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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781877551437 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Awa Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 370 KB |
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Fate and Philosophy
A Journey Through Life's Great Questions
By Jim Flynn
Awa Press
Copyright © 2012 Jim FlynnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-877551-43-7
CHAPTER 1
What is Good?
DOES A MORAL REALITY TELL US WHAT IS GOOD?
After the age of twelve I lost Catholicism as the foundation of my commitment to humane ideals. Indeed, one of my objections to Catholicism was that its rules, such as the ban on contraception, were not always humane. For the next forty years I searched for something that would elevate humane ideals into principles everyone ought to respect, whether inclined to or not. Western philosophy offered five candidates: moral realism, moral language, nature, a universal maxim, and "the market".
Those who posit a moral reality believe there are moral "properties" that illuminate what we ought to do. These belong to an entity — such as God, or the world of forms proposed by the great Greek philosopher Plato — that exists beyond the physical universe, or to states of affairs within the physical universe.
Those who believe in the latter are divided into two camps: those who think moral properties belong to a kind of behavior (such as enjoying the pleasures of friendship), and those who think they belong to people as a trait, which we must use to explain their behavior. (For example, Hitler's wickedness influenced what he did.)
Living in a shared physical universe confers objectivity on science. What if what exists for you did not exist for me — for example, if you saw Mars with two moons and I with three? The advantage moral realism would confer is that my ideals, or those of someone else, would have objective status. If others had contrary ideals it would simply mean they were out of touch with moral reality, just as a flat-Earther is out of touch with the real physical universe.
The oldest appeal to a moral reality is to claim there is an all-powerful god who is morally perfect and issues commandments that tell us what is right and what is wrong. But would we accept his opinion if he were an all-powerful devil? Power is not the same as goodness: if Hitler had created the universe and resurrected himself from the dead, I would still reject his ethics. To accept a god's ethics, I must judge that this god is not only all-powerful but also benevolent. Indeed, why not just benevolent? What has power got to do with it? But that shows I have already made up my mind about what is good: goodness is benevolence.
An all-powerful god also poses the problem of the existence of evil. If this god is omnipotent, why does he tolerate so much evil in the world? Even if you solve this problem it does nothing to alter the facts: you had made up your mind about good and evil prior to judging him. Plato put this with elegant simplicity: do we accept a god's laws because they are good, or simply because they are a god's?
Plato, who lived from 428 to 348 BC, argued that beyond the physical universe there existed a world of "forms", each of which possessed the property of perfection — that is, each was perfect of its kind. The "form" of human society was the morally perfect human society, and we could look to this to know the truth about justice. Its perfection was absolute and thus it was too perfect to exist in the physical world of actual human societies.
Although no human society can be perfectly just, we must, of course, strive to approach justice as closely as possible. Think of the concept of a straight line. It is the only line that catches what a straight line really is: the shortest distance between two points. Every line I draw on paper will fall somewhat short of its perfect straightness.
Things that exist beyond the physical world — and so cannot be perceived by the senses — we refer to as transcendental, or non-natural. Plato's brand of moral realism proposes a non-natural entity — the "form" of human society — that possesses a non-natural property, perfect justice.
Plato argued that for every class of object we must posit a general idea in our minds. We can all distinguish chairs from tables. Therefore, even those two chairs that resemble one another least — say, a Victorian rocker and an aluminum lawn chair — must have more in common with one another than either has with a table. The general idea of chair must be truly general, and that means it cannot be reduced to a sense image. It must, for example, be broad enough to include both red and black chairs. To be a sense image it would have to have a particular color, and that would mean it could not do its job of allowing all chairs into its class.
Plato's reasons for thinking each general idea must have an independently existing counterpart (that is, that there must be a "form" of chair as well as a general idea of chair in our minds) are not made explicit. Perhaps since we, as physical creatures, are imperfect and the general idea is perfect, we must get it from contemplating something outside ourselves. However, the external existence of the forms is not too important for ethics: they would hold the key to the perfect state of things even if they were mental entities. Either we can read off their contents and learn what justice really is or we cannot. Plato's method of opposing the perfect and the anti-perfect is called dialectic.
