Two Analogies that Cast Doubt on Amoralism, and a Response
Two Analogies:
1.
Alcoholism
Perhaps
moralism is like alcoholism. For an alcoholic, one drink is too much. Just so,
for a moralist, any indulgence in judging something or someone right or
wrong or good or bad etc. is to be avoided, since it can quickly get out of
hand.
That is how I have conceived amoralism, that is, in its
practical form of moral abolitionism. But the analogy also suggests that moral
abolitionism should be restricted to morbid moralists. After all, not
all human beings are alcoholics. Many, perhaps even most human beings
can handle their liquor without going off the deep end, at least with normal
social and legal interventions. Prohibition in the U.S. was a response to the
sense that human beings in general cannot handle their liquor. It is not
clear whether Prohibition ended because this turned out to be an empirically
false assumption, or rather because it was impractical to prevent people from
drinking or the attempt created even more problems than it solved.
Analogously, then: Is it true or false that human beings in
general cannot “handle their morality”? Either way, moral abolitionism is
thrown into question. For if true, it may still be impossible or impractical or
counterproductive to attempt to eliminate our moral responses. And if false,
then moral abolitionism is at best a prescription only for morbid
moralists, who may be a minority like alcoholics. And perhaps it is not even
advisable for them if it turns out that being morally responsive is,
unlike drinking liquor, a requirement for normal or fruitful or
non-baneful life in society. Instead what would be called for is some kind of intervention
or management of their moralism, difficult and sometimes even ultimately
hopeless[1] as that
may be.
2.
Nervous tic
I
have been assuming that adopting an amoral attitude toward heretofore moral
issues helps smooth interpersonal relations and thereby facilitates (what a
moralist would call moral) progress. For example, I became a vegan for
what would normally be called moral reasons, namely, that I thought eating
animals and animal products is wrong because it typically involves the
torture, confinement, and killing of innocent sentient beings for no compelling
reason. But this made it just about impossible for me to have any kind of
normal relations with the vast majority of human beings, whom I now viewed as
willingly complicit in the most massive atrocity ever committed. Thus I was
very pleased (once I got the hang of it) to discover (quite independently of
this personal crisis) that morality is a myth, and so I need not harbor this
poisonous attitude toward most of my own species. I now have a ready
substitute: I can retain my strong preference that nobody eat animals
and animal products, and treat the fulfilment of this preference as a purely
practical problem of how to persuade or move other people to become
comrade vegans without alienating them in the process (which would not only
make my own life socially isolated or unpleasant but also likely be counterproductive
to my ambition to “convert” the masses).
However,
what I have discovered is that, despite my amoralist “tolerance” of omnivores,
they simply cannot grok that I am no longer judging them (since they really
cannot grok amoralism itself, it being such a conceptual novelty to them) and
so inevitably they resent what they still take to be my holier-than-thou
judgmentalism. (Who am I to “tolerate” them? They don’t think they are doing
anything wrong in the first place. Ironically, neither do I anymore; but that
is what they cannot grok, given my obvious distaste for their omnivorism.)
Even more
significant, I further realized that I am still judging others
as wrong, and even bad (evil), for eating animals and animal products. I have
considered this remnant moralism to be an atavism, due to a long life of having
been a moralist, indeed an arch-moralist, or perhaps just to being a human
being with an innate moralism. So I did my best to pay it no mind … much the
way I would view having a nervous tic, which serves no good purpose but may be
ineradicable.
But what I realize
now is that this analogy calls for more than just a dismissive attitude toward
my own moralism. For there would be no use my telling other people I
don’t have a tic. I do have one (we are supposing). They can see it!
Just so, I do (in fact) think (or rather, feel)
other people are wrong and even bad for eating meat and dairy
etc., and they can sense it despite my denials of its import. (Pay it no mind.
It’s just my atavistic moralism.)
So perhaps adopting a
stance of so-called moral abolitionism is not a
good idea, and it would be better to acknowledge that I disapprove of
others’ omnivorism. This would call for shifting the strategy from trying to
convince people I’m not judging them to instead avowing that I love or like (or
at least don’t hate) them anyway.[2]
After all, we are all sinners … that’s just being human. Note
also that I would “say” the same thing to myself as a way of relieving my
felt sense of guilt about other things.
An alternative approach[3]
is fallibilism, which is just to acknowledge that my judgments could be
mistaken. But I don’t think that goes far enough, since in any given case a
fallibilist clearly does not think he’s mistaken. (Oh, you
believe you might be mistaken that Hitler was wrong to strive to
wipe out European Jewry? I don’t believe you believe that!) The
new approach suggested above involves sticking to one’s
judgment but countenancing others’ moral shortcomings as part of the human
condition shared by oneself. Thus, I have no doubt that eating
meat is, in most cases, wrong (and that the Holocaust was wrong, etc.). But,
there but for the grace of contingencies go I, and no doubt I myself am guilty
of other things. So I am not going to demonize the person.
This attitude of “morality
lite”[4]
offers a kind of safety valve to our innate moral impulses without jeopardizing
normal human relationships, nor assuming too heavy a burden of guilt oneself.
It also makes for more honest (and less confusing) interactions, so that other
people need not presume one is being fatuous or condescending by claiming, as
the amoralist does, that one doesn’t really think, say in the case of
diet, that the omnivore is doing anything wrong even though one thinks (believes,
knows) what is happening to the animals is cruel and unnecessary, etc. No, even
the (aspiring-)amoralist (me, in this case) vegan thinks omnivorism is wrong!
