back to the beginning: morality

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

Years ago I created an ‘ethics game’ in order to facilitate rational moral thinking in my students. Participants had to imagine themselves as having two responsibilities. Firstly, they had to draw up a constitution (in effect, the program of the Morality Machine) by ordering a series of moral priorities. Secondly, they had to apply the constitution they had created to a series of difficult cases.

To abort or not to abort. If there is ever a morality machine able to reconcile the arguments of those on both sides of this particularly ferocious moral conflagration, please, by all means, bring it to my attention.

Effectively, this meant that they became the Morality Machine and ran its program. You may be familiar with the kinds of cases I threw at them: my students had to deal with all the popular moral issues philosophers like to think about. One of the beauties of the game was that I could add more and more cases as time went on, and the game has grown accordingly.

From my frame of mind, however, I’m looking for a case in which anyone’s particular morality machine is able to convince me there actually are arguments [philosophical or otherwise] that establish either the optimal moral narrative here or [perhaps] even establish the only truly rational narrative there ever can be.

The result was mayhem. The most common demand from frustrated players was that they be allowed to rewrite their constitutions (programs) in accordance with how they felt about each case in turn. In other words, they wanted a license to be inconsistent (they wanted to be ‘situation ethicists’).

And, until a particular morality machine is able to demonstrate why one set of behaviors pertaining to the ethics of abortion is, in fact, the best of all possible worlds given any situation, why wouldn’t situational ethics become the best of all possible worlds.

This was something I absolutely disallowed. I conceded that they might re-order principles in the light of the insights they gained from applying them to the cases; but the ultimate goal remained that of coming to a settled list of principles in a settled order of priority which could be applied to any and all cases. I demanded, in short, that interpretation should come to an end.

Imagine me in the class.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

This thought experiment concerning what he called the ‘Original Position’ for moral deliberation, Rawls asked his students to imagine that they were disembodied beings residing behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, waiting to be born into a body with unknown characteristics and an unknown life. By these means, Rawls wanted to distance his participants from any biases which might lead them to unjustifiably favour particular kinds of people when drawing up their ‘principles of justice’.

Thought experiments are one thing, intertwining them into our day to day human interactions another thing altogether.

And the bottom line is that we are not “disembodied beings residing behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, waiting to be born into a body with unknown characteristics and an unknown life.” Instead, many are here to assure us that they are themselves the very embodiment of one or another One True Path. They are here in fact to save the souls of some or to convince others that while we have no souls we do have access to the best of all possible secular worlds.

Then the part where some of them insist it’s not enough for you to think like them if they don’t have the right skin color or the right gender or the right sexual orientation or the right ethnicity.

Some then feel obligated – to their God? to the Party – to anchor it all in this: or else.

Rawls took much philosophical flack from many directions for his way of thinking about morality. Communitarians claimed the whole thing to be psychologically implausible, and, through abstraction from everything that defines a person, to hollow out the personal, leaving us not with an unbiased arbiter as Rawls imagined, but with no individual at all.

Anyone here convinced the Communitarians themselves reflect just one of many, many other sets of assumptions regarding human morality. For example, that morality revolves more around “we” than “me”, more around memes than genes, more around the collective than the individual, more around cooperation than competition.

Others, such as Jürgen Habermas, have argued that thought experiments cannot replace the ‘communicative rationality’ of actual people, although for Rawls – as for Kant – the universality of rationality meant that any and all individuals would arrive at the same principle, independent of actual debate. It was partly to avoid all such objections that I asked real people to decide on an ethical constitution.

And [philosophically or otherwise] how is this not predicated largely on dasein, on ever evolving and changing social, political and economic narratives out in particular worlds understood in particular ways.

As for the “same principles”, that’ll be the day right?

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

So far so good; and things arguably got better when I managed to convince the vast majority of players that the following constituted the ideal constitution:

1. Respect the autonomy of autonomous beings in respect of their ‘large-scale concepts of the good’. (Autonomy is someone’s capacity to direct their own life.) This is a ‘negative’ principle, or principle of self-restraint, which demands that we don’t interfere with or coerce people in respect of their deepest commitments, values and beliefs…

Assuming of course we have any autonomy at all. As for our “deepest commitments, values and beliefs”, that’s all well and good until you bump into someone who insists that, on the contrary, only their own “deepest commitments, values and beliefs” cut it.

