One difference between consequentialism so understood and old-fashioned Utilitarianism is surely that under consequentialism "you can exculpate yourself from the actual consequences of the most disgraceful actions, so long as you can make out a case for not having foreseen them." This means that one problem with consequentialism is that it is, in a sense, not consequentialist enough. There is too much scope for failure of imagination (by way of excess or deficiency) to exculpate. Hence, to give some examples, I might not be responsible for killing an innocent man if I genuinely felt (i.e., imagined that I was) mortally threatened by him and did not foresee that he might pose no real threat to my life, and I might not be responsible for plunging a country into violent anarchy if I sincerely expected my invading troops to be greeted as liberators.Let us suppose that a man has a responsibility for the maintenance of some child. Therefore deliberately to withdraw support from it is a bad sort of thing for him to do. It would be bad for him to withdraw its maintenance because he didn't want to maintain it any longer; and also bad for him to withdraw it because by doing so he would, let us say, compel someone else to do something. (We may suppose for the sake of argument that compelling that person to do that thing is in itself quite admirable.) But now he has to choose between doing something disgraceful and going to prison; if he goes to prison, it will follow that he withdraws support from the child. By Sidgwick's doctrine, there is no difference in his responsibility for ceasing to maintain the child, between the case where he does it for its own sake or as a means to some other purpose, and when it happens as a foreseen and unavoidable consequence of his going to prison rather than do something disgraceful. It follows that he must weigh up the relative badness of withdrawing support from the child and of doing the disgraceful thing; and it may easily be that the disgraceful thing is in fact a less vicious action than intentionally withdrawing support from the child would be; if then the fact that withdrawing support from the child is a side effect of his going to prison does not make any difference to his responsibility, this consideration will incline him to do the disgraceful thing; which can still be pretty bad. And of course, once he has started to look at the matter in this light, the only reasonable thing for him to consider will be the consequences and not the intrinsic badness of this or that action. So that, given that he judges reasonably that no great harm will come of it, he can do a much more disgraceful thing than deliberately withdrawing support from the child. And if his calculations turn out in fact wrong, it will appear that he was not responsible for the consequences, because he did not foresee them. For in fact Sidgwick's thesis leads to its being quite impossible to estimate the badness of an action except in the light of expected consequences. But if so, then you must estimate the badness in the light of the consequences you expect; and so it will follow that you can exculpate yourself from the actual consequences of the most disgraceful actions, so long as you can make out a case for not having foreseen them. Whereas I should contend that a man is responsible for the bad consequences of his bad actions, but gets no credit for the good ones; and contrariwise is not responsible for the bad consequences of good actions.The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one "method of ethics"; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old‑fashioned Utilitarianism and that consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him. By it, the kind of consideration which would formerly have been regarded as a temptation, the kind of consideration urged upon men by wives and flattering friends, was given a status by moral philosophers in their theories.
Another difference is that in consequentialism "the kind of consideration which would formerly have been regarded as a temptation [...] was given a status by moral philosophers." We see this in the following quotation from Benny Morris:
Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.He is talking about Israel, but many people in the United States think something like this. Or they think that the annihilation never happened, or it wasn't so bad because those were different times, or it was bad but it's in the past and therefore irrelevant, or they don't think about it at all. Or all of the above. What matters is the evasion of responsibility, not how the evasion is achieved.
But I don't mean to single out Americans. The Khmer Rouge were consequentialists too. Consequentialism is bad, ubiquitous, and not well understood. Philosophers can at least address the last of these. As I see it (going solely by this passage, which is probably a mistake), consequentialism holds (or at least implies) that the goodness or badness of an action depends entirely on the consequences expected by the agent. Whether these consequences are foreseen or intended does not matter. The intrinsic goodness or badness of the action is also irrelevant. And for these reasons consequentialism is doubly bad.
Anscombe: ". . . Sidgwick's thesis leads to its being quite impossible to estimate the badness of an action except in the light of expected consequences. But if so, then you must estimate the badness in the light of the consequences you expect; and so it will follow that you can exculpate yourself from the actual consequences of the most disgraceful actions, so long as you can make out a case for not having foreseen them. . . ."
ReplyDeleteYet how do we know they are "the most disgraceful" if there is no consideration of consequences? On what basis can any act be thought good or bad without consideration of consequences? An act with no consequences carries no moral implication for how can anyone be held morally accountable for doing something that has no effects? So what can be meant by her use of "intrinsic badness" ex any consequences in this case?
Well, plenty of actions are traditionally considered disgraceful. Anscombe had traditional Christian values, so you can imagine the kind of thing she had in mind. Telling a lie might be a good example of a disgraceful action that could be expected to have no bad consequences in certain circumstances.
DeleteHow do we know which acts are good and which bad? Consideration of human nature is one possible way. For instance, we need to be able to rely on one another, so lying and breaking promises are bad. Another possible way is divine revelation. Mystical perception is another. Not all of us will agree with Anscombe on these points, of course, but I think this is roughly her view. She doesn't think that consequences are irrelevant, by the way.
I think that's part of the problem I'm suggesting with the conception you describe: thinking consequences are NOT irrelevant while still supposing they're not sufficient to assess actions morally. That suggests, to me at least, that they both DO matter and don't, which seems contradictory. You can't murder without a victim after all.
DeleteWell, as you suggest, you can lie to yourself in a sense, without telling anyone about it, but, assuming it's a conscious lie, i. e., that I am telling myself a falsehood and expecting that I will believe it, even while knowing it's false (disbelieving it) can it really be thought of as a lie?
If it allows me to act in a certain way, if it serves as justification for my doing something I should not otherwise have done, for whatever the reason, because I can falsely assert its truth to others if asked, or to myself if I need an internal justification of what I've done, then there IS a consequence, of course. But if my statement to myself is false, and I know it is when I make it, and nothing comes of it in terms of what I then proceed to do, have I really told myself a lie? How can I knowingly lie to myself? A falsehood mistakenly believed isn't a lie. And an act without any sort of effect, any consequence, seems too abstract to even be deemed an act.
But as soon as we find some consequequence to it, then that's what matters, no? Can there be an act without any consequence at all? Unless we define "intrinsic" to mean that which is ALWAYS, without variation, an outcome of the act (which I think is itself contradictory, if in a slightly different sense) the concept of a goodness that's intrinsic to an act seems empty. But as soon as we grant THAT, we're back to a notion of taking the act's consequence(s) into account.
Yes, Anscombe takes the position that some acts are intrinsically right or wrong but my question is how can any act be that once we take consequences entirely out of the equation?
She doesn't take consequences entirely out of the equation. But she includes other things in the equation as well. One of these is intrinsic goodness and badness. Murder is bad even if the world ends right after it is committed, and the same goes for many other kinds of acts. That's her view, anyway, and it sounds right to me.
