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Some subversive thoughts on immigration

September 29th, 2025 by Matt
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I’ve been thinking recently about the moral issues surrounding immigration. This is partly because it’s an issue I’ve never really studied in depth, and partly because it’s become a massive political football.

Here’s a thought that came to me. As I understand it, the right of a refugee to seek asylum in international law has Christian roots, which in turn draw on certain passages in the Torah, such as this one:

You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall live with you in your midst, in the place that he chooses in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.(Deut 23:15-16)

This law contrasts with common legal practice in the ancient Near East, where people were legally required to return any runaway slaves. Consider, for example, the Laws of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE):

LH §16: If a man should harbor a fugitive slave or slave woman of either the palace or of a commoner in his house and not bring him out at the herald’s public proclamation, that householder shall be killed.

Or a fifteenth-century BCE treaty between two Syrian kings:

If a fugitive slave, male or female, of my land flees to your land, you must seize and return him to me; (or), if someone else seizes him and takes him to you, [you must keep him] in your prison, and whenever his owner comes forward, you must hand him over to [him].[1]

Jefferey Tigay explains:

The only thing remotely close to this biblical law in the ancient world is the practice at certain temples of granting asylum to slaves fleeing harsh treatment by their masters. Generally, such asylum was not permanent; it protected the slave until he could come to terms with his master or, as a last resort, was sold to another master. By contrast, the biblical law is absolute and treats the whole land of Israel as a sanctuary offering permanent asylum.[2]

Notice what the Torah passage states: it forbids Israel from deporting someone who has escaped into their nation to escape slavery, and it prohibits restricting their freedom of movement within Israel or limiting their choice of where to live. (Here the “you” is a collective reference to Israel, not simply “your” towns.)

I was familiar with this passage, but I was struck by its possible application to modern immigration.

Let’s begin with some historical examples.

Example 1 (1850). The Fugitive Slave Act required citizens of states where slavery had been criminalized to assist in the capture and return of escaped slaves who had made their way into those states. Abolitionists at the time quoted Deuteronomy 23:15–16 to justify refusing to comply with this law.

So: you live in a free state in 1850. You discover the whereabouts of a runaway slave who is fleeing an abusive master. Do you (a) comply with the Fugitive Slave Act and hand him over to the authorities, or (b) conceal his whereabouts to prevent his capture? I think most of us would agree that (b) is the right thing to do.

Example 2 (1930s). The Nazis persecute Jewish people across Europe. Thousands of Jews flee and seek to emigrate, but protectionist U.S. immigration policies mean many are refused entry. You discover a German Jewish overstayer. Do you (a) inform the authorities so he is deported back to Germany, or (b) help conceal his whereabouts? Intuitively, (b) again seems the morally right course; (a) would be immoral.

Example 3 (contemporary). It is 2025. The Taliban rule Afghanistan. You discover an Afghan overstayer who fled the Taliban; if reported, he will be deported. Do you (a) report him, or (b) conceal him? Or you discover an undocumented Mexican restaurant owner in California who fled cartels, or a Nigerian Christian overstayer who fled persecution? Do you disclose their legal status or do you conceal it? From what I read, many American evangelicals appeal to Romans 13—“obey the government”—to argue that Christians must support the deportation of illegal aliens because the law has been broken in these cases.

So here is my question: how do these 2025 cases differ in principle from examples 1 and 2? In all cases, the person is illegally in the country while fleeing life-threatening danger—slavery, genocide, Taliban rule, cartels. Is there a principled difference between returning a slave to his master and sending someone back to the Taliban or cartels? If those who defied the Fugitive Slave Act were doing the right thing, why must we follow the law here?

[1] Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 387.

[2] Tigay, Deuteronomy, 215

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Goodbye NCEA, Farewell, Get lost, Good Riddance

September 21st, 2025 by Matt
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Some readers of this blog will know that I work as a secondary school teacher. Recently, several people have asked my opinion on the government’s decision to ditch the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). My thoughts follow.

When I was at teachers’ college, we were taught that New Zealand had the best curriculum in the world. Unlike other curricula, which focused on subject content, New Zealand’s curriculum focused on certain kinds of skills—analysis, critical thinking, research, etc.

A comparison between the NCEA standards for Religious Studies (my specialist subject) and Cambridge illustrates the contrast. For IGCSE World Religions, students study two major religions over the course of a year. The syllabus requires them to learn a huge amount of content—about the religion’s history, doctrines, modes of worship, and so on. The assessment is an examination in which any of these topics could be assessed.

By contrast, Level 1 NCEA has standards such as: Demonstrate understanding of the development of a community that shares religious or spiritual beliefs. This is flexible—teachers can choose any religion. One gets an Achieved if they show understanding of the development of the religious community, a Merit if they can explain it, and an Excellence if they examine it. The focus is on analytical skills. Prima facie, this is a good idea. Education should not be about regurgitating facts; it should develop skills of understanding, explaining, and examining.

This appearance, however, has not withstood my experience at the coalface, teaching Religious Studies to Year 11–13 boys.

My first practical experience with NCEA was during my practicum in 2009. I was placed at a low-decile school in South Auckland. The school was almost entirely in Pasifika in its demographic. Despite being in a poor area and having a demographic that statistically underachieves, the school was getting good results—large numbers of students were getting Achieved. Here was the method I encountered:

  • Period 1: Tell the students the questions they will be assessed on. Get them to copy them down.
  • Period 2: Tell them the answer to Question 1. Write it down.
  • Period 3: Tell them the answer to Question 2. Write it down.
  • Rinse and repeat
  • Then the assessment: Take the sheet of paper you’ve copied the answers onto into an exam where you will be asked the memorised questions.