With God, among others.

As for the rest, it may well be an integral part of the “best of all possible worlds” for some, but sooner or later they will bump into others who insist that, on the contrary, that is actually the worst of all possible worlds.

2. Minimise suffering where possible. This is a ‘positive’ principle, or principle of action, which demands that we don’t just refrain from hurting others, but actively intervene to reduce the suffering of other beings;

Same thing? At least it would seem to be when minimizing your own pain results in pain for others. Just note the moral conflagrations that revolve around issues like abortion or gun control or human sexuality.

Then the part where it all revolves around God and religion. That part regarding the ultimate punishment of all…Hell. So, the religious fanatics in Gaza and the religious fanatics in Israel are hell-bent instead on maximizing the pain of all infidels.

3. Aim to promote the autonomy of potentially autonomous beings. This is another positive principle. It suggests, amongst other things, that we should educate children, or make sure that disabled people have the opportunity to participate fully in society, etc.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that disabled people should actually be gotten rid of. Or, if it’s spotted in the womb, aborted.

[iambiguous]

The Morality Machine
Phil Badger considers what it would take to make truly justifiable moral decisions.

There are many good reasons for choosing precisely these principles [above] and ordering them in precisely this way (if we reverse the order of the first two principles, for example, we end up with a justification of involuntary euthanasia – overdosing a terminally ill patient without consulting him because we know that this will lessen his suffering); but the point right now is to concentrate on those moments where this constitution/program comes under critical stress.

Like here in America, our own Constitution is open to interpretations that generally revolve around particular moral and political prejudices. Or if you are a Supreme Court justice, around God Almighty Himself.

Philippa Foot’s ‘trolley problem’ is a famous thought experiment in ethics. We are faced with the moral dilemma of diverting or not diverting a runaway railway carriage. We can pull a lever that will cause the carriage to switch tracks, saving the lives of five innocent track workers, but killing a different individual; or we can leave things as they are and allow the five to die, and the other to live.

I noted my own reaction to that on other threads:

[quote]"I’d want to know who these people are. Are the five stuck on the tracks total strangers? Is the person on the other set of tracks my own beloved wife or son or daughter? Do I know the five stuck on the tracks but despise them? Or do I despise the person on the other set of tracks even more?

Or what if the five on one set of tracks were young children and the person on the other set was a very old man. Or a middle-aged pregnant woman?"[/quote]

Thought experiments of this sort are just that, thoughts about things that may or may not be applicable to the actual complexities embedded in human interactions. As though ethicists actually can think up – deontologically – not just the best of all possible worlds regarding the trolly quandary, but, perhaps, the one and the only rational resolution?

I’ve argued in previous articles that, because the people involved cannot be consulted about their ‘large-scale concepts of the good’, we should rule such concepts as irrelevant to the issue (they may or may not be inclined to be heroic, but we have no way of knowing which). In this context I’m prepared to be a consequentialist (i.e., to minimise suffering) and pull the lever.

On the other hand, there are going to be those in our lives we would actually prefer to suffer…maximally? There are just too many potential combinations of variables precipitating any number of actual existential permutations we only have so much of an understanding and control over.

In my view, that’s why moral objectivists still abound among us. In other words, to make that ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty go away. Anchored to their very own One True Path that, it covers many of them both before and after the grave.

However, some of my students took the ‘Kantian’ line that it is wrong to try to ‘add up’ suffering in this way rather than valuing each individual person as an ‘end in themselves’. They further argued that there was a distinct difference between ‘allowing’ the deaths of five people and actively intervening to ‘cause’ the death of another.

None of this make my own points go away. If it comes down to a situation in which some will live and some will die, it’s got to be calculated to the advantage of some rather than others. And if there really comes a time when philosophers/ethicists actually can calculate the best of all possible worlds here – or the one truly rational choice? – by all means link me to it.

[iambiguous]

An Argument On The Moral Argument
Luke Pollard and Rebecca Massey-Chase dialogue about the existence of a God.

Luke Pollard:

Spanning history, ‘the argument from morality’ has been supported by people such as Kant, C.S. Lewis, and more recently, William Lane Craig. It has enjoyed much change over the centuries, but now philosophers have managed to cut it down to one simple syllogism:

1. Objective moral values exist
2. Objective moral values necessitate the existence of a God
3. Therefore, a God exists

I once believed something pretty close to this, myself. Only now I have come to believe that in a No God world, morality is likely to be largely subjective, rooted historically and culturally in dasein and ever confronting a world of contingency, chance and change.

