More on Metaethics: A Reply to Callahan

[This post is part of The Morality Debate]

I

In the comment section of a previous post on moral nihilism and existentialistic fictionalism, Gene Callahan came to the defense of moral realism with a list of important moral theorists who have argued for his position:

See Pythagoras, Lao-Tse, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Isaiah, Anixamander, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Plotinus, Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Bradley, Voegelin, et al. (2500 BCE - 1950 CE) "Why Moral Nihilism Is Booshit," The Journal of the Perennial Philosophy, Vol. α No. ω.

Ευγενοσ

I pointed out in response that a) many those thinkers held mutually incompatible positions, b) many of those thinkers defended morality on religious grounds which I don’t find reasonable to believe, c) those philosophers’ moral views are not necessarily consistent with Gene’s own libertarian views, and d) the argument as offered is technically fallacious. Gene responded:

An argument from authority is bad form only when the person you cite is not an authority in the area you cite him! But in any case, this wasn't an argument, it was a citation.

And, no, I really don't see that much disagreement between them. We even have a straight line of descent running Pythagoras-Socrates-Plato-Plotinus-Augustine that then rejoins the Aristotle-Avicenna branch with Aquinas.

It seems to me that continuing this debate in the form of short comments is not likely to lead anywhere. So let me try to sketch more clearly the problem I have in mind, cherry picking from the beginning of Gene’s list. I'll then offer some thoughts about my own view, and attempt to show why Gene's line of argumentation does not succeed in what it appears to set out to achieve.

II

I haven't had the opportunity to fully explore Laozi's moral thinking, but it's not clear to me what happens to the concept of ziran if you divorce it from the religious sense in which the Daodejing was advanced. It's surely different to say, "That action is inconsistent with the aim of integrating yourself properly into the natural flow of reality," than it is to say, "It would be morally wrong to fail to integrate yourself properly into the natural flow of reality." And without the religious imperative, it's not clear how we would get from the first to the second. It would seem to me like the best arguments for acting based on the first would be prudential, which would be consistent with moral nihilism.

I've similarly had limited exposure to Confucius' thought, but if I've understood correctly, he places a heavy emphasis on tradition, wisdom, and moral intuition as the sources of ethical norms. To the extent that these things are prudential to adopt and adhere to, the moral nihilist will have no problem. And again, I haven't heard a Confucian metaethical argument that would create real problems for moral nihilism.

Siddhartha's moral thought was, according to the traditions I find most interesting, explicitly fictionalistic. The idea wasn't that morality was important for itself, but rather that leading a peaceful, harmonious life would be useful in the quest to achieve satisfactoriness. This would be perfectly compatible with moral nihilism.

It's been a while since I read Isaiah (or that is, the parts of the book that were supposedly attributable to him), but I don't remember any substantive arguments for moral realism in there -- just a lot of arguments about what people ought to do based on God's law. The significant ethical point in the book, if I remember it correctly, was that God would not accept the praise of those who acted badly (that is, contrary to The Law), and that the mere fact of the covenant would not guarantee protection from God's punishment. Without the religious element, though, it's hard to see how you would get to the same moral conclusions.

Socrates' morality was a hybrid of virtue ethics (which, depending on how one conceives of virtue, can be consistent with moral nihilism) and religion. So far as we ought to do what's "morally right" because it's best for us, the nihilist is going to agree, pointing out that to call that morally right is a bit misleading. So far as we ought to do what's right because of what the Gods will do to our souls, that's just not going to win any arguments.

Plato's account of morality was built on an idea of moral forms which I don't take anyone to seriously accept as true anymore. Accordingly, I don't see why the nihilist would need any response besides, "But Plato was wrong."

Like Socrates' virtue ethical ideas, Aristotle's moral theory was completely compatible with moral nihilism, being based on individuals' pursuing the good life for their own sake. The nihilist would again want to say that the use of the term "moral" here would be a bit misleading.

III

I could go on, but hopefully the point is clear by now. Moral nihilism is not built on ignorance of past philosophy; it's built on disagreements with certain elements of some philosophers' thought, and built to incorporate other elements of those ideas. Surely the nihilist is not going to say that we ought to simply act according to our unconsidered caprice, or that we should go around killing people. You can still talk about living a good life and living peacefully with others without talking about distinctly moral reasons for doing those things.

