Amoral Moments

The better he [Konstantin Levin] knew his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for the public welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest in them.               from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy   As a self-described amoralist, I have in mind a particular conception of morality and also a particular way of being amoral. For me a moralist is one who maintains that there are things one ought to do, ways one ought to be, and so forth, where the ought is categorical, universal, and overriding. Thus for example, if a moralist believes one ought to help others, this implies an obligation by anyone in like circumstances to help others regardless of further considerations, such as whether helping those others will work out well for oneself in the end, or even if the o

  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 wor

Oliver Alston comments: "I’ve been worried about a few things regarding desirism. Most of these worries are closely related to the problem of free action more generally.   1)       I find it difficult to see how you can talk about weighing up desires, being rational about them, critically evaluating them if determinism is true. Isn’t it simply just the case that I act according to my strongest desire, and my strongest desire is a simple brute fact, not of my own choosing or effort? In which case ‘desirism’ boils down to the philosophy that one ‘does what one does because they do it’ which doesn’t seem to be much of a worldview at all.   2)       Of course you can’t say that one must live by their strongest desires, because a moralistic ‘must’ is used and, also, people by default automatically follow their strongest desires anyway.   3)       Besides, what if you have a lot of people who desire to be as moralistic as possible (this isn't a hypothetical statement, I know

The amoralist is taking some things too seriously. Morality, like everything else in human knowledge or belief, is just a model. Our mind is  always  in theoretical mode when it cognizes something, as opposed to simply experiencing something. Maybe it never purely experiences anything either. Maybe even when we experience a sharp pain we are conceptualizing what we feel  as pain . Gestalt images make this point, since the very same configuration can look like an old woman or a young girl, a bunny or a duck; so something over and above the “pure experience” shapes what we see – some idea, some concept.   So reality is whatever there is, but we only know reality through our concepts, our theories of what exists. That is what is meant by a “model” (which, of course, is itself a concept). And when it comes to something as complex and abstract as morality, then surely we must realize it is a model. But this is why it is extreme to  deny  morality’s existence altogether, when it was understo

I have proposed an ethics that I call [1] desirism. My personal appropriation of this ethics has been unsteady. At first I was simply astounded by the personal discovery (my “anti-epiphany”) that (objective) morality is a myth. Then I was appalled and disconcerted to find myself (seemingly) bereft of morality’s guidance. This was followed by my experiencing euphoria on discovering that I still had plenty of psychic resources, such as compassion, remaining, to assure my existing (formerly known as moral) commitments continued. I then developed this more formally into the ethics of desirism, which calls for the rationalizing of our desires in the formation of motives to act. But my allegiance to this soon became so strong that I was in effect becoming a moralist about my amoralism. After recognizing this problem, I thought it would be simple enough to rectify. Alas, however, the truth does not always set you free, and eventually I discouragingly resigned myself to being a divided desiri

  “ The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. ” The above epigraph is Socrates’ challenge to Euthyphro, a priest. Socrates was trying to understand what piety is. We could just as well speak about morality or moral rightness or goodness. Euthyphro had suggested that piety is whatever the gods love. But Socrates recognized that this was an ambiguous assertion; that is the “point” he is talking about in the epigraph. The position that piety, or moral rightness or goodness, is simply whatever the gods happen to love (or approve, etc.) goes by the name of Divine Command Theory in modern philosophy; thus, for instance, if God wanted Abraham to kill Isaac, then that was the right thing for Abraham to do. [1] Socrates, presumably, opted for the alternative, which is that the gods love something because it is right or good. (And presumably, therefore, God would never

Items for a notebook or workbook of amoralist illustrations and exercises. 1. The Duel I was telling an acquaintance A about an episode with my older stepson S, shortly after my marriage to his mother and our all moving in together, when we were all about to set out on a drive and S, as he was accustomed to do, commenced to jump into the front passenger seat next to his mother, who was at the wheel of her van. I said, “Whoa. You’re in the back,” or something to that effect. Naturally I assumed I would be sitting next to my wife and the child (a preteen) would be sitting in the back.             But S would have none of it. So I playfully challenged him to a duel, and we physically wrestled with each other for pride of place. But the struggle was in fact deadly serious – downright archetypal, I realized in the midst of it. This led me eventually to write about it as an exquisitely moral dilemma. My conclusion was that there was no pat resolution – this even before I became an amor

Like anyone else, I become exercised about countless matters, from the global to the personal:  the horrors of war, noise in the neighborhood; climate change and nuisance calls; injustices, inconveniences -- the gamut of human concerns, whether of vital significance or relative trivialities. Yet, as a philosopher, I also have a part of me that puts all of these things into perspective, not only with regard to one another, but to two in particular that seem to me to outweigh all of the others, namely animal ethics and planetary defense. [1]             By animal ethics I refer to the way humans treat other animals, although I have no great objection to including human animals within this purview. The point is that we humans use sentient beings of all kinds with far less regard for their (and our) well being and interests than compassion and respect would move us to do. [2] And if one does focus only on the nonhuman animals, their (mis)treatment eclipses by orders of magnitude the hor

I have all along stated that I merely recommend desirism as an ethics. Differently put, desirism is itself a recommendation, specifically to rationalize one’s desires prior to acting. Desirism is intended to supplant moralism, by which I mean the belief in objective value(s) (including not only right and wrong, which comprise morality in its pared down sense, but also good and bad and even truth and falsity [1] ). The reason I have only recommended desirism is that to speak of it as somehow required would turn desirism into a moralism. For a hallmark of morality is that it consists of commands or injunctions: obligations and prohibitions (as well as permissions). But that is the very feature that makes me prefer desirism as an alternative, for I find commands of this sort to be both absurd and noxious. They are absurd because these commands issue from no commander (in the Godless universe I believe in), and they are noxious because a regime of this sort lends itself to fear and guil

“In the beginning”: There are also sorts of things I care about, want, etc. Among these are various people, all animals (including humans), music, “nature” (as in hiking), literature, astronomy, cinema, world peace, universal happiness, protection from catastrophe from asteroids and comets and climate change and you name it, etc. ad inf. But of particular relevance to our philosophical difference(s) of opinion are the following: that people behave in certain ways, that people think in certain ways, that people care about certain things. Speaking with the vulgar or in shorthand, we could say that I care about truth, rationality, morality, and compassion. But, for various reasons, I want to conditionalize or even eliminate the three first and hold on only to the last. The general reason for this set of preferences is that I think the  bulk  of my (and most people’s on reflection) preferences would more likely be satisfied (i.e., and again with the vulgar, “the world would go better”) i