De Mendacio Non Est Disputandum?

I promised myself (as well as several people dear to me to whom I was becoming a bore) that I was done with the whole Lying and Live Action controversy - you know, after this, that, and the other thing.

But, lo, from the American Chesterton Society come lately three rejoinders, in the form of contrary editorials in the hot-off-the-presses issue of Gilbert Magazine: from David Beresford, Sean Dailey, and Dale Ahlquist. Sean Dailey explains that the Gilbert editorial board arrived at an impasse on this particular issue. Unable to reach their customary unanimity in doling out the task of the editorial on the subject, they decided to present the competing views to the readership. It's provocation! A gauntlet cast! Just begging me to get back into it, even! (I rationalize to myself and the aforementioned bored loved ones, anyway.) So, it's back into the fog, go I.

I must add a couple more prefatory notes before jumping in: First, I want this to be a discussion, really and truly, so please don't be shy! Second, there'll be multiple posts on this, so be courteous in replies and give me the benefit of the doubt that I might not be completely overlooking something, but maybe only waiting. Third, the last having been said, if it seems obvious that I'm "through" a point and you note errors in my logic, I welcome - indeed I desire! - your correctives and counterpoints, because I intend to try to shape something of an official reply for the magazine out of this discussion. Or, you know, my scrapbook.

---

I want to begin with David Beresford's piece because his is the one which most obviously stands opposed to the position on the Live Action debate which I took the last go-'round.

And in beginning with Beresford's piece, I'm going to prescind momentarily from discussing the beginning half of his article, for reasons which I hope will become apparent further down. Instead, I'll begin in the middle of his article, where he proposes to "strip away the emotion" that often belabors this matter in debate, and offers an example which will make the issue "clear." Allow me to quote at length:

Suppose, for example a four-year-old girl comes to her father and shows him a crayon drawing of a cow. “Look at my cow, Daddy! Isn’t it a good picture?”

What is the right response?

For literalist, truth-at-all-costs-and damn-the-consequences types, the situation is stripped of the heroic sacrifices associated with telling the strict truth, and reveals this position as that of a heel. “No, it is not good,” they must answer. And shame on them.

The equivocators among us may want to craft a clever response with a mental reservation: “It is a wonderful picture and the colors are so bright!” Congratulations, this verbal dexterity will allow one to maintain self-respect and fool the small child in the process by dodging the question. But, this is no better than the previous answer.

There is only one morally right answer, one answer that does not sin against charity, against duty, and against innocence: “That is the best picture of a cow I have ever seen!”

This is the only answer that is not encumbered by “self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.” We do not know if it is lying or not, by definition.

We do know that in this case equivocating is a disgusting pose almost as despicable as answering that the picture is no good. [SOURCE; emphasis mine]From this situation, Beresford argues, we can appreciate "the common sense of ordinary people: the natural law written on men's hearts."

Now, there's something very wonderful about this argument, and I mean that truly. It's a refreshing appeal, just as was Dr. Kreeft's appeal so many month's ago to the power of synderesis. And both these good men are right: there is a common sense element here. But as I argued back then, I will argue now: common sense leads in the opposite way than what is suggested here.

---

Let's look at Mr. Beresford's analogy more closely. What is it about the four-year old girl that informs this common sense judgment that she deserves to be affirmed in her cow drawing? I do not deny that she should be so affirmed! But I ask, again - isn't it that she should be affirmed that is the crucial thing here?

Suppose it's not a four-year old, but my fourteen year old daughter. She brings me a painting she made up in her room, whence she rarely comes because the world is so tragic, and only she and the wailing voices in her music really "get it." And she expresses this tragedy that she just gets so well, because she's suffered and lost love (even though she never actually talked to the boy one has in mind), she expresses all this pain and ennui in her edgy, stick-figure and glitter art.

Suppose that's the situation. She brings me this painting and says, "Daddy, isn't this just the best? Ohmahgawd, I'm totally dropping out of school and becoming an artist!"

