DARWINISM, ALTRUISM AND PAINIENCE by Dr Richard Ryder
I found this site on a web search for "Darwinism altruism".
Do you consider yourself to be a moral revolutionary?
Absolutely not! So despite my aim in the Masters thesis to work "towards an empirical theory of ethics", an actual theory of ethics is perhaps not really an appropriate aim for me. I am more interested in taking our existing ethics and protecting it against what I believe to be unfair requirements being placed on it by certain rather arbitrary formalised theories.
This, of course, is quite the same as Anne Maclean's project in The Elimination of Morality. It also seems related to Bernard Williams' project in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. But what does it amount to saying other than that philosophy cannot teach moral expertise--an uncontentious claim in itself? If this is your only point, then is your book actually saying anything interesting?
Well, what have I been spending all this time doing, if it hasn't been pursuing anything interesting? I was dumbstruck by the hypocrisy that the students around me displayed towards utilitarianism. If I could decide that I would do something in a hypothetical example that I was impelled to consider immoral, then it took the interest out of the deliberation. I might decide that the moral thing was absolutely anything if I simply would not practise it if it was contrary to my own interests. I would be happy to agree that anything at all was immoral if at the end of the day I still would do as I pleased. In fact, one could say the same thing about absolutely any other philosophical view, such as inductive skepticism. This relates to Hume's famous point, that his skepticism was academic only, not practical. "Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." (Enquiries, Selby-Bigge edition, 1972, p.41.) But my point is, why should I not feel free to believe in anything at all, if at the end of the day, I feel free to be a hypocrite?
That is a different argument from what you mounted before. You started out saying that there is no point in studying ethics if at the end of the day you are not prepared to practise it. That argument, however, would have no force with most academics, because they do not care about practising the ethics that they see fit to study. It is enough for them simply to have a pure intellectual justification for that ethics.
But how are they meant to arrive at this "pure intellectual justification"? I could come to agree with almost anything if I didn't care about practising it. I would simply go along with whatever the most charismatic ethicists said, safe in the knowledge that it could not touch me. I would look at whatever the leaders said was an interesting problem, and agree with whatever the philosophical herd said was a plausible solution. My personal intuitions on the matter one way or the other would have no force if I had no intention to act upon them. In short, ethics would be reduced to a purely Machiavellian exercise, with rhetoric prevailing over substance. For moral arguments to mean anything, something real must be at stake. If you remove the intention of practising the ethics, then I do not see what that thing at stake is in its stead--hence my aporia from hypocrisy.
This aporia arose for you because you could not seem to write a theory that you could both preach and practise. But by now the solution to this problem for you has become obvious. In general, people are only hypocritical about abstract theorising about ethics, not about social mores themselves. So if you began by codifying the existing mores of your society, then you would have an ethics that was both preachable and practicable. The actual content of the ethics would probably be banal, but it might be interesting to observe the ways in which it could be formalised. I cannot help thinking, however, that in making this decision, I am moving outside the boundaries of philosophy, and into anthropology. But at least I would have a clearer picture of my point of departure.
Well, you still wanted a theory of ethics. It seems to me that in some respects what you will end up with is an "empirical" theory of ethics, but I think that this term probably now implies too much. Some people might take this to mean that you have an ethics based on some sort of scientific method. Yet all it really is, at least at the outset, is an anthropology of morals. Even then, it is only necessarily an anthropology of the morals of our society--I presume, Western bourgeois liberalism. Yet to codify this anthropology also facilitates a defence of its morals, if only because you will be revealing the ways in which it is consistent, as well as explaining the reasons for what it holds dear. If, at the end of the day, you disagree with your society, then this will only matter if you act on that disagreement. If, on the other hand, you do still agree with your society, then I think that your project will simply be to continue to describe the mores of your society, including their grounding.
This will include more than simply appealing to an opinion poll for one's beliefs about right and wrong. For moral reasoning does not consist in asking anyone's opinion, but in justifying that opinion based on moral principles. A catalogue and taxonomy of the principles on which actual norms were based would already seem to be a contribution. Certainly I know of no such extant work, but the project would present a certain fascination.
