Is the concept of moral responsibility compatible with physicalism / materialism?

I saw that Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 linked to this post by J. Warner Wallace.

Excerpt:

When examining the causes for an event (such as a death) we can separate them into two categories: event causation and agent causation (prior physical events cause things to happen and free agents cause things to happen). It’s important to recognize that free agents alone have the freedom to act or respond without a prior physical causal event. Physical objects, like dominoes, cannot cause themselves to fall over; they require a prior event to cause them to fall. But you and I have the ability to cause the first domino to fall as a simple matter of choice (we don’t need a prior event to cause this action). You can’t blame a car for running over a victim; the car is simply a physical object subject to a series of physical processes, none of which can be held morally culpable. But we can blame thedriver of the car for driving the car over the victim. The driver is a free agent, and we recognize that his choices are just that: free choices. The driver is not like the car. His choice is not simply the result of a series of purely physical processes, like dominoes falling. He had the freedom to choose otherwise, and this is why we seek to arrest and prosecute him.

Our recognition of the moral culpability of the driver (rather than the car) is an admission that materialism (physicalism) fails to explain who we are as humans. Consider the following argument:

No Physical System is a Free Agent
Physical systems are either “determined” (one event necessarily following the other) or “random”

Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility
Moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility
We recognize that each of us has the responsibility and choice to act morally, and indeed, we seek to hold each other legally accountable for each other’s free-will choices

Therefore, Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems
Our recognition of moral responsibility and our efforts to hold each other accountable are irrational and unwarranted if humans are merely physical systems

If we, as humans, are only physical systems (merely matter), we ought to stop trying to hold each other accountable for misbehavior. In fact, there can be no misbehavior if we are only physical brains and bodies; there can only be behavior. Our actions have no moral content at all unless we truly have the freedom to choose and the ability to break the bondage of physical event causation.

I finally learned what the “Twinkie defense” was by reading that post. It’s worth it for that reason alone.

This quote by JWW reminded me of a famous chapter in Theodore Dalrymple’s famous book “Life at the Bottom”, in which he explains the worldview of the lower classes in Britain. The chapter is called “The Knife Went In“, and it shows how people in the underclass describe their crimes in a way that completely minimizes their own free choices and their own responsibilities.

Take a look:

It is a mistake to suppose that all men, or at least all Englishmen, want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaint, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Listening as I do every day to the accounts people give of their lives, I am struck by the very small part in them which they ascribe to their own efforts, choices, and actions. Implicitly, they disagree with Bacon’s famous dictum that “chiefly the mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.” Instead, they experience themselves as putty in the hands of fate.

It is instructive to listen to the language they use to describe their lives. The language of prisoners in particular teaches much about the dishonest fatalism with which people seek to explain themselves to others, especially when those others are in a position to help them in some way. As a doctor who sees patients in a prison once or twice a week, I am fascinated by prisoners’ use of the passive mood and other modes of speech that are supposed to indicate their helplessness. They describe themselves as the marionettes of happenstance.

Not long ago, a murderer entered my room in the prison shortly after his arrest to seek a prescription for the methadone to which he was addicted. I told him that I would prescribe a reducing dose, and that within a relatively short time my prescription would cease. I would not prescribe a maintenance dose for a man with a life sentence.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s just my luck to be here on this charge.”

Luck? He had already served a dozen prison sentences, many of them for violence, and on the night in question had carried a knife with him, which he must have known from experience that he was inclined to use. But it was the victim of the stabbing who was the real author of the killer’s action: if he hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been stabbed.

My murderer was by no means alone in explaining his deed as due to circumstances beyond his control. As it happens, there are three stabbers (two of them unto death) at present in the prison who used precisely the same expression when describing to me what happened. “The knife went in,” they said when pressed to recover their allegedly lost memories of the deed.

The knife went in—unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crimes, was as nothing compared with the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome.

I wonder how much the secularism and atheism of the Britain academics has now seeped down to the lower classes and caused them to view themselves as lumps of meat or animals, rather than responsible free agents. Britain is the country of Charles Darwin and the idea of unguided Darwinian evolution. If you believe that you are an animal who evolved by accident in an accidental universe, then you don’t believe in free will, moral choices or moral obligations. The funniest thing in the world to me is how atheists go about their lives helping themselves to moral language that is not grounded by their worldview. Like parrots who have been trained to talk about the stock market. There is no realm of objective moral values and duties on atheism, so why are they using moral language and making moral judgments? On their view right and wrong are just social customs and conventions that vary by time and place, and human actions are biologically determined anyway. There are no choices. There is no responsibility.

