So Vain

I've been reading a lot of my favorite, academic subject this year: Ethics. I even went so far as to pick up a subscription to Ethics, a journal published by the University of Chicago. I admit to having misgivings about dealing with that bastion of reactionary market fundamentalism. Despite that, it has been good for me to revisit some very old issues.

The most important thing I discovered in reading philosophy is how different it seems to me today. I can recall myself as a college student, taking on the issues in a certain frame of mind, a frame I would now describe as 'academic.'  Then there is myself today, a lot older and less able, but with an entirely different perspective. As a young man, I scoffed at Aristotle's remark that a man should be at least 35 before studying philosophy, but maybe there is something to what he said. Somehow, I cannot disconnect Jack Weinberg's saying , 'Never Trust Anyone Over 30,' from this context. The sophistic conclusion is, 'never trust philosophers.' My problem is NOW I am one of THEM.

Silly Prejudices

In my readings, I am most impressed by the (un?)consciously assumed academic setting of the discussions. Decisions about life and death, right and wrong, etc are discussed dispassionately, as if the consequences did not matter. The academic setting tries to remove emotion, flesh and blood, from discourse, so as to arrive at the reasoned result. I understand the importance of reason, of rational decision making, and paying attention to the facts. But, I also understand that life is not lifeless, that it matters to living things whether they are about to be dead.

Meanwhile, lay philosophers, politicians and lawyers advertise their belief in entities beyond the grave. We are constantly exhorted to pay obeisance to an "Almighty" (whatever that is) that protects the United States (or wherever). We are asked to do things that will benefit "the country," but our status relative to "the country" is left unspoken.

In one classical definition of schizophrenia, sufferers were guilty of "concrete thinking." I admit it: Guilty! I do lots of concrete thinking. I am unable to grasp what someone means by the "Almighty." I cannot accept the notion that decision-making goes beyond flesh and blood. In my view, those who believe the  nonsensical words they bandy about are guilty of "silly prejudice." "Silly" because, as 10 year old children, they did not believe in Santa Claus, but as adults they believe even BIGGER fairy stories. "Prejudice" because such beliefs are held held without question, even though there is absolutely no evidence for them. The Catch-22 of silly prejudice is that you have to have faith. Disbelief shows you are not a person of faith.

The Experienced Facts

I would like to stick to the facts as I know them. I have not heard any voices during the day or night. I have not been called to Mt Sinai or any other Mount to receive any tablets. I don't have any special insight into what people should and shouldn't do, other than my own life experience.

The most important thing is, I don't know anyone else who has those insights or hears things or goes up mountains and is credible. As a social worker, I knew a few people who said they heard voices, but the voices went away after they were put on a prescription. There are lots of people I don't know who claim to have special insight, or who have heard some words personally. I think some of them knock on my door from time to time: Jehovah's Witnesses (JW). The only person I knew much about who was  a JW also had serious mental problems. So, I tend to think of people who make claims about "God's Will," or who climb mountains, etc as having a medical problem. I don't think of them as putting forward weighty propositions.

It is true we are forced to consider fairy tales and other dreamy vapors in our everyday lives. Children who have been taught to believe in Santa Claus must be placated until they can be deprogrammed, leaving us to endure fake reports of a sleigh circling the world every year. Then, there's the Easter Bunny and any number of other miraculous characters we endorse for the purpose of titillating our children. I don't know why parents are ashamed of simply saying they love their children, and they have given them gifts. (Spare the rod and spoil the child?) Here again, there are the plain facts and the embroidered story.

Magical thinking has been a persistent problem at least as long as history has been recorded. It is very seductive. I remember reading with great interest Carlos Castenada's fictions about the "Yaqui Way of Life." His stories were written and accepted as a PhD thesis in anthropology, a background which enhanced everyone's credulity. Having taken a few trips in those years, I can still understand how those books appealed to thousands of people, even the normally hard-headed, down to earth skeptical types. It's easy to slip into magical thinking whenever we want to; it's hard and often unpleasant to stick to the facts. But, the older I get, the more I prefer 'just the facts' (remember Dragnet?). Our world is glorious and magical enough without further embroidery.

Theoretical Facts

Besides our experience, there is our science. The importance of modern science is that it works. That's vastly different from the alchemy of the Middle Ages, or Aristotle's untested conjectures. In the last century, we created radio, TV and movies, cars, stereos, microwave ovens, and rocket ships. We have sent ourselves to the Moon. We sent our robots (yet another invention) to all the planets. If there is some flaw in our science, it is a subtle one. The impressive fact about modern science in the hands of  its practitioners is that predictions come true, things are accomplished. This experience is as common as starting one's car and driving somewhere.