I am not joking. What was interesting was that even under these conditions, students would talk during the assessment and not finish. So extensions were given until the students all passed. Or they were held in till they finished.

Here I discovered the perverse incentive structures of NCEA. Because there were certain prescribed skills (such as “explain” and “describe”) which were internally assessed by the school, and because the school’s reputation was tied to how well it got traditionally low-achieving groups to pass, tactics like this actually made the school “successful.” Students who struggled with basic skills and academic discipline would pass at high rates.

My experience in the teaching sector has suggested to me that this sort of thing is not an aberration. I have seen many NCEA programmes where students who lack basic skills pass because they are spoon-fed the answers. I have seen, for example, courses where students copy notes into a workbook in each class, then have a week of classes to copy those notes into a resource, and are then given a structured worksheet on how to write an essay. They fill in the worksheet with the material from the resource. Despite the apparent ease of this, I have witnessed teachers offer several weeks of classes—including lunchtime and after-school sessions—to get students to complete the task. If all else fails, threaten a detention until they fill out the sheet. Instant, Achieved. In a short time, this student who can’t write an essay or hand one in on time gets University Entrance. A school has managed to get large numbers of students known for lack of academic ability to university level. It looks impressive—but of course, in the long term, it is fraudulent. These students haven’t achieved the “skills”; they’ve ticked boxes and been micromanaged on how to tick them.

My next experience was doing professional development on NCEA marking. At a best-practice workshop, I was given a model answer for the standard Describe the beliefs of a religious community. It stated: “According to Christianity, Jesus was a good moral teacher.” Achieved or Not Achieved?

I said Not Achieved. My reason: this is not an accurate description of what Christianity teaches. Muslims believe Isa (Jesus) was a prophet, so they would consent to this statement. An agnostic could—and many do—accept that Jesus was a good moral teacher. Christianity teaches Jesus is the Messiah and God incarnate.

I was told I was being too precise. To meet the standard, they only need the most generic answer. The student should get an Achieved simply for writing that down.

We went on to look at exemplars of Merit and Excellence. To get an Excellence, a student needs to “evaluate.” I pointed out that the evaluation provided was extremely poor. I was told that the standard didn’t say “evaluate well”—it simply said “evaluate.” That meant the student used words like therefore and in conclusion. If they used such words, they were using evaluative language and hence got an Excellence.

On another occasion, I was learning the ropes of moderation. The course was on the Reformation. To get an Achieved, the student had to describe the key facts. To get a Merit, they had to show the implications of the facts. I  was told that because the word “facts” is plural, NZQA required that a student get two facts correct. Facts were things like names, places, and dates. This meant that if a student, after studying the Reformation for several weeks, wrote only: “Martin Luther, Wittenberg 1517,” they got an Achieved.

Here I learned how words like “describe,” “evaluate,” “discuss,” and “analyse” did not mean what they appeared to. Due to bureaucratic requirements and moderation procedures, they had highly specific meanings which reduced them to a checklist. A student could know in advance what the checklist was and tick the boxes. They didn’t need to understand, analyse, or evaluate in the ordinary sense of those terms. Or at least not in terms of what would be expected by the canons of the discipline.  

Students were often aware of this. I’ve had several classes where I assigned an essay and got the response: “Sir, if I don’t write an intro and a conclusion, but just write X, Y, Z, will I still get an Achieved?” The honest answer, according to the requirements I had been told, was yes. What do the students do? They don’t bother learning to write an essay. They can Google the basic “facts” they need to meet the minimum standard. Do it, pass. They haven’t learned to write an essay, or research, or think critically. They’ve learned that they don’t have to. The most efficient path to success is to not do these things. They know the game.

This was exacerbated by a third feature of NCEA. When I was teaching it, a student could pass an entire course by doing two or three internal assessments early in the year. Once they had ticked the box and got an Achieved, they could tune out for the rest of the course. They could fail to show up for the exam and still get an Achieved. I had many students ask me: “Sir, if I don’t hand in X and Y or do the exam, I’ll still get an Achieved, right?” They were right. I saw large numbers of students pass subjects without ever successfully sitting an exam. They left with University Entrance.

The school I currently teach at has a dual pathway: NCEA and Cambridge. A few years ago, the leadership began assigning me fewer NCEA classes and more Cambridge ones. Here’s what I noticed.

First, students were much more concerned about learning the content. They knew that anything they learned might be in the examination—and they didn’t know which topics would be. Second, they were keenly aware of risk. They understood that if they failed the exam, that was it—they failed the year. They also knew I couldn’t give them a break; I wasn’t the examiner—Cambridge was. A re-sit might mean they would repeat another six months of work. It couldn’t be done for two days during my lunch hour.

Third, I discovered that appearances can be deceiving. While Cambridge had a huge amount of content, when it asked questions in the exam, it used terms like “discuss,” “describe,” and “explain.” These terms were not redefined in non-standard ways. The people marking the exams were subject specialists who knew what these terms meant, and the marking schedule reflected that. Students were assessed on things like “used relevant information,” “took into account various views,” and “some inaccurate information.” “detailed evidence” “technical precision”. They also had to write answers in essay form. Through the process of doing practice exams, students learned those skills. To prepare, they had to research a massive body of content and ask how they could put it into essay form—how to analyse and draw on relevant information. They weren’t just regurgitating facts; they were developing the requisite skills.