You can read the whole Dalrymple book for free online, and I’ve linked to all the chapters in this one post.

Filed under: News, Agency, Agent, Apologetics, Atheism, Darwinism, Dualism, Evolution, Free Will, God, Life at the Bottom, Materialism, Mind, Moral Agency, Moral Duties, Moral Law, Moral Obligation, Moral Standards, Moral Values, Morality, Obligation, Physicalism, Responsibility, Responsible, Theodore Dalrymple, Unbelief

Why do women have abortions? Are women responsible or are men to blame?

Dina said me this astonishing article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Her first abortion came when she was 17, following a bitterly regretted drunken encounter with a colleague at an office party. 

[...]Her bold decision to speak out about her abortions comes after it was revealed that the NHS spends more than £50  million a year on repeat terminations.

One third of the 189,000 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2010 involved women who’d had at least one before. In some cases, a staggering seven abortions had previously been carried out on the same woman.

Abortion one:

The first one… was when she… got pregnant when she ended up in bed with a  22-year-old colleague called Brian.

‘Although I knew I could get pregnant, we didn’t use contraception. I just didn’t think it would happen to me…

[...]Michelle visited her GP and found out she was entitled to a free NHS abortion at her local hospital. 

Abortion two:

[S]he met John, 35, an Irish soldier stationed at barracks near her home, and they embarked on a three-week fling. It left her with another unplanned, and unwanted, pregnancy. 

[...]Michelle was once again granted an NHS abortion at nine weeks — this time at a private London clinic, in July 2000.

Abortion three:

Then, a year later, she met her current partner, Paul, at a local pub.

[...]Michelle says she was open about her abortions, and told Paul, 36 — who is an estates manager — that she didn’t want any more children.

[...][I]n July, Michelle was going through a rocky period with Paul when she discovered she was pregnant again.

She says: ‘At the time we were barely speaking, as we were both so stressed out. We hadn’t been intimate for months, but one night relations thawed and we had sex.

‘Until then, we’d been using condoms but this time we didn’t. Although I thought about getting the morning-after pill, I ended up leaving it to chance.’

[...]At nine weeks, Michelle was granted a third NHS abortion, at another London clinic.

Three taxpayer-funded abortions for three pregnancies brought on by this woman’s own free decisions.

In the UK, abortions, IVF and single motherhood are all taxpayer-funded. If women had to pay for their own abortions, their own IVF, their own out-of-wedlock births, then maybe they would not be making decisions like this woman has. When you pay people to do something, you mustn’t be surprised when they do that thing more. Lowering the cost of anything means that more people will buy it. And making it free is the worst of all. The first step to ending abortion is that society needs to understand that virtually every woman who has one is at least partly responsible for her own decision-making. The sooner we stop feeling compassion for women like this one, and start feeling compassion for unborn children and taxpayers, the sooner abortion will end. This woman is not a victim – she made these decisions and the consequences were absolutely devastating.

And many Christian leaders are part of the problem – they seem to really like blaming men for cases like the one above. Man-blaming Christian leaders have to do their part and stop blaming men for women’s irrational belief that recreational sex will be followed by an offer of marriage if the woman becomes pregnant. Men who have recreational sex don’t want marriage, and pregnancy doesn’t turn them into marriage-minded men. Men who have recreational sex want… recreational sex. Marriage is a heavy burden, and men who fool around are not going to “do the right thing”. Men who have recreational sex before marriage are not the sort of men who can be depended on to “do the right thing”. The sooner we start holding women accountable for their own decisions – and shaming them – the sooner abortion will stop.

UPDATE: This comment from straightright is worth reading if you are annoyed by the “poor me, I’m a victim” tone of the article.

Related posts

• 5,300 UK teens who aborted a baby in 2010 had at least one prior abortion
• NHS spends £1 million a week on repeat abortions
• What happens when the government pays people to have babies out-of-wedlock?
• British woman has sex with strangers in order to get fatherless child
• The UK has generous welfare benefits for single mothers
• Switzerland company to manufacture condoms for 12-14 year olds
• Sex-education video prompts mother to transfer out 7-year old daughter
• Most children of British mothers born out of wedlock – UK Telegraph
• Less than half of 7 to 21 year old women think marriage precedes child-bearing
• Public schools hand out condoms to 5-year olds without parental consent
• Teacher union promotes sexualizing children at United Nations conference
• New survey finds women more sexually active than men in high school
• Research to help you understand the “hook-up” culture on campus
• Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?
• Who is really responsible for the abolition of marriage? Men or feminists?
• Who is to blame for the hook-up culture?
• What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?