To consider the value of this argument, first, it is important to know what we mean by ‘objective moral values’.

There are two views in ethics: morality is either ‘objective’ or ‘relative’.

Or, perhaps, morality is actually a never-ending intersubjective grasp of a particular world by particular individuals living lives that both overlap and diverge. And then, as well, noting the historical context. Especially one in which great changes are unfolding.

Objectivism in morality is the theory that there are at least some moral statements that are right or wrong, whether we believe them to be or not. These truths are not dependent upon us or upon any changeable thing. For instance, “Torturing babies just for fun is wrong” is objectively true whether we believe it to be or not.

And it often stays theoretical here because as soon as an actual issue is broached given particular sets of circumstances, the sheer complexity of human interactions tends to readily deconstruct all One True Paths here.

At least given my own set of assumptions, of course. In other words, No God, The Gap, Rummy’s Rule, the Benjamin Button Syndrome, dasein.

Just imagine living in a world, however, where torturing babies for entertainment was not embraced as universally wrong? I certainly don’t rule out the possibility that this is the case. But in the absence of God how, philosophically, scientifically etc., can this be established?

Even if everyone was brainwashed into thinking that it is morally acceptable, torturing babies just for fun would still be wrong.

And “here and now”, rooted existentially in dasein, “I” would certainly prefer to live in a world where sans God mere mortals can establish the deontological parameters of such behaviors.

Give it a shot, yourself.

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

If Hollywood genre movies can be depended upon to deliver one thing, it is a good hero pitted against an evil foe. Simplistic though it is, Hollywood cinema seduces us all with these Manichean conflicts that persuade us to side with the good guys.

Simplistic isn’t all that far removed from much of what comes out of Hollywood. And, more to the point, the box office there commands it.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood marked a rare exception to this rule, giving audiences an unconventional protagonist – one seemingly beyond good and evil.

And isn’t that basically how one would describe much of the capitalist political economy? Just ask the theocrats – or the me-o-crats? – who own and operate the oil industry, well, everywhere, right?

In other words…

There Will Be Oil

And chances are you use it. And because millions upon millions upon millions of others use it as well, it’s important to keep in mind that those able to provide us with it may well be construed as, say, necessary evils in what still may well still be the best of all possible worlds.

The narrative, a cinematic adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil, centres on the epic rise, and ultimate decline, of oil magnate Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis).

Not to worry. Individual oil magnates may rise and fall but “the system” itself always grows more to take their place.

But this is no typical tale of poor boy made good, for Plainview is far from good in any moral sense, despite his admirable characteristics. Instead Plainview is a thoroughly Nietzschean figure, and if one is seeking ways to vivify Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy – especially his attitude towards Christian morality – one can do no better than through this film.

Vivify or vilify, what’s the difference in a zero-sum world? Just so [one way or another] we get all the oil and all the gas that we need. At least until the oil and gas industries themselves able to gain control over all the other sources of power?

At least providing that the climate doomsayers are wrong about our future being one or another rendition of Waterworld?

While Plainview embodies many aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy and personality, I will limit my focus to how the film illuminates Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. The parallels go far beyond Plainview’s bushy moustache.

Of course, Christianity itself had long been refitted to accommodate capitalism. What is Protestantism after all but an attempt to align Jesus Christ himself with…Prosperity Gospel? What is the Donald Trump phenomenon if not more of the same on steroids? Never – and I mean never – underestimate the ignorance of enormous chunks of the electorate even to this day.

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

The central conflict of There Will Be Blood is between Plainview, who is a plain-speaking businessman with big ambitions in the burgeoning oil industry, and a hypocritical Christian preacher, Eli Sunday, who shares Plainview’s ambition for wealth but doesn’t want to get his hands dirty earning it.

Indeed, there are any number of “prosperity gospel” Christians out there – in here? – who are more than willing to rake in the big bucks while never even coming close to having to scrub dirty hands at the end of the day. And not just the Pope, of course.

There is no dialogue during the opening scenes, and our attention is drawn instead to the raw, uncivilized physicality of man as animal struggling against the elements.