But we are all, vegans and omnivores alike, mutually dependent and share this
planet, so a robust tolerance amidst the disagreement and even strife is
called for: a fundamental respect despite deep differences.
An additional point is that most of us are not Hitler. So
perhaps the actions of a Hitler do call for an extreme moralism, even
unto a demonization; but it is important to recognize that most of the moral
flaws we find in others and ourself do not rise anywhere close to his level.
The amoralist (i.e., me) responds:
The main problem I see in any compromise
with moralism is that moralism is based on falsehood and delusion. So while it may
seem reasonable to advocate or countenance judging others “moderately” in most
cases and perhaps even “extremely” in extreme cases (Hitler, bin Laden, Putin,
etc. ad inf.), the fact remains that these judgments are metaphysically bogus:
There simply is no such thing as objective value, such as an action’s being
inherently wrong or a person’s being inherently bad or worthless, etc. These are
add-ons[5]
to nonmoral likes and dislikes, desires and aversions, etc. The likes and
desires are real; the qualities of being right or wrong or good or bad (in the
categorical, moral sense) are not.
It is people – the “judges”
– who have real responses to real objects or actions or people, although we
call them “subjective” responses because they are qualities of the person who
is making the judgment and not of the things (or “objects”) being judged. But the
contents of these judgments have no independent, objective existence, and certainly
not as qualities of the objects being judged. It is precisely analogous to the feeling
of pain “in your toe,” which is not in your toe but in your mind. What is
objectively in the toe may be an impinged nerve fibre, but there is no feeling
of pain there. Just so, someone may have deliberately knocked down a little old
lady in the street just for fun, but there is no objective quality of wrongness
residing in that act – only a subjective judgment thereof in the mind of an
onlooker (and clearly not in the mind of the perpetrator).
Well, not “only” (a subjective judgment) … for there is
also, presumably a subjective aversion or dislike in the mind of the
onlooker (as well as in the mind of the little old lady). And my general claim on
behalf of an amoralist ethics is that that is enough[6]
to motivate the kind of response most of us would, on reflection, like or
desire … whereas layering it with the additional
response of a moral judgment is too much, because of the noxious
consequences of doing so.
Note then that I bring two indictments against moralism. The
first is that it is based on falsehood; the second is that it has noxious
consequences.[7] The two
analogies cast doubt on the second indictment only. So the point I wish to make
now is that, even if the moralist has made a convincing case that moralism is
something to be preserved for the well-being of individuals and society, there
will be a cost in intelligence: We will have to countenance living in delusion.
Perhaps there is simply no avoiding this.
However, this “cost” also has practical implications … and so may
still undercut even the seeming practical advantage of moralism that has been granted
here for the sake of argument. For living a lie is not always easy, and is
sometimes impossible. Our world might be happier if we believed in Santa Claus:
But can we do it? Well, I suppose some of us can: Consider conspiracy theories and
“alternative facts,” which are rampant. Indeed, I guess I must grudgingly admit,
even most of us can: Consider religious miracles, which in my mind are no different
than Santa Claus. So maybe a regime of delusory moralism could (and even does?)
work … and we are left with a world with which we are in fact quite familiar,
namely, one in which a handful of theologians and Dostoevskies perpetually wring
their mental hands over the absurdities of religious beliefs, and a handful of philosophers
– in particular, moral fictionalists – wring their mental hands over the
falsity of their moral commitments, and otherwise most people go about their lives
in moral (and religious) delusion, blissfully ignorant of or indifferent to all
that mental hand wringing.
There are, however, two objections[8]
to my complaint which give me pause. One is that my conception of the commitments
of moralism (or, even more basically, of morality) is mistaken. Specifically,
most people do not in fact subscribe to an objectivist notion of morality.[9]
So they (or one) need not engage in self-delusion in order to be moralist. The
other objection is that my conception of objectivity in morals is mistaken, so
that even if someone believes that morality is objective, there is no delusion,
because morality is objective in a benign sense.[10]
I am not convinced by either of these claims, in both cases because I do not
find the alternative conceptions (in the one case, the layperson’s, in the
other case, the philosopher’s) intelligible.
But there is one
final response[11] to my resistance
that I am becoming increasingly sympathetic to, namely, that in these matters,
as perhaps in all matters of everyday living, it is better not to think too much.
That does not shock me anymore because I have come to view all of life as
illusory, so one should hardly expect it to make perfect sense.
[1] In which case the morbid moralist’s condition would
be tragic, analogous to the incorrigible criminal recidivist’s.
[2] As suggested by Kelby Sandoval.
[3] Advocated by Mitchell Silver.
[4] A term suggested by Allan Saltzman.
[5] Cf. Ronnie de Sousa’s “double counting.”
[6] Provided, that is, the relevant
desire has been rationally vetted.
[7] That is, net noxious
consequences or, more to the point, worse consequences than amoralism …
and yet more precisely (in keeping with amoralism), consequences that we would disfavor
(not like or be averse to, on reflection) relative to those of
amoralism.
[8] Although I think they amount to
the same thing.
[9] Thomas Pölzler is a leading defender
of this view (and on an empirical basis).
[10] Mitchell Silver is a leading
defender of this view.
[11] Thank you, Kelby Sandoval.