Notes

I see a challenge from that brief historical analysis in the previous section. Why, if ethics is based on social evolution, do societies sometimes devolve? Evolution does not necessarily mean progress, just change. A society could degenerate as surely as it could progress. In other words, the mechanisms for degeneration must be understood as well as those for progress. Another thing forces a question for the fall of Rome. That the empire already lasted for a thousand years, clearly for most of which time being an indefinitely sustainable society. So what caused its ultimate degeneration? If the theory of ethics is based on social evolution, then how can it cope with the degeneration of societies? Do the societies' morals degenerate as much as the societies do themselves? If so, then one cannot really make any secure claim at any one time that our ethics must be superior to the ethics practised before, by our own values. Our ethics must be as good as the ethics practised...

In your last section, you introduced the conception of commensurability. It seems now to be a logical question about how two different moral views reach commensurability. In this respect, you have the full support of Kuhnianism. You can argue about how if all we have at our disposal is abstract moral reasoning, then this becomes impossible. If, on the other hand, we have the level of cultural norms, then it seems entirely possible. Abstract reasoning will tend to follow the cultural norms anyway, in the long run. In other words, all the material you included about social evolution can go here. This includes all those analogies that you made with the philosophy of science. It will be a big leap forward for you. But, of course, this brings us up to the point where we left off as well. For there was at least one time when abstract moral reasoning did seem to change the social order: the Age of the Enlightenment. This, then, would be the logical next thing to explore for your book. ...

We have now decided that society can be specified independently of moral considerations. It is therefore consistent to conceive of a society without morality. Of course, in one way, however, the point is rather academic. All societies do contain some sort of morality. Darwin himself postulated the notion of a "moral sense" after observing the behaviour of tribal natives, including the tribes on Tierra del Fuego 1 . There is widespread empirical support for the cross-culturality of morality 2 . Everyone has a sensitivity to public opinion. Everyone has some need to justify themselves in terms of norms upon which all can agree. Everyone (except a psychotic) feels some guilt or shame at having transgressed a recognised norm. Peter Singer has also noted that the psychological need for a moral justification is strong 3 . The general existence of morality in the human species is thus no accident. It does not follow, however, that moral content is innate. Indeed, moral norms vary wi...

Can society be specified independently of a constitutive reliance on moral terms? We are now in a position to answer this question. First, we could see that society can be considered to be a network of interactions, which are regulated by various protocols. We have also seen that there are plenty of protocols that are non-moral in nature. Law, etiquette and aesthetics can all be specified non-morally. Prudence also plays a role in society as an individual protocol, and prudence is quite distinct from morality as well. Morality can be considered its own kind of protocol again. We are therefore faced with two questions: (1) Can a society exist without morality, and (2) is question (1) asking for an answer that is an analytic or a synthetic truth? That is, is it consistent to suppose that a society could exist without morality? It seems to me that it must be. For we can imagine a society that existed with prudence, etiquette, aesthetics and law, but without morality. An enlightened fo...

From the previous section, we may already infer two things about what morality is. Our first lesson came from one of the differences between morality and aesthetics. The judgements of aesthetics are not universally binding, but those of morality are. We can clearly accept that certain works of art may not be in everyone's taste. Morality, however, is not a matter of taste. Part of what it means to make a moral judgement is precisely that we at the same require that all moral agents have the same judgement. In practice, of course, this never happens. But that does not stop the requirement from being there in principle, and from its having certain important practical consequences. First, this provides the logical foundation for a moral disagreement. When we morally value something, we not only value that we value it, but also that all else value it in a similar way. Hence, we are often morally obliged to judge other cultures by standards that are not their own, because they perfo...

The question we faced at the end of the last section was, can you have a social network with no moral protocols? This, of course, depends on what a moral protocol is. A related question here is also what a non-moral protocol is, for although we concluded in the last section that some protocols are necessary to society, it does not follow that those protocols must be moral, if a viable definition exists of a non-moral protocol. Certainly we do not think that every rule that society sets for us is necessarily a moral rule. For example, the laws that govern human society are not necessarily the same thing as morals. There is probably no non-controversial definition of law, but it should be sufficient to show here that a definition can be found that distinguishes law from morality proper. It does not have to be the only possible definition of law. It only needs to be able to demonstrate that there is at least one possible class of social protocols that must fall outside the domain of m...

