Where I'm coming from
We have now clarified our understanding of Pietersen's classification of the paradigmatic individuals. Do you, then, still consider these individuals to be worthy of study?
Let me take a section to explain where I'm coming from:
I guess that my main problem in the first place had to do with what I perceived to be moral hypocrisy among academics. It seemed to me that the dominant moral paradigm was utilitarianism, but that this was very hypocritically supported.
Did you have in mind anyone in particular?
To be honest, it was more the students than the staff. Particularly, that horrible argument that I had with those arseholes at the science fiction society that Monday.
It all started from considering an example that was given to me ages ago by an ethics lecturer. In essence, it consisted of an astronaut in a ship that was plummeting towards Earth, out of control. The astronaut carried a deadly virus that would wipe out every living thing on the planet if he landed. Many versions of this example were possible, but the one that I found most interesting was the one where the astronaut could self-destruct his own ship to save the earth. Does he have an altruistic duty to kill himself in order to prevent the deaths of everyone on the planet?
This example proved to be very difficult for me. Even if I thought that the astronaut had an altruistic duty to kill himself, I couldn't begin to imagine myself doing such a thing. I started to think of other examples, all of a farfetched nature, where one might legitimately kill someone out of self-preservation. I adapted an example of Nozick's in Anarchy, State and Utopia. Suppose someone was falling into a well, and there was someone at the bottom of the well, who we'll call Mr Pointy, because he was built like a church spire. If you landed on him, he would skewer you, and we could even assume something gruesome, such as that he would eat your remains. Now suppose that you had a ray gun that you could use to vapourise him. Below him, we could assume that the ground was soft, so that you would simply bounce upon it until you landed safely. Was it legitimate for you to kill him out of self-preservation, and if so, then what if there were two Mr Pointies at the bottom of the well? At first, I considered this all on my own, with a clear interest in an egoist conclusion. It started to seem to me to be callous to attempt to draw the line by means of the number of people in the party in question.
I decided to test these intuitions against those of the people at my science fiction club. They accepted that it was legitimate to kill Mr Pointy out of self-preservation. I didn't think that they would like my trying to introduce the notion that number didn't matter, but I needed to brave the controversy to solve this difficult problem. Anyway, when I got to the point of saying, "And if you can kill one, why not two?" the reaction was quite hysterical.
"YOU CAN KILL UP TO THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN YOUR PARTY, BUT YOU CAN'T KILL ANY MORE THAN THAT!" I stood my ground and put my case as clearly as I could, but they were simply trying to shout me down. "IF HE LANDS ON THE PLANET, THEN HE'S KILLING THEM, HE'S MURDERING THEM!"
And then came the bit that I was totally unprepared for: "I would do it," said one of the shouters, "and I would feel guilty after it!"
That tore it. It had been an implicit assumption up to that point that you actually had to do whatever it was that you decided that you should do. But these bastards seemed perfectly happy to make a moral judgement that they had no intention of practising.
It got worse. They thought that most people in that circumstance probably wouldn't kill themselves, but that we were not here discussing what people would do, but what they should do. None of them would do it, but for whatever reason, it was still supposed to matter that they would feel guilty after it. As though anything they felt after the fact mattered that didn't prevent them from doing it in the first place! I even asked them if they would punish somebody else for doing it, and they refused, on the grounds that the guilt that he was feeling would be punishment enough. I argued that this would depend on the person. Even if he started out feeling guilty for it, he might become steadily deconditioned to this feeling if he found himself in the same situation each time.
Of course, this devolved into an argument about the relative merits of utilitarianism. All these people were utilitarians without even having ever learnt the word 'utilitarianism'. All thought that the sacrifice of an individual was acceptable if it were deemed necessary for social utility. But in every case, I decided, this was because they wanted the benefits of someone else's sacrifice without having to provide any sacrifice of their own. It was, I thought, quite a naked display of hypocritical utilitarianism.
This put me into a terrible dilemma. I did not believe that any moral theory was credible outside of utilitarianism, at the same time as I could not find myself happy to practise such a theory. Even John Stuart Mill found himself in a similar crisis of conscience in his early twenties. So from that point on, I resolved that I was going to try to find a prescriptive theory some way, somehow, that I could both preach and practise.
