WHY YOU SHOULD KILL THE ONE TO SAVE THE TWENTY. AND WHY YOU SHOULDN’T.
December 18, 2011 § 49 Comments
Jim is a botanist doing research in a South American country led by a brutal dictator. One day he finds himself in the central square of a small town facing 20 Indians who have been randomly captured and tied up as an example of what will happen to rebels. The army captain tells Jim that if he agrees to kill one of the Indians, the others will be released in honour of Jim’s status as a guest. If, however, Jim refuses, then all the Indians will be shot. What should Jim do?
It is a question that philosopher Bernard Williams poses in his essay ‘A critique of utlitarianism’ in his 1973 book Utilitarianism: For and Against, which I am currently re-reading. The book is a double-hander with JJC Smart, in which the two philosophers… well, unsurprisingly, argue for and against utilitarianism. Both essays in the book are worth reading. But my sympathies are clearly with Williams’ critique of utilitarianism, and more broadly of consequentialism.
Wiliams uses the story of Jim to illustrate his most profound criticism of conequentialism. The real problem with consequentialism, he observes, is not that it arrives at the wrong answers to moral questions (though often it does). It is that even when a consequentialist arrives at the right answer, he or she does so by the wrong means and for the wrong reasons, and in a way that is devastating for our moral lives.
Take Jim. For most consequentialists, there is no moral dilemma. Jim should kill one Indian because it is better that one is executed than twenty. A non-consequentialist would probably come to the same conclusion. But there can be no simple counting up of consequences. Rather, a non-consequentialist Jim would face a deep and terrible moral dilemma. Why? Because there is a crucial moral distinction between my killing a person, and that person being killed by someone else because of my refusal to act immorally. It is a distinction that rests upon the existence of humans as moral agents.
The consequentialist, Williams argues, has lost sight of the difference between ‘my agency and other people’s’. In ignoring that distinction, consequentialism transforms human beings from moral actors, keenly pursuing particular moral ends, into empty vessels by means of which consequences occur. Or, to put it another way, consequentialism undermines the integrity of the moral agent. ‘Integrity’ is an immensely signifitant concept for Williams. It describes the ability of an individual to view himself as a moral agent whose actions flow ‘from projects or attitudes which in some cases he takes seriously at the deepest level, as what his life is about’. To demand of such a moral agent that he should see himself as a janitor of a ‘universal satisfaction system’, as a compiler of a balance-sheet of consequences, rather than as the curator of his own moral projects, is ‘to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone’s projects, including his own, and an output of optimific decision’. It is to attack his moral integrity.
Consequentialism cannot understand this notion of moral integrity, Williams suggests, because ‘it cannot coherently describe the relations between a man’s projects and his actions’. It has, in other words, an impoverished picture of the inner life of human beings, of why humans act upon the world, and why it is so important to see those actions as ours, as flowing from our needs, motives, desires and dreams. The whole business of compiling moral balance-sheets of the consequentialist sort is incompatible with the phenomenon of agency as we know it.
A consequentialist Jim would have done his calculations and then simply picked up a gun and shot an Indian. A non-consequentialist Jim would have agonized over his decision, before perhaps also picking up a gun and shooting an Indian. It may not seem much of a difference (it certainly would not make any difference to the Indian who was shot). It may even seem that the assertive consequentialist has a clearer, firmer grasp of ethics than the prevaricating agonizing non-consequentialist. But in that gap between the picking up of the gun after having consulted a moral spreadsheet, and the picking up of the gun after having wrestled with one’s moral torments, lies, Williams insists, the meaning of morality.
(The picture, by the way, is Goya’s The Third of May, about a rebellion in Madrid against French occupation.)
Jim should pick up a gun and take out the sick sadistic army captain and as many of his troops as possible.
Couldn’t agree more.
I’m not sure what to make of this. I am not sure that morality must have any meaning, just as biological facts do not have meaning. It’s just about facts (again, I, pace Harris, do not think there is a split between facts and values): option 1 makes more people happy; option 2 makes less people happy. No-brainer: go for whatever contributes most to happiness.
On the other hand, Williams’ work on moral luck has its appeal. A drunk driver who runs over two children is not morally distant from a drunk driver who was lucky enough not to run anybody, although the consequences were dramatically different.
Ethics is a hard field, I always have great trouble finding satisfactory answers
Gabriel, let’s look a bit more closely at this idea that ‘values’ are nothing more than ‘facts’. In the past scientists believed that it was a ‘fact’ that certain races were inferior to others and that that fact of inferiority justified discrimination and enslavement. Scientists, of course, no longer believe in such notions of racial inferiority and superiority. But suppose, for the sake of this argument, that in the future scientists were to discover that one race really was inferior to another and that cost-benefit analysis showed indisputably that the best outcome was for that one race to enslaved by the others. Would you accept that such enslavement was a moral good? Or to put it another way, is your opposition to racism and slavery simply factual, or does it derive from a moral and political belief, rooted in, but distinct from, facts about the world, about the meaning of human dignity and about how we should treat human beings?
I don’t know about you, but my opposition to slavery derives from the fact that I am biologically programmed to feel the pain of others as my own (i.e. empathy), and thus I avoid imposing such treatment on others. There’s no “should” there. I simply feel better when people are not enslaved.
This talk of “the meaning of human dignity” seems to suppose that there is something more grandiose going on in my head other than a simple “avoidance of aversive stimuli” subroutine.
Tim, that is exactly my initial point. I, like you, am not sure morality requires a grandiose meaning. It seems to be just facts. Slavery fires my neurons in such a way that it makes me feel bad. I do not like my neurons to be in such a state; hence, I thrive towards the erradication of slavery, so my brain state changes towards pleasure.
Tim, as I pointed out in the response to Gabriel below, for most of human history, people have not felt pain about the suffering of slaves. In other words, while I agree with you that empathy is a biological disposition, the idea that one is ‘biologically programmed’ to oppose slavery is clearly untrue. As for the claim that ‘human dignity’ is nothing more than a ‘“avoidance of aversive stimuli” subroutine’ – it’s the kind of argument that makes my own avoidance of aversive stimuli subroutine kick in ☺.
