Let me consider your first example. Suppose I poisoned all the water on a planet. If I was the only life on this planet then it would either be a very stupid act, or else it would be a deliberate act of suicide. But is it immoral to kill myself either by stupidity or by suicide? Is it immoral to accidentally hit your own thumb with a hammer? Is it immoral to commit suicide? I believe a man has the right to his own life. Do you agree?
Now suppose I poison the drinking water in my city. This is a very different situation because I have presumed to make the choice for other people. Even if everyone in my city desperately wanted to die, unless each person in the city can convince me that it is better for him or her to die, then it was immoral for me to kill them. Morality is a social concern. It only arises when living things interact.
Now let me consider your second example. It is not immoral for a woman to hurt her own body by smoking. But if she expects society to treat her smoking related illness then there is a moral dimension to this issue. If this woman is pregnant and she knows that her smoking might hurt her baby then she obviously must make a moral decision. It is clearly a moral decision because more than one person is involved.
Johan, neither of your two examples makes me think that moral decisions exist for less than two living things.
Humans have always been in danger from other humans. There was more inhumanity in the days when humans believed that God wrote the moral codes.
Suppose I’m an Irish monk living in the Middle Ages. Suppose you are a Viking warrior that has just sailed over to Ireland. When you appear in my Abbey with an Irish girl tossed over your shoulder and demanding gold, I bring out the Bible instead. I explain that this book contains God’s commandments that apply to everyone in the world, and these commandments forbid you to act in this way. Now, how do you think this story ends?
Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter if our moral standards were written by God or by humans. The problem is not how to make good men act good, the problem is how to make bad men act good. Laws are not written to protect us from good men. No matter how our moral standards arise some men will always choose to ignore them. A hundred reasons might not suffice a bad man to be good, but no reason at all is sufficient for a good man to be good. Good men need no external reasons to be good. There is no law that makes me treat you with kindness. Kindness comes from inside the heart, not from external threats. Kind and compassionate men free themselves from all moral restraints.
Johan, I should make it clear that I am not a moral relativist. There are standards of behavior, but humans write these standards. If we are to have any standards at all they must be written by humans. Who else could write them?
----- Hello Pax_vitae, Polemarchus, Johan. Polemarchus thank you for your useful riPOSTe. It has stimulated my individual brain.
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----- Yes. “no is implies an ought.”. I never said i espoused Socrates opinion, i was only reporting it. I agree, it is not good to be absolutely certain of one’s morality.
Man does not have to kill the higher animals for his nutritional intake.
Man has more options, including (but not limited to) birth control and migration, options that lions can not exercise.
Your counter-example contrasts a man-made overpopulation (and thus one that did not have to occur) with my example of natural starvation.
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----- I submit that situations in which woman must kill to survive are rare. War would be a good example.
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----- Point taken. Although the bestiality of chimpanzees is extremely cruel at times, man is much crueler, but in a higher, more subtle clever kind of way. Thus we see the average CEO in the USA making $13,000,000 annually while poor africans starve to death on less than $200 during the same time period. In man the capacity for cruelty is simply magnified.
----- Morality is an intensely individual phenomena, although one can view it from a social context. If morality is of no concern for an individual, how can it ever be of concern to society which is comprised of individuals? If i don’t first care about myself, how will i ever begin to care about other people? And conscience, which you rightly seem to value, would be of NO value from a purely collective viewpoint. Show me where morals reside, if not in individuals. When we all share the same stomache and the same brain i might be inclined otherwise.
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----- I do not hold the traditional view that goodness is an entirely internal quality. As i stated "I am not sure that morality can be considered in a context separate from women (or men), but I do feel that it can be considered from more than a purely social context. Balance is critical. Often, competing theories both have truths. And yes, we need others, and we need to act with benevolence towards others, but this in no way implies that morality is a purely social phenomena. Just because one of the effects is social does’nt mean that the cause is also.
----- Your thesis: A man can’t be good, honorable, or have dignity outside of his relationships. So you are telling me that a man’s relation to himself is of no consequence in his affairs with others. Most psychologists would disagree.
