Moral experimentation as praxis
We have seen two sections ago now how there is a difficulty with using hypothetical scenarios as a form of moral experiment. Are there any other kinds of moral experiment that we might employ?
There is, of course, my own paradigmatic assumption that legitimate moral judgments must derive from life experiences. Indeed, it would take considerably more bravery to go back over one's own life and judge events according to one's own moral hypothesis. However, this exercise in and of itself relies heavily upon the intellectual honesty of the individual ethicist. It would seem to make more sense to place greater demands than that on a moral experimenter. For example, I would also require that she actually preach her own ethics, at least putatively, and withstand the judgement of others about her own moral standpoints.
This last requirement is not trivial. Iris Murdoch writes in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals that lip service should not be despised, simply because many important moral and social reforms begin by people becoming ashamed to say certain things in public. For example, people might become ashamed to make sexist and racist remarks long before real reforms towards sexual and racial equality take place. What people preach is not always what they practice, but it can sometimes be a harbinger of change.
This requirement, of course, places some minimal demands on the integrity of the ethicist. One must wonder what their sense of character must be like if they are not even prepared to speak their views in public. They might presumably fear censure from their colleagues for their views, but it seems to me that in some ways this is a test of whether they in fact believe them. I do not like to be on the receiving end of negative judgement, but one must also consider what the point is of one's ethics if one will not even practise it consistently. If one honestly believes something to be true, then one owes it to oneself to endorse it publicly. This does not mean getting up on a soapbox about one's beliefs, but it does mean not pretending to believe something else if the subject should arise.
Of course, once we decide that one must make one's views known, the next logical step is actually to practise them. In other words, if one requires moral integrity in speech, then one should also require it in action. This has an additional satisfying result of implementing what Karl Marx termed praxis. Praxis is really little more in many ways than a basic requirement of integrity, that one practice what one preach, but it does take this concept one step further. Marx saw the ultimate confirmation of his theories of society as in the fact that when one were to practice them, one actually would create a society of true moral value. Because praxis was indeed a proper test of his theory, it follows that if it turned out to be no good in practice, it would simply have been an inferior theory, and it should be scrapped in favour of one that did produce a moral result. It is, therefore, very ironic that people often say these days that Marxism is noble in theory but no good in practice. Marx would have been the first to admit that a negative result from praxis would have constituted a proper disconfirmation of his theory, at least in its present form. But it also gives us an elegant model for a moral experiment. It really is little more than claiming that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and that if you find that practising your ethic is unsatisfactory, then this must reflect somehow poorly on the ethic itself.
I do not want here to beg the question in favour of consequentialism. There is a kind of consequentialism inherent in examining the results of an experiment, because the results of any experiment are a kind of consequence. However, it is important to note that even a deontological theory could be suitably tested in this way. For example, one could observe that the moral worth of a duty being performed outweighed any negative consequences that followed it, thereby making one's praxis a confirmation of one's deontological view. A moral experiment can therefore simply be seen as putting one's money where one's mouth is.
There is, of course, my own paradigmatic assumption that legitimate moral judgments must derive from life experiences. Indeed, it would take considerably more bravery to go back over one's own life and judge events according to one's own moral hypothesis. However, this exercise in and of itself relies heavily upon the intellectual honesty of the individual ethicist. It would seem to make more sense to place greater demands than that on a moral experimenter. For example, I would also require that she actually preach her own ethics, at least putatively, and withstand the judgement of others about her own moral standpoints.
This last requirement is not trivial. Iris Murdoch writes in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals that lip service should not be despised, simply because many important moral and social reforms begin by people becoming ashamed to say certain things in public. For example, people might become ashamed to make sexist and racist remarks long before real reforms towards sexual and racial equality take place. What people preach is not always what they practice, but it can sometimes be a harbinger of change.
This requirement, of course, places some minimal demands on the integrity of the ethicist. One must wonder what their sense of character must be like if they are not even prepared to speak their views in public. They might presumably fear censure from their colleagues for their views, but it seems to me that in some ways this is a test of whether they in fact believe them. I do not like to be on the receiving end of negative judgement, but one must also consider what the point is of one's ethics if one will not even practise it consistently. If one honestly believes something to be true, then one owes it to oneself to endorse it publicly. This does not mean getting up on a soapbox about one's beliefs, but it does mean not pretending to believe something else if the subject should arise.
Of course, once we decide that one must make one's views known, the next logical step is actually to practise them. In other words, if one requires moral integrity in speech, then one should also require it in action. This has an additional satisfying result of implementing what Karl Marx termed praxis. Praxis is really little more in many ways than a basic requirement of integrity, that one practice what one preach, but it does take this concept one step further. Marx saw the ultimate confirmation of his theories of society as in the fact that when one were to practice them, one actually would create a society of true moral value. Because praxis was indeed a proper test of his theory, it follows that if it turned out to be no good in practice, it would simply have been an inferior theory, and it should be scrapped in favour of one that did produce a moral result. It is, therefore, very ironic that people often say these days that Marxism is noble in theory but no good in practice. Marx would have been the first to admit that a negative result from praxis would have constituted a proper disconfirmation of his theory, at least in its present form. But it also gives us an elegant model for a moral experiment. It really is little more than claiming that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and that if you find that practising your ethic is unsatisfactory, then this must reflect somehow poorly on the ethic itself.
I do not want here to beg the question in favour of consequentialism. There is a kind of consequentialism inherent in examining the results of an experiment, because the results of any experiment are a kind of consequence. However, it is important to note that even a deontological theory could be suitably tested in this way. For example, one could observe that the moral worth of a duty being performed outweighed any negative consequences that followed it, thereby making one's praxis a confirmation of one's deontological view. A moral experiment can therefore simply be seen as putting one's money where one's mouth is.
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