The Mopologists Fantasize About "A Totally Different Morality"

[_Doctor Scratch]

Greetings, Friends and Colleagues.

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well during these difficult times. So many things seem to be on the retreat: unemployment is surging. People are getting sick and dying. Services are being cut. Businesses are collapsing. And yet, in the midst of all of this, there nonetheless remains a pretty much unceasing hive of activity. That would be Mopologetics, of course. If you were thinking to yourself: "Man, couldn't they find something else to do with their time during this crisis?" then you would be totally wrong.

What can I say? People are creatures of habit. The upshot seems to be that, at least, the Mopologists are in a more reflective mood lately. For example, did you know that on "SeN" they are currently trying to imagine a world where their behavior is "moral"? I encourage you to check it out.

The entry, naturally, is based on the Mopologists' warped understanding of C.S Lewis. Just look at the way that Dr. Peterson spins Lewis's basic idea:

In his classic 1952 book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis discusses God and the moral law. He notes that, when people are quarreling, they often say things like these:

How would you like it if somebody did that to you?
That’s my seat. I was there first!
Leave him alone. He’s not doing you any harm.
Give me some of your brownie. I gave you some of my fries.
Come on! You promised!

Actually, no: Lewis doesn't "note" that people "often say things like these." These are Peterson's own, made-up twists on Lewis's ideas. (Note the line: "Give me some of your brownie. I gave you some of my fries." Yeah: sure--that's what first came to mind for Lewis. LOL! Classic, DCP. You know: salads--including, yes, kale salad--can actually be really tasty if they're made properly. But by all means: feel free to keep wolfing down the French fries and brownies!)

But the elaboration on the metaphor grows ever more interesting with each line:

Essentially nobody ever says that there’s nothing wrong in doing to others what we wouldn’t like done to us, that fairness doesn’t matter, that it’s okay to harm innocent people, that promises needn’t be kept. In nearly every case the other person will try to show that what he has done or is doing doesn’t really contravene the standard, or that there is some special circumstance. For example, something has happened that prevents him from keeping his promise, or, in fact, the person had done him harm. We make excuses. Whether valid excuses or not makes no difference. We even make them to ourselves.

(emphasis added....lol)

Before long, we get to the real meat of the matter:

But if there is a Wrong, and if there is a Right, there must be some standard behind those identifications. There would be no point in calling a foul on a basketball player if there were actually no rules defining what a foul is.

Could it be that the Mopologists actually understand why their behavior is wrong? Or, at least, they understand the mechanics behind the reasons why critics consistently tell them that they're wrong? Maybe not:

But where does this standard come from? Is it a natural law, perhaps? It certainly isn’t a natural law in the same sense that gravity is a natural law. If I choose to violate the law of gravity, I’m likely to wind up dead or, at least, with broken bones. If I find myself suspended in mid-air, I will fall. I have no alternative. I can’t violate the law of gravity. But I can break promises, be unfair, and unjustly wrong and harm innocent people. (Just wait: That last line is very liable to end up elsewhere online as my actual boasting about my actual unethical behavior. I’ve seen precisely that done with earlier things that I’ve posted.)

You don't have to say it, Dr. P.: we know that you're capably of breaking promises, being unfair, and unjustly wronging and harming innocent people. We've seen you and your pals do it plenty of times! Stuck in a bind, Peterson quotes Lewis himself:

I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. . . .

[SNIP!]

It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.

All right. Let's set aside, for a moment, the proposal that morality is somehow equivalent to math. (It isn't.) Instead, let's look at DCP's bizarre endorsement of these ideas:

And if Right and Wrong are actually in some sense real, that may point to something really, really significant about the universe in which we live.

Okay, if you can hold back your laughter ("Look! It proves that God's real!") and gather your wits about you, then you'll see that this whole thing is ripe for analysis through the lens of Mopologetics Studies.

What if we make some minor adjustments to Lewis's quote?

Think of a realm where people were admired for trying to destroy a man's reputation, or interfere with his bid for tenure, or where a young man felt proud of making fun of Jewish wedding rituals.