Now, how would anyone with common sense respond? All good parents will tell my daughter that she should stay in school and make sure about her choice of career path. But what about commenting on the quality of her art? If it really is awful (which, let's presume it is), there's suddenly something different about saying it's not, because she's fourteen and not four.

Okay, now press pause. We're going to a third scenario.

Press play.

I'm with my thirty-four-year-old yuppie daughter and my four-year old granddaughter (by another child) in the local art museum. We come across a sculpture involving legs pointing upward from a urinal that has teeth painted around its rim. Both my daughter and granddaughter exclaim, "That's great! I love it!!!... Grandpa [Daddy] - what do you think?"

Pause.

Now it's time to turn the disc over...

---

There seem to be different demands upon our common-sense notion of truth-telling in these situations, even though the questions and the quality of art are constant. What's changing is the person. And if you want to write that down as one of my central theses throughout this whole debate - that the other person matters fundamentally to the demands of truth-telling - you can go ahead and do that now.

Mr. Beresford, while suggesting that he is going to eschew all of the emotional attachments which belabor this argument, doesn't make a very good show of it by conjuring the heart-string-tugging image of a four-year old tyke holding up a crappy picture for doting dad to drool over! But why do we drool? Because four-year old art is all good, to all of us, because it's done by four-year olds. None of us has to lie to say it's great. Nor is this a lie to the other.

Truth-telling is about communication. What does a four-year old want to know when she asks, "Isn't this a good picture?" What does a four year old mean by "good"? Child psychology has shown that children of that age operate by a very pure inductive method of reasoning, and that they cannot apply abstract axiologies to form evaluative judgments. In the four-year old vocabulary (which is what we'll be responding in), "good" means "good for me" and also probably means something very much like "morally good." Contrariwise, to a four-year old, "that's a bad picture" means "you're a bad artist" and, in all likelihood, "you're a bad person." We know this by common sense reasoning - there, Mr. Beresford is right. And so we say what we say in order to communicate truth to the four-year old: to validate her worth, even with a hyperbolic statement like, "That's the best picture of a cow I've ever seen!" Because it's the "best"-loved by us, for the artist's sake.

Some might object though that we have also communicated falsehood about the objective nature of art. But that's precisely what we have not done because we cannot have done. A child of four couldn't intuit that because they can't understand those kinds of evaluative systems. They can't conceptualize "best amongst all cow pictures" in any way such that we could be accused of genuinely communicating it to them as a falsehood. How many times have we heard kids say, "Blue is my favorite color, and so is pink!" They don't understand the axiological weight of "favorite" and "best," so we can't really have communicated much falsehood to them by our use of the phrase in our line about the cow drawing. Instead, "best" here meant what it ought to mean for that child.

Similarly, in the museum with my granddaughter, my granddaughter is "right" when she says that the urinal sculpture is "great." Because, as far as my granddaughter as a four-year old is concerned (barring any gross and perverse anomalies or aberrations), it is "great" - if it makes her giggle, if it makes her happy, if it gives her imagination fuel.

What about my thirty-four-year-old daughter, though, who also said the sculpture is "great"? Well, no, she's wrong. Because really it's not great, it's a piece of shit. And a thirty-four year-old ought to know that; and I'll tell her when I get the chance. Why ought she to know? Because it bears consequences for her that it doesn't for my granddaughter. And so with my fourteen-year-old and her emo nonsense. She might cry if I tell her the truth; and in charity I'm bound to try to help her learn the truth gently. But I'm a bad parent and a perverse sycophant if I tell her it's good art. I have obligations towards these two that I didn't have formerly, and it's all conditioned by how the other is able to get the truth from what I say, and what the truth that benefits the other is considered to be.

To put it simply, one might say that for children under the age of reason alone does the adage really hold true: de gustibus non est disputandum.