What are we to make of that? What ought we to make of that? We all come into the world hardwired to have gone in that direction. And only given the particular life we live often determines if we might or might not go there ourselves. It’s like sex. Some eschew it in turn as just another manifestation of raw, naked, animalistic behavior. Civilized fucking? Right. If only we didn’t have to reproduce ourselves. If only God had created us without genitals, without assess to wipe, without periods to contain, without all this: Malacards: The Human Disease Database - PMC

Without ids?

Then the part where some will insist that, “in no way could I even imagine myself behaving in such an uncivilized manner”

And just those living in one or another “gilded age”. That sort of thing is why God created the working class.

Also, consider any number of posters here who are entirely civilized until someone posts something that so infuriates them, they rage and rage and rage.

Several years pass, and again we see Plainview prospecting for oil, this time with a team of colleagues, one of whom is killed in an accident at a primitive drilling site, leaving a son. Plainview adopts the orphaned boy, who goes by the name ‘H.W.’. These early scenes of injury and death set the contours of what will follow: destruction, loss and injury is seen throughout the film as an integral part of all that is exceptional, energetic, life-affirming and productive, not as antithetical to it. It is a means to greatness, progress and flourishing.

Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere. Then get back to us.

Greatness, progress and flourishing without a ton of destruction, loss and injury? Well, not so far. Though clearly some embody destruction, loss and injury far, far more so than others.

So, Is that just the way the world is?

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

Eli Sunday sets about trying to make converts of the new arrivals to Little Boston but is met with indifference. He seems to have nothing to offer men and women whose bellies are full of bread and whose days are filled with productive work.

Doesn’t surprise me a bit. How about you? The more your life is in the toilet, the more likely it is that you will seek comfort and consolation before it’s, well, flushed and gone forever.

He attempts to siphon off some religious currency from the new oil well by requesting that Plainview allow him to give a blessing at the public opening of the new well. Plainview appears to give his assent, but when the townspeople are gathered in front of the well, he gives his own ‘blessing’:

“Let’s forget the speech; I’m better at digging holes in the ground than making speeches, so let’s forget the speech for this evening. Just make it a simple blessing. You see, one man doesn’t prospect from the ground, it takes a whole community of good people such as yourselves, and uh, this is good – we stay together. We pray together, we work together, and if the good Lord smiles kindly on our endeavour, we share the wealth together.”

Perfect!
Right?
Prosperity gospel meets trickle down economics meets the white working class. The part where, even to this day, Trump and his ilk are able to dupe any number of working-class folks into believing that he really is on their side. Praise the Lord and leave it to beaver.

At this juncture he says, “God bless you all, Amen,” the well is opened, and drilling commences. Eli has been rendered impotent and silent. Plainview has demonstrated that he knows the true source of power in Little Boston, and that any religiosity to be drawn from the well will be under his authority, not Eli’s.

Of course, by in large, in the world today, nothing much has changed. The ruling class still knows the value of bread and circuses, of divide and conquer, of letting “the people” dope themselves on “religion and sex and TV”

In other words, to the ruling class, “they think they’re so clever and classless and free, but they’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

Well, sort of. Each of us, of course, has our own rooted existentially in dasein spin on that.

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

Plainview is not against the use of religion as a means to power; and neither was Nietzsche.

Nor, of course, do countless ruling classes down through the ages. Still, when it comes to keeping “the people” doped on religion no other nation comes as close to perfecting this as America.

Well, not counting the theocracies, perhaps.

For Nietzsche, the responsibility of the ‘free spirit’ is to his own development. For this, the free spirit may use religion, in the same way that that he might exploit political or economic circumstances.

Then the part where Nietzsche’s perspective on all this stops and Machiavelli’s begins?

Those who are strong, independent and of a noble nature can use religion to remove obstacles. Nietzsche also saw that religion tends to make the drudgery of life bearable for those powerless to change their circumstances. It gives meaning to their suffering and allows them to remain content with the circumstances of their lives by assuring them that they have a place in an illusory higher order.

See, didn’t I tell you? Only there are any number of folks who, in my view, embrace the myth of the Übermensch much like others embrace God. Okay, they can’t take it with them because God is dead. But all the way up to the grave they can convince themselves that they really are…super men?

But to Nietzsche, religion goes wrong when seen as an end in itself, or when it celebrates or exalts what is weak and ought to die out.

