Reading Cicero
I read all of Book I yesterday and all of Book II today. That leaves Book III, where Cicero deals with the apparent conflict between duty and expediency. I think he actually makes a good case in Book II that duty and expediency are not in conflict most of the time, and from what I have read elsewhere, he will here try to establish that they only ever appear to be in conflict because of some things that merely appear good but are not. It sounds reasonable to me already.
Where does this leave you and your theory?
I guess that I am interested in the concept of social viability and its relation to ethics. Issues such as cultural memes that get transmitted from generation to generation will come to play here, and so will the degree to which certain institutions last over time. Moral beliefs--as opposed to moral realities, to the extent that those can be different things--will certainly constitute a species of cultural memes. In that respect, I guess I am interested in the degree to which memes of morality track memes of practice over time. If they track memes of practice fairly closely, then we would expect that immorality as society defines it, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. If, on the other hand, memes of morality do not track memes of practice, then one must wonder what is it that ensures that memes of morality survive at all.
It seems to me that memes of morality must survive because they do track memes of practice. We all know that an entire society may in some ways be unjust... but what example from the real world can we provide of this? Consider the Romans, who relied heavily upon slavery, yet who also certainly did not believe at all that there was anything immoral with doing so. It is all very well for us to judge their practices by our own morality, but we may not use this as evidence against the notion that morality must somehow track practice. For our morality does track our practices, just as their morality tracks theirs. After all, we do not practise slavery any more than they thought that there was anything wrong with slavery--it is simply that our morality is also the standard that we use for judgements about other societies who do not share our morality. Hence, morality does, on the whole, have to be practised by the society who owns it. But it does not have to serve as the standard of conduct for only the society that does practise it.
That argument removes the problem of your supervisor's original counterexamples to your position on the day you had that argument. However, what can you say about the possibility that a lone individual can legitimately have a moral disagreement with his entire society? That is another kind of way in which an entire society can in some ways be unjust. I do not actually think it ever happens that just one person at a time disagrees with his entire society, but the logical possibility is compelling.
This is where an analysis of social change comes into the picture. In March, I did a lot of research into the history of the abolition of slavery, and the factors behind people's change in perception of slavery as an institution. It was fascinating stuff, and it strongly suggested to me that some kind of robust empiricism in ethics is not only possible, but downright desirable. It seems to me that moral observations that refute existing beliefs are part of what causes social change at the moral level, but I also think that necessary presuppositions from other moral beliefs also play a part. For example, it is easy to explain why we no longer believe in a fixed hierarchy of humanity now that capitalism is in full swing. Capitalism really requires more flexibility in the workforce than to have people stay at the same legally enforced class level forever. By the same token, however, there seems no reason a priori why this should have entailed that slavery should be abolished. It would have enabled the bourgeoisie and working classes greater upward mobility, and the abolition of slavery would certainly have facilitated this as well. But the abolition of slavery seems to have been more the result of a social movement with a moral agenda than a natural consequence of capitalism. But the ethic at work here was one that undoubtedly drew some support from its practical value for capitalism as well. The ethic, once entrenched in one corner of society, had ramifications that spread to another.
A fortiori, the animal rights movement today does not seem to make sense at all in terms of the functional requirements of capitalism. If anything, it seems to place greater legal constraints on the capitalist process than it removes. But one strong ethic that sanctioned what capitalism needed to function effectively in the first place was the notion of the equality of human beings. And once that equality has been granted to those who were considered inferior before, it seems natural that in some ways this process should treacle down to others considered more inferior still. There are enough differences between animals and humans to prevent animals from gaining all the rights that humans have. For example, animals' lack of awareness of long-term consequences seems even to the utilitarians to make it easier to justify killing them than killing humans, on the whole. But we are seeing a general de-commodification of animals in much the same way as we saw of slaves in times gone by. And notions of equality are partially behind it just like they were partially behind abolitionism, which can particularly be witnessed through the arguments of Peter Singer.
Where does this leave you and your theory?
I guess that I am interested in the concept of social viability and its relation to ethics. Issues such as cultural memes that get transmitted from generation to generation will come to play here, and so will the degree to which certain institutions last over time. Moral beliefs--as opposed to moral realities, to the extent that those can be different things--will certainly constitute a species of cultural memes. In that respect, I guess I am interested in the degree to which memes of morality track memes of practice over time. If they track memes of practice fairly closely, then we would expect that immorality as society defines it, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. If, on the other hand, memes of morality do not track memes of practice, then one must wonder what is it that ensures that memes of morality survive at all.
It seems to me that memes of morality must survive because they do track memes of practice. We all know that an entire society may in some ways be unjust... but what example from the real world can we provide of this? Consider the Romans, who relied heavily upon slavery, yet who also certainly did not believe at all that there was anything immoral with doing so. It is all very well for us to judge their practices by our own morality, but we may not use this as evidence against the notion that morality must somehow track practice. For our morality does track our practices, just as their morality tracks theirs. After all, we do not practise slavery any more than they thought that there was anything wrong with slavery--it is simply that our morality is also the standard that we use for judgements about other societies who do not share our morality. Hence, morality does, on the whole, have to be practised by the society who owns it. But it does not have to serve as the standard of conduct for only the society that does practise it.
That argument removes the problem of your supervisor's original counterexamples to your position on the day you had that argument. However, what can you say about the possibility that a lone individual can legitimately have a moral disagreement with his entire society? That is another kind of way in which an entire society can in some ways be unjust. I do not actually think it ever happens that just one person at a time disagrees with his entire society, but the logical possibility is compelling.
This is where an analysis of social change comes into the picture. In March, I did a lot of research into the history of the abolition of slavery, and the factors behind people's change in perception of slavery as an institution. It was fascinating stuff, and it strongly suggested to me that some kind of robust empiricism in ethics is not only possible, but downright desirable. It seems to me that moral observations that refute existing beliefs are part of what causes social change at the moral level, but I also think that necessary presuppositions from other moral beliefs also play a part. For example, it is easy to explain why we no longer believe in a fixed hierarchy of humanity now that capitalism is in full swing. Capitalism really requires more flexibility in the workforce than to have people stay at the same legally enforced class level forever. By the same token, however, there seems no reason a priori why this should have entailed that slavery should be abolished. It would have enabled the bourgeoisie and working classes greater upward mobility, and the abolition of slavery would certainly have facilitated this as well. But the abolition of slavery seems to have been more the result of a social movement with a moral agenda than a natural consequence of capitalism. But the ethic at work here was one that undoubtedly drew some support from its practical value for capitalism as well. The ethic, once entrenched in one corner of society, had ramifications that spread to another.
A fortiori, the animal rights movement today does not seem to make sense at all in terms of the functional requirements of capitalism. If anything, it seems to place greater legal constraints on the capitalist process than it removes. But one strong ethic that sanctioned what capitalism needed to function effectively in the first place was the notion of the equality of human beings. And once that equality has been granted to those who were considered inferior before, it seems natural that in some ways this process should treacle down to others considered more inferior still. There are enough differences between animals and humans to prevent animals from gaining all the rights that humans have. For example, animals' lack of awareness of long-term consequences seems even to the utilitarians to make it easier to justify killing them than killing humans, on the whole. But we are seeing a general de-commodification of animals in much the same way as we saw of slaves in times gone by. And notions of equality are partially behind it just like they were partially behind abolitionism, which can particularly be witnessed through the arguments of Peter Singer.
Comments