The point is just that it's not clear what a plausible moral reason can be based on besides the identification of the implications of one's actions for something that one values. And if one values that thing, then it makes sense to act accordingly -- that has nothing to do with morality. Distinctly moral problems (as opposed to prudential problems) arise only when one tries to make the claim that someone ought to value something that they don't value. Since value is subjective, and since ultimately the universe is just a bunch of stuff in different configurations, it's going to be difficult to ground such an "ought" claim in something “objective” or “objectively true.” As Vichy might put it, all value is ultimately just bias for one sort of thing over another. And the idea that there can be no literal truth to the matter of what one “ought to value” is basically moral nihilism.

But that doesn’t rule out moral argumentation or the adoption of moral attitudes. As I argued, we can have good reason for adopting moral attitudes. And if we acknowledge that our values transform when we recognize certain connections between things, then arguing about values can make sense -- if I lead a supporter of slavery to understand just how much like him are the slaves, he may be led to value them in a way that would make him not want to see them treated without regard for their interests. So as far as moral theories are fictionalistic road maps that show us how our values will change in light of certain features of a situation, they can be perfectly consistent with moral nihilism. It’s only when moral theories try to argue that there is something objective or objectively true about our values (as opposed to their being “impartial” or “natural for humans to accept”) that they run into trouble.

Ultimately, our moral sentiments are rooted in our psychology. Again, moral nihilism does not involve the denial of the fact that we have moral sentiments, that our moral sentiments affect our values, and that there are definite patterns in the way that these sentiments work. It similarly doesn’t exclude the possibility that we might want to choose to adopt certain attitudes that roughly capture those patterns so as to avoid having to fight them. But it does assert that aside from people attributing value to certain things, and aside from the inherent capacity of certain objects to produce valuing reactions in normally functioning human beings, there is no sense in which we can say that they are valuable in themselves. And I think that that’s true.

So I guess my point is that if you want to dispute what I’ve said, it won’t do to say, “Well there were a lot of really smart people who didn’t think that way.” I know that, and I disagree with them. Accordingly, if you’re going to change my mind, you’ll either need to offer a particular argument that I have not considered, or engage what I think. Basically saying, “Go learn about the history of philosophy” is, I think, pretty unfair given my background. That’s not to say that I fully appreciate what everyone has ever said, or that I am not totally ignorant of critically important figures or ideas. I undoubtedly am. But I’ve spent a fair bit of time developing my own views, and I think they’ve at least reached a point where they warrant a response on their own terms.

Lighting Authoritarianism Is Hilarious

It appears that the European Union is set to ban certain energy-inefficient light bulbs, "forcing consumers to buy more energy efficient alternatives." First to go will be conventional 100 and 60 watt pearl bulbs and frosted 25 and 40 watt bulbs; the rest of the inefficient bulbs will be "phased out" (i.e., prohibited by force of law) by 2012.

Do I care? No. But I did find one part of the article to be utterly brilliant. According to the owner of the British lighting chain Ryness, "We are seeing people coming in and bulk buying. People like frosted bulbs because they have a softer light." But according to a spokesman for The Lighting Association, a European Trade Association, "Consumers will realize in the end that the alternatives provide substantial savings and have equivalent light quality to incandescents." Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it?

For the uninitiated, the problem with the spokesman's statement is not that "They're regulating light bulbs! Communism is right around the corner!" The problem is that this guy has an opinion about the quality and value of these products that is very clearly not shared by a lot of people. And these people are apparently willing to spend a whole lot of extra money in order to have light bulbs that this guy finds to be equivalent to the cheaper ones. So could it be that the fluorescents have yet to prove their value to some people?

I personally use compact fluorescents in my home. They work just fine, and I'm very happy to save the money, energy, and space it would take to maintain a supply of incadescents that would match the life of the fluorescents. But the light bulbs are very much not the same. Fluorescents take time to heat up, they look funny, and they emit a decidedly different quality of light. Maybe I will "realize" that this wasn't true after I haven't seen an incandescent light bulb for a while, but while I still see the differences every day, it's pretty difficult to come to that "realization." Again, I don't mind the differences, but some people might. And if they're willing to actually pay money in order to not use fluorescents, then why on Earth would I want to forcibly stop them from doing so?