Kenan, I’m not arguing that we are biologically programmed to oppose slavery. We are, however, biologically programmed to feel others’ pain as our own. You put this in quotes in your reply, but I’m not sure why, because it is a fact. Empathetic organisms react to the pain of others with neural activity in their own pain centers. If you’re not aware of this, I can find sources. Sociopaths, by the way, do not exhibit this activation, which explains why they treat other human beings as mere tools to be used. They do not empathize with them whatsoever. So it is very much accurate to say that normal humans are programmed to feel others’ pain as their own, whereas some congenitally abnormal humans are not.
That is not to say that we do not ignore the suffering of others. We do. Cultural and religious influences, concern for our own wellbeing, brutalization, psychological distance, etc. are all factors that can cause us to be less than empathic with our fellow creatures. Still, it is a fact to say that my opposition to the maltreatment of others, when I feel such opposition, is a result of empathy. If I could look at a suffering human and not be emotionally moved, there would be no motivation to care about their plight at all. Again, if you doubt this, sociopaths are the perfect test case, because we know that they do not care about others, and we know that they do not exhibit the neural activity associated with empathy.
Lastly, I did not say that “human dignity is nothing more than an avoidance of aversive stimuli subroutine.” Again you are not being careful in your reading of my comment. I said that you speak about morality (using phrases such as “the meaning of human dignity”) as if it were something grandiose, when really it is just an evolutionarily-programmed motivation, like anything else.
I have a feeling it will be difficult to get you to agree with me on this, since you state in your reply to Gabriel that some things are intrinsically immoral, and that sounds like (if I may be honest) nonsensical mystical thinking to me. In other words, there is a fundamental difference between your and my beliefs on this issue, which we would probably have to address before we agreed on much of the above.
But if you were interested in getting into that, I would ask you:
1) What does it mean to say that something (e.g. slavery) is intrinsically immoral?
2) What would falsify your statement that it is immoral?
Tim, I fear you’re the one who seems not to be reading carefully. I wrote ‘I agree with you that empathy is a biological disposition’- so I’m not sure what your complaint is about my understanding of empathy, or what facts you think I am unaware of. The point, however, is that empathy is not a sufficient explanation for our aversion to slavery. We have had a biological disposition to empathy throughout human history. But for virtually all that history human societies have also regarded slavery as morally acceptable. So, the fact that today most people despise slavery cannot be explained simply by an evolved disposition to empathy. Empathy is a necessary condition for a moral aversion to slavery – and, indeed, for morality itself. It cannot be a sufficient one.
There is nothing mystical about insisting that an act such as slavery is intrinsically immoral. It simply means that there are no circumstances in which I would consider slavery to be a moral act. And, no, the claim that ‘slavery in all circumstances is wrong’ cannot be ‘falsified’ in the normal sense of the word because it is not a factual statement but a moral judgment. What you can do is challenge the premises on which I base that judgment or the reasoning by which I arrive at it. And if you do have a cogent argument as to why there are circumstances in which slavery is a good – in other words, why slavery is not intrinsically immoral – I am happy to hear it.
Hello! Apologies for the late reply – it’s been a very busy few days, as you can imagine.
Point taken about empathy not being a sufficient cause for our aversion to slavery. My diversion into the neural underpinnings of empathy was to make sure that we were on the same page, since you put “biologically programmed” in scare quotes. But I think we are on the same page as far as that’s concerned, so… moving on.
Let’s talk about your claim that slavery is intrinsically immoral. I’m still trying to understand what this means. You said it means that “there are no circumstances in which slavery is moral,” but that doesn’t really tell me anything new. What does it mean for something to be “moral”?
I’m also having trouble understanding why your statement cannot be falsified. You say this is because it isn’t a factual statement, but a moral judgement. Isn’t a “judgement” simply a conclusion about what you think is a fact? Every judgement I can think of can be falsified – even so-called subjective ones. For example, if I say “this is a good movie,” what I’m really saying is that I have a set of criteria about movies which I use to judge goodness, and this movie fits that criteria. The criteria might involve ‘convincing acting,’ or ‘a plot that doesn’t follow too closely traditional archetypes,’ etc. If I say a movie is “good” and the movie in fact follows a traditional plot archetype very closely, then my judgement is falsified. Or, on the other hand, you could focus on the fact that I subjectively experienced this movie as a “good movie,” which is a claim that would be falsifiable by psychological or neuroscientific investigation.
So, again, I wish to know:
1) What it means that slavery is “wrong.”
2) What would falsify that statement.
And one more:
3) If your moral judgements are not factual statements, on what grounds do you criticize people (i.e. consequentialists) for having different judgements?
Tim, this discussion might move on a bit if you actually read more carefully what I write. In my first response to you I wrote that ‘while I agree with you that empathy is a biological disposition, the idea that one is “biologically programmed” to oppose slavery is clearly untrue’. You responded that we are ‘biologically programmed to feel others’ pain as our own. You put this in quotes in your reply, but I’m not sure why, because it is a fact’, and decided that I needed a lesson on the biological roots of empathy. Presumably the sentence ‘I agree with you that empathy is a biological disposition’ meant something different to you than it did to me.
Then you asked me what I meant by slavery being intrinsically immoral. I told you that it meant that ‘there are no circumstances in which I would consider slavery to be a moral act’, in other words that ‘slavery in all circumstances is wrong’. That is about as clear an explanation/definition as one can give. Now you say that this ‘doesn’t really tell me anything new’. I’m sorry, but if it’s not clear after that, there is not much point having this discussion because we are obviously talking in different languages.