Filed under: News, Abortion, Alcohol, Consequences, Contraception, Decision, Drunk, Feminism, Harriet Harman, Irresponsibility, IVF, Labour Party, NHS, Out of Wedlock Birth, Pregnancy, Recreational Sex, Responsibility, Responsible, UK, Welfare, Women

After causing the first recession, Democrats plant seeds of the next recession

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (links removed, please see original article for links)

Excerpt:

The Wall Street Journal today writes about how the Obama administration is repeating the “mistakes of the past by intimidating banks into lending to minority borrowers at below-market rates in the name of combating discrimination.” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez has argued that bankers who don’t make as many loans to blacks as whites (because they make lending decisions based on traditional lending criteria like credit scores, which tend to be higher among white applicants than black applicants) are engaged in a “form of discrimination and bigotry” as serious as “cross-burning.” Perez has compared bankers to “Klansmen,” and extracted settlements from banks “setting aside prime-rate mortgages for low-income blacks and Hispanics with blemished credit,” treating welfare “as valid income in mortgage applications” and providing “favorable interest rates and down-payment assistance for minority borrowers with weak credit,” notes Investors Business Daily.

Under Perez’s “disparate impact” theory, banks are guilty of racial discrimination even if they harbor no discriminatory intent, and use facially-neutral lending criteria, as long as these criteria weed out more black than white applicants. The Supreme Court has blessed a more limited version of this theory in the workplace, but has rejected this “disparate impact” theory in most other contexts, such as discrimination claims brought under the Constitution’s equal protection clause; discrimination claims alleging racial discrimination in the making of contracts; and discrimination claims brought under Title VI, the civil-rights statute governing racial discrimination in education and federally-funded programs. Despite court rulings casting doubt on this “disparate impact” theory outside the workplace, the Obama administration has paid liberal trial lawyers countless millions of dollars to settle baseless “disparate impact” lawsuits brought against government agencies by minority plaintiffs, even after federal judges have expressed skepticism about those very lawsuits, suggesting that they were meritless.

Fearing bad publicity from being accused of “racism”, banks have paid out millions in settlements after being sued by the Justice Department, even though they would probably prevail before most judges if they aggressively fought such charges (although doing so would probably cost them millions in legal fees).  A Michigan judge called one proposed settlement “extortion.” These settlements provide cash for “politically favored ‘community groups’ ” allied with the Obama Administration, and the Journal’s Mary Kissel predicts that “many” of the loans mandated by these settlements “will eventually go bad.”

This is exactly what caused the first recession.

Who caused the first recession?

Here’s a summary of how we got into the first recession – it was caused by the Democrats, and the Republicans tried to stop them.

First, watch this video of Barney Frank obstructing regulators and defending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (H/T Verum Serum)

Now look at this Boston Globe article.

Excerpt:

When US Representative Barney Frank spoke in a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill seven years ago, he did not imagine that his words would eventually haunt a reelection bid.

The issue that day in 2003 was whether mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fiscally strong. Frank declared with his trademark confidence that they were, accusing critics and regulators of exaggerating threats to Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial integrity. And, the Massachusetts Democrat maintained, “even if there were problems, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.’’

Now, it’s clear he was wrong on both points — and that his words have become a political liability as he fights a determined challenger to win a 16th term representing the Fourth Congressional District. Fannie and Freddie collapsed in 2008, forcing the federal government to buy $150 billion worth of stock in the enterprises and $1.36 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities.

Frank, in his most detailed explanation to date about his actions, said in an interview he missed the warning signs because he was wearing ideological blinders. He said he had worried that Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration were going after Fannie and Freddie for their own ideological reasons and would curtail the lenders’ mission of providing affordable housing.

“I was late in seeing it, no question,’’ Frank said about the lenders’ descent into insolvency.

This is not in doubt – this is a known fact. Democrats caused the recession by meddling in the free market.

Democrats caused the recession and Republicans tried to stop them

Here is Barney Frank in 2005 claiming that fears of a housing bubble are unfounded.

Here’s the timeline showing who wanted to regulate Fannie and Freddie, and who blocked their attempts.

Here’s video from a hearing showing Democrats opposing regulations:

That’s right – Republicans wanted to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Democrats said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are “doing a tremendous job”.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had paid the Democrats off handsomely during multiple election cycles, but I’m sure that the Democrats’ opposition to regulations had nothing to do with those political contributions.

The only ones to try and stop the Democrats were George W. Bush in 2003 and John McCain in 2005. Both attempts were blocked by Democrats.

