Antecedentalism
Yesterday you said that the hypocrites' behaviour was peculiar and hard to explain. This morning I have just read a section of The Moral Animal that would seem to explain it perfectly adequately. It is not in people's genetic interests actually to be moral per se. It is only in their interests to appear moral, for the sake of raising their own status1. Sometimes this means that their behaviour actually will be coextensive with morality. (Sometimes they will even actually believe that they are being moral, and are taking ethics seriously.) But it also means that they will pay lip-service to a belief that they will not necessarily themselves practise. The club members did not care that they would not sacrifice themselves, because "we are not here discussing what people would do, but what they should do!"
Writing that again now, it really does sound like a dodge. Why is it what people should do when it is not what they would do? What is the point of ethics if you do not, at the end of the day, obey it as your primary, overriding rule of conduct? Now sociobiology has confirmed my worst fears. The biological point of ethics is precisely that it makes you "look good". We may not live in a Machiavellian world where people only consciously care about morality insofar as it makes them look good. But in this world, people still unconsciously only care about morality to this extent. The Machiavellianism is still there. It is simply that it exists in our genes, rather than in our consciousness. The only difference between Machiavelli and most of the rest of us is that he recognised the social reality for what it is. And in recognising it, he embraced it.
This is not to suggest that the rest of us need to embrace such a notion. But if we are to avoid it, then it seems we have two choices. On one hand, we can try to cultivate sufficient virtue to sacrifice ourselves as much as morality demands. On the other hand, we can attempt to discover moral grounds why such self-sacrifice is not justified. For the rest of this entry, I will attempt the latter course of action.
Morality, as it is commonly conceived today, is utilitarianism2. As such, it is not difficult to imagine that the moral thing involves untold self-sacrifice. We can especially see this today, with the huge disparity between the First and Third Worlds. We might have a moral duty to donate 90% of our salaries to the Third World. They might only be marginally better off because of this. But it is still what we have to do, just because they need the money more than we do. Everybody might be pulled under the poverty line, or even kept at an even level of mediocrity. The people who suffer their losses may be completely demoralised. But it is better that, say, one billion people are demoralised than that five billion people suffer from commensurately greater poverty. Utilitarian distributive justice, in other words, is quite Marxist. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
I hope that even this sketch reveals, however, that something must be wrong with this. First, as Robert Nozick observed, it only considers the current time-slice.3 All that matters for desserts here is the current time-slice of distributions. But for Nozick, it also matters how the distribution took place. Certainly, it seems to me that judging actions merely by their consequences seems arbitrary. There is no reason why other components of actions could not also be morally relevant.
First, the kinds of actions themselves must be relevant. For example, one thing that we would never consider doing is deliberately killing an innocent person against her will. This action cannot be justified in terms of its consequences. Furthermore, it cannot even be justified that the action is wrong merely in terms of its consequences. Any consequentialist attempt at justification either way seems callous. This is because this action is not wrong in virtue of its consequences at all. It is wrong in virtue of the kind of action that it is. It is also significant that utilitarians never try to justify this action in practice. They always claim that it would not really be necessary to maximise utility. This, however, ignores the fact that a utilitarian would still, in some case, however contrived she might try to make it, have to approve of the action. Yet it would still be wrong in that circumstance. Not because it did not maximise utility--but simply because it would be murder.
If we accept that one non-consequentialist consideration is relevant, why not another? What about the antecedents of an action, for example? This is an area where there has not been nearly enough philosophical research--although there has been some. The term coined for this approach, appropriately enough, is "antecedentalism"4. Antecedentalism has been proposed as a moral ground for giving people what they deserve. People who, say, have performed a good deed deserve to be rewarded for that deed. This reward is not justified in terms of any consequences that it will bring. It is justified in terms of what its recipient has already done. On this rationale, people would not receive more money simply because it would maximise the overall happiness. It would be because they did something to earn it in the first place, such as work hard. This seems a perfectly moral conclusion to draw. But once we draw it, then how can we justify a narrowly utilitarian redistribution of wealth for those who did not earn it?