We find that all societies that exist in the physical world share a common defect: they are ordered by politics, which always means a struggle for power and enshrines the principle "might makes right". This is the opposite of justice and suggests what we will find in the form of human society: the struggle for power will have been eliminated and a new, uncontaminated ordering principle will have taken its place. In other words, whatever ordering principle remains after we have eliminated the struggle for power will be true justice and tell us what justice really is.
When we perform the conceptual experiment of eliminating all the sources of the struggle for power, we are forced to imagine a kind of society in which the rulers live simply and have families in common, so no one can suspect them of greed or nepotism. Rulers are selected on merit, for their wisdom and virtue, by an apolitical institution — namely, the education system. The principle of merit dictates that everyone in the population, whatever the circumstances of their birth, has an equal chance in the education system, and the system must discover and enhance their best talent. When they leave there must be meaningful work for them to do — work that gives them a sense of inner worth so they will not seek "that good opinion they lack of themselves" from others. Empty people have a terrible need to feel larger than life: they seek to be applauded and worshipped and this is the root of the lust for power. Finally, there must be no extremes of rich and poor.
The citizens must believe in the "myth of the metals" — that is, have the proper mores. They must not have commercial values (worship the successful entrepreneur), militarist values (worship the man on horseback), or populist values (admire whoever can attract the applause of the mob). Rather, they must believe that wisdom and virtue are the mark of a ruler and that all social roles should go to those who have the appropriate competence and virtues.
We now realize we have the ordering principle we were looking for, the criterion of justice that orders society without defect. It is a full appreciation of the notion of merit: no racism, no sexism, no aristocracy of birth, no rich and poor, no human life wasted, no lack of a sense of self-worth.
Has Plato found a non-partisan test of goodness, one that confers objective status on his ideal society? That depends on whether the criterion "eliminate all competitions that confer power" is both impartial and sufficiently informative. Few would want an unmitigated struggle for power that would plunge us into an anarchic state of nature. However, many would want to retain competitions for power or wealth as long as these are governed by rules.
Democrats will want to use elections to select the government unless Plato can give better arguments against this than are found in The Republic. If they want to play his game, they will argue that elections are not ideal but the closest possible approach to perfection possible in the physical world. Free-marketers will argue that capitalism is the best possible approach to a just allocation of resources between the industrious and the lazy.
Those who are committed to the totality of humane ideals will note that humanism includes the creation of beauty, delight in diversity, and tolerance among those who differ. The criterion of eliminating the struggle for power is too narrow to address these great goods. Plato treats them as devoid of intrinsic value: he merely assesses them as means, either productive or counterproductive, to other goods. He censors the arts and forbids foreign travel because he believes artistic freedom and alien influences will corrupt the masses.
Much can be said for and against Plato on these issues but the point is this: the criterion of goodness he finds in the "form" of human society has been shown to be partisan. This means no one will profit from adding to their arguments a tag such as: "And besides this, my views are in accord with the form." The criterion can be legitimately debated and need not be accorded the role of an impartial arbiter.
The positing of a moral reality is seen to be futile. Plato has not solved a dilemma that afflicts all attempts to establish a higher court of appeal that will tell us whose ideals have objective status. To be non-partisan the court must be chosen according to a criterion broad enough to include both the humane and anti-humane. But in that case how could its decisions favor the humane over the anti-humane? Either it is non-partisan and helpless, or it can hand down decisions only because of its bias.
G. E. Moore (1873–1958) dragged moral properties down out of the heavens. Like Plato, he believed the property of goodness, or moral perfection, was non-natural and should not be confused with the natural properties we see around us, such as the colour yellow. However, goodness did not belong to "forms" that transcended normal human experience, but rather to certain states of affairs we experience every day (if we are lucky) — such as friendship and beautiful objects.
Moore gives us directions as to how to "cognize" which states of affairs have the property of goodness: we are to contemplate them in isolation from everything else. This will winnow out things that have intrinsic value from things valued merely as means. If you do this with money, you immediately perceive that it has value only in relation to the things it can buy. If you do it with the pleasures of friendship, or the contemplation of beautiful objects, you find that they (and nothing but they) are intrinsically good.
It is immediately apparent that Moore's method of "cognizing" what things are really good is hopelessly subjective: the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche just needs to say that contemplation of beauty is valuable only if the people in question can actually appreciate beauty (supermen), and friendship is valuable only between creatures worthy of regard (supermen) and not when herd men (the rest of us) are tasteless enough to enjoy the company of one another. So once again the positing of real moral entities is useless.