-----If Robinson Crusoe (before he meets Friday) has a value conflict as whether to remain in his hut or gather coconuts, that is morality. If a woman awakens in the morning, and consciously decides that today is worth living, that is morality.
----- I do not think that we would still be human if we were anything less than a “bundle of competing interests”. This gives us life, depth, clarity. Without inner conflict we could not learn, grow, etc. It does’nt matter whether we consciously think of ourselves as having differing interests or no, the fact is that we do. If we did’nt, as Polemarchus put it “[we] would remain as morally innocent as chimpanzees.” In this, i submit that you, yourself, Polemarchus have given us an example of a moral di-lemma that is not purely social.
-----“One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche.
There are ecological systems in the nature that you are a part of the same as the cells in your body are a part of you. I use to call them “larger cycles”, and the processes in my body I call “smaller cycles”.
The ecological system are in it’s turn under influence of larger cycles in form of universal laws. There is not a god that write them down.
From your point of view there were nothing wrong with Nazigermany’s ideology and behavior because it was a collective where the majority agreed about their new morality. Noting in the nature told them that it was wrong. Only a larger collective could tell them that they were wrong. If they had won the war it would have been a perfect civilization that had started to take place?
You answered a early version of my post before I was ready and I removed #2 (before your answer) because of the same reason as you write in your answer, I’m sorry for this. I will not put up a post again before it is 100% ready. The focus should be on the hypothetical example.
In my opinion there is no other way out of my last post then to agree with one of those two statements:
Laws can be found outside human collectives.
There is no right and wrong, and I can do whatever I want as long as everyone else agree with me.
Do you have a third alternative?
Mistakes from accidents are not on the same level as mistakes from misunderstandings. But it is wrong to hit yourself on your own thumb, and there are ways to avoid this by practicing and being able to use the hammer better. But I would not use the world immoral, no. The next step is to ask yourself if it’s immoral to be hit by lightning?
Yes I agree but if the person commit suicide for the wrong reason; from a misunderstanding then it also makes the act wrong. And something that is wrong is in my opinion the same as immoral, or else we are just playing with words.
Are you now including something else then humans?
Yes I agree, and I’m not including a God in my model.
Well the Vikings became Christians after a while, but I guess this first encounter ended up a little messy. The alternative was to ask them how many they were and accept their morality if there were enough people in their collective. Polemarchus, is one more person enough to make their morality the right one, or do you have any other rules what makes one collective’s moral wrong and the other right?
I don’t like being practical in a philosophical discussion. Something may feel practical but it does not make it right. To be “good” we must first sort out what good is. “Kindness comes from inside the heart”. The so called heart is not a premiere function; the heart (feelings) indicates that you are doing something meaningful in relation to your surrounding, it does not tell you anything about right and wrong I’m afraid. Many lies have been told with a bleeding heart.
I think you provide a good example of total moral relativism, that’s why I find this discussion interesting. You say that humans write the standards of behavior, and that they become rightful if enough humans stand behind them. If enough people told you that the earth was flat again and that they should avoid to go out on the sea because they can fall over the borders, then you would believe them and act as if it was true? And if everyone claims that the earth is in the center of the universe and the sun rotates around the earth and it was a sin to think differently, and that doing so was punished by death, then you would agree with this morality?
There have always been “evil†people who didn’t care about religion. I know it would be naive to believe that religion somehow automatically makes for kind and gentle people. Some will never be swayed by the “fear of God.†But there was a surface veneer to the relationships between people back then, at all levels in society, because that is what God demanded. Well I should really say the Catholic Church. But partly because of people’s lack of fear in God, and the fact the Church had so much power, the State developed their own Laws to protect their interests.
We as a civilisation live on two levels (although some only on one): The law of the Land, and the Law of God. How you choose to live is made up by the combination of the two. Nearly all will acknowledge the first, knowing if they break them, they will have to spend time in Jail. While in the case of the second its more about fear of the “Afterlifeâ€. Which from reading another one of your posts is no more then a superstition held in the fear of facing non-existence.