Fourth—and most disturbing—I noticed that every year I taught bright students with potential who told me they were going to transfer to NCEA because it was easier. They could get into university without doing an exam and could, with minimal stress, get an Excellence in every subject—often in the first half of the year. Even more pernicious, I encountered Māori and Pasifika students who told me that because of their race, they are “too dumb” for Cambridge. These students—often bright and full of potential—lack self-belief. Because of this, they doubt themselves, and they know they can get academic success without the risk, effort, or fear of failure. Every year, I try to talk students out of dropping out and switching to NCEA because “it’s easier to pass.”

Here I reflect on the irony of my first experience with NCEA. People were concerned about Māori and Pasifika fail rates. They were using NCEA to fix the problem. Large numbers were passing. The problem is—they were not being educated. We were defrauding society and the students themselves by declaring they were educated and certifying them as having skills they didn’t have. Academic skills are acquired through work, practice, and the risk of failure. Making errors is part of the process. It requires students to take ownership and responsibility for their learning. It cannot just be given for free by a teacher or from the ministry. These students were learning that they didn’t need any of that to pass. Someone else would just give them the results if they checked a box.  

So, when I heard the government was scrapping NCEA, my initial response was this: Goodbye NCEA. Farewell, get lost. Good riddance.

Cross-posted at kiwiblog

 

 

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Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Secularism and “reasons” to be moral. Part Three: Can Religious theories answer the question, “Why be moral?”

September 13th, 2025 by Matt
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In a previous post, I observed that Walter Sinnott-Armstrong concedes that secular accounts of moral obligation cannot vindicate the thesis that agents always have decisive (all-things-considered) reasons to avoid wrongdoing. To mitigate this problem, he argues:

Is this limitation a problem for secular accounts of morality? I doubt that, too. If we demand this extreme kind of reason to be moral, then we are bound to be disappointed. The solution to our disappointment is to give up this demand, not to imagine a higher power that we want to fulfill an illegitimate demand. Besides, this limit on secular theories would be a problem only if the alternative religious account could provide a better reason to be moral. It can’t. That is what I will show in the next section.[1]

There are three ideas here. First is the claim that the failure to vindicate this assumption is a problem for secular theories only if religious theories can adequately vindicate it. Second is the claim that religious theories cannot vindicate this assumption. Third, he claims that the assumption itself cannot be adequately vindicated.

I want to focus on the last two of these claims.

Can religious theories adequately vindicate this assumption?

Sinnott-Armstrong argues that religious theories cannot adequately vindicate the thesis that agents always have decisive reasons to avoid wrongdoing. His argument involves two steps.

First, he argues that any adequate theory of moral requirements must not only vindicate the assumption that agents have reasons to do what is right, but that those reasons must be of the right kind—they cannot be arbitrary. He illustrates this point with two examples.

Imagine that “the King of Curls threatens to kill all of his subjects who do not shave their heads on May 21, though there is nothing special about that date.”[2] Do we have a reason to shave our heads? Yes—the threat of death gives us a reason to comply. However, this reason is arbitrary; it is based on naked force and bears no relation to the content of the command.

Similarly, a mother is trying to teach her son to stop hitting his sister. She can do this in two ways: she can convince him that harming his sister is wrong, or she can simply threaten him with punishment if he doesn’t comply. The second approach gives the son a reason not to hit his sister, but it is the wrong kind of reason—it is arbitrary, based on force, and doesn’t teach him to care about his sister.[3]

His second step is to argue that religious theories fail to provide the right kind of reasons for refraining from wrongdoing. They are arbitrary in the same way. His reasoning is as follows:

Divine threats of Hell or promises of Heaven operate in the same way. If our only reason to be moral is to avoid Hell or get to Heaven, then our motivation is far from ideal. Even a total psychopath, who cares about nobody else but believes in Hell, would have this reason to be moral. But this reason would not give the psychopath any reason for the content of the moral restrictions themselves. The psychopath would still see moral restrictions as just as arbitrary as a law requiring him to shave his head on May 21.[4]

The key premise here is that if God exists, the only reason we could have for following His commands would be to either get to Heaven or avoid Hell.

But why think this? Sinnott-Armstrong doesn’t say.

Earlier in the same chapter, he had rejected the idea that all interests are self-interested. He wrote: “Many reasons are not based on self-interest. That should be common ground between theists and [atheists].”[5] Later, he states:

The fact that an act prevents harm to another person can be a reason for me to do that act. The fact that an act causes harm to another person can be a reason for me not to do that act. These facts are reasons, even if the other people are strangers. Crucially, these reasons are not self-interesting. They are facts about the interests of other people, not me.[6]

So, Sinnott-Armstrong accepts that—even if theism is true—there can be non-selfish reasons for acting. But if that’s correct, why assume that the only reason an agent could have for obeying God is a selfish one? Why couldn’t agents also have non-selfish reasons to obey God?

Remember the theist whom Sinnott-Armstrong is criticising. This theist understands God to have certain attributes: God is all-powerful, all-knowing, essentially benevolent, and impartial. So what God commands is co-extensive with prescriptions that a benevolent, impartial person would endorse—if that person were fully informed and reasoning correctly. It is quite plausible that agents would have unselfish reasons to follow such prescriptions. In fact, it is hard to see how Armstrong can say that we have unselfish reasons to do acts that benefit others, but no unselfish reasons to obey prescriptions that are justified from a perspective that aims to benefit others.