One possible answer might lie in the fact that the European Union is trying to limit CO2 emissions. Using energy inefficiently, then, is not just a waste of money -- it's a contribution to global climate change. I may be reading into this too far, but it seems to me that what's happening here is a proclamation that "The differences between fluorescent and incandescent bulbs are not important enough to justify allocating a portion of our CO2 budget to allowing consumers to use incandescents." But this is exactly the kind of mindset that market-based policies are designed to avoid! The whole point of a market-based policy is that you increase the price of the thing you want to avoid, and people cut back wherever it's the least uncomfortable for them to do so. The policy is specifically designed to make it so regulators don't have to decide where those cuts will take place; that's the problem with centrally coordinated programs!

According to the owner of Ryness, if you watch what people are doing, you will clearly see that switching from incandescent light bulbs to fluorescents is not the least uncomfortable thing to do. The fact that people are motivated to actually go to the store and buy massive quantities of light bulbs suggests that they are quite uncomfortable indeed with this switch, and are willing to significantly go out of their way to avoid it!

And so in conclusion, facepalm.

Adventures in Moral Nihilism and Existentialism

[This post is part of The Morality Debate]

Update: See the comments section of this post for further discussion, and Gene Callahan's post on the ThinkMarkets blog for more.

I

So I've been having a sporadically ongoing argument with a friend of mine about the plausibility of morality, and I think I've gotten to the point now where I'm happy enough with my position to warrant saying something about it here. In order to understand the argument, though, you'll need some background about my friend. So first, I will offer that background, and then explain why I think Vichy's position is reasonable in light of that background. I will then turn to my own position and attempt to show how it can function even without rejecting Vichy's position.

II

Vichy has Asperger's syndrome, which manifests in her case in a number of ways, notable among which is an apparent incapacity for a certain range of feelings (whether this incapacity is rooted in emotion or some higher cognitive process is not clear). I am no expert in psychology -- especially moral psychology -- and so I haven't been able to understand the consequences of Vichy's condition with as much depth and clarity as I might like. But through speaking with her on a number of occasions I have uncovered two things which I take to be of extreme significance: first, that she is incapable of directly experiencing sensitivity to consequences that obtain for others, and second, that she is incapable of feeling indignation. In light of these two facts about Vichy, it may be unsurprising that she is not a humanist, and that she is a moral nihilist. But some clarification may be in order here in order to establish why I think these are perfectly reasonable positions for her to take.

Humanism is the view that individuals have some sort of intrinsic value such that they deserve to be treated according to certain minimal standards simply because of the kind of thing that they are. As many people have pointed out at least since Hume, it is simply impossible to derive from the objective nature of a human being a categorical normative claim of any sort, much less an entire moral system. And hopefully, it isn't necessary to attempt to demonstrate why the idea of mind- and moral agent-independent "objective moral facts about reality" should be rejected. So, then, the modern humanist needs some other way to establish the intrinsic worth of human beings which does not depend on trying to squeeze an "ought" from an "is."

III

It seems to me that the most obvious way to do this is to appeal to introspection -- to establish humanism through some claim of intuitive self-evidence. The shortest path to this conclusion is through the phenomenon of sensitivity to others. It is a natural human propensity to experience positive or negative feelings in response to perceiving or conceiving of certain consequences obtaining for other people: if I saw someone savagely beating a child, I would find myself awash in thoroughly terrible emotion -- I would long for the abuse to stop, or even to be somehow negated. And I would not attach these emotions to my personal aesthetic preferences, my perception that the beating was doing more overall harm than good, or any view that the abuser was making a poor decision, given the alternatives available to him. Rather, I would attach the emotions to what I perceived the child to be going through.

If I were to try to give proper credit to the way that I felt, it would not do to merely say that I would prefer the child not be beaten (though surely that would be true); I would naturally appeal to what was done to the child in order to point out what I perceived to be the true source of my distress. And insofar as my psychological disposition powerfully impelled me to believe that the child ought not to be savagely beaten, and insofar as I believed that other people shared my basic psychological disposition, it could be perfectly reasonable for me to think that other people should feel the same way. David Hume captured this sort of idea when, in Chapter 9 of An Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, he wrote:

When a man denominates another his enemy, his rival, his antagonist, his adversary, he is understood to speak the language of self-love, and to express sentiments, peculiar to himself, and arising from his particular circumstances and situation. But when he bestows on any man the epithets of vicious or odious or depraved, he then speaks another language, and expresses sentiments, in which he expects all his audience are to concur with him. He must here, therefore, depart from his private and particular situation, and must choose a point of view, common to him with others; he must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string to which all mankind have an accord and symphony.

