OK, should the US enter WW2. Yes, well it won’t be better for the Germans and Japanese. No, it won’t be better for…
How can one possibly decide what would make everyone better off?
In fact war is just a dramatic example. We are faced all the time with decisions where one choice benefits some and not others. How could I even pick a charity? to marry Jane not Sarah? To spend tax dollars on housing or schools or health care or research or…
Generally speaking, littering (as well as other kinds of environmental sins) is immoral, because if everyone did it, then we would all be worse off. This is justification for those who do not litter to chastise those who do. If most people did not litter, would it do a lot of good? Of course. But the condemnations of those who do litter would still be justified.
Sure, it works fairly well on some things. But not on others. What would happen if everyone was gay? If everyone took vows of chastity? If everyone moved to the city? if everyone drove or did not drive? if everyone was non-violent? 1) sometimes things work perfectly fine if many people do them, but not all. Sometimes there are things where some people MUST break the pattern. Etc.
- if I get a dog as a pet, it will have certain effects. if everyone gets a dog as a pet, all sorts of problems will arise - just the amount of protein that will need to be produced causes all sorts of problems. Let alone buying a car or getting a divorce. Must I stay married to prevent everyone ending their marriages? And sure, we can fine tune to, everyone who does not get along with their partners. But then, perhaps in my case, it will not ever work out, but many people with the same feelings and thoughts I have, will be able to reconcile and their partner is the best one.
You provide here examples of how complicated the actual calculus of a particular act’s virtue can be. For example, in the context of a very sustainable population (relative to the quantity of natural resources available), having a dog or a car or two cars, etc., would not be a problem. (Imagine a world population of 1 billion) But if/when the population is close to outstripping the planet’s natural resources (to sustain a particular lifestyle), then behavior that would not have been immoral if the human population was much smaller would become immoral once the population has reached a certain threshold (assuming other options are not available).
If it is not sustainable for everyone to have a dog, does that entail that no one should be allowed to? same question with cars? four children? Your rule would eliminate all sorts of behavior, if the rule was followed, that might be neutral, perhaps even positive when a few, or many, but not all were allowed to do these things.
I can sort of turn the rule on its head: is it better for everyone if people are only allowed to do things that it would be good if everyone did them. Better for everyone. I doubt it.
This is the kind of complexity we face in our attempts to make rationally justified moral judgments, but in no way does the complexity invalidate the principle that I claim people ‘intuitively invoke’ when they make moral judgments.
I am not presenting complicated examples. I am presenting examples which, since they involve humans, happen to be complicated, but I am choosing them because it can be bad if everyone does something but neutral or even good if many do them but not all.
If you think about it, the examples I provided re: environmental issues make it clear that moral absolutes are necessarily relative to specific environmental (including social) circumstances. Given certain circumstances, certain kinds of behavior are ‘absolutely wrong’ or ‘absolutely right’, but it depends on those circumstances. My example: in primitive tribal societies, everyone was better off the more children were brought into the world…more babied meant more people to bring in the harvest, defend the tribe, and provide replacements for those who were lost through famine, plague, or war. But now, with an overpopulated planet, having more children because “you like large families” is probably a moral sin against the whole of society (although more so in India and China than in say Russia).
But in those tribal societies it would not be bad if someone decided not to have kids, even though it would be bad if they all made the same decision. Or decided to stop at one child. I know you can find examples that seem to confirm the rule. I am trying to point out that it causes problems with many examples.
Keep in mind, the promise being made here is not that this ‘rule’ will end all moral disagreements or that it will magically give everyone supreme wisdom re: all the variables we try to project into the future; it simply establishes the fundamental principle upon which our moral decisions are based, and will always be based, if we do not prefer instead to rely on deontological rules passed down from earlier generations…
I get that, especially now, that you do not see it as a panacea. But it seems like you see the problems as having to do with complexity. I see a fundamental problem with the rule. It will make one, at the very least, feel guilty about behavior that is either 1) neutral or 2) good. In addition to giving a heuristic that might make one abstain from some activities I’d be fine with everyone abstaining from. Would we be better off is everyone applied the rule to pedophilia? sure.
But there are a huge amount of decisions I make, including small things every day, that suddenly become problematic or ‘bad’ if I apply the rule.
I had the same problem with Kant.
And again, one thing I can know for sure is that my choices will NOT be made by everyone else in the world. It functions as if it is causal or the case, when in fact it cannot be the case. It seems like a more realistic set of criteria which acknowledged this would be more valid. It also eliminates gut reactions. Which may seem like poor predictors, but on the other hand, it is we who must live in the society calculated, with what I would consider hubris, by application of this rule. Humans also need to be in societies that fit their gut feelings, even if these cannot always be, via calculation, be proven correct, whatever that means in the end.
I actually sort of imagine men managing to make women feel guilty for having a gut feeling that some policy is fucked up, because the men think they can track all the variables and the women think, something is off here, I know it. Wait, that’s the way things are already.
MLK is deciding whether to intentionally break the law on moral grounds. He then asks himself ‘what if everyone decided to break the law on moral grounds?’ Since morals differ there would be societal shutdown. He could then try to refine it. They would be wrong in evaluating morals. I am, in a sense, an expert, and know when it is moral to break laws. Then he worries, but then, they will think the same thing. They, like I am, consider themselves able to judge and we are all potentially fallible.
And so on.
What if everyone (the men and lesbians) went for someone who is considered by me and the majority, to be the attractive woman?
The no one ends up trying to be with the attractive women. Of course then we have to reset and come up with another application of the rule.
I think it also leads to absurdities.