Filed under: Polemics, ACORN, Bank, Banking, Bernanke, Community Reinvestment Act, Crisis, Dodd, Economics, Fannie Mae, Fed, Frank, Freddie Mac, Gorelick, Government, GSE, Interest Rates, Johnson, Lending, Mortgage, Mortgage Securitization, Obama, Pritzker, Raines, Recession, Responsible, Socialism, Subprime, Subprime Crisis, Subprime Loans, Warned, Warning, Who Caused

What are slut-walks and how do they relate to feminism and marriage?

Feminism and slut walks

Consider this Washington Post article by a prominent feminist named Jessica Valenti, entitled “SlutWalks and the future of feminism“.

Excerpt:

More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant — kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die — some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault, wearing not much more than what their foremothers once dubbed “objects of female oppression” in marches called SlutWalks.

It’s a controversial name, which is in part why the organizers picked it. It’s also why many of the SlutWalk protesters are wearing so little (though some are sweatpants-clad, too). Thousands of women — and men — are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape. SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto and have gone viral, with events planned in more than 75 cities in countries from the United States and Canada to Sweden and South Africa. In just a few months, SlutWalks have become the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.

In a feminist movement that is often fighting simply to hold ground, SlutWalks stand out as a reminder of feminism’s more grass-roots past and point to what the future could look like.

The marches are mostly organized by younger women who don’t apologize for their in-your-face tactics, making the events much more effective in garnering media attention and participant interest than the actions of well-established (and better funded) feminist organizations. And while not every feminist may agree with the messaging of SlutWalks, the protests have translated online enthusiasm into in-person action in a way that hasn’t been done before in feminism on this scale.

[...]Nineteen year-old Miranda Mammen, who participated in SlutWalk at Stanford University, says the idea of “sluttiness” resonates with younger women in part because they are more likely than their older counterparts to be called sluts. “It’s also loud, angry, sexy in a way that going to a community activist meeting often isn’t,” she says.

Emily May, the 30-year-old executive director of Hollaback, an organization that battles street harassment, plans to participate in SlutWalk in New York City in August. “Nonprofit mainstays like conferences, funding and strategic planning are essential to maintaining change — but they don’t ignite change,” she says. “It’s easy to forget that change starts with anger, and that history has always been made by badasses.”

Unlike protests put on by mainstream national women’s organizations, which are carefully planned and fundraised for — even the signs are bulk-printed ahead of time — SlutWalks have cropped up organically, in city after city, fueled by the raw emotional and political energy of young women. And that’s the real reason SlutWalks have struck me as the future of feminism. Not because an entire generation of women will organize under the word “slut” or because these marches will completely eradicate the damaging tendency of law enforcement and the media to blame sexual assault victims (though I think they’ll certainly put a dent in it). But the success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing. One when women’s anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.

I am not sure that slut walks are the right way for women to prepare themselves for marriage and children. It seems natural to me that women should aspire to life-long love and commitment – being protected and provided for by a man who is enchanted by them and values them as a helper and companion. To me, slut-walks are not a step on the way to lifelong love and parenting, because behaving selfishly and immodestly doesn’t attract marriage-minded men. Men don’t want wives who are irresponsible and immodest – they want wives who can assess risks, respect others and to take responsibility for their own decisions.

Dressing provocatively doesn’t excuse evil predatorial men if they take that as an offer to commit crimes. But dressing immodestly does say to a good marriage-minded man that he should avoid that woman as a candidate spouse. That’s why people dress professionally and conservatively at work, too – to set the tone for respectful interactions about things that matter, and to not distract the other person or lower the level of discussion. It’s a courtesy to others that helps them to focus on work-related things instead of being distracted by non-work-related things.

Women should also welcome men who say to them “that behavior is unwise and self-destructive”, because giving a woman constructive guidance in a gentle way is a form of caring – just like telling someone that not exercising may be bad for their health. Telling someone the truth about something dangerous that they should avoid is a way of caring for them. When I talk to fatherless women, they tell me that they did stupid things they regret because “no one cared what I did”. So if a man says “don’t do that, it’s wrong”, it is a way of showing that he does care. “Don’t drink alcohol when you’re driving, it’s wrong”.

If a woman wants to communicate to a man that she is worth marrying, then she should try to try to get him to focus on her personality and her intelligence – the things that last after getting old and wrinkly. Just like if she were going to a job interview and wanted to talk about her academic qualifications and her work experience. Women should say to a man “I am strong and dependable and caring” not “look at me! I’m fun and easy!”. Marriage-minded men want an intelligent and encouraging helper, not fun. Marriage isn’t about fun – it’s a lot of work. If either person says “It’s my body, I’ll do what I want” then that is a red flag that shows they are not ready for the conflict resolution and compromising that marriage requires. It would not be good, for example, if a husband just decided to stop working one day and said “it’s my body, I’ll do what I want”. Marriage isn’t like that – the whole point of it is to do what’s best for others.