Now all the Übermensch need do is to advise us on what constitutes weakness and who should be the first to go. Maybe not all the way to the gas chambers, perhaps, but each Übermensch has his or her own rendition of “or else”.

He thought that Christianity was nihilistic to the core, sacrificing everything of value in others and ourselves, ultimately even God himself. Christianity sacrifices everything real – life – for a non-existent future. But for the church, Nietzsche’s life-affirming values are sins.

This is something that Satyr and his ilk always bring up. Religion as a manifestation of nihilism. Whereas from my own perspective it is just the opposite of nihilism. The entire point of religion is to insist that reality can be wholly understood as a manifestation of God. There may be hundreds of Gods to choose from, perhaps, but they will assure us that their own path is the One True Path.

Just ask them.

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

One evening there is a fatal accident at the well, and Plainview is forced to shut down until the middle of the next day. When he learns that the deceased was a devout Christian, he feels obliged to visit Eli to ask whether he would give the man a Christian burial. When he arrives at the Church of the Third Revelation, he finds Eli in the throes of a ‘healing’. Eli Sunday is transparently false, and we are positioned to identify with Plainview’s point of view on his disingenuous antics, which swing between extremes of saccharine sweetness and uncontrollable rage.

Of course, when it comes down to religion there are countless agendas you can pursue in order to further your own wants and needs. Think of all the disgraced evangelicals – Baker, Swaggert, Haggert – piling up the money by duping the faithful into believing they were the real deal. Prosperity gospel on steroids. And, indeed, any number of politicians know the value of that. Trump is just the most flagrant.

On the other hand, as long as the flocks keep on bleating for more, don’t expect anything to change any time soon.

This also fits Nietzsche’s description of the religious disposition. Nietzsche noted that repression and denial of the will leads to “spasms” of “extravagant voluptuousness” followed by penitence and “denial of the world”. Nietzsche diagnosed this tendency to swing back and forth between extremes as a kind of ‘neurosis’.

And what would one expect once, historically, capitalism and Christianity became…mates? On the one hand, it’s all about salvation; and, then, on the other hand, it’s all about the Benjamins.

Plainview just recognizes how this can be used to further his own considerably more secular interests.

When Eli Sunday has finished the ‘healing’, Plainview says, “That was one Goddamn hell of a show.” Eli launches into a diatribe about how the accident could have been avoided if Plainview had only let him bless the well – suggesting that not only Eli but divine providence had been displaced from the well. He continues to taunt Plainview with accusations, but the older man interrupts him with a reminder that the well cannot “blow gold all over the place” if the men are too tired from listening to Eli’s gospel. At last this silences Eli, whose bluff has been called by Plainview’s acute discernment of where his true motives lie.

And, indeed, from time to time still today there will be new scandals in one of another church exposing what is really going on behind the curtains. On the other hand, where else can the flock go? Okay, the scandals are exposed – Category:Religious scandals - Wikipedia – but there’s still the part where God is the only game in town if, say, immortality and salvation are important to you?

[iambiguous]

There Will Be Blood
Terri Murray tells us about a Hollywood hero beyond good and evil.

De Profundis

Plainview himself is a man who has emerged from the depths of the earth. We saw him injured in the opening sequence while digging in a deep hole. We have seen his filthy hands and his face covered in dirt and oil, and we know that his power comes from the same source. The metaphor is one of evolution – of man the species who has emerged from dust, from lower forms of life, and who survived through his adaptation and overcoming of adversity.

No getting around the fact that in forging his amazing life, blood, sweat and tears were crucial components. Indeed, compare the fortune he accumulated with that of, say, Donald Trump. And back then there was no doomsday clock revolving around a “climate crisis” fueled by the oil and gas industries. Many will admire him and presume he reflects the evolution of biological life at its most triumphant. As one of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” might insist.

By contrast, Sunday is a soft, effete, solicitous fellow who in Nietzschean terms is unfit for survival. He is an embodiment of everything Nietzsche despised about Christianity.

Still, that didn’t stop Plainview from using him, religion and Christianity to his own advantage. And while those who practice and preach prosperity gospel today may in turn be all about “show me the money”, the millions who flock to them are often no less comforted and consoled by their own rendition of “The Gospel Truth”.