Given this background, it is not unreasonable to treat scientific propositions as facts. Of course, a theory is not a fact - it is not something we experience or personally verify in the same way as grabbing hold of a tree. But theories are like driving a car somewhere: the whole operation depends upon concepts of what a car does and where we want to go. It is not something we do for ourselves, by ourselves, like walking. We use machines, which are inherently scientific devices, to achieve our purposes. Because we are used to the things we discovered or invented working as expected, they become "facts" in our experience. For most people, the workings of their cars is just as much a fact of life as the grass in their lawns.

Because we have these experiences everyday, scientific theories are given high status. For the practitioners of science, established theories are considered just as true and immediate as waking in the morning and eating dinner. The stuff of scientists' daily efforts depends on those pre-existing truths: reinventing the wheel is considered a waste of time. It is assumed wheels work as described by physical science. The scientists' job is working from established "facts" to the next "fact." At the beginning of this chain was immediate, unaided experience; things experienced as a fact. At the end of it are things no one experiences directly: quarks and gluons. Almost everyone watches TV, which depends on nearly miraculous probabilities of electron/photon interactions. Our sight of the TV is taken as a fact, and by implication so is Einstein's explanation of the Photoelectric Effect which no one sees.

My Facts

I take scientific propositions to be as factual as the TV pictures I see. Lots of other people don't. On the other hand, lots of other people believe in superstitions and religious stories, but I don't. It's a choice people can make that has no effect most of the time. Since I am plugging my view here, I will say that the other choice is foolhardy and just plain wrong, even if without immediate effect. My view of the matter is justified by the experiential fact that, when a choice does make a difference, science works and superstition doesn't - at least, that's the way it is with me.

Coming back to the starting point - ethics - I have changed my views radically since college days. It seems pretty obvious that a lot of disputes about 'ought' are based on woolly headed thinking, which goes back to the days of shamans, priests and the words of gods. A lot of what passes for argument is merely the expression of familial and formal training.  A lot of what passes as "ethical" is merely the accumulation of rituals - cultural practices - over the ages. Here is my cynical take on some famous ethical thinking.

Now, I know it is not considered chic to argue against a position ad hominem or because of the author's social or political standing. Arguments are supposed to stand on their merit, logically, without respect to their author's particulars. So, what I've said is more political or social criticism than a devastating blow against Platonism, Aristotelian Naturalism , Kantian Idealism, Utilitarianism, or Darwinism. All of the "isms" still stand. My point is, nonetheless, that the philosophy was proposed and argued by actual people who had something at stake. Mills' and Kant's views did not materialize from thin air; they were rooted in the cultural, social and political circumstances of their time. In considering their validity, we must consider what background. What I deny is that theories, including mine, have some sort of 'Platonic' existence and truth beyond time and space. Theories, especially ethical theories, are about this world and these circumstances.

In Plato's dialog Parmenides, young Socrates rants on and on about his ideal world, about how things ought to be. Parmenides was then an elder hearing and judging the performances of his juniors. Having listened to Socrates patiently, at last Parmenides asks: 'But, Socrates, in your ideal world, what do you do about hair, mud and filth?' (The polite modern translation misses the crude language of the original, something like : who cleans the shithouse?)

Ethical Foundations

There are many other important ethical philosophers, especially modern ones, that I haven't mentionned. I have read a little bit of all of them, and been influenced by their thinking. In the end, however, here is where I come down on ethical matters:

1. I am at heart scientifically oriented, and a believer in the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution. Ultimately, this means our Universe got to where it is on its own, and we got to where we are on our own. The "metaphysics" of how it all started may be open to question, but, after that, there were no miracles or special interventions. We are the results and examples of entirely natural processes. This implies ethics is entirely our invention or habit, parallel to our use of language and tools. Ethics is founded on human considerations.

    

2. There has been an evolution of ethical principles from the less general to the more general. This corresponds to our increasing knowledge of the world, and parallels our development of legal and economic institutions. However, while interesting, I deny the Utilitarian notion that the good can be decided by adding up the votes. Like Kant, I believe ethical principles are more general and permanent than today's fashion. At issue here is whether ethics is about the right or the good. With Kant, I think the right is more fundamental, so that we do good by doing right. Utilitarian decisions are necessarily about 'good for,' not just good. The central ethical notion derived from Kant is Generalization. Our modern practice of making law is founded on that principle. In my view, it follows that the law is our moral code.