DeleteTo think there is intrinsic goodness or badness, you have to take consequences entirely out of the equation. Even agreeing that she leaves consequence in the relevant calculus in practice, she has to be discarding it entirely to assert the possibility of "intrinsic" goodness in some cases and it's that move that I think we cannot make while still preserving the possibility of moral assessment.
DeleteTo think there is intrinsic goodness or badness, you have to take consequences entirely out of the equation.
DeleteI don't see why. Can't I think that some acts are intrinsically right or wrong but that others' moral status depends on their consequences? Or on their reasonably to be expected consequences? Just war theory takes likely consequences into account, as well as ruling certain acts out as impermissible. We might disagree about whether such theory is good or bad, but it doesn't seem incoherent.
What counts as intrinsic goodness and how do we ascertain its presence? If we can't give an account of that, what are we actually claiming? That it's intrinsically good (or bad) because we think so?
DeleteI guess that's part of what seems incoherent to me because, when we actually set out to say what we mean, we end up having to talk about contexts and consequences. If murder is intrinsically bad and love intrinsically good, then there should be no cases where murder is a good thing and love bad. Yet it seems to me that there are such cases. And every case of describing one or the other always involves describing events, circumstances, etc. I can think of neither in the abstract and, more, it seems to me that it's always the concrete instances that have goodness or badness.
Resorting to an instrumentalist account, which entirely grounds the alleged goodness of anything in consequences, seems to be the very antithesis of moral goodness because instrumentalism is always self-interested which seems to run counter to any ordinary notion of how moral goodness works. But does that mean the only other option open to us to explain the basis for asserting moral goodness must be intrinsicness? If we acknowledge the role of consequences but find them in the intentions underlying any agential act, rather than in world-based outcomes, then I think we can have this cake and eat it, too. We can make a case for non-instrumental goodness without positing intrinsicness which, to me at least, smacks of the same sort of problem as Moore's "non-natural quality."
What counts as intrinsic goodness and how do we ascertain its presence?
DeleteI don't know. I don't think anybody does.
If murder is intrinsically bad and love intrinsically good, then there should be no cases where murder is a good thing and love bad.
'Intrinsically' doesn't mean absolutely or infinitely. I do think that murder is always bad and love is always good, but it's still possible for murder to be the lesser of two evils in some situation, or for it to be a bad thing that one particular person loves some other particular person. For instance, I'm married so it would be bad if I fell in love with someone other than my wife. I still think that that love would be intrinsically good even though the overall situation would be bad. Peanuts are good, but it's not good if they are consumed by people who are allergic to them. Does this mean that they are not intrinsically good? I don't think so. It just means that 'intrinsically' doesn't mean 'so overwhelmingly as to make context utterly irrelevant'. Other things being equal, a world with peanuts is better than a world without them.
Perhaps we differ in that I think to get at what moral valuing is, how it works, what counts as a legitimate moral claim and what doesn't, we first have to give can account of valuing per se. And there I'd say it's a matter of what satisfies our needs, desires, etc. That is, valuing is the rational side of wanting, needing, etc. It's what happens when a rational creature thinks about itself in the world. Dogs like and want things just as we do but they don't value or have values. So at its most basic level, valuing is just what happens when an experiencing creature reaches the point where it can picture, think about, its world. (Brandom makes a point rather like this, and I think he's correct.) But not all valuing is equal and moral judgments present us with a special case because they typically have the form of one valuing creature being concerned for the interests of another which is hard to explain on the self-interest model which covers other valuing cases. Now not all moral value claims do that, but I think such instances represent the problem case.
DeleteTypically valuing is about figuring out which something is most likely to satisfy the valuer's need or want. But moral valuing seems to run against this grain because, if THAT'S the basis of a moral judgment, then a whole lot of moral claims can't be supported and some claims, which seem counter intuitive to our moral judgments, seem to be okay.
Straight up non-moral valuing can be understood as instrumental judgments: What's good is what works to bring about the most desired or desirable result. But because that often produces seemingly non-moral outcomes, we end up trying to justify moral claims instrumentally (via utilitarianism, say) or else conclude there is something extra special about the moral, that it's about things that are good in themselves (intrinsically good) or it's some special, non-natural quality or, invoking a naturalist rejection of Moore'solution, we really can equate whatever it is we take to be morally good with something natural, some state or condition which is definable as part of the natural world.
I don't think supposing some forms of goodness are intrinsic while others aren't gets us any further than positing an intuited non-natural quality. It's subject to the same sort of criticism, namely how do we learn that it's intrinsic except by being taught it is, in which case what is being taught other than we should think this way and not another?
I agree with you that sometimes an otherwise bad thing to do is really the right thing to do, maybe because it's the LESS bad thing under the circumstances. But then I would say that it's morally right, i.e., morally good in spite of having some bad consequences or making me feel bad, or guilty, for doing it! Perhaps where we truly differ then is in how we choose to talk about these things? For me moral goodness is a special case of goodness which brings different issues into play than other cases and the way to get at that is to examine the moral case in light of those cases which carry no (or only slight) moral implications for us.
I don't think supposing some forms of goodness are intrinsic while others aren't gets us any further
DeleteIt might not get us anywhere. But it's not a supposition that I'm choosing to make in order to advance some project. It seems to me to be a given, a fact that any adequate account needs to take into account.
Perhaps where we truly differ then is in how we choose to talk about these things
Perhaps. But to my mind the lesser of two evils is still evil. Its being less evil than some alternative does not make it good. Indeed, that one of two evils is evil and that evil is not good are statements whose denial I could make little sense of.
Hi, Duncan, thanks for the exchange but I have the feeling it's getting too much into the weeds now. I have taken the liberty of addressing your concerns in more detail over on Sean's site, Serious Philosophy http://ludwig.squarespace.com/volume-15/ which Sean created as a forum for philosophical exchanges, particularly about Wittgensteinian concerns. There I feel somewhat freer to engage in a detailed response (plus the textual limit is non-existent so far as I have yet discovered). So perhaps, if you have the time, you might want to take a look at my response to your very reasonable concerns over there. (You already have the link to the article itself in the right hand column of this page.) Otherwise I won't continue to press my view in this exchange since it would be redundant (and unlikely to get us to a point where we are largely in agreement in any case). But I do think your concerns can be adequately answered. Thanks again for your patience and feedback!
DeleteThanks, Stuart. Into the weeds sounds like the general direction of philosophy.
DeleteYes philosophy is weedy. But some weeds require other gardens and I don't want to intrude further on this one. So I have crafted a response elsewhere which, if you are interested, I'd be glad to have your comments on. Thanks again for the invaluable opportunity to exchange ideas with you.
DeleteYou're very welcome. I hope I can respond elsewhere soon.