Here we need to recall the challenge to secular ethics and how theism is purported to solve it. The challenge is this: Suppose we are not accountable to God. In that case, certain kinds of practical dilemmas will occur. Requirements that are justified from an impartial point of view—ones that promote the interests of others—will sometimes conflict with an agent’s long-term self-interest. Unselfish reasons will point one way, prudential reasons the other. If such dilemmas occur, we face a question: What reason is there to act unselfishly rather than in one’s self-interest? What reason do we have for always giving precedence to impartial demands in such cases?

It is the inability of secular ethics to address this question that is the alleged problem.

If we are accountable to God, this problem is avoided because such dilemmas never occur. Rewards and punishments change the balance of reasons for and against the act. However, they do so not by changing or negating the strength of the unselfish reasons against the act—they change the balance of prudential reasons in favour of the act. Because God is impartial and benevolent, we will still have the same kind of unselfish reasons—of the sort Sinnott-Armstrong refers to—to obey God’s commands. However, these reasons will never be matched or overridden by prudential demands to the contrary. Instead, prudential reasons will support and reinforce them.

Can the assumption be adequately vindicated?

Let’s turn to Sinnott-Armstrong’s second claim: that the thesis that agents always have decisive (all-things-considered) reasons to avoid wrongdoing cannot be adequately vindicated. He proposes the following dilemma:

Different audiences react to this point in different ways. Some people really want a reason to be moral that will motivate psychopaths, even if it is not connected to any reason why certain acts are immoral. They are rightly scared of psychopaths, so they want a reason that will convince psychopaths to be moral. Other people want a reason to be moral that does not leave morality arbitrary, because the reason to be moral shows why those moral acts are moral. They want a moral reason rather than a selfish reason. I share the latter goal, but I can appreciate the former wish. Unfortunately, I doubt that the former wish can be fulfilled. No reason will succeed in convincing everyone to be moral. This is another obvious but hard fact of life that we need to learn to live with.[7]

The proposed dilemma appears to be this: no meta-ethical theory can both vindicate the assumption that agents always have decisive reasons to refrain from wrongdoing and identify reasons of the correct type. If a meta-ethical theory entails that agents always have decisive reasons to be moral, the reasons it cites will be arbitrary or of the wrong kind. If we are to identify a fact that provides reasons for all people—including egoists and amoral individuals—it will need to appeal to something like self-interest; and self-interested reasons are the wrong kind of reason. By contrast, if a theory provides reasons of the right kind, it will fail to provide a reason strong enough or universal enough to ensure agents always have decisive reasons to be moral. The right kind of reasons are unselfish reasons, but these will not provide everyone—including egoists and psychopaths—with reasons to be moral, nor will they always be strong enough to override prudential or instrumental reasons to the contrary.

Here, I think Sinnott-Armstrong relies on a false dichotomy. He assumes a meta-ethical theory must either appeal to selfish reasons to be moral or to unselfish reasons. However, his interlocutor’s point is that this is a false choice. If a divine command theory is correct, then what is in our long-term interest and what is justified from an impartial point of view coincide. So we have both types of reason at the same time. They are never in conflict.

It is always in our interest to obey God and never in our interest to disobey—things such as eternal life are at stake. For this reason, there are strong self-interested reasons to be moral that are never overridden. These reasons provide even an egoist or a psychopath with reasons to comply.

Because God is impartial and benevolent, we also have very strong unselfish reasons to be moral. What God commands us to do is what a fully informed, rational, impartial, benevolent person would command. The commands He gives are prescriptions justified from a perspective that equally considers the interests of all. These are reasons of the right kind.

[1] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God 118

[2] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God 95 (ebook)

[3] Ibid, 96

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid, 93

[6] Ibid, 94

[7] Ibid, 96

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Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Secularism and “reasons” to be moral. Part two: Do unselfish reasons answer the question, “Why be moral?”

September 8th, 2025 by Matt
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***

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discusses the following objection:

“Harming others is sometimes in some people’s best interest, even considering probable costs. In those cases, some theists say that only a divine threat of Hell provides a reason to be moral. Since atheists and agnostics do not believe in God, they do not believe in divine retribution for sins, so they have to admit that sometimes some people could get away with immorality and then they have no self-interested reason to be moral. Does that mean that these people have no reason at all to be moral?”[1]

He responds to this argument as follows:

No. That conclusion would follow only if every reason had to be self-interested, selfish, or egoistic. There is no basis for that assumption. Many reasons are not based on self-interest. That should be common ground between theists and atheists… The fact that an act prevents harm to another person can be a reason for me to do that act. The fact that an act causes harm to another person can be a reason for me not to do that act. These facts are reasons, even if the other people are strangers. Crucially, these reasons are not self-interested. They are facts about the interests of other people, not me. These unselfish reasons can answer the question, “Why be moral?”[2]

Here, Sinnott-Armstrong makes three points. First, the argument in question assumes that “all reasons are selfish.” Second, this assumption is false—“it should be common ground between theists” that there are also “unselfish reasons,” based on the fact that certain acts harm others. Third, these “unselfish reasons” can answer the question: why be moral?

Do non-selfish reasons answer the question: “Why be moral?”

I discussed the first point in a previous post. In this post, I will discuss the third: do the non-selfish reasons he appeals to answer the question “Why be moral?”

