Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition is possibly the most entertaining and original of the various anti-atheist books that have come out in the past two years, if for no other reason than that it’s thesis is so radical: that rejection of Scholastic Aristotelianism is responsible for atheism, same-sex marriage, bestiality, necrophilia, the coming fall of Western Civilization, and condoms. From the point of view of a philosophy student like myself, it is actually worthwhile, both because it gives a decent explanation of Aristotelianism and because it gives a sense of what the big deal was when Descartes made his début. Ultimately, the book has a lot of problems, including the fact that Feser doesn’t really understand anything that’s happened in philosophy since the Middle Ages. Still, it’s a more worthwhile book than say, Berlinski’s or D’Souza’s.

By the way: I’ve decided to start marking off sections of my post for “philosophical nerdage,” for slightly more obscure, less red-meat sections. In this context, it will mark sections that are less about how dumb the things Feser’s saying are, and more about trying to humor him. Enjoy, or not, as you choose.

Feser on Moral Theory

I’m doing this in two parts. In this first post, I want to look at the claim that Aristotelianism is the foundation of morality. According to Feser, if we accept Aristotelian metaphysics (which is obviously true) then we must accept a certain kind of traditional Christian morality, and if we reject Aristotelianism, then nothing will be good or bad. As I’ll explain next time, he also claims that accepting Aristotelianism entails accepting the existence of God.

Feser’s Aristotelian morality (“natural law,” as he calls it) works like this: the cause of things isn’t just what we normally think of as a cause, everything also has a purpose or “final cause” which must be taken into account when explaining why it does what it does. Even inanimate objects have final causes. The moon, for example, has as its purpose orbiting the Earth. For animals, at least, fulfilling your final cause is what it is to be good. But why should we care about seeking Aristotelian goods? Feser asks, rhetorically. Because everyone naturally seeks out what they take to be good, and as soon as they realize that the Aristotelian understanding of good is correct, they’ll start seeking Aristotelian goods. On this basis, Feser mocks the idea that there is an “is/ought problem”–that merely knowing what is the case cannot tell you what you ought to do.

The trouble with this argument is that it doesn’t actually answer the question it’s supposed to. Feser starts out asking what we ought to do, and then makes a claim about human psychology which predicts that Aristotelians will seek out Aristotelian goods. It doesn’t tell us what anyone ought to do. It does tell us, though, that Feser has misunderstood the is/ought problem–which should have clued him in that no amount of armchair speculation about what people will do amounts to telling us anything at all about what people ought to do.

The first argument setting up Feser’s natural law morality is bad enough, but this is followed by two even lousier arguments: first, there is an argument against homosexuality and contraception, second, in favor of individual rights. On the first point: the purpose of sex is procreation, therefore all sex must end with ejaculation into a vagina, with no attempts to prevent conception. Second, individual rights exist because we musn’t interfere with eachother’s Aristotelain purposes.

[WARNING: Philosophical nerdage ahead. Here I'm going to humor Feser a little, and see where his assumptions lead, but this may not be interesting to those who think Feser's philosophy should just be laughed off.]

Feser seems to think that the main kind of sexual immorality is either (1) ejaculating somewhere other than a vagina and (2) ejaculating into a vagina, but using contraception, and he explicitly says it is not immoral for infertile people to have sex. This is puzzling on his own assumptions: consider a case involving two men: one is bisexual, regularly has sex with men, but also has sex with his wife and has four children with her, though they did have sex for awhile using contraception before they wanted to have children, and started using contraception again. The other man has sex with a wife who he doesn’t have any children with, because, while he has never used contraception, she is infertile. Suppose the second man knows that it is his wife, not he, who is infertile. It seems that the first man has gotten more Aristotelian goods, and the second man could get more Aristotelian goods than he does if only he were to divorce his wife and marry someone fertile. Feser, though, claims that Aristotelianism somehow supports the conclusion that the second man is more moral, and how he reaches this conclusion I know not.

As for individual rights, this simply isn’t explained, and it seems very easy to refute in Aristotelian terms. If we were to Aristotelian purposes, then it’s pretty clear that the purpose of predators is to do things that interfere with the purposes of prey. At least in principle, such a relationship could exist between different human beings. Interestingly, Feser has an ambivalent relationship with evolution, and if we run with his more pro-evolution comments, we could conclude that Darwinian purposes are Aristotelian purposes, and since we evolved to sometimes screw each other over, sometimes natural law morality positively demands that we screw each other over.