I think your use of the word ‘Truly’ is meant in sarcasm. While back then people might have had the fear of God in them, they still acted the way they wished to a large extent. When talking about a God figure I mean it as a hypothetical statement. The God figure would be undeniable, not of imaginary origin. But even if this deity were true, you would still have to be moral, either because of love or fear of God. Love makes us do selfless acts willingly, fear makes us do almost anything but through coercion.
To me, Morality and its’ original need has been superseded by the State Laws. So the only way we could get the idea of humanity’s fellowship is by displaying to them the bigger picture. Like the way you said the Astronaut looked out the window back at earth and covering it with his thumb. Realising that humanity’s destiny has to be intertwined. While the world seems so big when you’re sitting on it, from space it’s just another speck in the horizon. Maybe if we can see the world like it really is from space, we can hope to educate kindness for the sake of kindness. But when we can’t even get local communities to live to getter in relative peace, I don’t know how long we might have to wait.
Yes, fear if people didn’t want to love him. You can choose to love him or fear him; it doesn’t matter as long as you do what he says. I think this is the Catholic line. I know this is not right, and was making a point about the weakness of humanity. People will always choose to do what they wish. So they need to be convinced that Morality is what they need most in life, not anything else.
Most people can’t be good for the sake of goodness. It’s a human failing, part of our survival instinct. I think the future of morality is limited, and has become a case of what we like and dislike. God no longer has a role to play in how people live their daily lives, as it could be said he has turned his back to us. While groups of people still believe, this number will get smaller and smaller over time. Education will remove superstition and then the need for God altogether. Fundamentalism will be seen for the power struggle it really is. Like a young child crying on the ground we sit, waiting for a loving parent to pick us up and give comfort. But we sit and wait, and wait. Soon we stop crying and dry are eyes, we stand up and walk off to follow wherever our nose leads us.
As for slaves, we’re all slaves to our body; we must eat, drink, and sleep, as it needs. But the body is also a slave to the mind. I (my mind) must be slave to the body for all my life if I wish to experience anything. While the mind might have most of the perceived control, when it really comes down to it, it’s the body that makes it all happen. Without this slavery could I exist? For me to exist it’s the price I must pay.
Like following the Laws of the State and paying my Taxes. All life is a prostitution of ourselves, which enables us to gain benefits in this world. I work because I want to live a comfortable life. I choose work that I find interesting but as undemanding as possible. While I work for about 8 hours a day, so in the other 8 I’ll have the money to pay for my house, car, girlfriend. These are all things I am a slave too, because I want them to enrich my life. Old-fashioned slavery might not exist to most of us in this current time. We are still slaves, we just get a better deal. I can choose who my master is, but I will always need a master. Capitalism works off the basis you can create something for less then you can sell it. This means you only pay workers the least they will accept to gain more profit. But even the master is a slave to his slaves, he needs them to survive. It’s back to the relationship of opposites that create and sustain life. We have freedom like the deterministic’s would say we have freewill. We just think we do.
How I would love to live in a world like this. But I must say, I don’t see it happening anytime soon (maybe I should also drop my use of the word ‘soon’). My childish optimism has long since passed me by. I agree with Jesus, that if we want to live in a Kingdom of God we need to be innocent like children, but not childish in an immature way. Idealistic because we know no other way of living. This is why the religious love polluting the minds of the young with their beliefs, to gain control over there minds. They become the new pawns in the game of life, to die as martyrs for the cause. Knowing no better they sacrifice their lives because of sins of the sinners. Just look at Palestine, this is the lowest form of struggle. The armchair generals send their suicide children to kill other children. All because they worshiped the God of national hate. Being Irish, I’ve had to watch my own countrymen do the same thing to the English for years. But at least for Ireland this might be drawing to a close soon.
It’s a good quote. But even those who live a moral life don’t get their reward, unless all are moral. While Morality makes us worthy of Happiness, reality will always make us miserable.