Let me take a section to explain where I'm coming from:
I guess that my main problem in the first place had to do with what I perceived to be moral hypocrisy among academics. It seemed to me that the dominant moral paradigm was utilitarianism, but that this was very hypocritically supported.
Did you have in mind anyone in particular?
To be honest, it was more the students than the staff. Particularly, that horrible argument that I had with those arseholes at the science fiction society that Monday.
It all started from considering an example that was given to me ages ago by an ethics lecturer. In essence, it consisted of an astronaut in a ship that was plummeting towards Earth, out of control. The astronaut carried a deadly virus that would wipe out every living thing on the planet if he landed. Many versions of this example were possible, but the one that I found most interesting was the one where the astronaut could self-destruct his own ship to save the earth. Does he have an altruistic duty to kill himself in order to prevent the deaths of everyone on the planet?
This example proved to be very difficult for me. Even if I thought that the astronaut had an altruistic duty to kill himself, I couldn't begin to imagine myself doing such a thing. I started to think of other examples, all of a farfetched nature, where one might legitimately kill someone out of self-preservation. I adapted an example of Nozick's in Anarchy, State and Utopia. Suppose someone was falling into a well, and there was someone at the bottom of the well, who we'll call Mr Pointy, because he was built like a church spire. If you landed on him, he would skewer you, and we could even assume something gruesome, such as that he would eat your remains. Now suppose that you had a ray gun that you could use to vapourise him. Below him, we could assume that the ground was soft, so that you would simply bounce upon it until you landed safely. Was it legitimate for you to kill him out of self-preservation, and if so, then what if there were two Mr Pointies at the bottom of the well? At first, I considered this all on my own, with a clear interest in an egoist conclusion. It started to seem to me to be callous to attempt to draw the line by means of the number of people in the party in question.
I decided to test these intuitions against those of the people at my science fiction club. They accepted that it was legitimate to kill Mr Pointy out of self-preservation. I didn't think that they would like my trying to introduce the notion that number didn't matter, but I needed to brave the controversy to solve this difficult problem. Anyway, when I got to the point of saying, "And if you can kill one, why not two?" the reaction was quite hysterical.
"YOU CAN KILL UP TO THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN YOUR PARTY, BUT YOU CAN'T KILL ANY MORE THAN THAT!" I stood my ground and put my case as clearly as I could, but they were simply trying to shout me down. "IF HE LANDS ON THE PLANET, THEN HE'S KILLING THEM, HE'S MURDERING THEM!"
And then came the bit that I was totally unprepared for: "I would do it," said one of the shouters, "and I would feel guilty after it!"
That tore it. It had been an implicit assumption up to that point that you actually had to do whatever it was that you decided that you should do. But these bastards seemed perfectly happy to make a moral judgement that they had no intention of practising.
It got worse. They thought that most people in that circumstance probably wouldn't kill themselves, but that we were not here discussing what people would do, but what they should do. None of them would do it, but for whatever reason, it was still supposed to matter that they would feel guilty after it. As though anything they felt after the fact mattered that didn't prevent them from doing it in the first place! I even asked them if they would punish somebody else for doing it, and they refused, on the grounds that the guilt that he was feeling would be punishment enough. I argued that this would depend on the person. Even if he started out feeling guilty for it, he might become steadily deconditioned to this feeling if he found himself in the same situation each time.
Of course, this devolved into an argument about the relative merits of utilitarianism. All these people were utilitarians without even having ever learnt the word 'utilitarianism'. All thought that the sacrifice of an individual was acceptable if it were deemed necessary for social utility. But in every case, I decided, this was because they wanted the benefits of someone else's sacrifice without having to provide any sacrifice of their own. It was, I thought, quite a naked display of hypocritical utilitarianism.
This put me into a terrible dilemma. I did not believe that any moral theory was credible outside of utilitarianism, at the same time as I could not find myself happy to practise such a theory. Even John Stuart Mill found himself in a similar crisis of conscience in his early twenties. So from that point on, I resolved that I was going to try to find a prescriptive theory some way, somehow, that I could both preach and practise.
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