You ask ‘again’ what would falsify the statement that slavery is morally wrong. Given I have already explained that it ‘cannot be “falsified” in the normal sense of the word because it is not a factual statement’, it seems strange that you should pretend that I have not addressed that question. Moreover, I have said that there are no circumstances in which it would be right to enslave humans. To falsify the claim that it is wrong to enslave human beings you would have to show that there are circumstances in which it is, or would be, right to enslave human beings, circumstances that I have already declared are not, and cannot be, part of my moral universe. That itself reveals the distinction between a factual statement and a moral judgment. But perhaps you can enlighten me as to under what circumstances you think it right to enslave a human being?
In your world everything seems to be a ‘fact’ and seemingly the only things that one can debate or criticize are facts. That is certainly not the world in which I live, or in which most people live. If I were to say that ‘Tim is a slave’ that is a factual statement that can be verified or falsified in a normal sense of those words. If I were say ‘Tim should not be a slave’ that is to make moral judgment upon a particular set of facts. I believe that it is morally wrong for Tim to be a slave because I take Tim to be a human being, I take human beings to be moral agents, and I believe it wrong to enslave moral agents. You can verify or falsify the claim that Tim is a human being, you can verify or falsify the claim that human beings are moral agents, but you cannot verify or falsify a moral judgment that, given the veracity of those facts, it would be wrong to enslave Tim. What you can do is challenge that belief, make a reasoned argument against it, show that it is irrational, or illogical or unreasonable. And, as I suggested before, if you do want to make a reasoned argument that it would be good to enslave humans, do so.
Finally you ask ‘If your moral judgements are not factual statements, on what grounds do you criticize people (i.e. consequentialists) for having different judgements?’ Again, this suggests that the only things about which we can rationally disagree are facts. As I said, that is not the world in which most people live. It is not even the world in which most consequentialists live. Consequentialists, as I’ve already pointed out in a different part of this discussion, have to decide which goods to maximize; which of the different ways of maximizing those goods is to be preferred; how one defines a consequence; why certain consequences are relevant, and others not; how to define the cut-off point beyond which we no longer consider consequences to be relevant; whether the consequences of my actions upon my family and friends have different weight to the consequences upon people living on the other side of the world. And so on. In answering these questions, consequentialists are making reasoned judgments, not stating empirical facts. It is true that some, like Sam Harris, pretend otherwise. So, here’s my review of Harris’ The Moral Landscape, which explains why they, and he, are wrong.
Onesimus is a slave owned by Philemon. There is a psychopath centurion, Marcus, who feels an irrational hatred for freed slaves, and keeps a very close eye on freed slaves and their former masters. He has a network of spies that let him know whenever slaves are freed. Every time a slave is freed, Marcus organizes his soldiers and thugs, and kills not only the freed slave, but also the former master. Philemon feels the moral duty to free Onesimus, but fears that if he does so, both Onesimus and he will be killed by Marcus’ thugs. Is slavery immoral here? I wouldn’t think so. This is not relativism, of course, it is just situational ethics, a brand of consequentialism.
Is all of this verifiable? I think it is. It is a fact that, in this case, masters who free slaves bring forth a greater amount of suffering. Previous experiences in this scenario allow us to know so, and hence, it is verified. It is also a fact that, in this case, owning a slave brings forth a lesser amount of suffering, both to the slave and the master. You can in fact compare owners who freed their slaves, and owners who did not freed their slaves, and verify that the former brought forth less happiness.
Kenan, I already explained to you why I went on a tangent about empathy. I wanted to make sure we were on the same page (something that it’s important to do at the beginning of a discussion, else we will surely run into problems later), and I told you that I had understood the point you were making in your original reply. Nonetheless, you bring this issue up again and chastise me for my (lack of) reading ability. This seems quite uncalled for.
When I asked you what “intrinsically immoral” meant, you defined “intrinsically” rather than “immoral.” I know what intrinsically means, and if I did not, I could look it up. For your definition of “immoral,” all you’ve given me is “not moral” and “wrong.” Like I said, this tells me nothing. In my previous comment, I asked you specifically to tell me what you mean when you say something is “moral” or when you say something is “wrong.” You have ignored the question and pretended as if I was the one not understanding something. It’s highly suspect that someone engaging in philosophy should be so reticent to define his terms.
So I understand the idea that you have opinions about what people should and shouldn’t do. Don’t we all? The question is, why should anyone care about your opinion, and why should you write a blog post in which you diss consequentalists for “getting it wrong” when you have no argument to back up your opinion? Your philosophy that “it’s wrong to enslave moral agents” is nothing but baseless assertion thus far. And despite the fact that you haven’t supported your opinion with argument, you invite those who disagree with you to put forward their arguments for why you’re wrong! Sorry, but if you make a claim, you support it.
So, for the fourth time, what does it mean to say that something is “wrong” or “immoral”?
Tim, this is getting rather silly. We clearly speak in different languages. The meaning of slavery being ‘wrong in all circumstances’ seems obvious to me. It seems to leave you perplexed. The idea of neurophysiology as a means of verifying/falsifying your attitude to a film appears to you common sense. It appears to me a claim that gets to the heart of what is wrong with your approach. You think it’s extraordinary for me to ‘invite those who disagree with you to put forward their arguments for why you’re wrong’. Isn’t that the essence of debate? You also seem oblivious to the irony of criticizing me for publishing on my blog a post ‘in which you diss consequentalists for “getting it wrong” when you have no argument to back up your opinion’ (in your opinion, that is) when you are happy to come on my site to throw around ad hominems without feeling the need to back up your claims. Be that as it may, let me respond to your points yet again. However, unless you wish to raise some different issues, or at least raise those issues in a different way, I cannot see much reason in persevering with this discussion.
First, yet again on the issue of empathy. I wrote in my very first response to you that ‘I agree with you that empathy is a biological disposition’. Somehow this made you think that we may not be ‘on the same page’ in thinking about empathy as a biological disposition and that I may not accept that empathy is a biological disposition. How this amounts to you having ‘understood the point’ I was making, I don’t know.
