Why Should I Care About Morality?
Arnold Zuboff keeps asking a dangerous question – whether anyone has any real reason to act morally. He thinks it has led him to a new basis for ethics.
Here we go again.
Another hypothetical examination of morality in a “thought experiment”.
A distant stranger? £10 [$12.50]? How about it being someone you love? How about it being £799,400 [$1,000,000]?
There are [out in the real world] countless numbers of actual different people whose lives might be traded for countless numbers of different sums.
And then there’s your own situation. How badly do you need money at the time the proposition is presented to you? What do you construe to be the source of morality given the behaviors you choose? Do you believe in God and Judgment Day? Are you a sociopathic nihilist? Is it ever and always about the money to you?
“Based purely on morality”? Is that even something that philosophers/ethicists can pin down with any degree of objectivity?
It’s like the “trolley problem”, but with no money involved. One set of lives traded for another set. But what is the precise set of circumstances. Who are these people? Do you know them? Does one outcome sit better with you even if it means a greater loss of life?
Instead, the “situation” is often confined solely to an intellectual contraption:
Presto! No punishment! Though, sure, there are actual “real life” circumstances in which someone might be confronted with a dilemma of this sort knowing that no matter what she chooses she will never be caught or punished.
Also, doesn’t this really come down to the intellectual contraption concocted by Kant: a categorical and imperative obligation to do the right thing?
It has nothing to do with rewards and punishments. Instead, it has everything to do with “reasoning” oneself to virtue.
But there’s a catch of course: that “transcending font”. A God, the God up there or out there somewhere able to finally judge Gyges. Take that away and what on earth is available to the Kantians or those among us here who might attempt to judge his choice.