In my previous post, I noted that the question “Why be moral?” can be understood in two ways. Armstrong’s interlocutor could be asking:

(a) whether, in the given circumstances, we have a pro tanto reason to refrain from harm; or
(b) whether, in those circumstances, we have decisive reasons not to harm.

I also pointed out that interpreting the question in terms of (a) is idiosyncratic. The way the question is commonly used—and the most plausible understanding of it—is in terms of (b).

Whether an appeal to unselfish reasons answers the question “Why be moral?” depends on how you interpret the question. If we interpret it in terms of (a), then the fact that an action harms another person would answer the question. Sinnott-Armstrong’s hypothesis is that the property of being morally wrong is constituted by the property of harming another person. Suppose the fact that an action harms another person provides a pro tanto reason not to do that action—in that case, we have a pro tanto reason not to do what is wrong.

The problem is that this is an extremely weak and idiosyncratic rendition of the skeptical challenge. As Mark Murphy points out:

It would be helpful if Sinnott-Armstrong had named an opponent here who thought that this was the real challenge for the nontheistic ethicist. The worry is not characteristically expressed by theistic ethicists in terms of whether there is any reason to do what is morally right in the absence of God; the worry is characteristically expressed in terms of whether there could be overriding, or decisive, reason to do what is all-things-considered morally required.[3]

In my last post, I pointed out that in his writings on moral skepticism, Sinnott-Armstrong himself has noted that the “Why be moral?” question is not normally understood in terms of whether there is “sometimes some kind of reason to be moral.” Instead:

“A more plausible and common version of practical moral skepticism denies, instead, that there is always an adequate (or non-overridden) reason to do what is morally required.”[4]

If we interpret the question in terms of (b), Sinnott-Armstrong’s appeal to the fact that an action “harms” another person does not answer the question “Why be moral?” His interlocutor argues that if a secular meta-ethical theory is true, then certain kinds of practical dilemmas will occur. What is prudentially required will be an act that harms others. We will therefore have self-interested or prudential reasons to do the act, and unselfish reasons not to do it. If such dilemmas occur, we face a question: What reason is there to act unselfishly rather than in one’s self-interest? What reason do we have for always giving precedence to impartial demands in such cases?

Murphy explains:

“The worry is that there are different kinds of reason that can pull in different directions, and it is not obvious that there is any practical error in choosing against a more impartial point of view by going with the more partial point of view.”[5]

If I face a dilemma between two options—doing an act that harms others or doing an act that is contrary to my own interest—pointing out that one option involves harming others doesn’t solve the dilemma. What we need is some reason for always treating the impartially based demands as having precedence. Sinnott-Armstrong provides no such reason. In fact, later in the chapter, he is candid that he cannot give any such reason. He writes:

The fact that an act causes harm to others is a reason not to do that act, and the fact that an act prevents harm to others is a reason to do that act. There is, then, always a reason to be moral on this secular account. And often these reasons are adequate, because they are strong enough to make it rational (or not irrational) to be moral….
Nonetheless, some people still wish for a reason that is strong enough to motivate everyone to be moral and also to make it always irrational to be immoral. I doubt that secular moral theories can establish that strong kind of reason to be moral. For people who really do not care about others, the solution is found in retraining or restraining rather than in theory. (emphasis mine)[6]

Note what is being said here: Armstrong is saying that if the best secular accounts of morality are true, agents do not always have all-things-considered reasons to do what is morally right. Sometimes they will, and sometimes they will not. In these latter cases, people will have adequate—and possibly even conclusive—all-things-considered reasons to violate moral norms. The solution to this is an appeal to naked force. What we need to do is force these people to act in ways that they have sufficient or decisive reasons not to act.

This seems an inadequate answer. Consider the following analogy: critics of monotheistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam often ask, “What reason do I have to adopt your religion?” This is not a question of belief but of action. Adopting a religion involves living a certain way. Skeptics ask: What reasons do I have to commit to faithfully following what you take to be God’s commands, especially when doing so often goes against my aims or interests?

Imagine a theist responded to this as follows: “You don’t have compelling reasons to do this. In fact, you have good reason not to do this. The balance of reasons does not support such a commitment and may in fact be against it. However, if you don’t convert, I will persecute you.” Would any religious skeptic think their concerns had been answered?

In the same way, I suggest that no one who was not already committed to secular morality would find Sinnott-Armstrong’s response here adequate.

Later, Armstrong offers a different answer:

Is this limitation a problem for secular accounts of morality? I doubt that, too. If we demand this extreme kind of reason to be moral, then we are bound to be disappointed. The solution to our disappointment is to give up this demand, not to imagine a higher power that we want to fulfill an illegitimate demand. Besides, this limit on secular theories would be a problem only if the alternative religious account could provide a better reason to be moral. It can’t. That is what I will show in the next section.[7]

Here, Sinnott-Armstrong’s position appears to be twofold:

First, the fact that a secular theory cannot answer the question “Why be moral?” is only a problem if religious theories can answer that question adequately. If they cannot, then this is a problem for all theories—and hence not a reason to favour one over another.

Second, he claims that a religious theory cannot answer this question either. In fact, he seems to think no theory can. The appropriate response, he suggests, is to give up the demand.

In a future post, I will examine Sinnott-Armstrong’s reasons for these two claims. I will argue that they fail.