We still are an unenlightened people, yet we call our individualistic selfishness enlightenment. Some day I hope enough people will become philosophers and realise that to have a good country and then a good world, we need to have morally good leaders. It’s the people at the top that set the example for the rest. When we elect scoundrels we should not be surprised to live in a country full of corruption, even the ordinary people will start to say, “Well if he’s doing it, and he’s the one making the laws, then I might as well get in on the action.â€
The world needs lots of good-hearted cynical people.
Was he talking about the children of the future???
Wow, the objections made by you, Johan, Pax, and Skeptic are all excellent. I really couldn’t ask for better replies.
I agree that we’re capable of far more sophisticated cruelty than the other animals. But I wonder if it isn’t because men have one foot in each of two worlds? We’ve one foot planted firmly in the world of the apes while our other foot is gingerly testing more civilized grounds. The discoveries of our higher intellect are freely available to the ape. No thinking person would hand a loaded automatic pistol to a Chimpanzee, but how could a similar catastrophe be avoided in a species that is simultaneously technologist and ape? How do we keep rocket launchers out of the hands of apes when the technologists are themselves apes?
Technology is a tool that allows us to amplify and concentrate our means. Suppose there is a supremely evil Slug living in my garden. But even if this Slug embarks hell-bent on a destructive rampage, what is the worst it can do? Now think of an Islamic terrorist on a rampage in New York City riding a camel and brandishing a scimitar. He might be able to kill a few people before he is pulled from his camel. But put him at the controls of a Boeing 737 aircraft and he now has an amplified means to deliver his terror. Technology allows us to amplify our means for whatever ends we choose. We can make cancer treatments or we can make nuclear weapons. The great shame is that man stumbled upon advanced technology before he’d been able to throw-off his primitive moral roots.
Every analogy has limits to its applicability. Your three points correctly indicate the useful limits of my Lion-Gazelle analogy. The intent of my analogy was to stress that men compete for resources.
This reminds me of a comment Francis Crick made about the human brain. If a single neuron is incapable of thought how could a collection of similarly unthinking neurons be capable of thought? The answer has to do with the way unthinking neurons are organized in a complex relationship with other unthinking neurons.
Morality, like consciousness itself, is an intangible phenomenon. As such, it does not reside anywhere other than as a relationship. Consciousness arises within a complex relationship among neurons. Morality arises with the complex relationship between discrete “selves.” Morality is a concept; it’s an invention of our mind. Despite his best intentions, a man can’t be good to a stone. For the relationship of goodness to exist at least two “selves” are required.
Living things don’t automatically ask themselves how they ought to interact with other living things, this concept is in no way innate to life. Man appears to be unique on this planet in agonizing over how he ought to behave towards other living things. My quote about gratuitous Chimpanzee violence was intended to suggest that these socially complex creatures exist without a well-developed sense of morality.
Well, many folks would argue that caring too much about myself actually inhibits my caring about other people. This reminds me of the story of the Zulu King Shaka (1785-1828). He’d have his own people strangled if they laughed or coughed in his presence. When his mother died, his personal grief was such that he had up to 7,000 of his subjects slaughtered. Shaka had a very high opinion of himself and his feelings, but he had quite a low opinion of the feelings of others.
But to return to the Primates for a moment, remember that both Chimpanzees and Bonobos have passed the mirror-identification test that’s supposed to indicate (at least to us) some measure of self-awareness. Chimpanzees seem to care very much about themselves. The males routinely fight to the death in their effort to attain an Alpha social status. So, here’s an example of a creature with both self-awareness and self-importance, yet ruefully lacking in moral character.
Now having said as much, you might now be surprised to read that I actually agree with your above assertion. I believe that the extension of the value one gives to ones own life is a necessary, though not a sufficient, requirement for the recognition that the lives of others are similarly valuable. I (obviously) don’t think this belief is incongruous with my assertion that morality is fundamentally a social relationship. Chimps and immoral humans alike can highly value their own lives without placing an equal valuation on the life of others. Morality exists as a relationship. Between humans, at least, it requires a trust that the goodwill I extend might be reciprocated.