In Nietzsche’s view, Christianity exalts the meek, the lowly, the oppressed, the poor – in other words, that which naturally ought to die out. It elevates what is ignoble, making it an object of praise, while stigmatizing the ‘manly’ virtues, labelling them as sins’.

On the other hand, in my view, for Nietzscheans of this ilk today – here or there – how would they go about deciding who or what should die out? Or what constitutes manliness and ignoble behavior?

Or note how the deontologists among us might weigh in on particular behaviors. In order to set everyone straight regarding things said to be Good and things said to be Evil.

Indeed, Sunday attempts to do this by trying to make Plainview ashamed of the very character traits – independence, will, ambition, fearlessness, strength, decisiveness – that make the viewer admire him. But Plainview feels no moral guilt.

On the other hand, does Sunday?

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

Today we begin our discussion of ethics. Later we will be turning our attention to a few issues in applied ethics - questions about what it is right or wrong to do in particular cases. But we will be beginning our discussion of ethics by addressing some general questions. And today we begin with the most general question of all: are there facts about what it is right and wrong for us to do and, if so, what are those facts like?

In fact, say some, in the absence of God, what are the facts we can pin down regarding moral conflagrations? Obviously, in interacting with others socially, politically and economically, there are any number of facts that can be acknowledged and shared. Facts embedded in the either/or world. But what in fact are the optimal assessments of those facts themselves when we shift gears to the is/ought world?

Let’s focus in on a particular conflict. Then given a particular set of circumstances let’s try to sort out what we can in fact agree on.

There is an interesting contrast between many peoples’ intuitions about ethical claims, and their intuitions about other sorts of claims…

Back to that again: intuition: “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.”

But then the part where, in regard to moral conflicts revolving around things like human sexuality, abortion and gun control, there are those on both sides of the issue claiming they “just know” what “the right thing to do” is.

So much for intuition then?

As often as not intuition is embodied in what some call their Intrinsic Self. As though intuition itself is not but one more manifestation of dasein rooted out in a particular world understood in a particular way.

[quote]There is an interesting contrast between many peoples’ intuitions about ethical claims, and their intuitions about other sorts of claims; this contrast can be brought out by considering some examples. Suppose that you are asked some controversial ethical question, like

“Are middle-class people morally obliged to give money to the poor?”

or

“Is abortion ever morally permissible?”

Many people would respond to at least some questions of this sort – even if not the examples above – by saying something like: “It depends on your perspective.”
“For me this is wrong, but that does not mean that it is wrong for everyone.”
“Well, I think that this is wrong, but that is just my opinion."[/quote]

Some – many? most? – here know of my own “fractured and fragmented” reaction to conflicting goods. And, sooner or later, within any human community, rules of behaviors are established and sustained such that some behaviors are prescribed [rewarded] while other behaviors are proscribed [punished].

How do you account for that given your own moral philosophy?

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

It is interesting that we would not respond this way to questions about, for example, what is being served in North Dining Hall. In response to an important dining hall question like…

Do they have beef stroganoff in North Dining Hall tonight?

no one would respond by saying

“It depends on your perspective.”
“For me it is true that they are serving the stroganoff, but that does not mean that it is true for everyone.”
“Well, I think that they are serving stroganoff, but that is just my opinion.”

or, if we would, they would mean quite different things than when used in answer to the ethical question.

That’s how the world works by and large. There are things and there are relationships between things that are not just a matter of personal opinion. They can be demonstrated to in fact be true for everyone.

At least in this instance until some insist that consuming animal flesh is…immoral? Yes, it cannot be denied that beef stroganoff is being served in a particular dining hall on a particular night. It’s a simple culinary fact. But what of those who do argue that it should not be served anywhere because it amounts animal abuse.

The fact that we would not give answers of this sort indicates that we all endorse a thesis that might be called dining hall absolutism: we think that there are genuine facts about what food is being served in the dining hall, and that these facts do not depend on the perspective, opinion, or anything about the person who happens to be discussing these facts.

So, does anyone here actually dispute this? Walk into any dining hall and facts abound. Who is there, what’s being served, and countless other variables that all will agree on provided that they are capable to recognizing what these facts are.

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

Moral absolutism: there are facts about which actions are right and wrong, and these facts do not depend on the perspective, opinion, or anything about the person who happens to be describing those facts.

And, given a particular moral conflagration of note, what might these absolute moral facts be?