    

3. Evolution does not specify right or wrong, only alive or dead at any given time. We have no scientific basis for deciding that one culture (set of practices) is better or worse than any other. Australian aborigines have survived a harsh environment for around 40,000 years, and now they are surviving the depredations of the White Man. Most people, including most Aborigines, like the conveniences of modern society, but that does not prove modern conditions are better or worse than ancient ones. It could be that modern societies are self destructive (as in On the Beach), so that, in the end, Aborigines might outlast the recent invasion of White Men. We have no way of predicting the result. For this reason, I believe we must adopt the principle of Cultural Relativism. This principle is fairly mushy: it doesn't set out sharp boundaries between this and that, so it is easily misused. When does a culture begin and end? Does any collection of 2 or more people constitute a culture? I don't know the answers to these questions, but do think a scientific process of progressive refinement can determine the boundaries. The important thing is we do not start with set ideas, but develop them as we encounter the facts.

    

4. There are no a priori guidelines for determining who is included in the ethical universe. This is the result of eliminating special creation, personal saviors and all those other fictions which make one group of creatures "chosen," and the others not. Thus, as I noted in my "WAR" paper, we must admit to the class of moral agents anything that declares itself as one. Eventually, that could include a gaggle of robots and a lot of aliens. There is no scientific basis for excluding such non-humans, a fact long foreseen by our science-fiction writers. I call this the Ethical Turing Test, after Alan Turing.

    

5. The moral agents we know about so far resent being kicked around. They want to be treated well, as defined by themselves. This gives some credence to the Kantian principle that moral agents should be treated as ends in themselves, and not as a means only. This is another mushy principle, for it is very difficult to determine when someone has been ill used. In our time, it is common for people to sue about almost anything or when their pride or vanity has been dented. So, it is pretty clear that people, considered as moral agents, are very egoistical and reject almost any use of their persons not explicitly condoned. But, I think we must adopt the Kantian principle as our guideline, and then struggle in society to find the proper boundaries between use and abuse. If we do it the other way around, we end up having a hard time abolishing NAZIs, criminals and other perversions. While, historically, the struggle to have each person treated as a moral agent has been won case by case, we have come to the point of realizing that there is a principle involved. So, rather than  saying moral agents (people) only have the rights they have specifically won, it is better to grant sweeping rights and then find the limits society must impose. This difference of starting position about moral agents makes all the difference between free and authoritarian societies. While I haven't given this a name until now, maybe I should call it the principle of Individual Rights or Personal Worth. Modern practices such as the "Miranda Warning" and "Innocent until proved Guilty" follow straightaway from such a conception. Again, Individual Rights is a perspective that supposes rights inhere in the individual, whereas contrary positions only allow individuals such rights and privileges as society may grant. (I note this distinction and my position is a uniquely American invention, owing to the Founding Fathers. Europeans, as shown in the Napoleonic Code, hold the view that individuals are dependents of society.)

Generally, I think ethical principles and explanations should be like scientific ones. They should account for the facts on the ground. It is absurd to argue that having 2, 3 or 4 sexual partners (wives, husbands or lovers) is immoral when that practice has been successful for thousands of years in many societies. Thus, being against polygamy in Utah is simply prejudice, without ethical foundation. Now, there may be practical considerations favoring monogamy, or serial monogamy, but those considerations are specific to local conditions. I think it is very difficult or impossible to argue the immorality of mating practices in other societies that aren't just like ours.

In the same vein, it turns out that there are very few universal, or nearly universal moral laws; i.e., rules of behavior justified by ethical considerations. So far, for example, all the moral agents we know about resist being killed. So it seems the prohibition of murder is a good candidate for moral law status. Similarly, assault, rape and robbery are likely candidates. But even these nearly universal moral laws have their exceptions. Some States allow capital punishment. Almost all States make provision for expropriation of property (taxes, right of way, public domain, etc).

While our ethical principles require moral cases should be subject to generalization, that general rule can be delimited by conditions and circumstances. This does not in any way denigrate the notion of universal ethical principles, any more than the application of scientific principles to specific cases reduces their generality. Einstein's gravitation doesn't have much to do with the workings of quarks and gluons, but that doesn't imply it is invalid. There are just different sets (classes) of experience to which our grand generalizations apply. In the same way, what is constant about ethics is our procedures and reasoning - the process - and commonly felt goals (to discover what is right or good). We think the principles we hold are likely to stand the test of time, even with some limitations, so we apply them as best we can.

It is not necessary for ethical principles to be absolute or universal, forever, to declare them as "essentially true," and apply them as needed. But, it is vain to propose that a certain set of principles, or moral laws, are the final solution to all such matters.

August 31 - September 11, 2004

Last update: 11/13/2007

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