Suppose we lived in a social system not unlike that of black-widow spiders. Imagine that (other than for the purpose for mating, and even here the consequences for males are rather bleak) whenever two people encountered each other the certain result would be a fight to the death. If everyone is assured that everyone else only means them harm, how could we speak of morality? How could I begin to cultivate the concept of altruism towards other men if I knew that the slightest display of weakness on my part would result in my instant death? My heart might be bursting with the wish that I somehow be able to express my love for others, but still I’d know that if I ever did; Whack! All men’s actions would be the same. No matter what thoughts were taking place in our own minds, we’d still try to kill each other the moment we set eyes on each other. If everyone fought to the death the moment they met how could an inherently good man ever be differentiated from an inherently evil man? Mahatma Gandhi said:
“It’s impossible to shake hands with a clenched fist.”
Indeed, it’s impossible to shake hands if the fist of either man is clenched.
Here we clearly disagree. I believe both examples exhibit the choices people make about their own lives. We decide moment by moment if our life is worth living. I can imagine pilots trapped in the wreckage of their burning aircraft begging to be killed. People suffering with incurable disease similarly ask for help to die. Peter Singer makes some persuasive arguments in this direction. All a man owns in this world is his character plus a bag of bones. Marcus Aurelius noted that Epicurus was fond of saying:
“Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse”
This is the extent of our dominion. Marcus Aurelius thought as much, even as the Emperor of Rome.
Again Marshall, I’ve particularly enjoyed this exchange of ideas. I wish learning were always this much fun.
You spoke earlier about collective moral agreements. I should have objected then to this suggestion, but I’m afraid that it slipped my mind. I do not believe that morality should be decided democratically. A million people can behave just as badly as can one person. In fact, one of my complaints about people is that they too often just imitate the society around them, instead of thinking through the moral issue for themselves. The cognitive neuroscientist, Steven Pinker, says that people tend to calibrate their moral compass to reflect the values they find around them. So, if all your neighbors are Fascists you probably will be a Fascist as well. If most of your neighbors have slaves then you are more apt to own slaves yourself. Again, I think we should all try to decide for ourselves how best to behave. I know that I’m not immune to social pressures, but still, I try to think for myself.
For example, no law prevents me from killing animals. People don’t care if I kill animals. But I decided that since I can live without killing animals then I will live without killing animals. But if I were on an airplane that crashed into a mountain in Argentina I would not hesitate to eat the bodies of my dead friends in order to stay alive. I’d probably be the first one in line with my plate and fork. Still, there is no reward for making my life more difficult by not eating meat. In fact, most people probably think I’m crazy for being a vegetarian.
The second part of your above quote is true. Nature did not tell the Nazi’s they were wrong. If everyone on earth died tomorrow morning from the collision of a huge asteroid, the universe would not take the slightest notice. The universe does not care if the atoms in my body form a human or a little cloud of smoke. You asked (humorously) in your last post if it would be immoral if I were hit by lightning. The thing that makes it funny is that we all know that lightning does not care if it hits me or if it hits a pile of rocks. It just doesn’t matter to the world if I live or die. There is no morality at all for rocks because no one cares about rocks. Rocks don’t even care about rocks. But people care about me, and I care about me. So this is where morality comes from; it comes from humans.
Yes, I think so. I wrote it in an earlier post. I said,
“A moral solution requires both of us relinquish some of our personal freedom so that we may both share an equal measure of personal freedom. We make a personal compromise for the good of all persons involved.”
Man is a social being. We seek the company of others and we suffer when we are isolated. We define ourselves, in part, through our relationships. Since we all evolved together out of the very same pond scum, it follows that our brains all function very much the same. So, if moral codes are written anywhere, they are written in the way that our brain functions. When men from across the world think about the same problems they most often find the same solutions.
My hobby is to solve mathematical problems that appeared in Japanese temples some hundreds of years ago.
I sometimes think about a certain geometry problem for weeks until the answer comes to me. When I look at the answer given in the back of my book, I usually discover that the method I used to solve the problem was nearly the same as was used by an ancient Japanese farmer or merchant. So, I have a good reason to think that if men all over the world think of the same moral problem they also might arrive at nearly the same solutions. The most important thing is that men try to find these answers.