I am sorry you don’t seem to understand what it means to say that ‘slavery in all circumstances is wrong’. That seems to me perfectly comprehensible and clear. But let me try once again. I believe that under no circumstances should another human being be enslaved. Is that any clearer?
You say that to suggest that ‘It’s wrong to enslave moral agents’ is ‘nothing but a baseless assertion’. No more so than the consequentialist argument that what matters is the ‘wellbeing of sentient creatures’. That is a moral starting point, not a statement of fact. (I recognize that you don’t accept the distinction, but that’s your problem, not mine). Other consequentialists think that what matters is the wellbeing not of sentient creatures but of human beings, or of ecosystems, or of the planet. I can think of rational arguments that may help distinguish between these claims. But I can think of no empirical test that can do so. Again, consequentialists differ on how to measure wellbeing – as happiness, as the expression of ‘higher pleasures’, as the satisfaction of preferences, and so on. And again, there is no empirical test that can entirely settle the differences. That doesn’t mean that we cannot debate such differences – simply that we cannot debate them as if they were purely statements of fact.
My starting point is that of humans as moral agents. Human beings live in a reciprocal web of rights and obligations created by a capacity for rational dialogue. We can distinguish between right and wrong, act upon such judgments, accept responsibility and apportion blame. In this, we are different from other animals. I have debated this issue many times with consequentialists such as Peter Singer and Richard Ryder. It is why, as I did in those debates, I oppose the idea of animal rights, support animal experimentation – and believe that slavery is wrong in all circumstances.
You say that ‘if you make a claim, you support it’. Quite. Since you insist that one should not consider slavery to be ‘intrinsically wrong’, in the sense that under no circumstances should a human being be enslaved, presumably you must think it right that under some circumstances humans should be enslaved. That is why I have asked you several times to provide a cogent argument as to what those circumstances are. Since you have not even attempted to provide such an argument, perhaps mine is not such a baseless assertion after all.
Kenan: The philosopher Joshua Greene, in his dissertation, distinguishes between epistemological skepticism and metaphysical skepticism regarding moral claims. Suppose I make the (non-moral) claim that Antarctica exists. An epistemological skeptic would ask, “How do you know?”, in which case I would cite my evidence. A metaphysical skeptic would ask, “What makes it the case that your belief is true if in fact it is?” Or, as I have phrased it in my discussion with you, “what does it mean for this to be true?” In the case of Antarctica, my claim being true would mean that there really is a large physical landmass at the south pole.
On morality, Greene says: “The question with which we are concerned is not “How can you know for sure that your moral beliefs are true?” but rather, “How could it be that anyone’s moral beliefs are true? What could make a moral claim true? In what does a moral claim’s truth consist? If two people have a moral disagreement, what could make one of them correct and the other incorrect?”
Again, this is what I’m getting at. What could it mean to say that “slavery is wrong” is true? Where does the truth of that statement come from. What are those who disagree mistaken about?
You haven’t answered. I believe this goes back to the fundamental mistake you seem to be making (pointed out in my second comment here), that moral laws have some kind of metaphysical existence, similar to the laws of nature, perhaps. You seem to think that these things just are true. But they aren’t, and if you disagree it is up to you to explain what it would mean for them to be so.
So that is the metaphysical part of what I’m asking. As for the epistemological – or the “how do you know this is true?” – part, I state again that you have provided nothing more than a baseless assertion. Here it is:
“You say that to suggest that ‘It’s wrong to enslave moral agents’ is ‘nothing but a baseless assertion’. No more so than the consequentialist argument that what matters is the ‘wellbeing of sentient creatures’. That is a moral starting point, not a statement of fact. ”
Yes, and what if someone doesn’t agree to your moral starting point, as I do not? Then he will ask you questions like “How do you know that’s true?” And you can either answer them, or take umbrage when it is suggested that you have no argument.
Put differently, you cannot just declare by fiat that slavery is wrong. Yet this is all you’ve done. And this is why I criticize you for asking people who disagree with you to “give an argument” for it – because you have given no argument to begin with.
Not that I am one to shift the burden of proof back and forth without end, mind you. But what you do not seem to realize is I am not making any more claims. I’m simply questioning yours. (I can do no other, since I do not yet understand what it would mean to to say that something is morally right or wrong.)
You write: “Since you insist that one should not consider slavery to be ‘intrinsically wrong’, in the sense that under no circumstances should a human being be enslaved, presumably you must think it right that under some circumstances humans should be enslaved.”
Again, the concept of “morally right” does not make any sense to me (that is to say, I have no answer to the metaphysical question). It is accurate to say that I dislike slavery. This is due, as I said at the start of this conversation, to the fact that I empathize with other human beings and would not want to see them enslaved. But I recognize that this is nothing other than a subjective desire on my part. There is no metaphysical reality to the “you must not do that”-ness of slavery.
So, if you will, kindly recognize that I have no claims to make, other than the claim that you have not supported yours.
The part of Greene’s dissertation which is relevant to this begins on page 67 of the PDF – I believe it would be helpful if you still don’t understand what I’m asking.
On the subject of instances in which it would be “right” to enslave someone, it seems to me that Gabriel has provided quite a good one above. I was looking forward to see how you responded.
Lastly, as far as ad hominems are concerned, I challenge you to point out one instance where I have engaged in anything of the sort.
Sorry, that should say “I am not making any *moral claims” above.
Zizek would probably argue that Jim shoul’d play the game of that commander. The fondanental problem remains the commander. The dilemme is a distraction there to Reduce the pain imposed by the commander, thus help the safekeeping of the system imposed by the commander.
And I would agree. My pointy here was not to defend Williams’ liberalism but to draw out why his critique of consequentialism can be valuable.
I’m faced with a similar (somewhat) philosophical conundrum every time I vote.
Do I vote for the candidate whom I would ideally like to get in (unlikely) or do I vote for the person with the better chance of defeating the candidate I would most hate to get in? I tend to do the latter.