Think of a planet where people are applauded for interfering with a professor's bid for tenure, or where a curmudgeonly nabob charges into a woman's bookstore in order to scream homophobic slurs.

Think of a blog where the proprietor posts images of black people being lynched as a "joke," or a list-serve that's used to coordinate gang-style attacks on critics.

Think of a splinter religious faction where you feel proud for lying about getting paid $20,000+ to do Mopologetics, or where you violate Church rules in an attempt to dox someone who dared to poke fun at you.

So, I ask you: are Right and Wrong "real"? Remember: all of the items I mentioned have, at one time or another, been in dispute, just like DCP describes in the opening of his blog post. He insists that this means that there is a very real "Right" at the center of all this. What does he "imagine" that that might be?

[_I have a question]

But if there is a Wrong, and if there is a Right, there must be some standard behind those identifications.

There is certainly a lot "wrong" with that sentence and the conclusions the writer forces upon the reader following the writing of it.
Why can't "Wrong" be variable?
Why can't "Right" be variable?
Why can't they be arbitrary dependant on other factors?
Right and Wrong are human constructs as can be shown be the species we share our planet with, including other humans. Let's take killing someone as an example - would the aforementioned writer say the act of killing someone was "Wrong" or "Right"? The answer, I suspect, would be "it depends". "Wrong" and "Right" is a moveable feast to which no standard applies except for the vagaries of how individuals or communities or societies or species want or agree to feel about something.

[_moksha]

... or where a curmudgeonly nabob charges into a woman's bookstore in order to scream homophobic slurs.

Kiwi (Pahoran) has already fashioned an apologetic on SeN in which the Midgley road trip to Tanner's bookstore did not happen. Perhaps the differing moralities topic should be expanded to include differing realities. The apologetic practice of Lying for the Lord can help span both topics.

[_honorentheos]

Interesting. Dr. Peterson's view of morality seems to take issue with agency as well as social evolutionary forces that create very real norms and shared cultural values that are still context dependent. Yet he seems to dream of an alternative reality where Mormon-style moral values are as compulsory and universal as gravity. It's just a matter of time is all before those who think they are able to walk off a cliff without consequence will find themselves dashed on the rocks below it. What was that book he liked as a kid that essentially had that as it's theme? Anyway. I recall once long ago on the old MAD board him saying he didn't agree with socio-biological theories about cultural evolution and fitness such as memic evolution. I see why. It gets in the way of his belief in divine origin for ethics just as biological evolution throws a wrench into his views on the divine lineage of human kind. And that gets in the way of being special for nothing more than adamantly holding onto a belief in the face of conflicting evidence. Some people have to take what they can get I guess.

Seems like Mormon mythology once described a figure with the same ideas about how morality ought to work.

[_Gadianton]

Thanks Professor, for this important contribution.

But I can break promises, be unfair, and unjustly wrong and harm innocent people. (Just wait:

Ha ha. You're welcome, Coach, for the restoration of your viewing privileges, but lets not be so enthusiastic as to immediately start with "sig-line bait" this obvious.

I have to chuckle at the earnest proposal here that morals are absolute, pointing to their objectivity, which thereby points to a "law-giver" as Neal A. would reason. What a laugh!

The Lewis quote hints at Kant's argument that morals must be absolute else the very words we use in moralistic language are meaningless "two plus two = five". But the Coach has bungled this up big time, misinterpreting the absolutist qualities of math (or morals) with objective ones. That 2+2=4 not 5 says nothing at all about whether or not numbers are real. And all kinds of mathematicians and philosophers reject the idea that numbers are "real". If numbers don't have to be real in order for math to work, then why would morals, which per CS Lewis pace math, need to be real?

Kant had a sneaky way of showing how these turnip-style philosophers that you find at places like SeN get confused when attempting as the Coach does here, to make morals objectively real like gravity. Kant shows that in a dispute between Aristotle and Plato about the reality of triangles; Aristotle says no, you can't see them out there in nature, and Plato says yes; they are up there as a perfect form; that the two can have an intelligent argument about triangles precisely because what constitutes a triangle has nothing to do with whether they are "real" or not.