Worse, Moore's method introduces a confusion because "morally good" is not the name of a property but a label we paste on human behavior. The whole notion of natural states of affairs — those belonging to the physical world — having non-natural properties is suspect. No one would think it sensible to attribute natural properties to a non-natural entity, to say something like "God is yellow".
Moore gives a criterion for distinguishing natural properties from non-natural properties. He says that stripping a natural thing of one of its natural properties does violence to it. Strip a lampshade of yellow, for example, and you have altered its whole material structure. Now, rather than reflecting the wavelength of yellow light, it reflects, say, the wavelength of red light. He contrasts this with the pleasure of friendship, which you can strip of its goodness and leave untouched.
Well, so you can, but isn't that a reason for saying goodness is not an attribute of the object at all but a label human beings paste on some human behavior — one that reflects their assessment of the behaviour's moral rectitude? If people assess differently, what changes is not the object assessed but the people: they are revealed to have traded in their old moral principles for new ones. How we judge what is good is one of our properties, not a property of things outside us. We will address what "morally right" means in the next chapter.
Today moral realism is making what I hope will be its last stand. The Cornell School of Philosophy asserts that human behavior has moral properties — or at least human beings do — but, contrary to Moore, its proponents say these are perfectly natural properties — that is, they are moral facts about human actors to which we must appeal in order to explain their behavior.
Nicholas Sturgeon (born 1942) asserts that morality was a cause of the abolition of slavery. He is quite correct. The British Crown used the Royal Navy at great expense to suppress the slave trade, and no national interest of Britain dictated this sacrifice. He asserts that Hitler's morality — or moral depravity — was a cause of his behavior. Who would deny that? If Hitler had not firmly believed in a moral crusade to exterminate the Jews, it is doubtful the Holocaust would have been as horrific as it was. Who would deny that if people are really committed to their moral principles and therefore act on them, these principles influence their behavior?
However, these "moral facts" Sturgeon cites seem to me devoid of moral significance. They are simply psychological traits like any other psychological trait. If, for example, someone is really committed to getting into medical school, he or she will study hard.
The fact that moral principles are one of the traits influencing human behavior needs emphasizing. There have been times when psychologists wanted a "value-free" social science and liked to ignore moral principles in favor of more scientifically respectable traits, such as anxiety, self-image, love and emotional control. Or they smuggled in moral traits but tried to pretend they were something else, such as group feeling, or the nurturing instinct, or even disguised self-interest.
Sturgeon is not happy with internalized moral principles being an important psychological trait. He wants them to be called "moral facts" to distinguish them as something over and above what ought to be called "psychological traits". I am never inclined to forbid people using words in ways that give them pleasure. We will call internalized principles a moral x (fact, value, whatever you will) that influences behavior, and never call it a psychological trait.
As for these two categories, there will be close cases. For example, where do we put honesty? But let us set that aside. What does this naming exercise have to do with ethics, unless we add a distinction between moral facts and moral fictions, unless we reserve the right to say, "Hitler was morally depraved" and deny a Hitler youth the right to say, "Hitler was a moral hero."
Ethics is concerned with whether we can separate moral principles into those with objective status — that is, worthy of regard by all — and those with subjective status — not worthy of regard no matter how passionately you believe in them. The superior causal potency of one moral principle over another does nothing to show that it is objective rather than subjective. If it could be shown that only humane moral principles had the capacity to influence behavior, I would be amazed and pleased. But even that "moral fact" would do nothing to vindicate humane ideals. Imagine the shoe were on the other foot. In the wake of a nuclear war, the only ones left alive are ten Hitler youth. Then only Hitler's principles would have the capacity to influence human behavior.
Sturgeon himself says that his case for moral realism depends on whether a certain set of claims about what is really moral can attract rational agreement. This gives the game away. If we can show this, we do not need moral realism to solve the fundamental problem of ethics. Even then, clear thinking would still forbid us attributing some kind of heightened causal role to the vindicated moral principles.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fate and Philosophy by Jim Flynn. Copyright © 2012 Jim Flynn. Excerpted by permission of Awa Press.
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