Kenan, I reply to your reply (unfortunely, it seems you can’t continue a thread in this blog format). I think I’d bite the bullet. If it is proven that the “inferior race” does not have enough intellectual ability to be free, and is better off working for the master race, then yes, I would support slavery. If the “inferior race” suffers because of its condition as slaves, then no, I wouldn’t support slavery, because their suffering makes me suffer. I am not intrinsically opposed to slavery, I am opposed to the suffering it brings forth (e.g., its consequences). If slavery is victimless, then I do not oppose it. I do not see how “victimless crime” is a coherent concept.
Are you concerned about robots and machines being your servants? I suppose not. And, you are not concerned, because you are familiar with the fact that they (at least until now) do not have a mental life (perhaps in the future some machine may pass the Turing test, but that is another topic). Your opposition or non-opposition to slavery is based upon facts: human slaves suffer, robots don’t.
First, why assume that ‘inferiority’ in this case necessarily means ‘not possessing enough intellectual ability to be free’ or ‘is better off for working for the master race’. According to your consequentialist calculus, all that matters is that 1.One race is in fact ‘inferior’ to the other; and 2.Enslaving this race would increase the overall level of happiness (irrespective of whether it caused suffering or pain to those enslaved). The fact that you (rightly) don’t want to defend such a position reveals one of the fundamental problems with consequentialism.
Second, we don’t even have to introduce the ‘fact’ of racial ‘inferiority’ to make this point. Suppose that we have succeeded in establishing an objective scale for the measurement of happiness (as you, following Sam Harris, seem to believe we will), a scale on which 0 represents absolute misery and 10 represents total bliss. And suppose (and I take this illustration from Anthony Kenny’s Philosophy in the Modern World [OUP, 2007], p369) we have to choose between two political policies. The first policy will lead to 60 per cent of the population scoring 6 on the happiness index and 40 per cent scoring 4. The second policy will lead to 80 per cent scoring 10 and to 20 per cent scoring 0. Which policy should we choose? The second creates a greater amount of total happiness than the first. But it also creates a greater amount of misery for a minority. The first creates less overall happiness, but it does not confine any humans to absolute misery. I hope you would find the second policy immoral. But according to your consequentialist calculus, that is exactly the policy that is ‘factually’ more moral.
Of course, you may say that this is an absurd illustration, and that morality does not work in the way. That is both true and false. Issues such as slavery, torture or barbaric punishments such as amputating the hands of a thief do pose such questions. There are consequentialist arguments used in defence of such social practices. If we reject such arguments, we do so from a non-consequentialist standpoint. At the same time, this kind of illustration is absurd because the kinds of calculations required by consequentialism are absurd and cut against the grain both of our moral agency and about the ways in which it is profitable to think about happiness and misery, social barbarism and social progress.
Faced with these problems consequentialists have advocated all manner of workarounds, from JS Mill’s distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures to RM Hare’s, and more recently Peter Singer’s, championing of preference utilitarianism, in which the good is defined in the satisfaction of an individual’s interests or preferences, the bad in their frustration. The cumulative impact of such workarounds is to diminish the consequentialism of consequentialist theory. What comes to matter is less the consequences of the action than its intrinsic value. What the history of consequentialism reveals is the difficulty in thinking about moral acts without passing judgment on the intrinsic worth of those acts.
Finally, you suggest that ‘I wouldn’t support slavery, because their suffering makes me suffer.’ From a consequentialist point of view, however, your suffering has no more weight than anyone else’s. All that matters is that a particular policy increases overall happiness more than it increases overall pain. To a non-consequentialist, the fact that I suffer when someone else does is of great import. First, because it is an expression of my moral agency – Williams’ point. Second, because what it suggests is that there are certain actions that are intrinsically wrong. Enslaving other humans is one of them, whatever may be the overall benefits for society.
It is worth adding that to be a non-consequentialist does not mean that one ignores consequences. One may (as I do) take them to be very important. All it means to be a non-consequentialist is that consequences are not the only criteria one takes into account in making moral choices.
Kenan, thank you for your long and thoughtful reply. Out of respect for your blog, I shall only make one more brief reply; you can make a final counter-reply, if you wish. Your philosophically famous illustration of a majority exploiting a minority (or 80% achieving 10 and 20% achieving 0) and thus, increasing the overall felicific index, has a problem not yet addressed: the morality of equality. Now, you may say that, if I value equality per se, then I’m no longer a consequentialist. But, I think you may make a consequentialist defense of equality. Everyone will be better off if there is equality. The scenario where the overall felicific index is increased by having one master race enslaving the other is not coherent after all, because such inequality immediately decreases the felicific index: a member of the master race cannot be truly happy if slaves exist; 80% cannot truly achieve 10 if 20% achieve 0. Inequality entails fear and mistrust, and thus, it can never bring about an increase of the overall happiness. If inequality did not bring bad consequences, then again, I think I would bite the bullet and admit the morality of slavery. But, it is simply not the case. I think some utilitarian philosopher such as Henry Sedgwick would be my guide here: he advocated consequentialism, but was very aware of arguments such as yours, and tried to make a consequentialist defense of equality, basically along the terms I am making.
I do not think Mill and Singer diminish the impact of consequentialism on consequentalist theories. They are simply taking into account more complex variables as to what are the overall consequences of an act or rule; but they still focus on consequences. Maybe consuming cocaine will give you nice consequences: you will feel great for five minutes. But, if you look more closely, you realize that the overall consequences are fatal. I think Mill, Bentham, Singer, etc., do something similar with all sorts of immoral acts.
Nevertheless, I may ultimately agree with you that, as far as metaethics go, consequences are not the sole measure of morality. For, I can think of plenty of immoral acts that lead to good consequences (but, then again, sometimes I think we should just bite the bullet and admit that those acts are moral indeed). And, in that case, perhaps, contra Harris, there is a difference between facts and values. Fortunately, you are the one writing the book, not me. For, unlike other philosophical fields, ethics is a field upon which I’d never have a definite stand.