1Robert Wright, London: Abacus, 1994, p.344.
2Ibid, p.332-336.
3Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, 1977, p. 154.
4This term is an accepted variant of "antecedentialism", as used by G. Sher in Desert, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
Writing that again now, it really does sound like a dodge. Why is it what people should do when it is not what they would do? What is the point of ethics if you do not, at the end of the day, obey it as your primary, overriding rule of conduct? Now sociobiology has confirmed my worst fears. The biological point of ethics is precisely that it makes you "look good". We may not live in a Machiavellian world where people only consciously care about morality insofar as it makes them look good. But in this world, people still unconsciously only care about morality to this extent. The Machiavellianism is still there. It is simply that it exists in our genes, rather than in our consciousness. The only difference between Machiavelli and most of the rest of us is that he recognised the social reality for what it is. And in recognising it, he embraced it.
This is not to suggest that the rest of us need to embrace such a notion. But if we are to avoid it, then it seems we have two choices. On one hand, we can try to cultivate sufficient virtue to sacrifice ourselves as much as morality demands. On the other hand, we can attempt to discover moral grounds why such self-sacrifice is not justified. For the rest of this entry, I will attempt the latter course of action.
Morality, as it is commonly conceived today, is utilitarianism2. As such, it is not difficult to imagine that the moral thing involves untold self-sacrifice. We can especially see this today, with the huge disparity between the First and Third Worlds. We might have a moral duty to donate 90% of our salaries to the Third World. They might only be marginally better off because of this. But it is still what we have to do, just because they need the money more than we do. Everybody might be pulled under the poverty line, or even kept at an even level of mediocrity. The people who suffer their losses may be completely demoralised. But it is better that, say, one billion people are demoralised than that five billion people suffer from commensurately greater poverty. Utilitarian distributive justice, in other words, is quite Marxist. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
I hope that even this sketch reveals, however, that something must be wrong with this. First, as Robert Nozick observed, it only considers the current time-slice.3 All that matters for desserts here is the current time-slice of distributions. But for Nozick, it also matters how the distribution took place. Certainly, it seems to me that judging actions merely by their consequences seems arbitrary. There is no reason why other components of actions could not also be morally relevant.
First, the kinds of actions themselves must be relevant. For example, one thing that we would never consider doing is deliberately killing an innocent person against her will. This action cannot be justified in terms of its consequences. Furthermore, it cannot even be justified that the action is wrong merely in terms of its consequences. Any consequentialist attempt at justification either way seems callous. This is because this action is not wrong in virtue of its consequences at all. It is wrong in virtue of the kind of action that it is. It is also significant that utilitarians never try to justify this action in practice. They always claim that it would not really be necessary to maximise utility. This, however, ignores the fact that a utilitarian would still, in some case, however contrived she might try to make it, have to approve of the action. Yet it would still be wrong in that circumstance. Not because it did not maximise utility--but simply because it would be murder.
If we accept that one non-consequentialist consideration is relevant, why not another? What about the antecedents of an action, for example? This is an area where there has not been nearly enough philosophical research--although there has been some. The term coined for this approach, appropriately enough, is "antecedentalism"4. Antecedentalism has been proposed as a moral ground for giving people what they deserve. People who, say, have performed a good deed deserve to be rewarded for that deed. This reward is not justified in terms of any consequences that it will bring. It is justified in terms of what its recipient has already done. On this rationale, people would not receive more money simply because it would maximise the overall happiness. It would be because they did something to earn it in the first place, such as work hard. This seems a perfectly moral conclusion to draw. But once we draw it, then how can we justify a narrowly utilitarian redistribution of wealth for those who did not earn it?
1Robert Wright, London: Abacus, 1994, p.344.
2Ibid, p.332-336.
3Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, 1977, p. 154.
4This term is an accepted variant of "antecedentialism", as used by G. Sher in Desert, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
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