The problem of hypocrisy
What happens, however, if one judges various actions as moral or immoral, but is a hypocrite about one's own judgements? This was exactly the problem that I encountered that sparked the Masters thesis in the first place. I was looking at a community of scholars who seemed content to prescribe ethical theories that not only nobody else was going to obey, but they would not obey themselves. In this case, they could be said to be making moral observations, from which one could legitimately derive a centralist, utilitarian theory. Yet this theory would only be hypocritically supported. I would not mind if nobody else obeyed my ethics, but I would still have to obey it, otherwise I would never be convinced that it was a worthwhile activity.
Yes, but in this respect, you are up against an ivory tower mentality. The idea is that the study of ethics is not tightly connected to practice, so that hypocrisy, if it arises, is a separate issue.
It cannot be a separate issue, because this is tantamount to saying that ethics doesn't really matter after all. Ethics, by nature if not by definition, is meant to be obeyed.
I agree, but if ethics is disobeyed on a regular basis, then what makes this a problem with the original ethical theory? How could an undesirable practical consequence show that the theory is false? This was one of the things that my supervisor said at one point, because he often had to protest that ethics didn't have to be viable. Even you ended up having to bypass the issue altogether by claiming that there was not actually a problem with ethics being viable in practice, because there was a commonsense viable morality that people both preached and practised. You would want to question the sanction of ethics if ethics didn't turn out to be viable. But, for what it was worth, it was viable, and that was all there was to it.
Yes, yes, I know, but I already argued in section 5.2 that you couldn't reduce morality to viability, or to anything else for that matter. Morality is simply morality, whatever else over which it may supervene. This is why I content myself with the fact that there is a commonsense viable morality, and it is to this morality that I make myself accountable in the thesis.
But it seems to me that this is exactly where you could provide still further argument. What makes commonsense viable morality better than academic unviable morality? After all, academic utilitarians spend a lot of time theorising, and even if they are hypocritical in such theorising, it still seems that they have as much claim to make a moral observation as people in the outside world.
In that case, I would trundle out my standard example of inductive skepticism. We consider it to be a legitimate objection to an inductive skeptic that she does not practise what she preaches. Actions speak louder than words, and a hypocrite's actions speak louder than her words as well, demonstrating that she is not really a skeptic about induction like she claims to be. Surely a moral hypocrite invalidates his own theory by the same argument, that his actions show that he does not really value what he claims to value.
I think that’s specious. You can show that one does not value the action by showing that one is in the habit of not practising it, but it does not follow that one does not judge it as right; it simply means that one is, to that extent, not a good person, according to one's own values.
You can still form a symmetrical argument in favour of the inductive skeptic. Catching an inductive skeptic in the habit of performing inductive inferences therefore does not invalidate her skepticism in any way; it simply means that, according to her own values, she is irrational.
I would here draw an analogy with epistemology. The great polarity in epistemology is between skepticism on the one pole, and non-skepticism on the other pole, in between which is a continuum of degrees. If you are an extreme skeptic, then you are said to be pricing knowledge out of the market, and if you are an extreme nonskeptic, then you make knowledge cheaply--if not freely--available to all. What, then, can be the criterion for how skeptical you should be in principle, and should it even depend on how much knowledge we end up with? Surely, if epistemology is to be practical at all, then we must have some knowledge to do what we have to do every day.
It seems to me that this reasoning can apply symmetrically in ethics. The great polarity in ethics is between altruism on the one pole, and egoism on the other pole, in between which is a continuum of degrees. If you are an extreme altruist, then you are said to be pricing ethics out of the market, and if you are an extreme egoist, then you are making ethics cheaply--if not freely--available to all.
Hang on a minute, that analogy is already breaking down! No matter how extreme an altruist you are, your ethics will always be practicable in principle, and as long as this is so, then at least one person, sometime, somewhere will actually practise it completely--such as Jesus! He might become venerated, if not emulated, by his society, as a paradigmatic individual. Even if no one else obeys his ethics perfectly, they will still be made better for practising it to the degree that they do practise it, however imperfectly--but I'll have to develop this in another section...
Yes, but in this respect, you are up against an ivory tower mentality. The idea is that the study of ethics is not tightly connected to practice, so that hypocrisy, if it arises, is a separate issue.
It cannot be a separate issue, because this is tantamount to saying that ethics doesn't really matter after all. Ethics, by nature if not by definition, is meant to be obeyed.
I agree, but if ethics is disobeyed on a regular basis, then what makes this a problem with the original ethical theory? How could an undesirable practical consequence show that the theory is false? This was one of the things that my supervisor said at one point, because he often had to protest that ethics didn't have to be viable. Even you ended up having to bypass the issue altogether by claiming that there was not actually a problem with ethics being viable in practice, because there was a commonsense viable morality that people both preached and practised. You would want to question the sanction of ethics if ethics didn't turn out to be viable. But, for what it was worth, it was viable, and that was all there was to it.
Yes, yes, I know, but I already argued in section 5.2 that you couldn't reduce morality to viability, or to anything else for that matter. Morality is simply morality, whatever else over which it may supervene. This is why I content myself with the fact that there is a commonsense viable morality, and it is to this morality that I make myself accountable in the thesis.
But it seems to me that this is exactly where you could provide still further argument. What makes commonsense viable morality better than academic unviable morality? After all, academic utilitarians spend a lot of time theorising, and even if they are hypocritical in such theorising, it still seems that they have as much claim to make a moral observation as people in the outside world.
In that case, I would trundle out my standard example of inductive skepticism. We consider it to be a legitimate objection to an inductive skeptic that she does not practise what she preaches. Actions speak louder than words, and a hypocrite's actions speak louder than her words as well, demonstrating that she is not really a skeptic about induction like she claims to be. Surely a moral hypocrite invalidates his own theory by the same argument, that his actions show that he does not really value what he claims to value.
I think that’s specious. You can show that one does not value the action by showing that one is in the habit of not practising it, but it does not follow that one does not judge it as right; it simply means that one is, to that extent, not a good person, according to one's own values.
You can still form a symmetrical argument in favour of the inductive skeptic. Catching an inductive skeptic in the habit of performing inductive inferences therefore does not invalidate her skepticism in any way; it simply means that, according to her own values, she is irrational.
I would here draw an analogy with epistemology. The great polarity in epistemology is between skepticism on the one pole, and non-skepticism on the other pole, in between which is a continuum of degrees. If you are an extreme skeptic, then you are said to be pricing knowledge out of the market, and if you are an extreme nonskeptic, then you make knowledge cheaply--if not freely--available to all. What, then, can be the criterion for how skeptical you should be in principle, and should it even depend on how much knowledge we end up with? Surely, if epistemology is to be practical at all, then we must have some knowledge to do what we have to do every day.
It seems to me that this reasoning can apply symmetrically in ethics. The great polarity in ethics is between altruism on the one pole, and egoism on the other pole, in between which is a continuum of degrees. If you are an extreme altruist, then you are said to be pricing ethics out of the market, and if you are an extreme egoist, then you are making ethics cheaply--if not freely--available to all.
Hang on a minute, that analogy is already breaking down! No matter how extreme an altruist you are, your ethics will always be practicable in principle, and as long as this is so, then at least one person, sometime, somewhere will actually practise it completely--such as Jesus! He might become venerated, if not emulated, by his society, as a paradigmatic individual. Even if no one else obeys his ethics perfectly, they will still be made better for practising it to the degree that they do practise it, however imperfectly--but I'll have to develop this in another section...
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