You obviously live in the suburbs Michael. This is just not the universal perspective. I’m not knocking the suburbs or any other of the peaceful places to live but you just have to remember that it is not universal. (I am a suburbanite myself)
Derivation of Morality?
I must agree with Polemarchus on the derivation of morality but I think that laws of nature played a part in the derivation of humans and the molding by which we are shaped. Human interaction is necessary for the term morality to be used as inanimate objects are not concerned with consequence. So I would suggest that you guys drop the derivation discussion as both of your thoughts concur and ultimately bring about the same concept, moral objectivism.
Moral Objectivism
The problem of moral objectivism is that it cannot be revealed except through percieved consequence. Kant would argue against this, but no matter it is true. So if we are to evaluate actions and consequences, we must evaluate by some universal principle. What do all forms of life strive for? Individual freedom and happiness. Right? So we must evaluate an action to either be righteous or unrighteous by this value. Don’t worry, I am not a Utilitarian, but I do take a Teleological perspective.
So now that we can add value to an action, what of actions that bring about individual freedom and happiness for myself but bring about enslavement and sorrow for a fellow being? Well, obviously it is deemed unrighteous. Well, is there any way to bring about these positives without subjecting another to the negatives? I don’t see why not. Theoretically, we could all live in peace, harmony, and love without adherence to selfish activity.
Law and Enforcement
Before I continue with this, I would just like to make the distinction between morality and law. Humans have developed laws throughout the ages based on subjective moral beliefs. Much of it has developed with and stemmed from religion. All of it, however, is based upon fear of consequence, as Pax suggested. The problem with this is that people associate their actions with the lawfully intended consequences rather than the actual consequences. This also leads to the reasoning of many that if I can get away with it, then there are no consequences.
This is why I say that law is a “fix”, not a solution. Not only is it a poor fix but law as it is subjective per the law makers, often excludes the much of the population.
Ignorance and Enlightment
This is why I liked Pax’s reference to Socrates, “To hurt another is to hurt ourselves.†People will do something b/c you tell them to but they won’t take it seriously unless they know “why”. This is where law fails and education succeeds! The “why” is the most important concept of morality. Like Polemarchus said, we may find out one day that benevolence was not necessary, but until then we should “act as if we loved.” That’s great and all but it does not work. People want to know why they should love each other. The people that act on this concept of love these days end up getting screwed over by the guy who realizes that it is easier to just steal. Integrity does not pay when you are in a “dog eat dog” world.
So it will continue to be the ignorant “do-gooders”(givers) vs. the ignorant “evil-doers”(takers) and the takers will win almost every time. This leaves even those of us whom are enlightened to choose sides. Although we know that what goes around comes around, we must play the same game that everyone else plays in order to get by. We end up paying the price, though. We have to live in a society where we are in constant fear of terrorists, criminal mischief, financial instability, governmental collapse, and just having to see the sorrow in a young person’s eyes when they come to the realization that world is not what they thought it was.
The answer is in education. Sure, the population knows the rules but they won’t play the game until they know the why’s.
Polemarchus stated:
You must be crazy! How could you go through Thanksgiving without the Turkey?!? I have to admit that pumpkin pie and sweet potatoe soufle deserve a mention as well but from a utilitarian perspective kill the animals and bring on the feast!
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----- Excellent post skeptic. The “why” and Education are always important. However i agree with Polemarchus on the vegetarian thing, i am moving in that direction myself.
----- Surprisingly i agree with much that you said. I am extremely intrigued by your notion of Morality as a formal aspect of relationships, rather than an efficient aspect of individuals. These two are not necessarily incompatible. Please help me to better understand this.
----- Values about a person’s own life are not part of morality? How serendipitous! I just read something similiar to this last night in a Nietzschean critique. READING NIETZSCHE Edited by Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins. THE ESSAY ON page 29 BY FRITHJOF BERGMANN. He cites the Balinese Culture, where most transgressions are simply considered “stupidities”. The idea of Freedom, and guilt as we know it is simply absent in these cultures.