I am a man who has very definite ideas about what I want from a woman. I have things that I need her to do if we were to get married. I need her to be able to raise children who know that God exists, and know what he is like. I need her to be able to steer them into fields that are important for the Christian life. I need her to be able to make them excel in those fields. I need her to be able to debate with them and make sure that they are able to withstand intellectual challenges and moral challenges that they will face. I need her to understand men, and male responsibilities, and to help me to flourish in my roles as protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. And I need her to have an influence on the people in our church and the people we invite into our home. Are young women ready to handle the moral obligations that are central to relationships with men and children? Are young women ready to encourage men and children to be more virtuous? Are young women ready to accept men as the moral and spiritual leader in the home?

When I read these prominent feminists, and how much of an influence they have on young women, I do not think that feminism as it is expressed today is helping to develop the kind of woman who is equal to challenges of marriage and parenting. I have made excellent decisions in my life around my education and finances. I am chaste and have a well-developed defensible Christian worldview – a worldview that my wife could count on. I am offering life-long married love, and I’ve got the references and the accomplishments to prove that I can do what is expected of me. What I am asking in return is for women to be mindful of the moral and spiritual needs of men and children, and to prepare their character for life-long married love and parenting. Marriage and parenting requires self-sacrifice, restraint and discipline. Where is self-sacrifice, restraint and discipline in these slut-walks? Can a woman “do what she wants” in a marriage when there are men and children who are depending on her to meet their needs?

Disclaimer: Men who are convicted of rape should receive the death penalty, in my opinion. Nothing in this post should be taken as excusing men who rape.

Related posts

• Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Elin Nordegren, Elizabeth Edwards and Maria Shriver
• New study finds that cohabitation damages children
• New peer-reviewed paper highlights the benefits of pre-marital chastity/abstinence
• Does being a virgin before marriage affect marital stability?
• Why do feminist academics think that feminism has empowered women?
• If things go wrong in a relationship, who is to blame?
• Tactics and talking points for defending traditional marriage
• New study links father absence to increased bullying
• How important are biological fathers for healthy child development?
• What causes women to become single mothers, and how are children affected?
• New study shows that children of working mothers live unhealthier lives
• New Scientist article shows why fathers are necessary for children’s well-being
• New study finds that women choose mates based on appearance
• Should Christian men marry Democrats who claim to be Christians?
• Men should prefer women who allow moral judging and spiritual leading
• Where have all the good men gone, and why aren’t men marrying?
• Do men have a responsibility not to marry feminists?
• Why do some women tolerate jerks as boyfriends?
• The dangers of sentimentality in relationships
• Is Mark Driscoll afraid to hold a woman accountable for her own choices?
• Why Christian men should be chaste

Filed under: Commentary, Abstinence, Chastity, Children, Family, Father, Fatherlessness, Feminism, Feminist, Hedonism, Hook-Up, Husband, Immodest, Immoral, Irresponsible, Jessica Valenti, March, Marriage, Marriage Strike, Men, Modest, Modesty, Morality, Mother, Promiscuity, Protest, Responsibility, Responsible, Sex, Slut, Slut-Walk, Slutwalk, Toronto, Wife, Women

Deutsche Bank says 48% of mortgage balances will exceed home values in 2011

Story from Yahoo News. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to 48 percent in 2011 from 26 percent at the end of March, portending another blow to the housing market, Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday.

[...]Covering 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, Deutsche Bank in June forecast home prices would fall 14 percent through the first quarter of 2011, for a total drop of 41.7 percent.

[...]Homeowners with the riskiest mortgages taken out during the housing boom have seen the greatest erosion in equity, in part because they were “affordability products” originated at the housing peak, Deutsche said. They include subprime loans, of which 69 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 50 percent in March, Deutsche said,

Of option adjustable-rate mortgages — which cut payments by allowing principal balances to rise — 89 percent will be underwater in 2011, up from 77 percent, the report said.

Regions suffering the worst negative equity are areas in California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and West Virginia. Las Vegas and parts of Florida and California will see 90 percent or more of their loans underwater by 2011, it added.

Socialism destroys economic growth. There is no way around it.

Filed under: News, Bank, Banking, Communism, Crisis, Economics, Fed, Federal Reserve, Government, GSE, Interest Rates, Lending, Mortgage, Mortgage Securitization, Obama, Recession, Recovery, Responsible, Socialism, Subprime, Subprime Crisis, Subprime Loans, Warned, Warning, Who Caused