Morality: One tool in the toolbox

Morality is a tool in the toolbox. That's all it is. 

    Here I have in mind morality conceived as a social practice or institution ... like science or religion. 

    There is another sense of "morality" according to which it is analogous to the objects (so to speak) of scientific and religious practice and inquiry. Thus, science investigates reality (in a certain way), religion has us relate to God or some equivalent purposive element in the fabric of the universe, and morality (the social practice) pushes us (in a certain way) to behave in accordance with categorical dicta of a certain kind, i.e., the right or permissible ways of doing certain things, which ways, confusingly, can also be referred to as morality. 

    But there are other approaches to the same objects of these various social practices. An alternative to science’s method of knowing reality is to believe whatever has been handed down by the ancestors, or what most of the people in your community believe, or what you learned in school. An alternative to religion’s relationship to God is simply not to believe in a divine element at all. An alternative to morality’s practical orientation to moral dicta is to rely instead on reason to motivate us in the same situations but without any reference to a presumed absolute right or wrong way of doing things. 

    Thus, there are many tools in the toolbox for accomplishing the same or similar jobs. A hammer or a screwdriver will do for fastening two boards together; and one may be superior to the other for a particular job…or superior in general for a certain type of task (hammers and screwdrivers have their separate significant uses). Thus, a nonmoralist ethics may suffice to guide behavior in many situations where, typically, morality has been relied on; and in some cases it may do the job better. 

    In real life we can and do use more than one tool for many purposes. Thus a political leader can use religion, morality, reasoning, appeals to pity, horsetrading, bribing, lying and media distortions, and brute force to get their way. (I think of Lincoln during the Civil War; see for example Chapter 16 of Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. Honest Abe was not at all above deceiving to save the Union. He even used unconstitutional means, contrary to his oath of office, although he used possibly specious reasoning to justify doing so.) If one is concerned to get one's way (which I take as the bottom line -- it is simply the analytic truth that one does what one is motivated to do -- so my "if" is purely rhetorical), then prioritizing morality (or anything else) as the One Right Way can only be seen as foolishness. Yes, again, sometimes it may be just the tool one needs for the occasion or it may even be one's default tool. But in the end it is just a tool, and there are other tools which may be better sometimes or even most times. 

I would like to think that morality, along with religion, could be dispensed with altogether; but I cannot possibly know if this is true. I don’t know anything, or at least I don’t think I know, or anybody, knows anything; but that does not stop me from having beliefs, which I hold with more and less confidence. So let me build a bit of a case for the dispensability (and with good riddance) of (the social practice of) morality, with rational inquiry the better tool for achieving morality’s presumed end of happiness and social harmony. I will take feeling moral guilt as an illustrative example. 

Moral guilt, like regret, is a backward-looking emotion. (Remember, I am talking about social practice and empirical phenomena, not metaphysical fictions. So when I speak of moral guilt, I do not referring to the supposed moral fact of being morally guilty of some morally wrong action, but simply the feeling or belief that one is.) So here is what I want to know (and I would like to say, “what one wants to know”): Does an emotion like this serve a relative net beneficial purpose, or perform some essential function, in human affairs? 

It seems to me it does neither (as a rule). Moral guilt, like regret, is painful. But I don’t see the gain, at least not relative to an alternative. What I think matter for ethics, i.e., for human happiness and social harmony at a minimum, and ultimately for the wider circle of sentient well-being, are forward-looking considerations. So a particular question would be: Does doubting one’s worth in the peculiar way that moral guilt obliges one to do, tend to cause human beings to refrain in the future from noxious behaviors of the kind that elicit the guilt, more effectively, and with fewer negative consequences overall, than the alternative of simply undertaking a rational analysis of all relevant considerations, such as one’s motives and the likely consequences for all concerned? 

My hunch is “No.” So for example: 

“Treating your grandma that way was wrong, and you should feel ashamed!” 

versus 

“You really hurt your grandma’s feelings. She’s always been so kind to you, and helped you so much, and she took care of you when you were little. Now she’s frail and helpless. Won’t you say you’re sorry to have spoken to her that way, and do something she’ll like, and try very hard never to treat her that way again?” 

            Now an objector might say that all of the second and supposedly alternative option is in fact encapsulated in the first. For it is incumbent on the moralist to explain what is wrong, and in this case that would be exactly what the amoralist is adducing as a “consideration” (that “You really hurt your grandma’s feelings,” and so forth). I (the amoralist) reply: True enough … but how – and why – does the moralist go from the account of these considerations to the “conclusion” that something wrong was done? As Hume would put it: How do you get from an is to an ought? 

But more than that: Not only is this move logically mysterious …it also seems (to me) unnecessary and ultimately mischievous. Granted, as I have fully acknowledged, this last is an empirical claim, whose truth is pretty much unknowable. It is similarly unknowable whether the second option would have greater efficacy in the desired direction. (But, of course, so too, by the same token, whether the first would.) But, for whatever reasons and causes, I believe both, and keep trying to persuade others to agree with me.

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