Objective moral truth? Thoughts on Carrier’s take — Part II

Philippa Foot

In the first part of this essay I gave my reasons for rejecting philosopher Richard Carrier’s boastful claim to have provided a deductively valid proof of why science answers moral questions. What I wish to take up now is an interesting suggestion in the latter part of Carrier’s post, one that he manages to significantly mangle, but should nonetheless be seriously considered by anyone interested in meta-ethics (the study of how it is possible to ground ethical systems).

I am referring to Carrier’s homage to philosopher Philippa Foot. Let me start with what he says, and I will then clarify and correct it for a better appreciation of his main point. To begin with, I think Carrier seriously mischaracterizes Foot’s standing in contemporary philosophy. He says: “Most philosophers ignore Philippa Foot, or make no use of her work ... It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that she was (and pretty much still is) ignored because she was a woman.” This pious comment comes after this other one: “the late, great Philippa Foot, author of the book Natural Goodness and one of the most famous papers in moral philosophy, ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.’” If you don’t see the contradiction between claiming on the one hand that an author has largely been ignored and on the other hand that one of her papers is among the most famous in moral philosophy, well, you just don’t understand what a contradiction is.

In fact, Foot’s work is very well known, and highly appreciated, by moral philosophers. She is famous for having introduced the “trolley dilemma” class of thought experiments, as part of her incisive critique of utilitarianism. Moreover, she has been credited for the reintroduction in modern philosophy of Aristotelian-type virtue ethics (properly updated), a framework for ethics that nowadays is a major rival to the other two principal schools of thought, utilitarianism-consequentialism and Kantian-style deontology. So much for being ignored or underappreciated.

What’s important in Foot’s work, and which Carrier brings up, is her idea that moral reasoning is best understood as a system of hypothetical imperatives, even though she was at least ambiguous about this position later on in her career. The idea is not actually new to Foot, as it was introduced by none other than Immanuel Kant. [1] Regardless, the point is that there are some moral imperatives that are not “categorical” (to use Kant’s preferred term), but only hypothetical, meaning that they apply conditionally (as opposed to regardless of circumstances). You can think of hypothetical imperatives as the kind of reasoning you engage in if you wish to achieve a given goal. So, for instance, if you wish to become a lawyer then you need to go to Law School; if you want to be considered a good person then you need to work on your character; and so on.

In a multi-part series on ethics and ethical reasoning I also suggested that hypothetical imperatives are the essence of moral philosophy (I did not use the technical term, though), so I fully agree with Foot’s take on this. We both reject Kant’s position, by the way, because we don’t think that there is any such thing as a categorical imperative (i.e., a moral law that is valid regardless of circumstances or goals). Remember, Foot was a virtue ethicist (like myself), so for her morality does has a goal, namely the pursuit of a eudaimonic existence.

But Carrier, I think, pushes Foot well beyond where her thinking can reasonably be pushed. He says: “Philippa Foot developed the fourth way in moral philosophy, showing that morality is actually just a system of hypothetical imperatives ... Foot added a fourth and wholly separate category [to virtue ethics, deontology and utilitarianism], which actually is far more plausibly correct. ... Even Kant’s deontological ethics reduces to a special form of teleological ethics which reduces in turn to a special form of virtue ethics, which reduces in turn to a system of hypothetical imperatives. Thus, Mill, Kant, and Aristotle were all right, they just were missing pieces of the whole picture, and thus failed to see how the defects of their separate systems disappear when their systems are united rather than treated as incommensurable and in competition with each other. The means to unite them is the approach of Philippa Foot.”

These are stunning (and stunningly confused) claims. Kant’s deontology reduces to virtue ethics? What? The two approaches don’t even ask the same questions! Kant, like the utilitarians, was concerned with what is the right thing to do — the way we mostly think of morality today. The ancient Greeks, and especially Aristotle, conceived of the moral project in a very different fashion, and asked instead what sort of life we should live. Foot herself — again — was a virtue ethicist, so she certainly didn’t think that her talk of hypothetical imperatives transcended virtue ethics. And she mounted serious criticisms of the other approaches to moral philosophy, especially utilitarianism, so it is hard to argue that she conceived of her approach as somehow subsuming the other ones as special cases. (Incidentally, utilitarianism is logically contradictory with respect to deontology, which is one more reason to think that Carrier’s claim is incoherent.)