[1] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 114

[2] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God 117

[3] Mark Murphy’s, Morality Without God, available at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/morality-s-without-god-s/ accessed 28 August 2025

[4] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Practical Moral Skepticism, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-moral/supplement.html accessed 28 August 2025

[5] Mark Murphy’s, Morality Without God, available at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/morality-s-without-god-s/ accessed 28 August 2025

[6] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God 117-118

[7] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God 118

 

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Michael Huemer on Wokeness

September 8th, 2025 by Matt
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Political Philosopher Michael Huemer weighs in on the question: what is wokeness?

I have been known to describe the essence of wokism as “reverse bigotry”. In the past, various forms of bigotry were common: prejudice against blacks, against women, against gays, against transgender people, and more. Wokism proposes, rather than to eliminate bigotry, to reverse the direction of traditional bigotry: replace anti-black racism with anti-white (or pro-black) racism; replace anti-female sexism with anti-male sexism; etc.

Now you might think this an unfair description of the views listed in section 1. For instance, just because someone thinks that America is systemically racist against blacks, doesn’t mean that they support racism against whites, does it?

Two things to note:

One, the people who say that are basically blaming white people for the problems suffered by blacks as a group. They are saying that racism (which is, on their view, one of the greatest evils of the world) on the part of white people is responsible for black disadvantage. Sometimes they say the racism is “systemic”, which means that there need not be any actual racists, but many of them say that the racism is ongoing in the hearts of white people today. Anyway, even the systemic racism was caused by evil white people in the past.

For a thought experiment, ask yourself what you would think about a person who explained most of the evils of the modern world as the product of wrongful behavior or evil character on the part of the Jews, either now or in the past. There are actually people like this. We call them “anti-Semites”, and they are obviously racists. If you replace “Jews” with “whites”, then you just have a different form of racism.

The full article is available here at Huemer’s blog Fake Nous.

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Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Secularism and “reasons” to be moral. Part One:

September 3rd, 2025 by Matt
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In his book Morality Without God, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that a secular account of the nature of moral properties—namely, that wrongness is constituted by the property of harming others—is preferable to a theistic account, in which wrongness is identified with the property of being contrary to God’s commands

Chapter 6 is entitled “Why be moral?” In this chapter, Sinnott-Armstrong attempts to rebut the idea that secular meta-ethical theories—such as the one he proposes—cannot provide an adequate answer to this question.

Sinnott-Armstrong begins his discussion by citing an argument that purports to show that secular accounts of morality cannot answer the question: why be moral? He summarises the argument as follows:

“Harming others is sometimes in some people’s best interest, even considering probable costs. In those cases, some theists say that only a divine threat of Hell provides a reason to be moral. Since atheists and agnostics do not believe in God, they do not believe in divine retribution for sins, so they have to admit that sometimes some people could get away with immorality and then they have no self-interested reason to be moral. Does that mean that these people have no reason at all to be moral?”[1]

He responds to this argument as follows:

No. That conclusion would follow only if every reason had to be self-interested, selfish, or egoistic. There is no basis for that assumption. Many reasons are not based on self-interest. That should be common ground between theists and atheists… The fact that an act prevents harm to another person can be a reason for me to do that act. The fact that an act causes harm to another person can be a reason for me not to do that act. These facts are reasons, even if the other people are strangers. Crucially, these reasons are not self-interesting. They are facts about the interests of other people, not me. These unselfish reasons can answer the question, “Why be moral?”[2]

There are some infelicities in the way this argument is described and set up. Sinnott-Armstrong’s version of the argument relies solely on the appeal to fear of Hell and divine retribution. He doesn’t, for example, couch the argument in terms of hope of eternal life. Moreover, in the paragraphs leading up to this one, he gives a sarcastic, literalistic reading of the Book of Revelation on the topic of Hell. These all rhetorically prime negative reactions in the reader; they also border on crude caricature.

However, in this post and in future ones, I will focus on what I take to be the main thrust of Sinnott-Armstrong’s response to this argument. Sinnott-Armstrong makes three points. First, he argues that this argument is only sound if one assumes that “every reason” is “self-interested.” Second, he argues that this assumption is false. It should be granted by both theists and non-theists that there are “unselfish reasons” based on the fact that an action will “harm” (or benefit) other people. Third, he contends these unselfish reasons can answer the question of why they are moral.

Does the argument assume that all reasons are selfish?

Let’s look at the first point: does this argument assume that all reasons are selfish? That depends on how one interprets the phrase “reasons to be moral” and the rhetorical question “Why be moral?”

When we talk of “reasons” to act, we can mean one of two things. Sometimes the word “reason” functions as a mass noun, referring to what we have decisive reasons to do—what we have reasons to do all things considered, when we consider everything that counts in favour of an action and against it. Alternatively, the word “reason” can function as a count noun, referring to what we have a pro tanto reason to do—what we have reason to do all else being equal. Here we ask whether there is anything that by itself counts in favour of the action.[3]

An illustrative example: It is a rainy day, and I have to walk fifteen minutes outside to the bus. The fact I will get wet if I don’t take an umbrella is a pro tanto reason to take an umbrella. The fact that carrying an umbrella is cumbersome is a pro tanto reason against it. When I consider all the relevant factors—the burden of carrying the umbrella and the prospect of getting wet—I conclude that I have decisive, all-things-considered reasons to carry it.[4]

Sinnott-Armstrong’s interlocutor asks: if we are not accountable to God for our actions, and harming someone promotes our long-term self-interest, what reason do we have to refrain from doing harm? He could mean two things:
(a) He could be asking whether, in the given circumstances, we have a pro tanto reason to refrain from harm; or
(b) He could be asking whether, in those circumstances, we have decisive reasons not to harm.