DeleteOne could draw a distinction between levels of consequences I suppose by saying that an act which results in some good or harm to another represents a condition intrinsic to the act IFF it always entails such a result while an act resulting in good or harm to another contingently lacks that condition. In the latter case, the goodness or badness lies in the consequence, not the act, because the consequence is not thought of as an intrinsic part of the act, whereas an act that is ALWAYS good or bad in outcome is thought to be intrinsically that.
ReplyDeleteBut, aside from the fact that it has to be very hard to conceive of something which is always good or bad in every case (is anything ever really that?), in either sense of "good" the condition of being a good or bad act occurs solely as a result of the act's consequence. So I find the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction strange.
Moreover, it seems an odd way to proceed in making moral judgments to suppose we must carefully tote up all possible factors in each case, as if all the factors COULD ever be so identified and enumerated (aren't the possibilities generally indefinite and so beyond precise prediction?).
Although we do engage in a kind of calculus when deciding what to do in complex cases, more often than not we make our judgments from the seat of the pants so to speak. Don't we have visceral reactions to situations and count people with certain kinds of visceral reactions morally better or worse? We might consider a psychopathic killer morally praiseworthy for refraining from acting on his inclinations and might even think him admirable for doing so. But would we want to grant that, given his inclinations, he is really a moral person?
Of course, if he never killed gratuitously, despite desiring to do so (admitting as much to us), and refrained solely on the basis of adherence to a principle which held that such killing shouldn't be done, then we would think him moral. But would we then recognize him as a pathological killer? Wouldn't that just mean that his mental life includes something in its makeup that is not, itself, pathological? In that case we don't have a pathological killer curbing his instincts but a morally good person with some pathological instincts.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's what's going on "inside the head" that carries moral weight and such goings on are not unrelated to anticipated consequences. Indeed, what any agent expects in acting in one way rather than another is part of the agent's mental life. Take the trolley case. Confronted with two morally abhorrent choices our agent is forced to choose. Whichever choice he makes results in some morally bad consequence. Do we hold him morally accountable when he chooses? I would say not because he could not have done other than produce some morally bad effect. Producing such an effect wasn't intended. Whatever he does will be both morally good (for the persons saved) and morally bad (for the others). Ex his intention to cause harm or capacity to avoid it, his choice carries no moral weight at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that moral goodness occurs in terms of agential intention, and intentions always involve expected consequences. I don't think anyone can be held morally accountable for unforeseen because unforeseeable consequences.
it has to be very hard to conceive of something which is always good or bad in every case
DeleteLove and justice are always good, aren't they? OK, they aren't acts. Murder, rape, torture, theft, and lying are always bad. At least, Anscombe would say so.
the condition of being a good or bad act occurs solely as a result of the act's consequence
That's one point of view. Anscombe doesn't see it that way. Murder and rape, for instance, may or may not have bad consequences, but they are still bad. (The victim's death is not a consequence of murder but an essential element in the act.)
it seems an odd way to proceed in making moral judgments to suppose we must carefully tote up all possible factors in each case, as if all the factors COULD ever be so identified and enumerated
I think Anscombe would agree.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's what's going on "inside the head" that carries moral weight and such goings on are not unrelated to anticipated consequences.
Yes, intentions matter hugely. I don't know that they are all that matters: people don't intend harm in cases of negligence, but perhaps negligence counts as going on inside the head too.
I don't think anyone can be held morally accountable for unforeseen because unforeseeable consequences.
Anscombe would agree. As I said, she doesn't think consequences are irrelevant. But she doesn't think that an intentional bad action can be excused because of its good consequences.
I think the issue boils down to what counts as "consequence." Broadly conceived, every agential act, to be that, must involve acting with some outcome in mind, to effect something in the world. What distinguishes morally assessable behavior from the kind that isn't is our capacity to act for reasons. And acting for reasons implies thinking about and trying to produce some outcome.
DeleteBut another construal of "consequence" also seems possible if, by "consequence," we mean happenings in the world that occur as a result of the act. But every act surely has an infinite, or at least impossible to fully enumerate, set of events that occur because of it. None of us can hope to know or anticipate everything. Nor do we expect such a god's eye view of others or ourselves. If we did we could never act because we aren't in a god's position.
So the idea that everything that results from an act, once taken, counts as its consequence seems too broad. No act can be free of bad consequences if we follow all the chains of events far enough. Nor can we even hope to do that. And if we can't, we can't do a relevant moral calculus. If acing morally actually depended on thinking about consequences in this latter sense, in order to take them into account, we would never be able to act at all.
Suppose an adulterous couple love each other at the expense of their respective spouses. Is their love still good? Suppose Jean Valjean is brought before a magistrate and duly hanged. Was justice still good?
DeletePerhaps we want to say this is a case of justice perverted, not true justice at all. But isn't that a kind of nitpicking? What if Valjean's theft caused a greater harm to someone unknown to him? Isn't justice meant to be blind to protect just such unknown parties?
Is murder always wrong by definition? Suppose we found ourselves in Germany in 1930, knowing what we know of history today? Would murdering Hitler then have been wrong?
I guess my point is that everything stands in some context, further undermining the notion that anything can be intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad.
every agential act, to be that, must involve acting with some outcome in mind
DeleteI'm not sure I agree. If I sing when I',m alone am I necessarily aiming at some outcome?
Is murder always wrong by definition?
I would say so. Consequentialists disagree, of course.
(I'll try to reply at greater length if you or anyone else has other comments, but I'm heading out of town now and don't know what kind of internet access I'll have for the next ten days or so.)
Yes, to hear oneself sing, to exercise one's voice, to practice a note. There are any number of explanations for why we may sing in private. Also we may just be expressing a momentary feeling of happiness or sadness, but arguably that sort of behavior would not warrant moral assessment. Do we put a moral value on a bird'song, even if we may find aesthetic value in it?
DeleteAnd surely there are times when even murder isn't wrong. If I kill a killer before he kills his next victim, it's still murder from a legal standpoint, and rightly so I'd say. But is it morally wrong? That's not so clear.
I guess I would say that the very concept of intrinsic goodness or badness seems to make no sense to me. Every description of a morally relevant action presumes intent which implies a context and it's within a context that moral value is assessed. Ex any consequences (which the agent intends via the action taken) it looks, to me at least, as if there is nothing to morally assess.
Thanks for the feedback though and have a good trip!
Thanks!
DeleteDoesn't there have to be some kind of intrinsic goodness? If not then which consequences are good and which are bad? Utilitarians care about utility, which is taken to be intrinsically good, for instance. To make a judgment we need something to judge. Saying that whether something is good or bad always depends on its consequences seems to be like saying "it's turtles all the way down." But I haven't read the whole discussion yet and am probably missing something.
I suppose it has to do with how we think about an action. I'd say there's no such entity as an action, only a series of events, including mental events, that underlie whatever we call an action. That doesn't mean there aren't actions, only that what we mean by "action" is a complex phenomenon. Any goodness accruing to an action in this sense must belong to some of the underlying elements that make it up and this seems to me to undermine any notion that there is something intrinsically good or bad in an act itself.