Anyway, the Coach has a further foot-shooting problem. Recall he's a Godel mysticist. Because of the undecidable propositions of Godel, math can't be reduced to formal proposition and therefore by extension, neither can science -- science is doomed, therefore God!

But so much worse for morality that paces math (in the world of Godel mystics). If there are formally undecidable propositions in math, there are formally undecidable propositions in morality! Now you just wait: I've given him the idea, so one day in the future when he's arguing from the other side of his mouth, he'll be struck with the intuition to say that undecidable propositions in morality cover the actions of Joseph Smith.

[_Physics Guy]

No, it's not clear that morality has to be real just because it's objective. It's not clear to me, either, what it even means for numbers to be real or not. I'm with Kant on this one for sure. Thanks for the tip that he talked about this. I've been impressed with pretty much the entire subset of Kant to which I have been able to assign any meaning. I've been unimpressed with the fact that this subset is small.

I do wish there were a way to tell Mathematica (that is, Mathematica) that all numbers are Real. It's awfully tedious having to refine every doggone result with /. Assumptions -> Element(x,Reals).

[_Dr Exiled]

I think Coach's real morality is defined by the anti-Mormon construct he and his colleagues create, the supposed battle of good v. evil. It's part of the humble superiority that is Mormonism. God supposedly chose them to be his people and rulers, the noble and great ones, the royal priesthood, the warriors. The antis supposedly know the truth and fight against it a la so many fantasy good v. evil novels. Coach and his group are there to fight the good fight. It may get messy at times, but ends always justify means.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I see the learned Sage of Provo and Jerusalem has emerged from his book-lined study to give us a summary of Book 1 Chapter 1 of Mere Christianity; the man’s intellectual labors are positively promethean. Heaven knows the transcripts of BBC radio broadcasts from early 1940s are nigh impenetrable and we humble readers of SeN need a faithful summary wherein Daniel captures Lewis’ profundity and communicates it to us in a vernacular that we can comprehend.

Dr. Scratch already hinted at one example, when we look at the samples Lewis gave us of possible quarrelling we find this arcane sentence:

‘Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’

This bit of mid 20th century British English is going to throw a 21st century American for a loop and I’m sure Daniel instinctively knew this, the man has translated classical neoplatonic writings of Islamic scholars afterall. Here is what Daniel gave us:

‘Give me some of your brownie. I gave you some of my fries.’

Say what you will, the man knows his audience.

But Daniel isn’t just sensitive to the mores of food consumption, but also displays a well earned competence when it comes to the economy of language. Consider this passage from Lewis that tips the scales at 61 words:

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’

Daniel was not only to get that down to 56 words, but also switched the pronoun “he” to “she”.

In all of these, Lewis notes, the person speaking isn’t simply saying that the other person is doing something that displeases her. Rather, she is appealing to an implicit behavioral standard that she expects the other person to know and to honor. As Lewis himself says, the other person rarely responds “To hell with your standard!”

I think the most admirable aspect of this blog post is that the thoughts and ideas original Daniel are altogether absent from this piece. I can truly appreciate that because like many Mormon Apologists I have trouble reading four whole pages and I’m saddled with the dire need to name drop someone in the comment sections of social media.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I really hope Mr. Stak does a follow-up piece to his MDB magnum opus 'Lolcow'.

- Doc

[_Doctor Scratch]

... or where a curmudgeonly nabob charges into a woman's bookstore in order to scream homophobic slurs.

Kiwi (Pahoran) has already fashioned an apologetic on SeN in which the Midgley road trip to Tanner's bookstore did not happen. Perhaps the differing moralities topic should be expanded to include differing realities. The apologetic practice of Lying for the Lord can help span both topics.

That's going to be a tough one to spin, especially since there are photos of the incident posted to SHIELDS--including a lengthy letter describing the incident, written by Midgley himself!