‘Everyone will be better off if there is equality.’ This a political and moral claim, with which I agree. It is not, however, a factual claim (or, at least, not necessarily so).
‘A member of the master race cannot be truly happy if slaves exist’: again that is a belief not a factual claim. As it happens, for the vast part of human history when slavery was the norm, it would have been clearly untrue to suggest that slaveowners had been made unhappy by the existence of slaves. They were more than happy to live off slave labour. The fact that this is no longer true is because we now possess a different view of human worth and human dignity. Historically, opposition to slavery emerged through the recognition that human humans beings possess certain rights and dignities that should not be breached precisely because they are human beings. In other words, that there are some acts that are intrinsically immoral.
And finally, Gabriel, don’t worry about taking up space with responses – the whole point of this blog is to open up debate.
Kenan, perhaps slave-owners were happy. But, I suppose they were happy in the same manner that prostitutes are happy having sex for money, or burglars are happy stealing. Bentham would have argued that the ethicist must teach the prostitute or the burglar that they would be even happier if they did not have sex for money, or they did not steal; Bentham would teach the prostitute that, even if she thinks she is happy, she has no motives to be, as her acts would lead to bad consequences, especially for her. So, again, I think ultimately consequences are the moral measure.
You say: ” Historically, opposition to slavery emerged through the recognition that human humans beings possess certain rights and dignities that should not be breached precisely because they are human beings. In other words, that there are some acts that are intrinsically immoral”.
I may agree that abolitionists, on the whole, were not consequentialists. But, the fact that they were not consequentialists does not imply that theirs was the most reasoned opposition to slavery, or that today we must reason along the same lines as abolitionists did. A much more reasoned opposition to slavery, I think, would have been a consequentialist argument: it is in everyone’s interest for slavery to disappear. I often hear a lot of antipathy towards Adam Smith’s utilitarian argument against slavery (there are very few economic advantages in slavery), but I am wiling to express sympathy for his argument; although, I think the best argument against slavery is that it is a dangerous institution for all.
Gabriel, we’re going round in circles. The trouble is that you insist that an act is moral if it increases happiness but also that a person can only really be happy if you say they are. And you define happiness neatly to be the outcome of what you consider to be a moral act. A slaveowner cannot be happy even if he is because slavery is immoral. A prostitute cannot be happy even if she is because prostitution is immoral. That is an argument that can never be refuted. You are not defining the morality of an act by its consequences. You are defining a good consequence as that which is produced by what you think to be a moral act.
Kenan, I admit that it may seem paradoxical to tell a smiling person that she is not truly happy; it may even seem a form of paternalistic authoritarianism. But, isn’t that what we do with teenagers who make wrong moral decisions, such as taking drugs? We tell them that they may think they are happy now, but in the future, they will regret what they are doing. Maybe the prostitute is smiling now, but the consequentialist philosopher should make her see that her actions will most likely have bad consequences for society and for her (although, admitedly, Mill famously argued that prostitution need not be immoral; I disagree). She may be happy now, but her actions have a great potential to take her happiness away. So, I insist (and I am sorry if I appear to be stubborn here), consequences seem to be indeed the ultimate measure…
Gabriel, of course we all take moral positions. No one would dispute that, least of all me. What I am disputing is, first, the idea that to make a moral judgment is the same as stating an objective fact about the world and, second, the belief that all one needs to take into account are the consequences of an action. Consequences are, in my view, and as I have already written, immensely important in judging an act. But they cannot be the sole criteria. And they cannot be even for consequentialists.
Consequentialists have to decide which goods to maximize and why. Which of the different ways of maximizing those goods (in other words, how the goods are to be distributed in the process of maximizing them) is to be preferred, and why? How does one define a consequence and why? (Any act can have an infinite number of consequences, some good and some bad, and these consequences can be traced into the indefinite future; why are certain consequences relevant, and others not, and how do we define the cut-off point beyond which we no longer consider consequences to be relevant, and why?) Does the consequences of my actions upon my family and friends have different weight to the consequences upon people living on the other side of the world, and why? And so on. It is not that consequentialists cannot answer these questions. They clearly can. It is that when they do so, they have to step outside the consequentialist framework, though they rarely acknowledge that.
When you say that ‘a slaveowner is not really happy’ or ‘a prostitute is not really happy’ you are making a moral judgment. What you are not doing is solely taking consequences into account nor stating a fact about the world. The refusal to acknowledge this is what I find to be the weakest and strangest part of the consequentialist argument. You say that a slaveowner thinks he’s happy but is not really. I say that consequentialists, in making such an argument, think that they are simply talking about consequences but they are not really ☺.
Kenan, you raise an important issue that touches upon a similar problem: the foundations and justification of knowledge. When facing an argument, you can always ask “why?”. But, whatever answer you get, you can again, ask “why?”, and thus you begin a chain of justifications. This may lead you to an infinite regress. But, some (I’d say most) epistemologists will agree that you eventually reach an axiomatic point where you can no longer justify your claims; i.e., the foundations of knowledge. Suppose I am an empiricist, and I take experience to be the ultimate source of knowledge. But, in order to justify my empiricist stand, I cannot invoke experience itself. In order to defend empiricism, I must invoke a non-empirical claim, i.e., that experience is the source of knowledge. I may reject metaphysics, but my rejection of metaphysics is itself a metaphysical claim. I, however, do not think that is an incoherent position. I just admit that the foundation of knowledge is not experience per se, but rather the metaphysical foundation of empiricism. But, once I have admitted that, I can take experience as the source of knowledge, and be properly called an empiricist.
Now, the same goes for consequentialism. I clearly have to invoke a non-consequentialist reason to be consequentialist. But, I do not think that takes my consequentialism away. I still am a consequentialist; I just admit that the metaethical foundations of morality are not consequentialist in themselves.
