Values and reason
But if values are not subject to our voluntary control, then how could we ever change them due to rational argument? It actually seems to me that vaules often do not change due to rational argument. The paradigmatic example of this for me was the argument I had with the people from my science fiction club. They had iron-clad arguments that "you have to increase the benefits for your society" in that in killing out of self-preservation, "you can kill up to the number of people in your party, but you can't kill any more than that". But this was not enough to prevent them from landing that stupid ship--they simply said that they would do it, and then that they would feel guilty after it. I thought that that was very convenient for them, allowing them to have their cake and eat it too.
What you can say in that situation, however, is that their guilt is their moral disvalue of their action. Their choice to land the ship reflects their prudential value of staying alive; it is simply that they value prudence greater than morality in this instance. But this does not mean that they do not value morality at all, which is why they feel guilty in the first place.
But once they said this, it produced a very large number of important observations for me. First, if that's morality, then how much do I really value morality after all? This was a very upsetting and distressing realisation for me, because among other things, it removed most of the value that I had for studying ethics. I did not value studying ethics if I were to decide simply to ignore its practical consequences when they contradicted my prudential values with enough strength, if only because it would render me a hypocrite. It would have been far more in the interests of intellectual honesty for me to study some form of rationality or decision theory, so that I could advocate it honestly and practise it consistently. Except of course that such theories were usually highly formalised and mathematical, which bored me no end. Furthermore, any qualitative theories of rationality were likely to be so banal that they would bore me as well. In other words, in many ways, the pursuit of what I came to call an empirical theory of ethics really was a last-ditch effort to keep ethics relevant to me at all. If it were to fail, I could only give up on philosophy as out of touch with reality, and continue living a normal life doing something else--in my case, IT.
I can only sympathise with your situation, but I honestly believe that your empirical approach to values is bearing fruit. To begin with, the experience-dependence of intuitions explains why the use of farfetched examples is invalid. In your case, your depression was caused by a fallacy committed during this argument. This argument was only possible through the use of examples that were so ridiculously farfetched that in a world in which they were at all likely to occur, you have no idea what your values would be anyway. The argument showed at most that given what your values were in this world, you would be likely to land the ship and then feel guilty after it. But if the world is that different from our own, then there is plenty of reason to believe that your values would be different as well. Consequently, you might well find that in that situation you would be completely willing to blow yourself up, despite your lack of ability to imagine this scenario in this world. The argument also showed at most that given what other people's values were in this world, they would likely hate you if you landed the ship. But if the world is that different from our own, then why would their values not be different as well? I might find that in that situation they would be quite sympathetic to me, perhaps because they empathised with that same will to survive in themselves. The point is that outcomes like this are impossible to determine, and that is why the examples cannot be considered to be valid.
All this leaves me with a descriptive approach to values. 'Value' is a descriptive word, but 'goodness' is an evaluative word, and I think that it is probably a great source of confusion in ethics that some philosophers seem to treat 'value' as though it is prescriptive when it is not. My approach to values is firstly descriptive, and secondly subjective. There are two main objections to the notion that a subjective account of values is adequate to our needs. The first is that if values are subjective, then we have no reason to take them seriously, which as I argued in "subjectivity versus objectivity" is a very muddled position to take. The second is that if values are subjective, then moral arguments are not legitimate, which as I argued in that same section, is also fallacious. The external reviewer himself raised a third objection, namely that if the defining mark of subjectivism is that somewhere having a value
What you can say in that situation, however, is that their guilt is their moral disvalue of their action. Their choice to land the ship reflects their prudential value of staying alive; it is simply that they value prudence greater than morality in this instance. But this does not mean that they do not value morality at all, which is why they feel guilty in the first place.
But once they said this, it produced a very large number of important observations for me. First, if that's morality, then how much do I really value morality after all? This was a very upsetting and distressing realisation for me, because among other things, it removed most of the value that I had for studying ethics. I did not value studying ethics if I were to decide simply to ignore its practical consequences when they contradicted my prudential values with enough strength, if only because it would render me a hypocrite. It would have been far more in the interests of intellectual honesty for me to study some form of rationality or decision theory, so that I could advocate it honestly and practise it consistently. Except of course that such theories were usually highly formalised and mathematical, which bored me no end. Furthermore, any qualitative theories of rationality were likely to be so banal that they would bore me as well. In other words, in many ways, the pursuit of what I came to call an empirical theory of ethics really was a last-ditch effort to keep ethics relevant to me at all. If it were to fail, I could only give up on philosophy as out of touch with reality, and continue living a normal life doing something else--in my case, IT.
I can only sympathise with your situation, but I honestly believe that your empirical approach to values is bearing fruit. To begin with, the experience-dependence of intuitions explains why the use of farfetched examples is invalid. In your case, your depression was caused by a fallacy committed during this argument. This argument was only possible through the use of examples that were so ridiculously farfetched that in a world in which they were at all likely to occur, you have no idea what your values would be anyway. The argument showed at most that given what your values were in this world, you would be likely to land the ship and then feel guilty after it. But if the world is that different from our own, then there is plenty of reason to believe that your values would be different as well. Consequently, you might well find that in that situation you would be completely willing to blow yourself up, despite your lack of ability to imagine this scenario in this world. The argument also showed at most that given what other people's values were in this world, they would likely hate you if you landed the ship. But if the world is that different from our own, then why would their values not be different as well? I might find that in that situation they would be quite sympathetic to me, perhaps because they empathised with that same will to survive in themselves. The point is that outcomes like this are impossible to determine, and that is why the examples cannot be considered to be valid.
All this leaves me with a descriptive approach to values. 'Value' is a descriptive word, but 'goodness' is an evaluative word, and I think that it is probably a great source of confusion in ethics that some philosophers seem to treat 'value' as though it is prescriptive when it is not. My approach to values is firstly descriptive, and secondly subjective. There are two main objections to the notion that a subjective account of values is adequate to our needs. The first is that if values are subjective, then we have no reason to take them seriously, which as I argued in "subjectivity versus objectivity" is a very muddled position to take. The second is that if values are subjective, then moral arguments are not legitimate, which as I argued in that same section, is also fallacious. The external reviewer himself raised a third objection, namely that if the defining mark of subjectivism is that somewhere having a value