total utilitarianism, for example, can and should judge w1 as better than w2 when they have the same locations. Moreover, we shall argue that there are some perfectly general metaprinciples governing how finitely additive theories should make judgements when an infinite number of locations are involved.
http://web.missouri.edu/~umcasklinechai ... Theory.doc
Note also that Ray has accommodated some, but not all, of the objections I raised earlier in the thread:
3) Smith does not restrict his argument to atheists. In his opinion, anyone (theist or otherwise) who affirms the three premises of his argument is a nihilist. Do you affirm the three premises of his argument, ALiD?...
If moral nihilism is a fundamentally undesirable position (as you seem to believe it is) then Smith's argument is at least as damning for theists as for atheists (and probably much more so).
...
According to the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, nihilism is "An approach to philosophy that holds that human life is meaningless and that all religions, laws, moral codes, and political systems are thoroughly empty and false. The term is from the Latin nihil, meaning 'nothing.'"...
Please also consider the fact that the definition of nihilism I cited in my first paragraph does not specify what "meaning" entails. You are using a highly specific definition of meaning: namely, that it exists as actual units of value with respect to the universe. Most people would reject your definition of meaning. Atheists tend to define meaning in more immediate and relative terms. To make your personal definition of "meaning" (and thus your personal definition of "nihilism") part of the premise of your argument is what we call the fallacy of arbitrary redefinition.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/redefine.html
AliD has not admitted that theists who affirm the three views Smith mentions are as susceptible to his argument as atheists who affirm those three views. He also has not clarified why his post is not an example of the fallacy of arbitrary redefinition.
Unless he can present us with compelling reasons to accept his reasoning over these cogent objections, I think we can lay this dead horse to rest once and for all. Rest in peace, wild stallion.
-CK