So, if you subscribe to moral absolutism, choose a moral/political conflict that is of particular importance to you and note these moral facts.

There are, broadly speaking, two ways of denying moral absolutism. One might say that there are no facts about what is right and wrong; or one might say that there are facts about what is right and wrong, but that these facts are relative to a person or group of persons.

It’s not what one might say so much as the extent to which they are able to demonstrate that what they say – think, believe – others are obligated to embrace in turn. If, say, they want to be thought of as rational human beings.

Let’s consider the first, more radical view:

Moral nihilism: there are no facts about which actions are right and wrong.

This view faces an immediate problem: the problem is to explain what if there are no facts about what is right and wrong, we doing when we say things like “Stealing is wrong!”

Stealing what? Given what set of circumstances? And then those like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who argued that “property is theft”. And if that is true what’s that make capitalism? For some, it becomes nothing less than the very embodiment [historically] of flagrant thievery.

Or the amoral sociopaths among us who will steal whatever it is they want, factoring in only the chances of getting caught.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Cue graded abdolutism.

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

The moral nihilist might respond to this challenge by pointing out that we quite often use language to do things other than describe facts. Consider the following examples:

“Get out of my classroom!”
“I declare you husband and wife.”
"Boooo!” (said while at sporting event)

These are all perfectly meaningful uses of language, but none is an attempt to describe some fact in the world.

On the contrary? It’s not like out of the blue a teacher will just blurt this out. There is in fact a reason for it. And a man and woman are declared husband and wife because in fact they just completed the marriage ceremony. Same with booing at sporting events. There was a particular set of facts that caused it.

Where the moral nihilists might interject here revolves precisely around contexts in which the facts might be disputed. The teacher was thought to be wrong to order someone out of his or her classroom. Someone might raise an objection to a marriage. And while some are booing at sporting events what about those who are cheering the same play?

So perhaps the moral nihilist should say that our uses of ethical language, as in

“Stealing is wrong!”

are like these; perhaps the purpose of this sort of sentence is not to describe a fact, but to do something else. This raises the question: what are the purposes of our uses of ethical language?

The whole point of creating and then sustaining ethical language pertains to the fact that in regard to things like classroom behavior and marriage and sporting events, different people will respond differently to the same behaviors. So, here, in regard to conflicting goods, both our actions and our reactions can be challenged by others. Click, of course.

Whereby relating to school classrooms or wedding ceremonies or athletic events, both actions and reactions might be very different. Then the part where particular deontologists on particular One True Paths might be squabbling rather heatedly regarding either the optimal behavior or even the only rational behavior.

One promising answer to this question is: they are commands, like saying “Get out of my classroom!” Perhaps saying the above sentence about capital punishment is a way of saying something like this:

“Don’t steal!

Perhaps. But then the part where any particular set of circumstances comes into dispute. The part where in community after community one or another rendition of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law prevails.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

At some point, in her past, someone dropped the needle on a self-loading turntable…and the same record has been playing for years.
At no point can she choose to stop doing what she’s doing.
It’s her fate.
So, it must be that she has no choice but to continue on…until the end, or until the compromises, she so desires, are made.
For no ethical or rational reason.

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

“Don’t steal!”

One apparent strength of this sort of view is that it explains an interesting fact about moral claims: that moral disagreements seem particularly resistant to resolution.

Your explanation or mine? And how exactly would we go about pinning down something like this in a world where there are literally hundreds and hundreds of moral objectivists among us all claiming they have already pinned it down. And some of them will tolerate no objections whatsoever. In fact, some will take those who do object and ship them off to reeducation camps or gulags or gas chambers.

Sometimes, of course, moral disagreements can be resolved; but other times, it seems possible for two people to, for example, know all of the relevant facts about abortion, and still disagree about whether it is sometimes morally permissible.

Though any number of times the “resolution” revolves almost entirely around this or that rendition of One True Path. God or No God, you either become “one of us” or else. Though for some you can never become one of them because you’re the wrong color or the wrong gender or the wrong ethnicity.

By contrast, it does not seem possible for two people to know all of the relevant facts about the dining hall, and yet disagree about whether stroganoff is on offer.

Same with abortion. There are all the biological facts embedded in abortion as a medical procedure. But what are all the facts pertaining to abortion as a moral issue? In fact, even those able to perform abortions with considerable skill can’t pin down when the unborn stop being just clumps of cells and become actual human beings.