DeleteThinking a thing is good is to say that we have a reason to do it, acquire it, etc. And to the extent moral valuing is about finding the actions that are right for us, the good ones to choose under certain circumstances, there must be something about them that provides us with such a reason. There must be some reason to choose one act instead of another and it must have to do with the elements making the act up, not the act itself. So we have to look at those elements.
There are many different kinds of reasons for choosing a thing (for deciding it's "good"). Many seem pretty non-controversial. They're reasons for us only to the extent that they satisfy some need or want we happen to have. But if moral valuing cannot be explained instrumentally (because that stands on self-interest) and we want to preserve the possibility of moral goodness as such, then we have to say how we choose things in a way that isn't strictly speaking an instrumental judgment.
One time-honored answer is to invoke the idea of intrinsicness. But how can any act be intrinsically good or bad if action is just a complex of other stuff that's going on? How can we understand an act as that without also thinking about its effects, i.e., what it brings about? Nor can it be the action of a rationally thinking agent, a necessity in the moral case, without considering the agent's intentions, too, what the agent performed the act in order to bring about. And intentions assume consequences.
This doesn't imply, at least not to me, that some acts have something intrinsically good or bad about them, that some are simply praiseworthy or "disgraceful" in themselves. I think we must look, rather, to the intentional element driving the act to find the moral aspect. What are intentions but the range of our thoughts, beliefs, desires, feelings, etc., that prompt us to act as we do? And these include our beliefs about the outcomes that will occur when we act in a certain way. Consequences are pre-supposed by intentions and intentions, being the expression of rational agency, are the relevant element of acts when we approach them in a moral, rather than an instrumental, way.
If "goodness" is ascribed as I've suggested, it must be ascribed to some component or complex of components. Can goodness then be taken to be intrinsic to some component of an act then? Only if we think goodness, itself, is component-like which seems like a Moorean mistake. If goodness is really just a condition in which any object of reference stands to its referrer, a relational state between subject and object, then there's nothing intrinsic to be found, only the reason(s) we take a goodness-ascribing stance toward the object in question. And reasons are context dependent, contexts including both anticipated and anticipatible consequences.
There can be nothing intrinsic about goodness or badness then if value is subject-dependent as I've suggested because "good" and "bad" only serve to express belief that there is a reason (or reasons) to do one thing instead of another.
Anyway, welcome back. Hope you had an enjoyable vacation!
Thanks. It was great.
DeleteAny goodness accruing to an action in this sense must belong to some of the underlying elements that make it up
Why? If these elements are events can't we say the same thing about them? Isn't an event a complex phenomenon?
intentions assume consequences
I'm not sure about this. Can't I intend to do something without thinking about what the consequences of doing it will be? If I'm thirsty and I drink I'm doing it because I want to, not because I have ideas about the consequences of drinking. That is, what I want is not to-make-my-thirst-go-away. What I want is to drink something, or perhaps what I want is this glass of water. I'm not thinking about consequences at all.
"good" and "bad" only serve to express belief that there is a reason (or reasons) to do one thing instead of another
But is that true? If I taste some soup and say it's mmm-mmm good am I saying that there is reason to eat it? Someone else might infer that, but it surely isn't what I'm saying.
If these elements are events can't we say the same thing about them? Isn't an event a complex phenomenon?
DeleteSure we can, and do. The issue is what is intrinsic about any of them? As with an action, its elements are likewise subject to description as complex phenomena and that is somewhat arbitrary but nowhere includes something called "intrinsic goodness." I can think of no case where any possible description of a thing will always yield the notion that it's good.
Of course, there are descriptions which contain, within them, certain emotive content. Murder, as you have pointed out, pretty much carries a negative connotation. Still I can imagine cases of killing rightly called "murder" which I'd want to call "good." As a convention of language, we tend not to think of some of these as murder. Cases of self-defense aren't murder generally, but suppose you overheard someone planning to kill you and your family and had every reason to believe he or she would and could do it. But his or her plans aren't legally culpable actions yet, they're just words and people change their minds and other events often intervene. Speech is not action in law even if it is for some philosophers!
Here you happen to be in a position to know that this person, say he's a member of ISIL, plans to do what you have overheard and only you know that. And you have a chance to strike pre-emptively so he cannot succeed. Wouldn't you do it, even knowing full well that in the eyes of the law it's murder?
Wouldn't you be prepared to take the consequences if you had to, just to save those you loved? Even if you would agree that the law is right because it can't see into the minds of citizens, still the morally right thing to do is to commit that murder. Murder in the abstract is surely a bad thing. But the case isn't abstract but real and happening to you and your loved ones.
So I would say there are cases in which even an action so described, with all the pejorative connotations it carries, is yet morally good.
Now you may want to call that consequentialism and you might be right but I would argue that in such a case the consequences (averted in this case) change the nature of the act in a fundamental way. So the idea that murder is inherently "disgraceful" or "intrinsically" bad or wrong, doesn't seem to make any sense. There is no act (and no part of an act) without a context and the context affects the act's status.
"Can't I intend to do something without thinking about what the consequences of doing it will be? If I'm thirsty and I drink I'm doing it because I want to, not because I have ideas about the consequences of drinking. "
DeleteConsequences, I would say, are where we draw them. More, no single act can ever provide us with a finite (or at least predictable) list of consequences. If I drink the water one consequence is that I've taken hold of the cup and another is that I've poured the water down my throat and another that I've ceased to be thirsty (or drank it so fast I started to choke!). And I thought about those outcomes because I have experience in drinking. I don't have to work them out though and yet, asked afterwards for the reason I drank that water, wouldn't I answer because I was thirsty? And if I would do that, doesn't that mean I knew what I was about when I reached for the glass?
None of these seem to have moral implications though. But suppose I reach for the water when there's a person literally dying of thirst (fresh from having survived untold days in a desert) nearby and do it in order to drink it before he can, to quench my thirst, knowing that he was in dire need of that water.
Then there's another consequence, namely that I deprived him of something he needed much more than I did. If I didn't realize I was doing this, I would say the only moral implication is what I do when I do realize it. Do I apologize or seek to secure him his own glass of water? Or do I slough my action off as tough luck on him?
Aren't we always thinking about consequences only sometimes we have different ideas about what they will be than the facts may warrant?
"If I taste some soup and say it's mmm-mmm good am I saying that there is reason to eat it? Someone else might infer that, but it surely isn't what I'm saying."
Well if you taste the soup and say "phew, this tastes like sewer water" and push it away, haven't you indicated it's bad, not good, and that that's a reason you're not going to eat it? If you think it tastes good, on the other hand, that is a reason to eat it though it may not be the most compelling reason or the only one available to you.