The comparison is not valid. You are not simply justifying ‘invoking a non-consequentialist reason to be consequentialist’. You are calling on non-consequentialist premises to justify decisions supposedly taken from within the consequentialist framework. When Mill distinguished between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures, or when Richard Brandt suggests that preferences should be limited to informed desires that remain informed desires after a course of cognitive therapy, or when you suggest that prostitutes who are happy are not really happy, it is not a case of establishing the ‘metaethical foundations of morality’, it is a case of inventing practical workarounds to overcome the inherent flaws of consequentialism.
Where’s Peter Singer when you need him? re above comment by Gabriel
Incidentally, if you want to continue a thread, click on the first post in that thread; your reply will be posted at the end of that particular thread. I have now enabled 3 levels of nested comments to make threads easier.
The first comment of the thread by Daniel Wiklander, dodged one horn of the dilemma. I might suggest dodging the other horn.
If I were still capable for using my mouth, I would shout to the 20 Indians: “¿Quién dará su vida por los demás compañeros?” (Who would be willing to give up his life for his companions? )
If someone offers himself, I would become the mere material instrument, not morally responsible, in the death of that person and saving the lives of the other 19. If no one offered himself I would consider myself free of responsibility for the lives of all 20, just as I am not responsible for the deaths caused by our Nicaraguan hurricanes and earthquakes.
Justiniano de Managua
Keenan —
I have two problems with this argument. The first is that I don’t see why agonising over one’s moral choices makes one a more moral person. It seems to me to favour hand-wringing over clarity of thought.
The second problem is that I don’t see why you think a consequentialist would not feel moral qualms over the decision to shoot the one to save twenty. I’m sure we have all experienced times in our lives where it was hard to do what we thought was right, even when we held no doubts about the morality of the decision. And even in this rather unlikely situation (has anything like this ever happened in human history?), if I were that consequentialist I would be wondering if I could trust the captain to keep his word, whether the captain actually has the power to release the prisoners, what would happen to the prisoners after they were released, whether the prisoners themselves pose a risk to others if they are freed, whether I could use my role as honoured guest to argue for the prisoners to be prosecuted within a fair judicial system, and so on and so on.
This story is pretty much a strawman of consequentialist thinking and relies for its big payoff on a lemma that is empirically false (that a consequentialist would have no qualms) and another that is unjustified (that being sure of one’s moral actions in some situations means that one denies the existence of moral agency).
Of course, a consequentialist would feel moral qualms – he or she is a human being. But that is the whole point of Williams’ argument, and of his critique of consequentialism. When you talk about ‘having qualms’ what you mean is the recognition that you need to take more than simple consequences into account in making moral choices. And ‘having qualms’ is just another way of saying that one is ‘agonizing over one’s moral choices’. The issue is not that being sure of one’s moral actions is a denial of moral agency. It is that the very existence of moral agency allows us to recognize that moral decisions are often not straightforward and cannot be read off a balance sheet of consequences. Incidentally, if you think that this is an ‘unlikely situation’, you should some of the situations that moral philosophers engineer. The whole point of thought experiments, after all, is not to recreate real-life examples but to imagine situations, however bizarre they may seem, that allow us better to clarify a particular moral or philosophical claim or argument or idea.
Kenan,
I understand that many of the situations proposed by philosophers (and not just moral philosophers) can be deliberately abstract. I’ve always been fascinated by the various brains-in-vats exercises, for instance, but my own experience of seeing real brains in real vats in anatomy museums did not shed any light on the philosophical questions.
But when the abstracted idea bears no relationship to reality I have to wonder how useful it is. To use a counter-point, I doubt there has ever been an historical example of a runaway trolley that could be switched to kill one person instead of 20…but the concept is fully applicable to real situations such as whether the US Air Force should have shot down flight 93 if they knew it was going to be rammed into the White House, or whether the Soviet engineers were right to stay behind to control the Chernobyl meltdown at the cost of their own lives. But Williams’s particular example bears no relationship at all to reality and therefore is not an effective argument against consequentialism..at least to me.
You (or Bernard Williams) seem to be saying that because a consequentialist will have moral qualms, this indicates some flaw in consequentialism. But I can’t imagine any consequentialist arguing that their moral decisions will be clear, unambiguous, and free of angst. Nor do I accept that having moral qualms proves consequentialism to be wrong — any more than being afraid of flying proves that aircraft are inherently dangerous.
No, that’s not Williams’ point. His point is that the route by which consequentialists (and utilitarians in particular) arrive at a moral answer betrays an impoverished understanding of human psychology, of needs and desires and of the distinction between my agency and someone else’s.
Sorry Kenan, feel free to remove that extra “e” from yr name above.
Kenan, there is also an issue that is not properly part of the discussion, but that is not unrelated, and seems relevant here. How does someone with a deontological or virtue ethics position, answer the age-old question, “why be moral?”. For the consequentialist (or, more specifically, for the egoist consequentialist), it is fairly easy: morality pays off, it is in your own (enlightened) self-interest to be good, because if you are not, you will ultimately suffer. If, as you seem to claim, many times morality does not pay off (and you can be very happy oppressing others), then, whence the moral motivation? How do you persuade someone not to enslave people? To say that slavery is intrinsically wrong just won’t seem to be enough for a slave-holder.
I am astonished that you still believe in the idea that individual self-interests somehow magically cohere into the social good. That is not a way of answering the question ‘Why be moral?’. It is a way of avoiding answering the question by inventing a highly implausible mechanism about how individual interest relates to the social good. I will in time write a proper post (or, rather, posts) about the three key issues raised in this discussion: Why am I not a consequentialist? Why are values not facts? And, the question you have just raised: Why by moral?
I do not see why you should be astonished. If you are astonished because it is not a popular idea anymore, well, I can think of plenty of philosophers that have defended the concept of “enlightened self-interest”: Helvetius, Hobbes, Bentham, Ayn Rand. More recently, Peter Singer has written: “Here ethics offer a solution. An ethical life is one in which we identify ourselves with other, larger, goals, thereby giving meaning to our lives. The view that there is harmony between ethics and enlightened self-interest is an ancient one, now often scorned”. Now, I am sure that to you (and to me), this is all irrelevant: we shall not make arguments that appeal to authority. But, I just want to highlight that you should not be astonished, as it is a rather popular position among many philosophers.
