Prologemena to a Naturalistic Morality
In our last episode, fans of philosophy, we were discussing whether and how a moral code can be erected on purely practical or natural grounds. I have only ever heard two basic arguments. The first argument attempts to tie those behaviors all men know to be moral into a hedonistic or utilitarian motive: we should be moral because it is in our long-term best interest, and because it affords us more of those pleasures, at least of healthy, temperate and non-self-destructive pleasures.
The second argument (much rarer) is that morality is obvious to anyone with a healthy conscience, and that the healthy conscience accurately perceives moral duties the way a healthy eye perceives light: and that we should be moral because it is moral to be moral, and that it is wicked folly to pretend we don’t all know this. Neither argument has recourse to any postulate about the supernatural.
Of the second argument, nothing need be said. If morality is obvious, arguing that morality is obvious is equally obvious. If one is already persuaded of this point, we need no additional reasoning to support it.
The first argument suffers a defect: granting that I should seek my long-term pleasures over my short-term, I do not see why I should grant any moral dignity to any man who is a stranger to me. Repeat customers, neighbors, or members of my pirate band, yes, them I should treat with justice merely to create the incentive that they will reciprocate. But a black savage living in happy isolation in a remote continent, whose tribe or nation has no dealings at all with me and mine for good or ill, affords me no benefit left in happy isolation, and clearly serves my short-term interests as a slave on the plantation, toiling under the lash. The degeneration of character required to be a slave owner might be a displeasure less than the pleasure of seeing my family wealthy, my wife in silks, my children able to afford university education in the College of William and Mary’s.
The argument from pleasure or utility, in other words, suffers a defect: what is the reason why the pleasure or utility of not some other men, but of all other men, should be considered in my moral calculation?
This defect can be supplied by and only by postulating a universal moral imperative to treat others with the same standards one uses for one’s own action.
This is not necessarily a religious conviction: both Kant and John Rawls argue in favor of a nonreligious objective moral code, as does Ayn Rand. (A more thorough examination that these few paragraphs would be needed to weigh out pros and cons of each: I am merely pointing out that better arguments for nonreligious objective moral codes exist, without commenting on their persuasive force.)
Hedonistic and Utilitarian moral codes I reject for basically the reason given above: they do not cover all the cases where moral decisions are required, especially the two extremes of (1) temptation to commit an undiscoverable crime and (2) an act of extraordinary self-sacrifice where one will not live to see any reward for the act.
I am not sure that ‘an objective morality’ necessarily means that the moral actor makes no subjective valuations from his own point of view. If my speak without paradox, I am not sure ‘objective morality’ necessarily means the same rules apply when circumstances are fundamentally different: there is such a thing as mitigating and extenuating circumstances.
But an objective moral code does mean that, if I am in your shoes and you are in mine, my judgment that the act in question is “right” or “wrong” does not change. If I am doing to you something which, in all honesty, I would accept as right if done to me or to anyone else were I in your shoes, then my code is at least claiming to be objective.
If, on the other hand, I object that things are wrong when done to me that are right when done to others, and all other factors of guilt and innocence are the same, then I am not even pretending not to be a partisan cheerleader: I am merely rooting for my side in that case, and my words are opinion, not a statement of objective moral valuation.
I made comments along these lines in the comments box of yesterday’s article, a reader labeled Flamingphonebook wrote in:
(Quoting me) “Hedonistic and Utilitarian moral codes I reject for basically the reason given above: they do not cover all the cases where moral decisions are required, especially the two extremes of (1) temptation to commit an un-discoverable crime and (2) an act of extraordinary self-sacrifice where one will not live to see any reward for the act.”
(1) is a more difficult scenario for my view of morality. For me, it is ameliorated by my own desire to be able to call myself moral. I cannot help myself to the body or the property of another because to claim them as my own diminishes my claims over my own body and property, even if only in my own head. Others might be motivated by a more direct Golden Rule, thinking, “What would happen if I were in a situation where someone could commit an un-discoverable crime against me?” Or they might have to consider that un-discoverable is a very high standard, that may often seem to be the case when it is not.
As to (2), it assumes that death is the worst thing possible for the Hedonist. But pleasure-pain is a scale with both positivity and negativity. I would be loath to volunteer for a kamikaze mission, but if somehow I knew that would eliminate every Islamic terrorist on the planet, I would do it for the sheer joy that I would have in the decision, and the posthumous accolades I could imagine, and not least of all because the alternative would be reading headlines of future attacks while knowing I could have prevented them.