If we think it true that some objects (in the grammatical sense) have the capacity to inspire these sorts of evaluative reactions across people, and that these reactions are rooted in what happens to other people, then it seems like we could find some basis for the view that we are all presuppositionally committed to the idea that there is something wrong with treating people in certain ways -- that people inherently deserve to be according some minimal amount of dignity. For someone to fail to behave this way would seem to demonstrate that they had taken "improper" account of what would happen to the child in deciding whether or not to go through with the beating, and that if they did, then they would be impelled to agree that the beating ought not to happen.

But this approach runs into serious problems when we acknowledge that some people may not feel these same kinds of impulsions. It is not literally true that there is something about what happens to the child that automatically impels all rational beings to feel like that shouldn't be happening. It is, rather, only a normal human reaction to our own capacity for sensitivity that makes us feel this way. My friend Vichy, as I mentioned earlier, lacks the capacity to have that sort of reaction. It will not, then, be coherent for us to argue that based on our psychology, she should feel a certain way about the child being beaten. She simply can't feel that way about the child. So while this approach may go some way in grounding a humanistic attitude for normally functioning humans, it will literally have no bearing on Vichy -- it simply can't.

IV

Another approach to grounding humanism is similarly grounded in our own psychology. Most people naturally think of themselves as having the sort of value required to sustain the humanistic view. This, I take it, is best illustrated by the entirely nature propensity for humans to feel indignation when others treat them with complete disregard for their interests. If someone randomly walks up to me and punches me in the face, I do not merely resent the pain that she has caused me or wonder if that was really the smartest thing for her to have done. I feel that she has treated me unfairly. As was the case in the example of the abused child, this feeling attaches to what happens to me, so that I end up thinking that the fault in the aggressor's action lies in the fact that she did not take "proper" account of what her actions would do to me in deciding whether or not to punch me.

If a person thinks of himself as having this sort of value, then the humanist needs only to point out that others are relevantly like him in order to establish her position. But once again, it should be clear that if someone doesn't feel this way about himself, then this approach will have no force. If someone's reaction to being punched in the face would truly be to merely resent the pain and to wonder about the wisdom of the other person's choice, then we will not be able to appeal to this reaction in order to ground any sort of normative view. And as I said before, Vichy is apparently incapable of feeling indignation. So again, this will make it impossible to ground a humanistic attitude this way for Vichy.

V

I find myself, therefore, out of bullets. I cannot offer Vichy any grounds for accepting humanism, and I do not find any other moral view plausible. Accordingly, I seem to reach the conclusion that for Vichy, anti-humanistic moral nihilism is not only a coherent position, but actually the only reasonable position for her to adopt. It surely isn't the case that there is objectively something about what happens to the child when beaten, or what happens to you when you are punched in the face, that makes it "improper" to take no account whatsoever of anything that does not happen to matter to Vichy for one reason or another. And there is no reason accessible to her that she should nevertheless believe that people are intrinsically valuable and that there are consequently such things as "morally improper" ways to account for people's interests.

What does this mean, then, for my own humanistic moralism? I seem to be committed to the view that it is literally false. But does that mean that I should be an anti-humanistic moral nihilist? I don't believe so. I will therefore offer an argument in defense of my moralistic humanism that could be appropriately classified as broadly existentialistic and fictionalistic.

It seems to me that the anti-humanistic moral nihilist position seems to entail a sort of egoism. If others have no intrinsic value, and there are no moral reasons for acting in any particular way, then the only thing left would seem to be to act for self-regarding reasons. I think it will be useful to think about this position as arguing that we should do whatever we think will allow us to live a life most in accordance with our own values, with no framework for evaluating the values we choose to pursue that are separate from our own value systems -- I don't know if that's a proper formulation, but hopefully it's close enough.

Where Vichy lacks a capacity for a certain range of emotions and reactions, I do not. I feel discomfort when others are treated without regard for their interests and I feel indignation when I am treated that way. If this is a natural way for my mind to work (and others' as well), then humanistic moralism will provide me with an excellent intuitive tool for knowing how these feelings are going to play out -- a sort of automatic navigation system. And because our reactive responses are attached to our conceptions of things -- my response to thinking about "a child being beaten" is different from my response to thinking about "me thinking from a humanistic moralist perspective about a child being beaten" -- I will only be able to use the humanistic moralist navigation system from within the humanistic moralist mindset.