We are faced with a preliminary challenge in our anthropology of morals. Anthropology is the study of human society, and an anthropology of morals, under my account, is the study of the way in which morals are preached and practised in a society. It includes not merely a taxonomy of the kinds of moral judgements and practices, but also the ways in which they are justified by the society that preaches and practises them. But this seems to presuppose in some ways that society can be specified independently of a constitutive reliance on moral terms. This is not a claim with which everyone would agree. Lord Devlin, for example, comes close to defining society in terms of morality in his essay "Morals and the Criminal Law": "Society means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics morals and ethics, no society can exist." 1 Although it does not state as much explicitly, it seems strongly to imply that it is simply part of what we mean by society that it ...

Stephen Jay Gould seems to me to provide a good summation of what the anthropology of morals is. I am interested in "why some (or most) peoples practise certain values" 1 . However, Gould is also quick to distinguish the anthropology of morals from the morality of morals 2 . The anthropology of morals is a descriptive endeavour about why people do practise certain values. The morality of morals, on the other hand, asks what values people should practise. This is similar to an observation made by Henry Hazlitt 3 , that the ethicist's job, unlike the anthropologist's, is precisely to judge, and not merely to explain, human actions and values. It is important to make this distinction, for to conflate the one with the other could result in incorrect moral judgements. For example, consider the anthropology of the morals of slavery. Definite explanations can surely be given for why certain people practised the values of slave holders and traders. These explanations wil...

I found this site on a web search for "Darwinism altruism". 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 y...

I was very impressed by this article, arrived at by a Google search for the exact phrase, "psychology of hypocrisy". It actually addresses a number of problems that form the basis for the first part of my book. The first part of my book revolves around my aporia from hypocrisy. I could either write an impractical theory that people would preach and not practise, or an immoral theory that people would practise and not preach (discussed more fully in " An Aporia from Hypocrisy "). The reason for the aporia is the hypocrisy in the first place. If people did practise what they concluded was right, no problems would exist in the first place. It was simply that people did not want to recognise the moral legitimacy of the self-interest that they applied to their own lives that seemed to me to be the cause of the problem. Their morality was largely altruistic, along utilitarian lines. They had no intention of obeying their own ethics when it contradicted their self-inter...

I finished reading On Duties last night. Today, I have moved on to Aristotle's Metaphysics , so that I can properly cite Aristotle where he suggests that philosophical inquiries should start with aporias. The first two books will contain not only references to this effect, but also the adumbration of the way in which an aporia can provide a procedure for resolving that aporia. The puzzlement that a philosopher feels from the aporia drives her to examine the assumptions on which it is based, ultimately for the purposes of resolving that aporia. A sensitivity to aporia is therefore necessary not only for the success of philosophy, but also its very viability. 1 I might find Aristotle's insights helpful to finding the way best to attack my own aporia from hypocrisy, therefore. There's no doubt that this is an enormous project, and it won't be completed anytime soon. But given the task that you have set yourself, I do not see what else you can do. 1 Oliver Ranner,...

That merit, therefore, belongs to the age, not to the man. III, 111. A very significant thing to say. Cicero is here saying that the most praiseworthy feature in the conduct of Regulus is not actually the fact that he returned to the Carthaginians, despite the fact that he knew that he would be tortured to death if he did. Cicero claims that in those days he could not have done otherwise, because oaths were not only very strictly enforced by the censors, but also binding by the "Sacred" Laws. In other words, it was not due to Regulus's virtue that he returned to Carthage, but to his self-interest, as determined by the circumstances of his times. The most praiseworthy feature of Regulus's conduct is actually that "it was he who offered the motion that the prisoners of war be retained". ( Ibid .) This was for the benefit of the state even though it meant certain death by torture to Regulus when he returned to the Carthaginians.

It seems to me that this discussion of the conflict between duty and expediency is proving very helpful. To start off with, I would certainly not have thought that duty and expediency were simply the same thing, as Cicero is contending. However, it seems to me that in the best of all possible worlds, they would indeed be the same thing. That is to say, in an idealised society, the most expedient possible ends would indeed be produced by the idealised members of that society. In a world where people do not lie, cheat or steal, and who present the proper amount of benevolence towards each other, their own individual advantages may not always be met, but their essentials would surely still be met. For if they were able-bodied, they would take care of themselves, and if they were frail, they would be looked after by others. Those who had money would pay for their goods or services, and those who had not money would still show what kindness they could in appreciation for same. All would enj...