Secondly, I did not see myself as a moral revolutionary, merely as wishing to extend conventional, Christian based, ethics to include the other animals.
Do you consider yourself to be a moral revolutionary?
Absolutely not! So despite my aim in the Masters thesis to work "towards an empirical theory of ethics", an actual theory of ethics is perhaps not really an appropriate aim for me. I am more interested in taking our existing ethics and protecting it against what I believe to be unfair requirements being placed on it by certain rather arbitrary formalised theories.
This, of course, is quite the same as Anne Maclean's project in The Elimination of Morality. It also seems related to Bernard Williams' project in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. But what does it amount to saying other than that philosophy cannot teach moral expertise--an uncontentious claim in itself? If this is your only point, then is your book actually saying anything interesting?
Well, what have I been spending all this time doing, if it hasn't been pursuing anything interesting? I was dumbstruck by the hypocrisy that the students around me displayed towards utilitarianism. If I could decide that I would do something in a hypothetical example that I was impelled to consider immoral, then it took the interest out of the deliberation. I might decide that the moral thing was absolutely anything if I simply would not practise it if it was contrary to my own interests. I would be happy to agree that anything at all was immoral if at the end of the day I still would do as I pleased. In fact, one could say the same thing about absolutely any other philosophical view, such as inductive skepticism. This relates to Hume's famous point, that his skepticism was academic only, not practical. "Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." (Enquiries, Selby-Bigge edition, 1972, p.41.) But my point is, why should I not feel free to believe in anything at all, if at the end of the day, I feel free to be a hypocrite?
That is a different argument from what you mounted before. You started out saying that there is no point in studying ethics if at the end of the day you are not prepared to practise it. That argument, however, would have no force with most academics, because they do not care about practising the ethics that they see fit to study. It is enough for them simply to have a pure intellectual justification for that ethics.
But how are they meant to arrive at this "pure intellectual justification"? I could come to agree with almost anything if I didn't care about practising it. I would simply go along with whatever the most charismatic ethicists said, safe in the knowledge that it could not touch me. I would look at whatever the leaders said was an interesting problem, and agree with whatever the philosophical herd said was a plausible solution. My personal intuitions on the matter one way or the other would have no force if I had no intention to act upon them. In short, ethics would be reduced to a purely Machiavellian exercise, with rhetoric prevailing over substance. For moral arguments to mean anything, something real must be at stake. If you remove the intention of practising the ethics, then I do not see what that thing at stake is in its stead--hence my aporia from hypocrisy.
This aporia arose for you because you could not seem to write a theory that you could both preach and practise. But by now the solution to this problem for you has become obvious. In general, people are only hypocritical about abstract theorising about ethics, not about social mores themselves. So if you began by codifying the existing mores of your society, then you would have an ethics that was both preachable and practicable. The actual content of the ethics would probably be banal, but it might be interesting to observe the ways in which it could be formalised. I cannot help thinking, however, that in making this decision, I am moving outside the boundaries of philosophy, and into anthropology. But at least I would have a clearer picture of my point of departure.
Well, you still wanted a theory of ethics. It seems to me that in some respects what you will end up with is an "empirical" theory of ethics, but I think that this term probably now implies too much. Some people might take this to mean that you have an ethics based on some sort of scientific method. Yet all it really is, at least at the outset, is an anthropology of morals. Even then, it is only necessarily an anthropology of the morals of our society--I presume, Western bourgeois liberalism. Yet to codify this anthropology also facilitates a defence of its morals, if only because you will be revealing the ways in which it is consistent, as well as explaining the reasons for what it holds dear. If, at the end of the day, you disagree with your society, then this will only matter if you act on that disagreement. If, on the other hand, you do still agree with your society, then I think that your project will simply be to continue to describe the mores of your society, including their grounding.
This will include more than simply appealing to an opinion poll for one's beliefs about right and wrong. For moral reasoning does not consist in asking anyone's opinion, but in justifying that opinion based on moral principles. A catalogue and taxonomy of the principles on which actual norms were based would already seem to be a contribution. Certainly I know of no such extant work, but the project would present a certain fascination.