----- This then, begs the question, where is the division line between values and morality? Morality implies free-will, perhaps this it. Perhaps morality only begins with choice. Maybe values are simply subordinate goals to those of Morality. Perhaps there are many more things under the heading amoral, non-moral than i have previously construed. Where is this no-man’s land of morality? Where the intrepid explorer who will map it’s boundaries? Am i (as Pax_Vitae states) rendering too much unto Caesar? These are questions of much personal import.
---- Thank you for quoting Ghandi, he is one of my personal heros.
----- Thanks for the excellent post Pax_Vitae!
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----- When you say that morality has become a case of our likes and dislikes it reminds me of emotivism or the boo-hooray theory. I disagree with emotivism. As a secular person, i continually look for ways to love without invoking God. Your allusion to “[us] waiting for a loving parent to pick us up” is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of God, that later in life we substantiate a God for our lost parents.
---- I think if more of us were “Citizens of the World” as one greek put it, the world would be a better place. There can be no place for hate and intolerance in the future World that i envision.
----- “May our differences unite to become greater than the sum of our parts.” Sarak on Star Trek.
I enjoy reading Robert Solomon as well. I thought his, The Passions was especially good.
Indeed, in his book Elbow Room, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote:
“As the philosophers’ saying goes, ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.”
At this moment in some remote galaxy, an advanced form of life is likely suffering wrongfully at the hands of others. But even if I knew the details of this interstellar injustice it still wouldn’t make me morally culpable. I am not responsible for events beyond my control. But back here on earth the argument that we’re unable to help is usually a cover for the fact that we’re actually unwilling to help. “I’d love to help you, but my hands are tied,” should normally be translated as, “I’d love to help you, but only if it would cost me nearly nothing to do so.”
It’s here Marshall: Which is more valuable; that I use this computer to debate theoretical Ethics or that I sell this computer and use the money to save the life of a single child in a third world country? Is there anything I could say in this forum that would have more value than a human life? In this respect, how am I different than Socrates, who sat on his arse discussing the essence of Justice while his wine cup was kept full by a slave? “Hypocrisy,” noted La Rochefoucauld, “is the homage vice pays to virtue.” We moralists are hypocrites by avocation, the only difference is that the best of us know of it before others have to remind us of it.
The Bible passage in Mark 10:21 tells Christians outright how they might follow Jesus’ teaching:
"Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, one thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.
This clearly implies that we should be able to recognize Christians on the street by their ragged clothes. So, where are they? Why do well-dressed Christians drive to their worship services in expensive cars? Why do they worship Christ and their God, his father, in vastly opulent churches and cathedrals?
Marshall, it’s good to hear that you’re leaning towards vegetarianism. However, I should warn you to be sure you’re not wearing leather shoes when you announce that you don’t eat animals for ethical reasons; else the carnivores will trip over themselves to point out your hypocrisy. There is no man so good that his actions could be entirely above reproach. But if trying to do even a little good in this world only makes us hypocrites, shouldn’t we all just admit that men are pigs and be done with it? But another path would be to understand that we don’t live in a binary world of black and white choices and perfect moral theories. In this tangled mess of confusion and uncertainty men are bad or good only in relation to other men.
The slave owner that tries to understand justice is, after all, trying to be a better man than the slave owner that doesn’t care about justice. Similarly, I’d allow that a Christian giving 5% of his income to the poor, as opposed to 100%, could still think of himself as a Christian. The vegetarian wearing leather shoes lives closer to his beliefs than a beefsteak-eating, leather shoe-wearing vegetarian. I’ve seen bumper stickers on SUV’s bearing Ghandi’s message that we should, “Live simply, so that other’s may simply live.” As much as a bumper sticker seems to make a mockery of his words, who am I to complain of their hypocrisy? I’m a hypocrite as well. The Roman poet, Ovid, might have been referring to me when he wrote:
“Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.”
“I see what is best and approve of it, but I continue doing what is worst.”
