|
RIGHT
AND WRONG: AN EXCHANGE What is morality? In this and the next "supplement," I offer a few remarks that may clarify the different dimensions of moral assessment and argument. Moral disagreement is rife. It is an ineliminable fact of life. Nevertheless, some of it is unnecessary and avoidable because it arises out of confused or imprecise claims. An example of the latter is given below.
I. From an Internet newsgroup discussion (September 1995):
II. Some comments. First, note that Alpha shifts ground in his last remarks. He initially contends that seeing the world in terms of "right" or "wrong" is a mistaken, and "damaging," thing to do. The world "just is." His follow-up claim, however, addresses a different matter, the source or basis of "right and wrong." There isn't any "cosmic" anchoring of right and wrong, he insists; "right" and "wrong" merely express human reactions of preference or aversion. Let's carefully separate the two claims Alpha runs together:
III. What, exactly, does the first contention amount to? Is Alpha saying that we shouldn't view the world through moral categories? Or is he saying something much stronger, namely, that we shouldn't view the world through evaluative or normative categories? His comment that the world "just is" suggests that he's making the second claim. It suggests we should use the language of "is" in contrast to the language of "right" and "wrong" or the language of "ought" and "should" -- we should just describe the world and not comment on it. However, this extremely strong claim seems completely implausible. For one thing, mere descriptions of the world never tell us what to do; they don't, by themselves, point us toward any actions. Yet we must act in the world. In order for a description of the world to prompt us toward a particular action, it must be combined with some evaluative standpoint on the world. This is clear enough in Alpha's own case. He tells us that seeing the world in terms of right and wrong "damages" us. He offers a reason for us to make a particular choice ("quit thinking in terms of right and wrong"). The reason: it is bad or wrong for us to be "damaged" in this way. Alpha appeals to some evaluative standpoint he assumes his readers share. So, there are two versions of the strong thesis:
Now, number 1B contradicts itself, since it uses an evaluative category, "bad," in saying we shouldn't use evaluative categories. (And since Alpha doesn't think it confused to rank in value different ways of seeing the world -- some ways are damaging and some are not -- number 1B also contradicts number 1A.) Thus, if we do not want to impute to Alpha a thoroughly implausible position, we should drop number 1A altogether and construe number 1B in this weaker version:
IV. Let's pursue this last suggestion further. What kind of evaluative standpoint might we take toward the world if we don't take a moral one? One answer: a prudential standpoint. A prudential standpoint is a first-person standpoint: I view the world in terms of what's good for me, in terms of what advances my interests. Question: is a prudential point of view enough? The prudential point of view differs for each of us. There's prudence for me, prudence for you, prudence for Fred, prudence for Susan, prudence for Anna, and so on, for all the people in the world. Could we get along without any other evaluative framework, one that is common to us all? V. The moral point of view differs from the prudential in that the former represents a point of view all persons could share. It's an "all-person" rather than "first-person" perspective. Such a point of view is indicated by the Golden Rule, for example, which says "Do to others what you would have others do to you." I could adopt that rule, and so could Fred, Susan, and Anna. But the rule "Do what's in Bob Fullinwider's interest," though it's one I could easily adopt, is not one that Fred, Susan, or Anna would care to take up to regulate their own lives. If we are to guide our lives by a point of view others can share, it will have to be suitably general, like the Golden Rule. It can't make "Bob's interests" the benchmark for everybody's actions. VI. Let's now turn back to the other claim made by Alpha, number 2: Human preferences are the source of right and wrong. How should we react to it? First, we should make a crucial distinction Alpha does not make clearly, between the source and the ground of moral rules. To ask for the source of moral rules is to seek a causal or historical account of their existence. To ask for the ground is to seek the reasons upon which they are logically based. One way we answer questions about sources is to point to historical origins. Why do you believe cheating is wrong? Because you learned it in school. Because you were told it by your parents. Such an answer about origins doesn't resolve questions about grounds, however. To answer those questions, we need to uncover the reasons adequate to defending the rule, "Don't cheat." We can draw a parallel, here, with another instance of knowledge. The original cause of your believing that the three angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees was your learning it in school. Your teacher or your textbook told you. Yet, your teacher or text also helped you attain the reasons the three angles equal 180 degrees. You learned how to construct a geometrical proof from simple axioms. Thus, you acquired a ground for your belief that freed it (and its authority) from its source. To establish or defend the truth of your belief, you don't need to appeal to the word of a particular teacher or text at a particular time or place. You can demonstrate it to yourself and to anyone else. Likewise, in school and in the home you learn various moral rules like "Don't cheat." What grounds (reasons) do you acquire in such learning? Often the wrong grounds! Parents and teachers frequently explain moral rules by reference to prudential considerations. For example, a parent will admonish a child: 'Don't cheat; look what will happen if you get caught.' But 'you might get caught' isn't a reason for the child not to cheat; it's a reason for him not to cheat if there's danger of getting caught. As a rule of prudence, 'Don't cheat' rests on a special condition: the disadvantages of getting caught. Thus, in circumstances where there isn't any danger of getting caught, the rule no longer applies. Prudentially speaking, in those circumstances the child has no reason to refrain from cheating. Now, moral rules seem different than this. 'Don't cheat' as a moral rule means 'don't cheat, even when you can get away with it.' Moral rules rest on conditions that don't come and go, as it were. Thus, parents or teachers might have given you a different, and better, account of the wrongness of cheating. The reason cheating is wrong, they might have said, is not because the cheater risks detection and punishment but because cheating is unfair. The cheater claims for himself a special status. After all, he doesn't want others to cheat him. He wants them to go by the rule, 'Don't cheat,' while he's free to cheat as he pleases. So the cheater (i) is unwilling to act on a rule sharable by others, (ii) implicitly demands of others that they adhere to a rule he won't adhere to himself, and (iii) takes advantage of others' adherence to reap benefits for himself. "If you don't want to be a free-rider -- a person who thinks he's above everybody else -- then don't cheat:" that's what your parents might have told you. It would have been a good moral lesson. The source/ground distinction we've just been exploring is essential for getting straight on the relation of religion to morality, a matter which preoccupies Alpha. Religions are clearly sources of moral rules. "Where did you learn not to cheat?" we might ask, and you might answer, "from the Bible" (just as you learned that the angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees from your geometry book). However, if we asked why you shouldn't cheat, would you need to talk about the Bible? Isn't the little account we gave above about the wrongness of cheating a sufficient answer? And it doesn't invoke any distinctively religious ideas or conditions, does it? It is possible to view the world in terms of moral right and wrong without being religious: that seems to be the point made by Beta. If one way to answer a question about sources is to point to historical origins, a second way is to point to persisting causal conditions. Alpha suggests that human preferences are the source of right and wrong (he "can't see any other possible source"). If humans were different than they are, if they had different psychologies, Alpha might be saying, the content of our morality would be very different than it is. However, Alpha seems to be saying much more than this in his second set of remarks. He seems to be making a claim about the authority of moral standards, about their justification, not just their causal conditions. Moral standards don't derive their authority from an extra-human source, he says, they are "created" by humans. Moreover, the only reason for a moral standard is that it satisfies people's preferences. 'Don't cheat' is a valid moral rule (if it is) not because it is given by a divine ("cosmic") law-giver but because cheating displeases people. Anyway, whatever Alpha is trying to say here, we need to apply the source/ground distinction before we can even begin to make sense of it. [return to Supplements INDEX]
|