[End of philosophical nerdage zone.]

Now for a more vulgar objection: Feser accuses those who say Aristotelianism could support slavery is a slander. But in his Politics, Aristotle explicitly says some people are natural slaves. Okay that was a little too easy.

Aside from Feser’s attempt to defend natural law morality, he also tries to more directly argue that without Aristotelianism, there can be no morality:

[WARNING: Philosophical nitpicking ahead. Here I'm going to humor Feser a little, and see where his assumptions lead, but this may not be interesting to those who think Feser's philosophy should just be laughed off.]

If there is no such thing as a form or essence by reference to which a thing (including a person or an act) can be judged a better or worse specimen of its type, there is no sense to be made of its being objectively “good” or “bad” at all.

Now, one of Feser’s examples of a thing’s essence as reference point is the case of a triangle: we can judge triangles more or less perfect. So in this case, by “good” Feser means “being of an ideal type,” and the implicit assumption is that being of an ideal type is the only kind of moral goodness at all. But not only is it not the only kind of moral goodness, there is no reason to think it is a kind of moral goodness–there is no moral significance in the straightness of a triangle’s sides or the sharpness of its angles.

[End of philosophical nerdage zone.]

Feser also seems to think that to accept that there is an is/ought problem is to think that there is no such thing as morality. But there’s another obvious solution: concluding that morality facts just are, independent of facts about things in the world. This was the conclusion of G.E. Moore, one of the most famous proponents of the idea of an is/ought problem. (Feser never mentions Moore, though he does mention Moore’s name for the problem, “the naturalistic fallacy.”)

Thrown in with these claims about the nature of morality is a careless dig at the idea of moral intuitions, which Feser equates with subjective preferences. Feser misses that in contemporary philosophy, “intuition” is a technical term referring to the seeming obviousness of certain philosophical claims. The key feature of intuitions is that they are supposed to be starting point enough for philosophical reflection. Feser seems to basically agree with this, as he is constantly defending his views by declaring them “just obvious,” the only problem I can see with his method is that some of the things he claims as obvious aren’t–it isn’t obvious that the moon is fulfilling a purpose of orbiting the Earth.

Overall, while Feser’s bold endorsement of Aristotle is fun for awhile, it gets a little tiring when you realize he doesn’t actually understand anything that’s happened in philosophy since the Middle Ages. In particular, he’s missing some of the biggest developments in the history of moral philosophy: the idea that there are facts about what we ought to do that don’t need to be explained by facts about what is, and that we can know some of them on the basis that they are just obvious.

Feser on the New Atheists

I also want to use this installment to look at Feser’s claim that the New Atheists are wicked people, because they (1) say things he disagrees with and (2) don’t pay enough attention to Aristotelianism. Feser likes invoking Peter Singer’s ethical views and shouting about how horrible they are, and kicks off his book by quoting some mostly-unnamed atheists commenting on the Anthony Flew affair. None of the quoted views are actually criticized in any substantial way. There’s also a lot of complaining about the dishonesty of atheists who fail to engage the “best” arguments for the other side–i.e. Aristotelianism. As Feser admits, though, most people defending religion today aren’t Aristotelians, but in spite of this Feser expects atheists to see that the most popular arguments for God just aren’t worth their time and they should be focusing on Aristotelian arguments. With apologies to Dave Barry: I am not making this up.

There’s also a little stream of other anti-atheist cliches: quoting Lewontin and Nagel, “OMG they believe in global warming,” evolutionary psychology is evil, and Carl Sagan is evil (can you hear me now, Matt Nisbet?). Most of these charges I admit only for my own record, not because I can say anything new about them. There is though, one interesting new claim: contemporary philosophers refuse to talk about God, but they are obsessed with religion because they’re trying to develop a naturalistic world view. There’s a better explanation, though: most contemporary philosophers see the question of God as a settled issue, not very interesting, but they do think the question of how the mind could be natural is an interesting question, so they talk about it because they find it interesting, not because their subconscious is obsessed with God.

Next time: Why Feser is also wrong about science, metaphysics, and skepticism.