To Is or Not to Is

 

A much-quoted statement from Clinton's grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word "is". Contending his statement that "there's nothing going on between us" had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the—if he—if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."[1]

(“Impeachment of Bill Clinton” in Wikipedia)

 

Clinton’s parsing of “is” in his testimony strikes me as correct, however questionable was his reliance on it to prove his probity.[2] But putting aside that particular context, I fully endorse the general proposition that "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.” The ambiguity that concerns me is between “is” as an assertion of meaning (or use of a word) and “is” as an assertion of existence (or fact[3]). The two are commonly conflated, which leads to all kinds of confusion and mischief.

            A classic case has to do with the Divinity. Suppose you ask someone, “Is God omnipotent?” And suppose the person answers, “Yes! God created the universe. God can do anything.” Well, fine … as far as it goes. But it may seem that, in the course of answering (or even asking) the question about God’s omnipotence, one has also endorsed God’s existence. After all, if God is omnipotent, must not God exist? And I don’t mean that it is God’s omnipotence in particular that establishes God’s existence, but rather that his merely possessing some property does. Thus, God’s having a fondness for playing tiddlywinks would also establish God’s existence, would it not? You can’t play tiddlywinks, or have a fondness for doing so, unless you exist, right?

            This is the logic of Descartes’ famous Cogito: “I think, therefore I am.” In fact, the original formulation makes the point even more dramatically: “I doubt, therefore I am.” For even if what one doubts is whether one exists, must not one exist in order to do the doubting?

            Alas, Descartes’ argument is question begging, for the premise stipulates that I doubt; but isn’t that supposed to be the conclusion? A proper premise would be “There is doubting going on”; but then it would be questionable whether it follows therefrom that a doubter exists. Maybe doubting can happen without anyone doing it. In any case that is a separate issue, so the original argument by itself does not establish the existence of the I, which has only been stipulated or presumed to exist. 

In the case of the (implicit) God argument, a different but related fallacy is being committed, namely to infer that God exists from the truth of “God is omnipotent.” But this would be so only if the “is” in “God is omnipotent” were interpreted to imply God’s existence. But I think the more plausible interpretation is that the “is” is only asserting a definition or meaning. Analogously, one could ask, “Is Santa Claus a jolly fellow?” Well, yes, I presume so. But I don’t think Santa exists![4] Just so, I might be willing to consent to God’s being omnipotent – which is to say, the concept of God, at least in Western culture, is of an omnipotent being – but in no way do I affirm the existence of such a being.

All of the above is by way of preliminary to my main concern, which is the ambiguity of “is” in ethics. Suppose someone asked, “Is it wrong to lie?” And suppose the answer given was, “Yes, it is, usually.” What exactly has been established? I think the common answerer (and even questioner) would assume that the wrongness of lying has been certified (especially if we had obtained this answer from a representative sample of humanity[5]). But, again, what has been established? This depends, again, on how “is” is being used.

Thus, is the answer “Yes, it is” about a presumed real property, wrongness, such that lying has it (at least sometimes), the way, say, walking may have the property of being stilted? (Apples are round and lying is wrong.) Or is the answer only about wrongness as the projection of an attitude, reflective more of the attributor (or their society) than of the action to which it is being attributed? (We disapprove of lying.)

Put differently, is wrongness – and by extension, morality – something ontological, or something basically psychological or social?

Notice that, just as with God, we can ask all sorts of questions about wrongness and morals without committing ourselves to their existing independently of our conceptions of them. Thus, it could be that moral properties like wrongness imply certain categorical commands, such as “Thou shalt not lie.” This could be true, which is to say, of how we think about morality. And yet, for all that, there may not be any such property or categorical command in reality. No more than there is a jolly Santa Claus in reality.

Or, alternatively, we could say that there is such a thing as wrongness and morality in reality, but all we mean by that is that a society judges certain things in a certain sort of way … analogous to how we judge certain things beautiful or ugly or funny or boring without worrying our heads overmuch about the existence of these properties independently of our emotional response to the things that supposedly possess them.

My own ultimate opinion is that morality has both meanings, and hence both does and does not exist. Thus, morality has certain features that distinguish it conceptually. This I accept. Furthermore, my particular conception of it does contain, among others, the implication that morality places categorical demands on us. I would say – this being my empirical hunch – that a significant portion of humanity presumes this conception and, as a result, harbors a corresponding attitude toward things in the world (events, states of affairs, people, and so on); and so in this sense morality exists … as a set of attitudes and social practices.

However, my view is that there is nothing in reality that fits this conception of morality. And so, in this sense, morality does not exist.

Thus, the conception of morality generates morality, a really existing psychology and social institution, even though the conception is not instantiated in reality. Just as the idea of God generates religious feelings and practices even though God does not exist. It is a mere accident of language that the same word, “morality,” is used in the first case for both the fictitious regime and the very real emotional and practical effects of believing in it, whereas two words, “God” and “religion,” are used in the second; but the relations are the same.

So, is lying wrong (at least sometimes)? It depends on how “is” is being used (the moral of our Clintonian story). If it is intended to imply the existence of a real property of some actions, then I would say no. The wrongness of lying no more exists than does the jolliness of Santa Claus or the omnipotence of God, because there is no Santa Claus and there is no God and there is no morality. But if it is intended to imply only that the mass of humanity (or some society) presumes that there is such a property in reality and has corresponding attitudes as a result, then, yes, lying is wrong (“in the common view,” we might say).

In this latter sense morality is very much a real phenomenon in the world, and it is the morality (or moralism) I myself have devoted the latter part of my career to investigating … and attempting to discourage (in myself and others). I am not so interested in morality in the first sense because there is no such thing in reality and furthermore (and I would say, consequently) I would not even expect the conception to be coherent. It is the psychology that results from holding an inchoate but strong conception of morality as categorical that concerns me because I take its personal and social consequences to be noxious and pervasive.

An objection to my brief is that it makes no sense to deny the existence of something if I can offer no clear conception of it. Maybe it exists under a different conception. Thus, someone could argue that morality, in conception, makes no categorical demands on us, and therefore the refusal to countenance categorical demands would not count against the existence of morality.

My reply is that (my empirical hunch is that) there is widespread belief in a categorical morality even though a careful empirical and conceptual investigation of the content and logic of this belief would discover that it is vague, multifarious, and possibly incoherent. In this respect it is, I think, exactly analogous to belief in an omnipotent (etc.) God.

Furthermore, if someone could provide an innocuous conception of morality (or God), my empirical hunch is that it would not correspond to the prevalent conception, and hence would not really merit the label “morality” (or “God”). No more than would defining “ghost” as a four-legged mammal that barks serve to establish that ghosts exist.

[1] "Starr Report: Narrative". Nature of President Clinton's Relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. May 19, 2004. Archived from the original on December 3, 2000. Retrieved May 9, 2009.

[2] But since this was in a legal proceeding, and conducted during an investigation that was itself a travesty, I’m not ready to judge him!

[3] Other than the fact of what a word means or how it is used.

[4] Similarly one could ask, “Does Santa Claus have a beard?” or “Does Sherlock Holmes smoke a pipe?”

[5] If such a notion even makes sense!

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