---

So, we must wonder at this point, how does any of this relate to Live Action? Well, according to Mr. Beresford's logic:

If mothers and fathers cannot rear children without daily having to choose between crushing a child’s heart or telling what some call lies, then lying has become a meaningless term. In the same way, if men of good will cannot save the lives of children without being accused of lying, then again, lying has become a meaningless term.

But here is where we're talking about apples and oranges. As I have tried to demonstrate, these two sentences largely refer to separate moral universes; it is for that reason that I am leaving the earlier half of Beresford's piece to discuss in a future post. The first sentence is too sweeping in its scope, encompassing as the analogy of the four-year-old's drawing is not. Parents don't have to - and shouldn't have to - worry in such a way about the daily struggle to be honest and communicate truth. When the troubled teens come along, though, and the topics are pot and sex and God-knows-what, don't mom and dad choose their words a little more carefully? But I digress...

I will add one final comment on the analogy here.

If one were to apply the logic of this analogy to the Live Action stings, I think common sense derives a very different conclusion than what has been urged in Beresford's article. We have seen that common sense tells us to speak to our daughters - of whatever age - in love. And we have also seen how this always involves the hearer knowing a kind of truth from our statement. We want to love our daughters through what we tell them, and so we tell them the truth - as they are able to understand it. We speak the truth to those we love.

If the analogy has any connection, the only one I can see is this: If my daughter gets the truth because I love her, why not somebody else's daughter behind the desk at the abortion clinic? If I correct my daughter when she's in error and teach her right from wrong without lying and prevarication and "stings" - why do I deal any differently with God's beloved daughter working for the terrible organization? Doesn't she, after all, need the truth all the more? Maybe she's only there because she didn't have a Daddy who loved her enough to tell her so, in all the ways that that truth can be told.

A Rhetorical Response to Dr. Kreeft

In my previous post, I outlined some distinctions about how moral intuition is only one step of the moral reasoning process.

Dr. Kreeft, I believe, does recognize this; but his essay leads to confusion by dismissing reasoned discourse over situations - which is what discernment in conscience is all about - as less important than the intuitive "sense" about right and wrong. But what about our "growing inability to discern right from wrong"?

A red flag in Kreeft's essay - and one that attests to the problem of using intuitive reasoning in this way - is in the argument he makes about the "ticking time bomb" scenario with regard to lying. To quote:

If lying is always wrong, then it is wrong to lie to a nuclear terrorist... to elicit from him where he hid the nuclear bomb that in one hour will kill millions if it is not found and defused. The most reasonable response to the "no lying" legalist here is "You gotta be kidding"—or something less kind than that. Thomas Aquinas said that even torture is sometimes justified; in emergency situations like that; if torture, then a fortiori lying.

Now, most of us will remember a while back the debate about this ticking time bomb scenario on the exact subject of torture. Back then, there were those who argued from Aquinas's allowance of it. There were also those who argued that it just seems obvious that, if the only way to "elicit from him where he hid the nuclear bomb that in one hour will kill millions if it is not found and defused" is to torture him, then of course this must be allowed. They continued to argue that "the most reasonable response to the 'no torture' legalist here is "You gotta be kidding'." We just know that torture isn't always wrong. It's moral intuition. And Aquinas said so too.

How did we respond in that debate? We responded that John Paul II and the Catechism had included torture under the list of sins which were "intrinsically evil" - evil "by their very nature." These sins, sua natura, are wrong and can never be justified.

Such a sin is lying. But here, proponents of Dr. Kreeft try to waffle on the point and say it's apples and oranges. That the moral intuition of those who thought torture was right was in error. But that with lying, it's different, because now we feel that way. And besides, okay, we're not saying that this means lying isn't always wrong, because, yeah, the Catechism says it is; and that's just a singular moment of imprecision in Dr. Kreeft - after all, he says above that "if lying is always wrong, then this isn't lying." So it's not lying. It's something else, because this is right and not wrong - we just know it is. And, as to torture, well, that's a whole other matter, because yeah, Aquinas was wrong there, torture is intrinsically evil.