Perhaps it's some kind of medicinal concoction and the fact that it tastes like sewer water isn't a relevant consideration if eating it can make you well, in which case that's a reason to eat it and, depending on what you're trying to achieve, the reason you need to proceed in swallowing the swill!
When we think something is good or not, what are we really saying? I argue that all we're ever really doing is telling others there's some reason to choose the thing or not. It doesn't follow that there aren't different sorts of goodness or badness and that we can't weigh them up against one another to pick the one that matters in the circumstance. All that's happening, I'd say, is that, by calling some thing "good," we are informing others (or ourselves) that the thing stands in a certain relation to us such that, all other things being equal, it has some feature or features which provide us with a reason to choose it. And if that's so, then there's nothing intrinsic about any of this. It all has to do with how the thing strikes us in terms of our needs, wants, etc., both long term and short.
I can think of no case where any possible description of a thing will always yield the notion that it's good.
DeleteMe neither, but I'm not sure why this matters.
When I talk about murder I don't mean in the legal sense but in the moral sense. I'm not sure whether pre-emptive killing of a would-be murderer is murder in that sense (I find the example hard to imagine), but it might be. Then I would say qua murder it is an evil act, qua self-defense (or defense of others) it is OK. All things considered it might be OK. But it would still have something bad about it.
If I drink the water one consequence is that I've taken hold of the cup and another is that I've poured the water down my throat
We're using the word 'consequence' in different ways. I mean it as an event or state of affairs that comes after the act. Picking up the glass does not come after drinking. It is part of the act. You can use the word that way, but we might misunderstand each other if we aren't clear about this.
Well if you taste the soup and say "phew, this tastes like sewer water" and push it away, haven't you indicated it's bad, not good, and that that's a reason you're not going to eat it?
Yes, if we change the example then it doesn't make the same point!
When we think something is good or not, what are we really saying? I argue that all we're ever really doing is telling others there's some reason to choose the thing or not.
Maybe so. But when we say that something is good are we always giving advice in this way? I don't think so. Think of eating a really tasty doughnut or having an itch scratched. Exclaiming "oh, that's good" is surely not telling others that there's some reason to choose the thing. There might not be any others around, for one thing. And this can apply to moral cases. I might read about some act of charity or justice and exclaim "Good!" as I do so.
It all has to do with how the thing strikes us in terms of our needs, wants, etc.
Can't things strike us as intrinsically good, as good without reference to our needs, wants, etc? It seems to me that this is exactly how things often strike us. If I see a great view it strikes me as good. I do not think at all about the thing in relation to my wants, etc. Of course there is some such relation, but I am not thinking about it.
A great view is good because . . .?
DeleteWell it's pleasing to look at in an especially satisfying way. Or it's a good place to stand if you want to see the sun come up, or to consider a pleasing expanse of valley. In the first case (as also in the case of the valley) what's good is what pleases you. In the second case, say the vantage point you have discovered, the view from there is instrumentally good, i.e., it affords you a place from which to watch something you find pleasing. So if the instrumental ascription covers extrinsic goodness, then does the image that pleases you cover the intrinsic?
But what is meant in this latter case? After all, what makes it good on this account is that it prompts certain pleasant experiences in you, maybe a happy memory or sense of awe or perhaps mere delight at the lay of the land. If this is the sort of thing you have in mind by "intrinsic" goodness then what do we say if you happen to be among those human beings who take no pleasure in such things? Have you missed the intrinsic goodness of that view or is the goodness in its affect on you and not the valley or sunset you're looking at at all? If in the affect, then is being so affected intrinsically good? But what if such an affect prompted you to forget an important obligation? Distracted you from someone who needed you, or became so important to you that you stopped doing other things more important to your well being? Is having a feeling of awe or delight or being taken with something beautiful (as Moore ultimately thought) intrinsically good? Are claims of moral goodness like that, too, i. e., equivalent to being taken with something that pleases our senses or being repelled by what disgusts us?
Yet acts are complex phenomena in a way that beautiful scenes and sunsets are not, so learning to find some lovely and some repugnant must be more about conditioning than are our natural responses to beautiful or ugly things because we have to learn them in their complexity. Learning to find "intrinsic" goodness or badness in actions must be about learning to grasp and attend to contexts. That is, it looks like more conditioning is involved in this case than in cases of aesthetic responses (though both involve some conditioning).
But conditioning cannot be the basis for moral claims without undermining the moral point. So if it's about something " intrinsic," even if we can't say what that is, I don't see how it can support the moral game. The whole notion of "intrinsic" goodness or badness just strikes me as a linguistic mistake.
what makes it good on this account is that it prompts certain pleasant experiences in you
DeleteIn that case the account is wrong. The pleasant experiences come from perception of goodness. The aesthetically valuable is not good because we like it. (People like all kinds of crap.) We like it because it is good.
what do we say if you happen to be among those human beings who take no pleasure in such things? Have you missed the intrinsic goodness of that view
Yes.
But what if such an affect prompted you to forget an important obligation?
Then we would have something in the minus column as well as something in the plus column. Indeed, the bad would be caused by the goodness of the good. Surely this is easily conceivable? I might be so impressed by an act of heroism that I observe that I forget what I'm doing and walk into traffic, which kills me. The act of heroism was no less heroic, and no less good, because of this.
Yet acts are complex phenomena in a way that beautiful scenes and sunsets are not, so learning to find some lovely and some repugnant must be more about conditioning than are our natural responses to beautiful or ugly things because we have to learn them in their complexity.
I'm not persuaded. Learning to appreciate beauty in, say, classical music or literature can require a lot of education. Learning to appreciate kindness need not.
But conditioning cannot be the basis for moral claims without undermining the moral point.
Why is this? I don't know about conditioning, but being socialized and educated might well be required in order for someone to see the goodness or badness in certain actions, surely. Knowing right from wrong is sometimes very easy and sometimes much less so. Or so it seems to me.
The whole notion of "intrinsic" goodness or badness just strikes me as a linguistic mistake.
What of we just talked about goodness and badness instead? I don't mind saying "murder is bad" instead of "murder is intrinsically bad." But if someone then claims that murder is only bad because of its consequences then I might object. Murder itself, the deliberate killing of an innocent person by another human being, is, other beings equal (and I might even omit this clause), bad. If this kind of claim is rejected then I'm not really sure what we mean by 'good' and 'bad' any more.
Sorry, "what if we just talked about goodness..."
DeleteIf I understand it right, then consequentialism (a relative of utilitarianism) says nothing about the act itself, only its consequences. There is, for the consequentialist, no intrinsically immoral act. (This view makes it easy to say, as some do, that the act itself is part of its consequence, and hence is judged on the same terms. So whether the act is eliminated (as being neutral, inconsequential, or whatever) from consideration of consequences or made part of the consequences amounts to the same. So there is, on this view, no disgraceful act. Hence, Anscombe's critique is of consequence only if one is already of the view that there are acts that are disgraceful (sinful) in and of themselves.