If he means (a), then Sinnott-Armstrong’s criticism seems on point. The interlocutor is assuming that all reasons are selfish. He is saying that if it is not in our self-interest to avoid harming others, then there is no consideration of any sort at all against harming them. This follows only if all reasons are selfish.

I suspect that this is how Sinnott-Armstrong interprets the argument in question. The problem is that this is a very idiosyncratic understanding of the question “Why be moral?” Normally, in philosophical discussions, this is not what is meant by the question.[5]

Consider what  Sinnott-Armstrong himself writes in his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on moral skepticism. He writes about a form of skepticism known as “practical skepticism,” which asks the question:

“Why be moral?” This question is used to raise many different issues. Almost everyone admits that there is sometimes some kind of reason to be moral. However, many philosophers deny various universal claims, including the claims that there is always some reason to be moral, that there is always a distinctively moral reason to be moral, and/or that there is always enough reason to make it irrational not to be moral or at least not irrational to be moral…
Practical moral skeptics usually deny that there is always enough reason for moral action.[6]

In a supplementary paper, he explains:

What such practical moral skeptics deny is that I always have reason to do what is morally required… Practical moral skeptics do not deny that there is sometimes reason not to do what is morally wrong. After all, some wrongdoers are caught and punished. However, practical moral skeptics can still deny that there is always reason to do what is morally required or to avoid what is morally wrong.
How much reason? Some practical moral skeptics claim that sometimes there is no reason at all to do what is morally required. If all reasons are self-interested, this means that sometimes doing what is morally required does not serve the agent’s interest in any way. That extreme position would be refuted if doing what is morally wrong always creates even a slight risk of some negative repercussion. A more plausible and common version of practical moral skepticism denies, instead, that there is always an adequate (or non-overridden) reason to do what is morally required. To establish this position, practical moral skeptics need only one case where there is overriding reason not to do what is morally required. (emphasis mine)[7]

So, according to Sinnott-Armstrong himself, if we interpret the rhetorical question “Why be moral?” charitably—in a way that reflects how the question is commonly used—it is not a denial that agents lack any pro tanto reasons to do what they are required to do. Instead, the interlocutor is challenging the idea that agents always have decisive reasons to refrain from harm when doing so is contrary to their self-interest.

Suppose we interpret Sinnott-Armstrong’s interlocutor in terms of (b). In that case, he is arguing as follows: if there are cases where harming another is in our self-interest, then we will not always have all-things-considered reasons to refrain from harm. This argument does not assume that all reasons are selfish. Even if there are unselfish reasons based on the fact an action harms others, these reasons will not always be stronger or weightier than the selfish reasons we have to the contrary. One can accept that we have a pro tanto reason to do an action and also admit that when one considers everything that is relevant—for and against—the total balance of reasons does not support it.

We can conclude our discussion as follows: Sinnott-Armstrong’s claim—that his interlocutor’s argument rests on a false assumption, namely that all reasons are selfish—is true if one interprets the question “Why be moral?” in an idiosyncratic and uncharitable way, contrary to how the question is typically used. However, if the question is interpreted charitably, in line with its usual philosophical usage, then  Sinnott-Armstrong’s claim is false.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 114

[2] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God 117

[3] See Stephen Darwall, “What Are Moral Reasons?” The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy 12 (2017): 2. Available at https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/What%20Are%20moral%20reasons.pdf accessed 28 August 2025

[4] See Stephen Darwall, “What Are Moral Reasons?” 2-3

[5] This point is made by Mark Murphy’s review, Morality Without God, available at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/morality-s-without-god-s/ accessed 28 August 2025

[6] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Moral Skepticism, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-moral/index.html accessed 28 August 2025

[7] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Practical Moral Skepticism, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-moral/supplement.html accessed 28 August 2025

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To Judge or not to Judge: Part Two

August 27th, 2025 by Matt
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Below is the second part of a talk I delivered at Crossroads Presbyterian Church.


3. What Did Jesus Mean

So if Jesus did not command us to refrain from judging others, what does he teach in this passage? I think Jesus is not, in this passage, telling us to “not judge.” He is instead telling us how to judge. He is contrasting judgments that are accurate, useful, and constructive with judgments that involve hypocrisy and grandstanding. He is telling us to avoid the latter so that we can effectively carry out the former.

Several features bear this out. First, let’s look at the passage. The phrase translated in the NIV as, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” was originally written by Matthew in Koine Greek and then transliterated. What is stated is, “Do not judge that you be judged” (Matt 7:1, Interlinear Bible). Note the phrase “that.” In Greek this is not a disjunctive “or,” which suggests alternatives. It is a conjunction which spells out the result, and it is in thejudgementsubjunctive tense. What this means, in layman’s terms, is that the passage states: do not judge if that judgment results in you being judged yourself. This is a reference to a particular kind of judgment, not judging in general.

This is clearly borne out when we look at the context, which states: “With whatever verdict you judge you will be judged.”

Here is the point: when I make a judgment about someone else’s character, I implicitly reference a standard which applies to myself as well as to them. If I condemn my brother for stealing, I am assuming it is wrong to steal. That means I am admitting stealing is wrong. If I say an action is wrong and blameworthy, and practise that action myself, I have in essence admitted I am doing wrong and am worthy of blame. I stand condemned by my own words.