On the present view, this sort of persistent disagreement would be explained by the fact that the two people are really not disagreeing about any facts about the world: they are, instead, simply expressing contrary preferences.

As though these preferences are not embraced by the moral objectivists in such a way that behaviors in any particular community are either prescribed [rewarded] or proscribed [punished].

Now, in regard to abortion, what behaviors ought to be either rewarded or punished?

[quote]However, even if this view seems plausible for sentences like “Stealing is wrong”, it does not fit other uses of ethical language as well. Consider, for example past tense sentences like

“The Athenians were wrong to put Socrates to death.”

could this really mean:

“Athenians, don’t put Socrates to death!”

or

“Don’t support the Athenians’ decision to put Socrates to death!"[/quote]

Or, for that matter, Hitler ordering the death of all Jews? Even when the lives of millions upon millions of men, women and children are at stake, both philosophers and scientists seem incapable of accumulating the facts needed to establish an objective morality pertaining to…genocide?

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

So this way of making sense of ethical language does not make moral nihilism seem very appealing. One other option for the moral nihilist is worth considering. Consider what my two year old daughter is doing when she says:

“Santa Claus will bring me an Elmo doll this year.”

It seems clear that she is trying to describe the world: she is saying something about how she takes the world to be.

On the other hand, as with any number of adults and God, the main point for children and Santa Claus seems to be this…

“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake”

Only it’s one thing not getting an Elmo doll from Santa because you’ve been bad, and another thing altogether being sent to Hell for all of eternity by God for sinning.

It’s just that what she is saying is false, since there is no Santa Claus.

Though, again, as with adults and God, all that kids need to do is to believe in Santa. At the same time, however, no one is actually going to expect these kids to demonstrate that he does in fact exist. There’s just no real comparison between opening Christmas presents once a year and saving your soul until the end of time.

The moral nihilist might say the same thing about “Stealing is wrong”: he might say that it is an attempt to describe the world, but one which is always false, since there are no such things as right and wrong actions.

Of course, existentially, stealing can result in all manner of individual rewards and punishments. And if they lock you up for stealing you’ll be able to describe a whole new world entirely…from inside a penal institution.

Existentially, right and wrong are everywhere. It’s just that – click – I root any particular individual’s assessment of stealing in dasein. And suggest further that in a No God world there may well be no essential, objective, deontological, universal morality.

Unless, of course, someone here can link us to a theoretical assessment of one from up in the technical realm. And then bring their philosophical conclusions down to Earth by demonstrating why and how their own One True Path here is obligatory for all those who wish to describe themselves as rational men and women.

Given a context of their own choosing.

[iambiguous]

Moral absolutism, moral nihilism, moral relativism
University of Notre Dame

This [moral nihilism] strikes many people as a hard view to swallow. For one thing, if moral sentences are simply all false in the way that all simple sentences about Santa are false, it seems that, once we realize this, we should simply stop using moral language. But could this be right?

Given that “moral language” is rooted historically and culturally in the necessity to establish rewards and punishments – rules of behaviors – within any particular human community, it really comes down to the extent to which these prescriptions and proscriptions revolve more around might makes right [autocracy derived from plutocracy derived from political economy], right makes might [God or No God] and/or democracy and the rule of law [in which over and again human interactions revolve around moderation, negotiation and compromise.]

With this in mind, let’s move to consideration of our second version of opposition to moral absolutism: the view that there are facts about which actions are right and wrong, but that these facts are, in some way or another, relative to a person or group of people.

Here I recall any number of exchanges I have had over the years in which some seemed to make what they deemed to be a crucial distinction between “objective morality” applicable to all in any particular sets of circumstances and “universal morality” which is said to be applicable to all rational human beings. Something along the lines of deontology ascribed to this or that specific community and deontology said to be applicable to all human beings. Period.

Note that this would not be a consequence of the version of moral nihilism which analyzes moral sentences as disguised imperatives; this analysis would not give us a reason to stop using moral language.

Even my own set of assumptions here – moral and political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein – does not suggest we stop using language to encompass behaviors deemed worthy of either rewarding or punishing. There’s just no getting around the need for morality in that sense. Instead, from my frame of mind “here and now”, we need to move away from the One True Path mentality that many objectivists embrace in appending “or else” as a consequence for those refusing to toe the line.