But I repeat: lying is intrinsically evil too. That is not to say all lies are culpable sins, much less all mortal sins. But lying is, according to the Catechism, "by it's vary nature" an evil.

Call this something else other than lying? Fine, then I'll call waterboarding "enhanced interrogation." In fact, as a good friend of mine has pointed out, in this scenario lying must be "enhanced interrogation", too. And this is no red herring of argument: by relating torture and lying, Dr. Kreeft has invited my objection. For if you're going to make this argument of association between two sins that are "sua natura" wrong, then you mustn't put much stake in the distinction that lying is "always" wrong. The avenue of reasoning, remember, is a fortiori: something which is "always" evil can sometimes be allowed, like Aquinas said torture is, and therefore this - even if it is lying - isn't wrong, because torture isn't and torture is worse. So if torture can be sometimes allowed, then how much more should lying be sometimes allowed!

So, allow that a lie is sometimes okay despite being intrinsically evil, and you must allow that torture is, too. Reconcile matters with the Catechism from there - but don't try to get out of the relation. Otherwise, admit that if what seems to be lying is allowed, then it is not really lying - but recognize that you are making the same rhetorical move that the proponents of torture made which so frustrated us who argued against it: to demand that we enumerate all the things that torture could ever possibly be, to show why waterboarding counts.

And if you don't see how this all constitutes the same line of reasoning; if you answer me by falling back on moral intuition and the fact that you just know this is different: then I can offer only one reply.

I just know it's the same. Try to argue with that...

A Philosophical Response to Dr. Kreeft

[I have tried, in this treatment, to take a philosophical and investigative approach and not dig too deeply into the argument's exact tenets; for this latter approach, see my follow up. - JLG]

---

Dr. Kreeft's essay at Catholic Vote, "Why Live Action did right and why we all should know that", has provoked a lot of discussion around the internet.

Dr. Kreeft bases his argument on the idea of moral intuition. He says that this moral intuition is what Aquinas speaks of as "synderesis." He says that human moral reasoning begins "with moral experience and imagination and the innate power and habit of moral understanding and judgment, moral 'common sense,' which makes instinctive judgments about moral experiences."

Based on this process, says Doctor Kreeft, when we encounter situations like the problem of Lila Rose and Live Action (which he says is analogous to hiding Jews from Nazis), normal people (i.e., in his words, those who are not "morally stupid") reason thus: "They do not know whether this is an example of lying or not. But they know that if it is, than [sic] lying is not always wrong, and if lying is always wrong, then this is not lying." Dr. Kreeft says that such intuitive reasoning is not infallible, but that when we start reasoning in ways that is contradictory to this intuitive common sense, we are most often going to turn out wrong.

Now, I want to look at some typical renderings of synderesis and see how Dr. Kreeft's aligns with them.

Servais Pinckaers, in "Conscience, Truth, and Prudence," explains that, for Aquinas, synderesis is a habitus, the function of which is "to condemn evil and tend toward the good."

Moral theologian Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P. - presently theologian to the Papal household - explains the process of practical moral reason as follows:

[P]ractical reason is endowed with the first principle of action, known as synderesis, which, in an innate and infallible judgment, assesses that good is to be done and that evil is to be avoided.... Practical reason begins with the spark of synderesis, and, using the light it receives from the instinctively known moral law and from its own experience and education, and taking into account the unique circumstances with which it is affronted, it issues a judgment concerning the act to be executed or passes a judgment on the act that took place.

- from "Conscience and the Liberum Arbitrium"

Here we find that "it" - the practical reason - has "instinctive" knowledge of moral law as well, which aligns with Dr. Kreeft's analysis. We also have a distinction, though, that synderesis itself is the very limited idea that good is to be done and evil avoided, and not a matter of judgment about situations, per se. These steps of practical reason are distinct.

