The Central Issue of (Meta-)ethics

A philosophical ethicist can spend a career pondering which theory of ethics is the correct one or defending one or another of them. By “theory of ethics” I refer to what is known in the trade as a normative theory, that is, a theory about what makes something right or wrong (or sometimes good or bad in a moral sense, such as a bad person as opposed to a bad car). It is possible to dichotomize the question, and the most common way to do so in modern analytic philosophy has been to distinguish consequentialist from nonconsequentialist theories. The most common representatives of these have been utilitarianism and Kantianism, respectively. Thus, the former is the claim that right actions are those that produce the best consequences, whereas the latter is the claim that wrong actions are those that treat anyone merely as a means. That this is a difficult choice, almost seemingly designed to keep the problem alive perennially, is easily seen by contrasting their opposing implications. Thus, the utilitarian’s duty is to do the right thing regardless of its intrinsic distastefulness, for example, kill one person to harvest her organs to save the lives of five persons; whereas the Kantian’s duty is to do avoid doing the wrong thing regardless of the consequences, for example, don’t lie about the whereabouts of the Franks to the Nazi police (since to do so would be treating the police merely as means). We all share intuitions of both kinds, both pro and con both consequentialism and nonconsequentialism. And round and round ethical philosophy goes, with one gotcha counterexample adduced after another by the opposing schools.

            To me as an amoralist all of this is silly. There is no truth of the matter about (normative) ethics … except that it is a fictional enterprise on a par with theology, which purports to explain the ways of God to “man” when in fact there is no God. Just so, there is no morality (of the kind in question, that is, absolute or objective or universal truths or facts about right and wrong etc.). But of course this too is, in philosophical terms, itself another position, which has its opposite, and hence can be debated perennially. It is a meta-position – hence, “meta-ethics” – about not which ethical theory is correct but about the nature of an ethical theory or of ethics. Just what sort of thing are we talking about when we talk about (moral) right and wrong, etc.? … that would distinguish it from, say, right and wrong in mathematics or in carpentry. My position is that we are talking about something that does not exist.

As with any question at all, there is really a double question about the meaning of a term or concept as well as about its instantiation in reality. So for example the question of whether God exists, or unicorns exist, or planets exist, or people exist, depends on the answer to a prior question: What is God? What is a unicorn? Etc. In the case of morality, I have already indicated that I am referring to the existence of absolute rules of human behavior, which obtain whether or not people agree about them or are even aware of them or even if people (such as myself) positively disbelieve in them. And about such rules (or some Supreme Rule or Principle or Law) I am at least highly skeptical and for the most part simply deny their existence. But for my purposes, which are practical (ethics being a practical discipline about what to do or how to live), I can even bracket the question of existence as perhaps even irrelevant, so that I do not need to deny their existence or even be skeptical about them.

            The special point I wish to make in this little essay, however, is that the central question of meta-ethics (which may turn out to be the central question of ethics, since surely the question of ethics’ very existence or meaning is prior to any particular questions about which things are right or wrong) is whether morality exists “as advertised” (that is, in the sense I have described) or whether instead what we think of as the moral is a set of psychological attitudes.

            I opt for the latter. Thus, regarding the dichotomy, I do not believe that the question at issue is whether the right thing to do depends on the consequences of our actions or instead on something else. I don’t think that question has an answer: no more than the question, “Is the King of France bald or hirsute?” since there is no King of France. However, I do believe that (1) all (or most or many) of us have strong intuitions about this question (just as many people have strong intuitions about God and His/Her/Its essential elements, on the assumption God exists), and often conflicting of inconsistent ones, and (2) all (or most or many) of us have strong preferences about the question, and often conflicting of inconsistent ones.

            The latter psychological fact, (2), in particular interests me. The former one, (1), is simply a matter of having false beliefs. But (2) can be entirely factual and rational. Thus, I myself, while rejecting all of the intuitions of (1), nevertheless retain strong preferences about the very same “rules.” For instance, I would be strongly averse to killing a person solely to harvest her organs to save five people; and I would also be strongly compelled to lie to the Nazis about the Franks’ whereabouts. Furthermore, mimicking morality even more, I would be just as strongly desirous of other peoples’ acting (or refraining from acting) in the same way as I about such things. This is entirely compatible with amoralism as I conceive it. 

            I am also fascinated by there being distinct personality types that tend to cleave to one or the other of these psychological tendencies. Thus one “crude” way (Jonathan Haidt works out out this kind of scheme in more detail) to distinguish Republicans or “conservatives” from Democrats or “liberals” in recent American history (even before Trump, which is a whole other ball game) might be to see the former as having predominantly nonconsequentialist intuitions and preferences and the latter consequentialist. (Both are moralist, however. Otherwise they would not be so fanatically partisan and demonizing each other.)

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