Now let us return to the passage and look at the commandment “judge not” in context:

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. 6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:2-6)

Here the qualifications are evident. One is not to judge in a way that brings judgment on oneself. For (because) the standard one uses to judge others is the standard by which one’s own behaviour is measured. Jesus goes on to illustrate, with a sarcastic example, precisely what he is talking about: a person who nit-picks or censures others’ minor faults (taking the speck out of their brother’s eye) yet ignores the serious, grave, moral faults in their own life (the log in one’s own eye). This, as Jesus points out, is hypocrisy. His point is that such hypocrisy actually blinds the person’s ability to make competent moral judgments. This suggests that Jesus is focusing on a certain type of judging and not the making of judgments per se.

In fact, Jesus condemns this type of hypocrisy so that we can judge correctly. Rather than engaging in the kind of judgment Jesus has condemned, a person should “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” In other words, one should try to rectify the serious moral flaws in one’s own life precisely so one can assist others with theirs. Jesus’s point is that one needs to avoid hypocrisy in order to make constructive and effective moral judgments about others.

Why is this? Two reasons.

First, in order to teach people any subject or skill, you actually have to be proficient in that subject or skill. I am a theology teacher. I have had some success, and the reason I have had some success is because I am trained in the relevant disciplines. When I read an essay, I can give constructive feedback because I have spent decades reading theological writings, writing such articles, and thinking about theology. When a student writes, I can give constructive feedback because I have become so proficient and familiar with such writings that I can just see what is lacking or needed.

Second, the nature of hypocrisy itself blinds people. People often think that a hypocrite is someone who doesn’t practise what they preach. This is incorrect. Anyone who has high moral standards will at times struggle and fail to live up to them due to weakness of the will. The Greek word translated “hypocrite” is actually the word for “actor.” A hypocrite is an actor on a stage who puts on a mask to play a role in front of others. Off stage they don’t play that role. A hypocrite is someone who is pretending—they want to appear virtuous by appealing to standards in front of others, telling them what is right and wrong, but they have no real commitment to those standards.

So if your values are so warped that you only care about how you appear—what others think, and not what God, who sees all, thinks—your value system is distorted and you cannot make competent moral judgments. The key point is that we need to avoid hypocrisy precisely so that we have the discernment we need to make constructive judgments that will actually enable us to help both ourselves and others in making wise, as opposed to foolish, judgments.

I think you see the same thing in the reference to “pigs and dogs” in verse 6. Dogs and pigs, to Jews, were unclean animals, and the terms were frequently used to designate people considered to be of low moral character who were “unclean” before God. In this verse Jesus is simply repeating the Old Testament teaching found in Proverbs 9:8, which states, “Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you.” The reason one is exhorted not to do this is because it fails to be constructive. It is not going to do any good. The implication again is that one should try to make constructive judgments rather than simply provoking anger.

I can appeal again to my experience as a teacher. When you teach five classes a day with over 25 students a class, you learn to be discerning. There are some students you will invest a lot of time in, giving constructive feedback, because you know they are motivated and will listen and want to improve. There are others you know are switched off and won’t listen or care no matter what you say. You don’t spend a lot of time giving constructive feedback to these students; sometimes doing so will simply provoke a confrontation that wastes your time.

Just in case I have not belaboured the point enough, my interpretation is further reinforced by what follows these passages:

15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:15-23)

Here Jesus actually instructs his disciples to make moral judgments about others. He tells them to judge whether a person is a false prophet or not by their “fruit.” Anyone familiar with Old Testament prophetic literature (as Jesus’ hearers were) would know that fruit is a metaphor for character. Isaiah’s use of the metaphor is paradigmatic:

1 I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 3 “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? 5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” 7 The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. (Isaiah 5:1-7)

The fruit looked for is such things as right conduct, justice, etc. Paul uses the same metaphor when he states that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23a). Jesus makes it clear that he is utilising this metaphor. He goes on to stress that, in this context, the fruit of a prophet is whether he or she “does the will of my Father” and is not an “evildoer.” It is clear then that Jesus here is exhorting his disciples to make moral judgments about other people, to critically evaluate other people’s lives and actions, and to make judgments about their spiritual authenticity based on these judgments. All this would be very odd if it were wrong to judge.

This is an important skill. In an age of people like David Koresh from Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones, or groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda who advocate terror in the name of God—or even the many contemporary secular political cults today—people need to be able to make discerning moral judgments about where to lay their allegiance, what is the will of God and what is not.

So what is the take-home here? I think it is this: the church is called to go into all the world, make disciples of all nations, baptise them, and teach them to obey what God has commanded. Its role is to be a source of moral education, to help people answer the question: How should I live? by providing credible answers—answers that are true and helpful. People need these answers to make important decisions. God wants us to become proficient at this, to do it well, both by learning how to live well and by teaching others how to. That means we need to be able to make moral judgments.

In this passage Jesus tells us how to do this. There are several things he says here:

  1. Learn to live well in your own life.
  2. Teach others out of this practice.
  3. Use discernment in reading your audience; know when to speak and when to be silent—when it is pearls before swine.
  4. Finally, avoid hypocrisy and grandstanding. You should be trying to live a life pleasing to God, not giving lip service to certain ideas in order to impress others with your virtue.

Doing this enables you to make constructive judgments that enable the church to be salt and light in a world—a world so confused that it regularly expresses the moral judgment that you should not make moral judgments.

 

 

 

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