ReplyDeleteOn the consequentialist (materialist) view there is, then, no such thing as (what people/the morally confused or primitive call) murder. The act itself carries no meaning, the consequences do. So it would make sense for a consequentialist to say that murder is not murder, since there is no such act, or it is not in itself wrong to murder anyone, it all depends on who that anyone is and that what is gained from murder offsets what is lost. This is where the value of someone comes into account, and where the death of a Westerner is a greater loss to the world (a greater minus on the ledger of happiness) than say 3000 third-worlders, who are of no consequence, or why the death of a royal is more important that that of an anonymous child, unless there is prifit to be made from the latter death.
So what figures on the ledgers (what story is told) will vary. You see this in Morris's account of annihilation. And from the interview one sees that there is a clear exception to the general (universal) rule: the annihilation of the Jews. Some would say that depends on the story told. I'm sure those who did annihilate Jews (the previous Fifth column in Europe) could tell much the same story Morris tells about Arab Muslims.
Another way of expressing consequentialism would be to say that all acts (consequences included) are empty and only the story told counts. I'm sure Karl Rove would agree with that.
A further way of putting it is to say that what is moral is what the consequentialist says it is. Shoot first and forget about asking any questions. You're either with us or against us.
A further exception to the universal consequentialist rule is inherently evil human beings (the "animals" of Morris's account) the annihilation of which is bound to be good no matter what the story told.
* profit
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't see how any act can be intrinsically anything, absent it's being seen in a context. Killing, itself, isn't murder in every case, as even the law of every land I can think of acknowledges. There's justifiable homicide and manslaughter and self-defense, i.e., killing in the context of mitigating circumstances that make the killer innocent of murder even if his or her actions bring about the death of another human being. Then there's the legally sanctioned killing that occurs in war.
ReplyDeleteSo what makes murder murder? The term, itself, implies the unjustifiable and deliberate taking of life of another human being, the unsanctioned killing of other persons. That does seem to us to always be wrong but isn't that because it is, by definition, unsanctioned?
Is there some act that we call "murder" which is "intrinsically" bad over and above its fitting into a certain category based on the context in which it occurs? I can't think of any form of killing I'd call intrinsically bad in and of itself.
How could we even conceive of a murder unless it already fit the category which defines murder? And in that case, it's the context, including the act's consequences (a dead body on the sofa in the absence of justifying facts, etc.) that render it murder which we recognize as bad by definition.
But even then there are contexts to think about. Should we count the murder of a Hitler before he fulfills our expectations wrong, even if it is clearly murder according to the law and the societal conventions within which we operate and so legally wrong? Is it also morally wrong?
It seems to me that murder is a bad example because it already incorporates the context which abrogates the presumed intrinsic nature of its wrongness.
What is murder is what defines it and that's context is it not? So what decides what context is murder?
ReplyDeleteWhether one divides it into act and consequence and say the act is empty or part of the consequence amounts to the same. You say the act, apart from the consequences, has no intrinsic value, or the act is part of the consequence and that has to be judged on some scale of value. So murder by good enlightened democrats is good and murder by bad unenlightened democrats is bad, or whatever. The story you tell is the story you tell. Even about whether you are a good enlightened democrat or not.
"I guess I don't see how any act can be intrinsically anything, absent it's being seen in a context." Is a context intrinsically anything? Is murder any thing? Is it a thing. We can go on. Shall we?
You say, no act is intriniscally anything, and a Catholic disagrees, and says, suicide or divorce are intrinsically bad. What do you say? That they're conceptually confused? That it is a matter of physics? That Darwin has settled the question?
What is the nature of wrongness if it is not to be found in nature?
And what are justifying facts? For Morris there need be none, if the body on the sofa is 3 years old he presumes it is the body of a future terrorist psycho-murderer, intrinsically so, even. Are these to be called justifying facts? It seems that what counts as a fact is what the Morris argues is one, and what doesn't is what he argues doesn't. You might call that disagreement about the facts. Or you might say there is no possibility of meaningful discussion. Consequentialism plays little to no role whatsoever.
If murder is killing someone under certain conditions, which include the absence of justifiable reason to kill that person, then murder is wrong by definition (since to be wrong in this case is to lack a justifiable reason).
DeleteHowever, I can think of circumstances where I would say it's not morally wrong to commit murder even if it's legally wrong, e.g., killing a human monster who we know will one day commit a great crime. If an agent of law enforcement knew what we were going to do they would be right to stop us if they could and, if not, then to arrest and try us afterwards and punish us for the act.
This hinges on a certain ambiguousness in what's meant by "justifiable" I think, i.e., legal justification is not precisely the same thing as the moral kind though there appears to be overlap (do we have a moral obligation to obey laws when they're just and represent properly legislated rules within the society in which we are enrolled?).
It seems morally justifiable to me to kill a killer whom you know, with certainty, will commit some great crime (perhaps murder of innocents) in the future, even if that killing would, itself, count as unjustified within the framework of the relevant law (because the law cannot recognize that you know something relevant about future events with any kind of certainty). Of course this is a hypothetical case since there are no real scenarios which would give us such advance certain knowledge. But if there were, and we had that kind of knowledge, wouldn't that take precedence over the legal prohibition on killing someone without the kind of reliable justification we expect in normal circumstances?
Is "murder" the name of the act of killing someone under certain conditions or a characterization of that particular act of killing?
If the latter, then the reason it appears to be "intrinsically" wrong is because the concept of moral wrongness has already been baked into the particular cake the terminology is being used to describe.
But take that slant away from the description of the events and you get a more neutral description which, I think, better accords with the facts of how we treat real problems in the world, i.e., if we would kill in self-defense or defense of an innocent party, and not count it murder, then why wouldn't we kill pre-emptively in self-defense or to defend another, given sufficient knowledge of future events, and still think it should be counted as murder in a moral sense?
There is also a distinction to be drawn between legal and moral sanction, I think, even if there is a great deal of overlap in these concepts and even if it is sometimes hard to tease them apart.
You ask "What is the nature of wrongness if it is not to be found in nature?"
But where in nature can we find it? What natural phenomena count as that wrongness?
I suppose, given the example we are exploring, you would say it's the murder itself, this particular kind of killing we have described. But if I'm right and there are circumstances where committing murder in a legal sense is not to do wrong in a moral sense, then it is not the legal definition of "murder" which matters but something else.
What could constituted the moral wrongness that's at issue here then?
Perhaps it's that harming innocents is what's wrong here not the killing that counts as murder in a legal sense? And why might harming innocents be wrong? One possibility is because doing so expresses an intentional state (the desire to cause harm to the other) which is wrong. If it's the state that drives the act and not the act itself, described in entirely phenomenal/physical terms, then the wrongness cannot be "intrinsic" to the act. It resides in an element of the act, in this case the motivating aspects of the agent's mental life.