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 ...

For instance, in the First Punic War, when Regulus was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; he came and, in the first place, it was he that made the motion in the Senate that the prisoners should not be restored; and in the second place, when his relatives and friends would have kept him back, he chose to return to a death by torture rather than prove false to his promise, though given to an enemy. Now that is unbelievable! It goes to show on the one hand how principled his standpoint truly is, and on the other hand, it is also impressive that this standard should be considered so viable. On the one hand, he can provide two specific examples of it that are actual, not hypothetical--of which this is the first. On the other hand, he also seems to believe he can expect such conduct from his son as well, in giving him the advice. If anything, it makes me wonder what it was about the Roman culture that was so special...

He warns him, therefore, to be careful not to go into battle; for, he says, the man who is not legally a soldier has no right to be fighting the foe. My God! He's describing the rules of armed conflict, as we were taught them in the army reserve, in terms of what you owe to people who surrender in wartime, and who is a legal combatant and who is not. Here and elsewhere, as I have quoted, it strongly seems to me that his morality and our morality are really not so different. And if not, then Emanuel Smikun's positing of timeless moral imperatives in social functioning suddenly becomes a lot more plausible. I think that part of the problem here is that philosophy has in general not cared about real moral reasoning. As I have argued previously, it is too wrapped up in arbitrary formalisms, which I may call philosopher's games. It is proud to try to force moral reasoning to fit the Procrustean bed of these horrible games and denigrates real moral reasoning as "banal"....

Although philosophy offers many problems, both important and useful, that have been fully and carefully discussed by philosophers, those teachings which have been handed down on the subject of moral duties seem to have the widest practical application. That is why I chose to study ethics! Because I thought that it would be the most practical philosophical subject that I could take. Imagine my surprise to discover that it was totally impractical because of moral hypocrisy. But the basic problem in this regard seems to be, now as it was then, the conflict between duty and expediency. The dictionary of philosophy stated that this work of Cicero was a classic attempt to solve the problem, but did not elaborate on what his basic argument was. I am therefore reading the work to ascertain whether it is worth including in my book or not. For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealin...

For while the orations exhibit a more vigorous style, yet the unimpassioned, restrained style of my philosophical productions is also worth cultivating. Now I know exactly what I am! I always thought that it was a defect in my writing that I "put my point very strongly", which my supervisor was always trying to stop me from doing, and it was very aggravating, but it is simply that I have the writing of an orator, not a philosopher! I hated the boring, anemic academic style, which was one of the reasons that I hated reading philosophy so much; it put me to sleep. I remember reading all of Bernard Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy for my Masters thesis because my associate supervisor recommended it. But I was so God-awfully bored by the whole thing that when I completed it, I did not even know what I had read. However, whenever my associate supervisor did point out something or other that Williams said, I would always go back to the book and find a releva...

Aha! Sir Isaiah Berlin is the important philosopher who said that there may be more than one right answer to a moral question, as well as who claimed that social science pertains more to the humanities than to the physical sciences. It is absurd to suggest, as the external reviewer did, that Peter Winch was the one who did "pioneering" work in this field. I could just as easily criticised him for failing to make any reference to the landmark work of Isaiah Berlin here, who seems to have performed far more sweeping a job of it. It just goes to show what my supervisor said, that there are so many philosophers and works now that it is simply ludicrous to expect that someone could cover them all. The external reviewer's preoccupation with Winch revealed a parochial bias only, not an objective requirement for something for me to include in my thesis. Winch does not have an entry in almost any of the philosophical dictionaries at which I have looked, including the one that I ow...

This morning, I found another good relevant concept: aporia. Aristotle suggests that inquiry should take its starting point in a survey of aporias. During the early stages of developing my MPhil thesis, I identified a dilemma that I was facing, of which I had already experienced both horns. I could write an impractical theory that people would preach and not practise (the original version of my theory of ethics, essentially a version of utilitarianism). Alternatively, I could write an immoral theory that people would practise and not preach (something that I had called 'the theory of permissibility'). Essentially, one theory was principle-oriented and the other was practice-oriented. The reason for the dilemma was the presence in the university of a culture of hypocrisy about altruism, and specifically utilitarianism. I cannot speak about specific staff members, simply because I was not one of them, and so did not socialise with them. However, I can certainly say that the stude...