If humanistic moralism is an effective tool in this sense, then it may be that I would live the better life if I adopted the humanistic moralist perspective. Further, it seems to me that there are other effects of adopting a humanistic moralist perspective that are quite desirable. One of the most valuable, I think, is the attitude of self-worth that comes along with it. It is quite easy to slip from "I have no worth" to "I am worthless," which is problematic for much the same reason as slipping from "The cup is empty" to "There is emptiness in that cup." It's no good to think of oneself as "worthless," and a great way to protect against feeling this way is to think of oneself as "having worth."

Another benefit of adopting the humanistic moralist perspective is the capacity to experience irrational feelings of attachment to people (i.e., in loving relationships and loyal friendships) that would be inaccessible to someone consistently and consciously adopting an egoistic mindset. Where conscious egoism would suggest the virtue of constant personal cost-benefit analysis, it seems to me that we can have better, happier, healthier relationships if we don't constantly evaluate things in this way, and if we instead allow ourselves to slip into a humanistic moralist mindset.

Also beneficial is the mindset which enables me to live in a world full of valuable individuals who are worthy of respect and love, rather than a world full of creatures who can do cool stuff. The same is true of the mindset which allows me to speak to "normal people" without having to translate back and forth between manners of speaking.

If these points are legitimate -- if there are considerable and potentially irreplacable benefits to being a humanistic moralist -- then it could be incompatible with the tenets of the anti-humanistic moral nihilist's egoism for me to adopt anti-humanistic moral nihilistic egoism. In other words, consciously adopting egoism personally would commit me to saying that "I ought to believe that I should do whatever is best for me, even if believing that I should do whatever is best for me would not be best for me." This, I think, would be clearly ridiculous. Accordingly, to the extent that I am capable of maintaining the humanistic moralist perspective, it might be reasonable for me to do so.

And luckily, I am quite capable of doing this. I am here reminded of something that Hume says in section VII of A Treatise of Human Nature:

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther.

And so, after laboring to show why anti-humanistic moral nihilism is a reasonable and compelling position for Vichy, I hope to have made it equally clear why I don't believe it to be a reasonable position for me to adopt for myself. Perhaps it will frustrate some people that I am choosing to adopt such blatant fictionalism, but I defy them to come up with any reason that I shouldn't which wouldn't immediately flip around into a reason that I should.

Beaten to the Punch

Darn...it looks like my outreach project has already been done for me!



The only thing left is to spread the word!

Summer Plans...

May 15th will be my last day as a cubicle jockey...maybe ever? I'll be at the IHS seminar on Liberty and Society from May 30-June 5, and I'll be at FEE's Applying Liberty seminar from July 6-10, their Young Scholars Colloquium from July 13-17, and their Advanced Austrian Economics seminar from August 3-8. I'm also going to Israel at the end of June for my dad's wedding, and I'm going to try to go to Madison for a week after Young Scholars in July. So that's a pretty busy summer, but there are some big gaps that are thus far unfilled. Accordingly, I'm thinking I should figure out how to make myself useful during that time.

So here's what I'm thinking:

I really don't like the way that the libertarian movement has digested the ideas of its luminaries and presented them to the public. I really don't like the way that a lack of nuance has become the mark of the "true libertarian," so that people who actually understand what they're talking about end up either having to say that they're "Liberals who are sympathetic with Libertarianism" or spending an obscene amount of their time explaining, "Well no, I don't believe that; my position is..."

I've said all this before on this blog here, here, here, here, and here (and probably other places, too). But since obviously no one really pays attention to what some kid blogger says, the impact of this proselytizing has been approximately zero.

Meanwhile, people actually watch this and come to believe that it is worth spreading:



That video has almost 150,000 views on YouTube and is available in 19 other languages. I can't make this stuff up.

This is, I think, an unfortunate state of affairs. Accordingly, my goal for this summer will be to produce a series of pamphlets and videos that actually do justice to libertarian ideas in their plausible forms. I acknowledge that this is an ambitious project, but I think it'll be a fun and interesting one. I certainly welcome offers to help out with any aspect of this, and I'll try to post more specific descriptions of what people can do as I get a better idea of what that would involve. For now, though, it's back to cubicle work for me!