Ad (1) That would depend on what one means by justifiable reason, or what one makes count as a justifiable reason, which again is part of the definition of murder, and is seen differently by different people. Whatever the case, I can't see how distingusÃshing between the unjustifiable act or murder or the unjustifiable consequences of that act of murder bring anything to light or any difference worth noting. Now whether one takes this to mean, as you do, that murder (the act) is not intrinsically wrong, or to mean, as consequentialists do, that the moral character of the event hangs on the consequences of the act (or that the act is part of the consequences), doesn't amount to much.
DeleteAd (2) You'd have to know a lot to know "with certainty" beforehand whether a e.g. a three year old human is (will become) a monster. Unless you presume to know of course, or you class certain humans as intrinisically evil, which you are of course free to do, in which case whether the human is in fact a monster or not plays no role, other than as window dressing for your position.
Ad (4) The hypothetical, assuming it makes sense, is not really worth considering.
Ad (5, 6) "Is "murder" the name of the act of killing someone under certain conditions or a characterization of that particular act of killing?" See Ad (1) and my previous comments.
Ad (7) If "killing", "pre-emptive", "self-defense", "defense" and the like are in fact, whatever that means, morally neutral (in the scientific sense or whatever) as the IDF style guide suggests then sure. But then you can make anything out of anything, which was my point. (See previous comments.)
Ad (9) "You ask "What is the nature of wrongness if it is not to be found in nature?"" Alas, that is not something I ask. It is the materialist's, hedonist's, scientist's, consequentialist's point of departure. Which says that if it can't be found in nature, a neutral description, it (morality) does not exist. Which leads naturally to might is right and whatever story is told by the winners is the one that matters.
Ad (10, 11, 12) "...there are circumstances where committing murder in a legal sense is not to do wrong in a moral sense" and the converse it seems, from what follows. So in some cases it is morally right to do what is legally wrong. And in some cases it is legally right to do what is morally wrong. And? You want to take intent into account? Legally? Morally? And what do you mean that the state of intent is an element of the act (consequence) but not part of or intrinsic to it? You seem to want to distinguish between the act and its intent and its consequences, is that right? And to these you can assign moral and legal proeprties depending on what story you want to tell? OK. See Ad (1) above and my previous comments.
For sake of clarity, I do not deny that there is a distinction between the moral and legal, there is. Only it is not what is in question here. Or if it is, that is only because certain laws describe certain acts as war crimes and some current war criminals seem to think they have a moral obligation to commit them. Which means the laws (the legal definitions or descriptions) are the problem, not the acts. The latter are completely neutral and can be whatever one wants them to be. Moral principles in this case (Benny Morris) function as post-hoc justifications based on impossible hypotheticals about supposed intrinsic evil in a certain class of humans (See interview). That's been seen before.
See previous comments.
"Some current war criminals" assumes that some current actors are that which, I presume you assume by their fitting within the definition of war criminality you adhere to. But the issue here is whether any given definition of a war crime (or any other morally bad act) is the right one without possibility of question.
DeleteThat is, how do we decide when an act is a "war crime" which, by the way, has moral implications more than legal because, unlike ordinary law which is legislated and enforced by some entity, there is no formal legislation (only treaties between sovereign actors) and no enforcer to execute the "laws" in question. Therefore the question of war crimes seems to me to be more about moral points of view than law per se (even granting that there are similarities between laws and moral standards, rules, etc.).
Yes, I take intent into account as the only reasonable way I can see to establish what acts are morally good or bad. What do you think makes an act morally good or bad aside from that?
Some fiat from a recognized authority (which one then and why are they authorities on the subject)?
The shared deep seated sensibilities of particular communities?
Your own personal sensibilities?
Some genetic predispositions we have as members of the species we are included in?
Some evolutionary behavioral traits we have which our history as a species has built into us through natural selection?
Something that we simply know when we encounter it in some unmediated fashion (intuited, that is)?
Presumably you have a different account than the one I'm trying to offer (i.e., that the state of the agent's character, that is his or her mental life, underlies moral valuation in that it motivates certain kinds of behaviors and avoidance of/aversion to others).
I wouldn't mind reading your account. Perhaps your view offers a more reasonable basis for explaining moral valuing than mine does. At the least, I'd like to know on what you would base your claims about who is a war criminal, say, or a murderer and why the acts you deem war crimes or murder are morally bad aside from the fact that you, or some community with with which you feel affiliated, feels they are.
As to the uses we make of narrative, it is certainly the case that we can describe things in different ways and how we do affects how we feel about them and judge them. Beardsmore made the interesting argument that how we feel/judge things is already built into our form of life, including the language we speak, from the first, and that these "built-ins" are a function of the societies in which we are embedded. But that still leaves moral judgment a matter of relativity because different cultures will build into any speaker a different set of standards (consistent with their own historical experiences and what is feasible to humans as a species). I think this does explain how moral judgments work superficially but it doesn't resolve the deeper problem that moral judgments cannot be seen to be relative. So either such judgments' non-relativity is an illusion or not. If not, an account like Beardsmore's still leaves the matter unaddressed. But the narrative of the society in question will certainly vary and the terms used to describe different actions (what a society calls "murder" and what it doesn't) will make a difference in how the acts are viewed.
As to the hypothetical cases I cited, the point is to show that there is always something about the context that makes the difference, which undermines a claim to "intrinsic" wrongness (or rightness) in my view.
SM: "As to the hypothetical cases I cited, the point is to show that there is always something about the context that makes the difference, which undermines a claim to "intrinsic" wrongness (or rightness) in my view."
DeleteThat's what you say, what consequentialists say. That's been clear from the beginning. All I've tried to say without much success is that the distinction between act and consequence that you make makes no difference, and that denying the intrinsical nature of an act by saying it is in the consequences neutrally described (whatever that is) or in the victim (who on your account are not) because they are your view are intrinsically evil doesn't make your account more scientific or general. Nor does the shuffle of saying that the all the genetic/psychological answers to what morals are are not in yet, so no one can say what is really truly moral, and that until then moral is what the victor says it is. That's nothing new, as the OP makes clear.
Finally, to take a like look at (what I choose to unscientifically call) presumption and prejudice (or knowing evil with certainty beforehand) that is closer to home there's this:
The ghost of Mike Brown: why must a dead black child defend his right to life?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/12/mike-brown-ferguson-shooting-police-black
It's the same old story, for a different set of (what I choose to unscientifically call) victims.
I think, Stuart, that we are speaking past each other and should probably end this here. With respect.
DeleteWhat does play a role, centrally, to Morris's argument is Secular Jewish Millenial Ethno-Nationalism or Zionism, as it is commonly known. I'm not sure Anscombe said anything about that.