The reason all of this is relevant is because I agree with Carrier when he says — as part of his argument about why science answers moral questions — that “all imperatives (all ‘ought’ statements) are hypothetical imperatives.” But there are still differences between hypotheticals, so just because one can make a parallel between a moral imperative (if you want to maximize human flourishing then these actions are “right”) and an empirical imperative (if you want to grow your crops then you need this kind of soil) it doesn’t follow that ethics is a branch of science. To see that even more clearly, you may again want to recall my analogy with mathematics from part I: if you want to demonstrate Pythagoras' theorem then you need these axioms and those deductive moves. I hope it is clear that just because we can phrase the aims of a mathematician as hypothetical imperatives it doesn’t follow that mathematics is a science, or that the answer to mathematical questions are empirical.

So, once again, yes, empirical evidence broadly construed, as well as science more narrowly delimited, is most certainly relevant to ethical inquiry — and no serious philosopher should deny this. But moral reasoning remains a sufficiently distinct type of human activity so that it can safely remain within the purview of philosophy. Scientists have their hands full already with going after increasingly elusive theories of everything anyway...

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[1] Carrier is aware of Kant’s contribution, of course, but he comments on it in his inimitably insufferable way: “This concept was first articulated by Kant, who attempted to argue that some imperatives were not of this type but were ‘categorical’ imperatives, but in fact his categorical imperatives all reduce to hypothetical imperatives, so his attempt to prove there was a second kind of imperative failed. Not everyone is aware of this. But I have a demonstration of it.” Seriously? No Kant scholar or meta-ethicist has ever noticed this before Carrier deigned to “demonstrate” it to the world? And yet I was exposed to critiques of the logic behind Kant’s idea of a categorical imperative in Ethics 101...

Ethical questions science can’t answer

by Massimo Pigliucci

Yes, yes, we’ve covered this territory before. But you might have heard that Sam Harris has reopened the discussion by challenging his critics, luring them out of their hiding places with the offer of cold hard cash. You see, even though Sam has received plenty of devastating criticism in print and other venues for the thesis he presents in The Moral Landscape (roughly: there is no distinction between facts and values, hence science is the way to answer moral questions), he is — not surprisingly — unconvinced. Hence the somewhat gimmicky challenge. We’ll see how that ones goes, I already have my entry ready (but the submission period doesn’t open until February 2nd).

Be that as it may, I’d like to engage my own thoughtful readers with a different type of challenge (sorry, no cash!), one from which I hope we can all learn something as the discussion unfolds. It seems to me pretty obvious (but I could be wrong) that there are plenty of ethical issues that simply cannot be settled by science, so I’m going to give a few examples below and ask all of you to: a) provide more and/or b) argue that I am mistaken, and that these questions really can be answered scientifically.

Before we proceed, however, let’s be clear on what the target actually is. I have summarized above what I take Harris’ position to be, and I have previously articulated what I think the proper contrast to his approach is: ethics is about reasoning (in what I would characterize as a philosophical manner) on problems that arise when we consider moral value judgments. This reasoning is informed by empirical evidence (broadly construed, including what can properly be considered science, but also everyday experience), but it is underdetermined by it.

This may be taken to be somewhat out of synch with Harris’ attempt, because he is notoriously equivocal about what he means by “science.” At one point (in an endnote of the book) he claims that science encompasses every activity that uses empirical facts, not just the stuff of biology, chemistry, physics, neuroscience, and so on. But if that is the case, then his claim comes perilously close to being empty: of course facts understood so broadly are going to be a crucial part of any ethical discussion, so what? Therefore, for the purposes of this discussion I will make what I take to be a commonsensical (except in Harris’ world) distinction between scientific facts (i.e., the results of systematic observations and experiments, usually embedded in a particular theoretical framework), and factual common knowledge (e.g., the n. 6 subway line in New York City stops at 77th St. and Lexington). If you don’t accept this distinction (even approximately) then you “win” the debate by default and there is nothing interesting to be said. (Actually, no you still lose, because I can do one better: I arbitrarily redefine philosophizing as the activity of thinking, which means that we all do philosophy all the time, and that the answer to any question, not just moral, is therefore by definition philosophical. So there.)