I’ve wondered at times how I ever could laugh when there’s so much suffering in the world? How could I ever enjoy a meal when I know that before I’ve finished with my desert a dozen children will die from hunger? At the end of the film, Schindler’s List, Schindler berated himself for not having saved even more Jews. He was gently reminded to look instead at the faces of those he had saved. I must remind myself likewise that if we should wait to laugh until the day there is no more suffering, then there will be no laughter at all. To think myself a good man I don’t have to live in barrel, as Diogenes is said to have done. I have no more ability to save every starving child on this planet than I have the ability to save that hypothetical man living in another galaxy. But it’s wrong to confuse the fact that I can’t save every child with the fact that I might save some child. “Ought” does imply “can,” but the fact that we can’t do everything does not imply that we ought to do nothing. The smallest of good acts that we do are worth more than the greatest of good acts that we leave undone.
Yes, as discrete ideas they’re good, but my attempts to construct a complete theory around them have thus far led to inconsistencies. When you push them a bit harder they invariably converge into a form of Contractualism similar to that proposed by David Gauthier or John Rawls (for which excellent counter-arguments already exist). But I’m not surprised when the extension of promising ideas lead to so little. The invention of a complete and consistent moral theory would be a huge accomplishment! But I wonder if the fact that man’s attempts to invent such a theory have so far clearly failed isn’t telling us something important? Perhaps the hope for a complete and consistent moral theory should go the way of our hopes for a perpetual motion machine?
What interests me more these days is to explain how men should act given that a complete and consistent theory remains as far out of reach today as it was two thousand years ago. This reminds me of the joke about two men stranded on an island. One of them suddenly and excitedly explains that he has thought of a way to refuel their Jet-Skis on what would be a very long ride back to civilization. The other man looks at him blankly and says that the idea is indeed wonderful, or at least it would be if only they had Jet-Skis. Men simply don’t possess the “Holy Grail” of moral theories; what we do have is a pressing need to decide how to act at this very moment. Instead of an exclusive search for certainty, I wonder if we should instead be thinking about how we might continue to live with uncertainty.
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----- Excellent! I believe that anyone who improves his life based on ideals and principles must at one time or another be a hypocrite. If i am twixt the self of yesterday and my ideal self, i am already guilty. I am a hypocrite too, like that dude from the Bible (Paul?), “That which i would do, i do not; And that which i would do not. i do” or something like that. I just don’t understand those who have no interest in changing for the better. I think it important to be trying. (My wife tells me that i am a very trying person.)
----- I will be a vegetarian by the end of the year for at least three reasons.
1.) Eating vegetables is healthier.
2.) I don’t create pain and suffering for animals. Chickens will no longer have their beaks snipped off for me. (something akin to ripping out all my fingernails at once).
3.) I will no longer consume inordinate amounts of grain and water that starving people in other countries need.
---- My primary reasons are to allevate hunger in humans, and pain in animals. If i bought my leather shoes before i became a vegetarian, i will gain nothing by throwing them away. I do not force these beliefs on others, nor do i go to extreme lengths like killing animal trainers.
I have’nt actually read Solomon, the book i was reading was merely edited by him.
---- Yes it is important not to exclude the middle. Morality is not just black and white.
----- I appreciate your post of the japanese puzzles from Scientific American. Mathematics can be very entertaining. I have several Martin gardner books as well as others, and i used to solve puzzles like Rubik’s cube.
What’s your take on like a virtue ethic theory like that advocated by Aristotle. Where the individual tries to develop virtuous qualities like justice, fairness, love, compassion.
----- After reading Nietzsche, Krishnamurti, and others i distrust most systems of morality. Systems are for people too lazy to think for themselves.
----- I trust and hope that i have not meandered too far from the original intent of this thread, whatever it was about.
Sorry Polemarchus for being such a pain about the ground in this discussion. It’s been a while.
How can it be possible that a million people can act wrong?
Is it not true that humans through science gather new information about nature’s laws and adjust their behavior thereafter? You must see what I mean by objective laws?
Still, there is no reward for making my life more difficult by not eating meat. In fact, most people probably think I’m crazy for being a vegetarian.
This is just not the universal perspective. I’m not knocking the suburbs or any other of the peaceful places to live but you just have to remember that it is not universal. (I am a suburbanite myself)