While distinct, though, the conscience and the synderesis operations are ontologically related according to modern moral theologians. Cardinal Ratzinger, commenting on the "anthropology of conscience", likens synderesis to the Platonic "memory" of the formal good and true (anamnesis): this is "instilled in our being [but] needs, one might say, assistance from without so that it can become aware of itself." Thus, even though it is an infallible first instinct, synderesis is not to be separated from the elements which "form" the larger conscience. Specifically, Card. Ratzinger mentions the Papacy [and all kinds of Magisterial authority], which are not coming from "without" in regard to synderesis, but function to "bring to fruition... its interior openness to the truth" (see Ratzinger, "Conscience and Truth").

Turning to Veritatis Splendor 59, John Paul II explains that the judgement of conscience "applies to a concrete situation the rational conviction that one must love and do good and avoid evil." Here the entire process of practical reasoning is included. Synderesis is that "rational conviction" about good and evil which then becomes part of the process of analyzing the moral values in given situations.

So, synderesis is, indeed, a moral "intuition" of a sort, which forms the basis of judgments of conscience. It is the essential insight about good and evil which forms the basis for the discernment of conscience. And there are other aspects of "intuitive reasoning" involved in the process of conscience even after synderesis, as Giertych points out, calling these facets the "instinctively known moral law." And, indeed, conscience and synderesis are part of one whole ontological structure of relation to truth in man, as Cardinal Ratzinger points out; thus, there are intuitive aspects to both processes and there are also aspects of both which are open to some kind of formation, which does not deny the "infallible" judgment of synderesis nor the immediate quality of intuition.

How, then, do we evaluate Dr. Kreeft's arguments? Well, I think he is right in noting that intuitions and experience have a value in moral reasoning. The problem with using synderesis in the way Dr. Kreeft has done, though - or even more generally using moral intuition as a closing of debate over issues based on the premise that those whose intuition does not seem to grasp the same things yours does are "morally stupid" - is that the Church does define certain things as "intrinsically evil", and lying is one of them.

John Paul II explains that the purpose of these kinds of definitions is "to serve man's true freedom...; there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth" (VS, 96). This impact by authority on reason is even on the level of synderesis, as Ratzinger has shown, as the Church's distinctions guide the operation of synderesis toward venues where it applies and where its infallible judgment can be free to work. In this case, the definitive statement that lying is always wrong is directed to freeing synderesis to make this moral sensibility part of our relation to the truth of natural law and a fundamental premise for our moral reasoning. In a sense, it makes our process of practical moral reasoning shorter and easier in cases having to do with lying, where the Church has directed us to use our innate moral sense.

However, the intuition that operates when we encounter a situation of hiding Jews from Nazis, or a situation of Lila Rose spying on Planned Parenthood, is not the infallible intuition of synderesis. Rather, it is an aspect of the intuitive moral process which is involved in the reasoning part of discernment in conscience. Synderesis applies to the situation only in telling us that "lying is bad," from which we can then reason toward conclusions that this, if it is lying, is also bad, which may not seem evident. On the other hand, we might reason that this is not lying, and therefore not necessarily bad - although it might relate to a different intuition of synderesis about what is bad and then be judged to be bad based on that other relation. But the point is that we still require a process of reasoning.

The reason we cannot stop at intuition - as even Dr. Kreeft admits - is evidenced in the title of the work that I took the above theological essays from: Crisis of Conscience: Philosophers and Theologians Analyze Our Growing Inability to Discern Right from Wrong (New York: Crossroads, 1996). This title and the concern of these authors - particularly the direction of Ratzinger's essay which seeks to put even the "infallible" intuition of synderesis in relation to moral authority such as is embodied in the Magisterium - makes plain that intuitions are harder to rely upon in this day and age. We need to form ourselves in virtue and in knowledge of the truth and in conformity to authority in order to use conscience properly and not too-subjectively.

A Treatment of the Live Action Debate

I've been working on an attempt at an academic treatment of the debate surrounding Live Action's undercover video work. This is still a work in project and the document will update as I revise and revisit it. Still, I wanted to share it sooner rather than later so that it can - hopefully - benefit the dialogue somewhat.

An Approach to the Debate Surrounding Live Action