The ‘More’ in Morality

Ronnie de Sousa and I take the problem with morality to lie in its having a gratuitous (and noxious) element. de Sousa refers to this as “double counting.” I have called it “moral punctuation,” since saying “and it’s the right thing to do” after listing one’s nonmoral reasons  (for example, “Pesticides cause cancer”) for preferring or advising a certain course of action (“Let’s farm organically”) adds nothing substantive or real but only a factitious weight, like using an exclamation point instead of a period.

            It seems to me (and I assume de Sousa, and certainly Richard Garner before us) that we have plenty of nonmoral material to support our preferences without invoking a mythical morality of objective values, and even to explain the psychological strength of our supposedly moral intuitions. The Eureka moment for me was realizing that the intensity of my conviction in the wrongness of meat eating (etc.) could easily be accounted for by my compassion for the animals. There was no need for me to believe in some Objective Principle that made my feeling somehow right (or the voice of conscience). It was enough that it was my feeling, that it was strong, and that it had survived, indeed been strengthened by, research and reflection on the question (of whether to encourage or discourage meat eating).

            Some might say that this is all that morality amounts to anyway. But, again, I think morality adds something more, namely, the belief that anyone who, in possession of the same knowledge, nevertheless has a different feeling or preference from one’s own is wrong, bad, and deserving of rebuke, even punishment of some kind. Hand in hand with this is the belief that one is obligated to feel as one does oneself. Together these beliefs generate wholly otiose and noxious guilt and contempt, as well as intransigence and conflict over and above the determination and action engendered by the strength of the original desire (that animals not suffer or be killed needlessly).

            Amoralism (or as I call it, desirism) advises getting rid of all that excess and focusing our energy instead on the practical realization of our considered desires.

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