ReplyDeleteJZ wrote: "All I've tried to say without much success is that the distinction between act and consequence that you make makes no difference, and that denying the intrinsical nature of an act by saying it is in the consequences neutrally described (whatever that is) or in the victim (who on your account are not) because they are your view are intrinsically evil doesn't make your account more scientific or general."
DeleteAnd that's "what you say" in the same way you accuse me of just asserting. But what you would need to show is WHY there is "intrinsic" goodness or badness, if that's what you want to claim, as in what kind of claim can you offer to support intrinsicness (other than the fact that some people believe there is)?
I've given cases where it's reasonable to doubt the presence of "intrinsic" value in particular cases while you haven't offered any reason for why we should think, instead, that there is "intrinsic" value present in those cases that would undermine a contrary moral intuition, i. e., that the context makes the difference, other than to assert some people do think this.
Nor do I have any idea where you get the apparent claim you impute to me: "or in the victim (who on your account are not) because they are your view are intrinsically evil . . ." Perhaps your statement was just garbled but my reading of it is that you have taken my point that moral value resides in the state of mind of the agent to mean some unnamed "victims" are "intrinsically evil." Of course my view rejects ascriptions of intrinsic goodness or badness as unintelligible on analysis. So perhaps you are right that we are just talking past each other. Should you want to continue, I think you would need to explain why goodness and badness can be intrinsic to some things, actions or individuals. Otherwise, I accept your desire to call it a day and move on. Thanks for responding.
Reading through your responses and our conversation it seems to me that you have not read the original opening post.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but what does unintelligible on analysis mean? And why do you think an act cannot be evil in itself? How do you analyse, say, concentration camps? Do you mean the treatment is not what counts but its effects, so that if you deny food to people what is wrong about it is that they starve to death?
And even that is debatable it seems (I'm working on the assumption that you are supportive of Morris, that seems to be your position, and that is after all what the original post is about) that you think there are cases where it is justifiable to starve an entire population to death to achieve specific colonial goals. Morris is of the view that ethnic cleansing is not, in itself, wrong, but it is only wrong when done to the wrong (right) people. In the case of the US he says it was right to annihilate the Native Americans, because the results of annihilation are so great (that seems to be beyond debate). It seems to me that he can say the same for slavery, segregation, and the e.g. current situation in Ferguson where this is going on:
pic.twitter.com/EMQVI5ZoCW
The ghetto might as well be the Gaza strip. If that, Morris's view, is your view I find it hard to make sense of. And that is not because it is senseless, necessarily, but because it is entirely foreign to me. That would be why we are talking past each other.
Correct link:
DeleteGhetto Life
"what does unintelligible on analysis mean"
DeleteWhile it seems to make sense in ordinary use, when we analyze it, it doesn't.
"why do you think an act cannot be evil in itself? "
Because there is no definition of that kind of evil without also considering context as in purpose, outcome, etc. And once those are brought in to justify the claim of "evil" then it's no longer evil in itself.
"How do you analyse, say, concentration camps?"
By looking at what the camps were used for and what they resulted in. For instance, the original notion of "concentration camps" merely referred to people concentrated together in an enclosed location. The term was first introduced, I believe, in South Africa where the British moved families of their Boer enemies into such camps. The Boers were not herded together to be killed as part of a program of ethnic extermination and were not systematically tortured or abused while so concentrated. The Nazis later took the idea of concentration camps and used them somewhat differently and, most of us nowadays, would think badly. Of course the Nazis, certainly some of them at least, and many German and other nationals who maintained the camps thought the concentration camps the Nazis built and used were good things, even if some humans suffered from them. So are concentration camps intrinsically evil? Obviously some weren't and arguably none were even if some were built to an evil purpose. And that goes directly to the intent of the agents who built and used them.
"Do you mean the treatment is not what counts but its effects, so that if you deny food to people what is wrong about it is that they starve to death?"
I mean what I've said, that the intent makes them wrong and intent can only be analyzed in terms of what the intender is trying to do (as in bringing certain things about in the world) the effect of which is that certain actual outcomes will be seen to have occurred when the act (or concentration camp) occurs as planned.
I was not writing about Morris, but responding to Duncan's point about Anscombe's consequentialism by making the point that that view requires a commitment to a notion of intrinsic goodness or badness, a notion which, I have suggested, does not stand up to analysis.
" Morris is of the view that ethnic cleansing is not, in itself, wrong, but it is only wrong when done to the wrong (right) people."
I am of the view that what makes any act good or bad in a uniquely moral (rather than instrumentalist) sense is the sort of intention it expresses and that the good intent recognizes the subjectness of others while the bad denies or ignores it. My view is contrary to a doctrine of intrinsic goodness or badness (because it finds that notion unintelligible) while incorporating the idea of outcomes by recognizing that they (outcomes) are what are intended by the acts in question.
I am certainly not defending any claim that exterminating any group of people, including American Indians, is morally good though I don't read history in moral terms. If we did then the vast majority of human would be rendered immoral. But history, human or otherwise, is neither moral nor immoral. It's just what happened.
To the extent that "consequentialism" implies that the end justifies the means, as in the Morris case, I think such a view is wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhat Morris describes is fundamentally immoral, whatever the ultimate results. Such a "consequentialism" does seem to accurately characterize the utilitarian ethos, i.e., that if making an omelet is a good thing and you have to crack a few eggs (a bad thing) to do it, then cracking those eggs is rendered good, too.
I think a better way of seeing this is to note that morality, as in doing what's right for others, is one thing and instrumental goodness another. Instrumentalist formulas never work for us in determining what's morally good because they are innured to moral consideration. We use "good" in different ways, based on what we think makes the things we apply that term to good. The problem arises, I think, when we can't keep the two straight which is a direct result of our not being able to say why moral goodness is good. To the extent we are in the dark about that, while acknowledging with ease that instrumental goodness is obviously good, we too easily slide into confusing the two types of goodness.
Moral goodness stands on a different plane, so to speak. My own thinking is that this is because moral goodness applies to the complete action, from intent to result and everything in between, while instrumental goodness only applies to results and the capacity of the physical events of any act to secure these. The notion of instrumental goodness is thus more limited, which is why moral claims seem to us to take precedence over the instrumental. Every ascription of instrumental goodness may also be subject to a moral assessment if we expand our evaluation of the act to the intent, i.e., the state of the acting subject, but the reverse is not true.
In the case described by Morris, or the American experience with this continent's native populations (or the Anglo Saxon with the Celts or the Celts with their predecessor populations now lost in the mists of time), morally bad acts (understood as such because they expressed states of mind inconsistent with what we take to be morally right) are not made morally whole by our satisfaction with how things ultimately turned out.
History may have its own dynamic, and it's fair to say history is amoral, but none of that renders the immoral moral. And that's because moral valuing encompasses the act in its entirety while instrumental valuing looks only at outcomes, at consequences.