It is true that seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers, primarily in the British tradition, defended the notion. But it was an idea rooted in an improbable view of the individual, a vacuous concept of society, an impoverished understanding of psychology and the absence of a historical vision. It was an idea that, consequently, was demolished through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, few apart from on-the-margins free market libertarians (such as supporters of Ayn Rand) do so.
I have very much enjoyed following the discussion here… I just wanted to add a couple points of my own.
I agree with Kenan that the kind of consequentialism advocated by Harris and others seems to betray individual human agency, which seems to be an important part of moral thinking. We have the capacity to choose among various actions, which means that we are responsible, and thus, capable of being held morally responsible in a way that we cannot expect of children. I think that those suggesting that moral arguments can be based on ‘facts’ are in danger of going down a road to positivism (are we looking to make synthetic and analytic distinctions here?). Furthermore, a ‘spreadsheet of happiness’ seems to be nothing but cold rationalization… it does take enough appreciation of the fact that our rational minds are often wrestling with emotions and even abstract values that may be tied to them… this approach also fails to appreciate cultural differences in how we go about defining happiness.
I also want to say that those talking about increasing neural activation in a way that promotes pleasurable states while avoiding pain, or those suggesting that we are pre-wired to feel empathy toward others, are oversimplifying our neural complexity and neglecting its being influenced by our social environments and cultures. As Kenan has pointed out, the fact that we are largely opposed to slavery and have a heart-wrenching response to oppression is dependent in part on our biology, but requires social learning, history, culture, and so on.
What’s so bad about positivism?
Probably a lot to answer here (and very complicated as well), but in a nutshell, the positivists thought they could distinguish between ‘analytical’ (i.e. factual) statements and ‘synthetic’ (i.e. philosophical) statements. However, upon closer scrutiny, ‘analytical’ statements supposedly based on ‘fact’ were very hard to nail down and the movement was shown to have many logical holes. Willard Quine’s essay: ‘the two dogmas of empiricism’ (one of the most praised essays in modern philosophy) essentially spelled the death of logical positivism… in particular, the idea that many factual statements are based, at least in part, on other ideas that may not be… he called this notion the ‘web of ideas’ if memory serves correct. I would recommend giving it a read. I do not think many philosophers would claim to be positivists in the present day, though many non-philosophers are tempted to walk down that trail… not realizing that it is likely a dead-end.
I do not think it leads to a dead-end. I cannot agree with Quine’s (admittedly famous) essay, among other things, because it leads to some sort of relativism: ultimately, Quine’s conclusion is that you cannot even be certain that “no circle is a square” is true. Anything goes.
I also think you are confused: analytical statements are NOT based on facts; precisely because they are not based on facts, you can tell whether they are true or false, regardless of experience.
The critique that you could make of logical positivism (and, it must be noted that the Vienna Circle was only one current of positivism, but there were many others), is that their view according to which meaningful statements are those that can be empirically verified, or those that are true or false in virtue of their meaning, is self-defeating, because that requirement is neither empirically verifiable, nor true in virtue of its meaning. But, I think there are ways to go around this problem.
Gabriel, I think you would be in the minority if you believe positivism does not lead to a dead end… I would love to hear your thesis on how it does not, and how you would address Quine’s (and others’) criticisms of positivism. It seems to me that you are also offering a false choice by suggesting the only alternative to be relativism… I do not think Quine’s criticisms lead to some kind of ‘everything goes’ philosophy, as you seem to suggest. I also think you would have a hard time proving that meaningful statements (with regard to the current discussion on morality) can be empirically justified, though again, I would very much like to hear your thesis on how this can be done.
Yes, I would be in the minority, but then again, philosophy is not a popularity contest. Nevertheless, there are some important names in contemporary neopositivism: Mario Bunge, perhaps Daniel Dennett, etc. I think all the current popular scientists, from Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, to Stephen Hawking and Michael Shermer, advocate some form of positivism.
There is a debate about whether or not Quine was a relativist. I think he was in a sense a logical relativist. Most philosophers would agree that there is a universal rationality, and thus, you can be certain that no squares are circles. Quine, by suggesting that you cannot even be certain that no squares are circles, opens the gate to the idea that there is not one universal rationality, but rather, multiple rationalities. For, to say “squares are circles” may, according to Quine, not be false after all, and thus, people who contradict themselves are not irrational.
Furthermore, the Quine-Duhem thesis basically states that you can always support any thesis; it just all depends on your previous assumptions. That, again, is close to “anything goes”.
As for morality, traditionally, philosophers have argued that morality is not about facts, so it cannot be empirically justified. That is Kenan’s position, and that was even the position of the logical positivists, who ascribed to emotivism: moral judgements are just expressions of emotions, not statements about the world. I, again, am in the minority. I prefer to follow Sam Harris: morality is about facts. “Rape is bad” can be empirically justified. You observe the world, and you realize that rape causes a lot of suffering. Morality is ultimately about pain and pleasure. It takes empirical observation, then, to figure out what causes pleasure and what causes pain. I admit, however, that there may be some scenarios that could make me reconsider all of this.
Thank you for clarifying your position – the names you cited fit perfectly with those I would also view as having neopositivist leanings, though I would be critical of all of them… most especially those pop-science writers that have emerged in the last 15 years or so. I appreciate hearing opposing views from intelligent people, so I again say thanks to you for providing that. I have read some of Harris’ works, but remain unconvinced. Do you have any other suggestions (preferably from philosophers) who make an intelligent case for a morality that reduces to ‘facts?’
Thank YOU, for your kind comments. Harris is quite revolutionary, so he is basically alone on this. As far as I know, John Dewey explored a science of morality, and more recently, Patricia Churchland also makes similar claims.