“But an objective moral code does mean that, if I am in your shoes and you are in mine, my judgment that the act in question is “right” or “wrong” does not change. If I am doing to you something which, in all honesty, I would accept as right if done to me or to anyone else were I in your shoes, then my code is at least claiming to be objective.”
I think that’s more impartial than objective. Parties reversed, decision remains is a good rule, in context. Obviously, if a four-foot-tall man shoots me five feet above my shoes, he may not claim innocence of murder on the grounds that, were I to shoot him five feet above his shoes, I would be innocent of murder. The element of the moral crime is the ending of the life of a person who wanted to live, not the mere mechanics of it. I believe this is what you mean by extenuating circumstances.
Why I believe morality is subjective is that I contend that such circumstances may exist only in the mind of the victim. If someone calls me a da** (ethnic insult), I don’t mind, because I don’t identify that strongly with my ethnicity. For others, it might be called immoral, since it hurts those.
He makes two very good points here; let us draw out the implications.
IF we assume that we have a moral duty to assume and abide by a moral standard (what you call an impartial moral standard, and what I call an objective moral standard) THEN a utilitarian or hedonistic moral code can be extended to cover the two extreme cases. Call this duty, Duty One: it is a moral imperative that we be loyal to an impartial or objective standard.
According to Duty One, we cannot commit an undetectable crime because we know justice would be offended if we were the victim of such a crime. While mere pragmatism might say we could commit the evil and be rewarded rather than punished, a concern for Duty One would stop us from giving in to the temptation to commit an undetectable crime.
Again, according to Duty One, we would be morally obligated to commit an act of self-sacrifice where we in an emergency where we would laud another for committing the same act. Suppose the ‘veil of ignorance’ of John Rawls was lowered over the APC into which a grenade has been thrown. For a moment of moral debate, none of the men in the squad know who will be called upon to throw himself on the hand-grenade. All contemplate the question: is it better that one man sacrifice himself to save the others, or that all die? Once they all agree it is better than one man sacrifice himself to save many, the veil is lifted, and if it turns out I am the one in position to throw myself on the grenade, a calculation of the hedonistic pains and pleasures no longer controls my actions. Instead, my actions are controlled by the agreement, which was made under conditions to ensure impartiality, that the sacrifice of one is better than the death of all.
But, to return to the main point, the reason why I myself am not persuaded by hedonism nor utilitarianism, is that I cannot see where or how one can deduce Duty One from the pleasure principle. Being moral is not as pleasant as merely pursuing pleasure.
Flamingphonebook’s comment speaks of “my own desire to be able to call myself moral”. This is, in my opinion, the most noble desire in the huamn breast. Most accounts of moral philosophy, and most speculations about the origins of morality, leave it out. It is not a desire for applause or peer approval, since the desire to be moral even in ordinary life causes us to go against the drift of our peers: many of us have been in a situation where a few chummy friends have been backbiting or gossiping about some absent friend, and felt the temptation not to speak up and defend him from gossip. Indeed, the desire for a clean conscience is a desire to find approval in something more impartial, and of greater moral gravity, than the opinion of gossipy friends.
Myself, I think of this desire as the most natural and rational thing in the world, and I cannot think of it as created by mere social conditioning or peer conformity, since it is so often against the drift. It is a facutlty of reasoning: it is the desire to be the kind of man an impartial judge would reward or an impartial and nonpartisan and uncorrupt conscience would approve. The purpose of moral education in the young is to instill and strengthen this desire.
I cannot account for the origins of this desire, except to return to the first argument given above, which says that the conscience is something that sees the good as the eye sees light, and it is obvious to anyone whose conscience is not blind that we should listen to our consciences, and seek to perfect them from corruption.
These leaves us with certain unanswered questions:
(1) What is the natural and practical reason for being loyal to impartiality (what I labled “Duty One” hereabove)?
(2) What is the natural origin of this desire, which apparently both theist and atheist share, or some of us, to think of ourself as moral: in other words, whence comes this desire to have an impartial an unpartisan judge or an impartial and unpartisan conscience approve our acts as moral?
(3) If it is simply intuitively obvious that we should obey our duties, pleasant or not, whence comes this intuition?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