I also need to make a comment about the other recent major supporter of the view that I’m criticizing: Michael Shermer. To be honest, I still don’t know exactly what Michael’s position is on this, even though I asked him explicitly on more than one occasion. At times he sounds pretty much like Harris (whom he openly admires). But if that’s the case, then one wonders why Shermer feels compelled to write another book on the relationship between science and morality, as he is reportedly doing. At other times Michael seems to be saying that both science and philosophy are needed for a comprehensive understanding of morality — both in terms of its nature and when it comes to applications of moral reasoning to actual problems. But if that is what he means, then no serious philosopher would disagree. So, again, why write a whole book to elucidate the obvious?

Anyway, let’s get down to business with a few examples of ethical questions that I think make my point (many others can be found in both recent books by Michael Sandel). (Entries are in no particular order, by the way.)

1. Should felons not regain their full rights as citizens after time served? Most US states (the exceptions are Maine and Vermont) prohibit convicted felons from voting while they are serving their sentence. This, seems to me, is relatively easy to defend: being a convicted felon entails that you lose some (though certainly not all) of your rights, and one can make an argument that voting should fall into the category of suspended rights for incarcerated individuals, just like liberty itself. More controversial, however, is the idea of disenfranchising former convicts, which is in fact the case in nine states, with three of them (Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia) imposing a lifelong ban from voting. Is this right? How would science answer the question? One can’t just say, “well, let’s measure the consequences of allowing or not allowing the vote and decide empirically.” What consequences are we going to measure, and why? And why are consequences the ultimate arbiter here anyway? Consequentialism is famously inimical to the very concept of rights, so one would then first have to defend the adoption of a consequentialist approach which, needless to say, is a philosophical, not empirical matter.

2. Is it right to buy one’s place in a queue? This example comes straight from Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy (hint hint), and there are several real life examples that instantiate it. For instance, lobbying firms in Washington, DC are paying homeless people to stand in line on their behalf in order to gain otherwise limited access to Congressional hearings. Yes, on the one hand this does some good to the homeless (even if one were to set aside issues of dignity). But on the other hand the practice defeats the very purpose of a queue, that is to allow people who care enough to get ahead of others because they are willing to pay a personal sacrifice in terms of their own time. Even more importantly, as Sandel argues, the practice undermines the point of public hearings in Congress, which are vital for our democracy: instead of being truly open to the public, they become a near-monopoly of special interests with lots of money. Again, what sort of experiment could a neurobiologist, a chemist, or even a social scientist carry out in order to settle the question on exclusively empirical grounds?

3. Should discrimination (by sex, gender, religion, or ethnicity) be allowed? This may seem like an easy one, but even here it is hard to see what an empirical answer would look like. What if, for instance, it turns out that social and economic research shows that societies that provide disincentives to women in the workplace (in order to keep them at home raising children) thrive better (economically, and perhaps in other respects) than societies that strive for equality? Such a scenario is not far fetched at all, but I would hope that most of my readers would reject the very possibility out of hand. It wouldn’t be right (insert philosophical argument about rights, individuals and groups here) to sacrifice an entire class of people in order to improve societal performance in certain respects. And, of course, there is the issue of why (according to which more or less hidden values?) we picked those particular indicators of societal success rather than others.

4. Those darn trolley dilemmas! I doubt there is need for me to rehash the famous trolley scenarios that can be found in pretty much any book or article on ethics these days. But it is worth considering that those allegedly highly artificial thought experiments actually have a number of real life similes, for instance in the case of decisions to be made in hospital emergency rooms, or on the battlefield. Regardless, the point of the trolley thought experiments is that the empirical facts are clearly spelled out (and they don’t require anything as lofty as “scientific” knowledge), and yet we can still have reasonable discussions about what is the right thing to do. Even people who mindlessly choose to “pull the lever” or “throw the guy off the bridge,” following the simple calculus that saving five lives at the cost of one is the obviously right thing to do, quickly run into trouble when faced with reasoned objections. For instance, what about the  analogous case of an emergency room doctor who has five patients, all about to die because of the failure of a (different) vital organ? Why shouldn’t the doctor pick a person at random from the streets, cut him up, and “donate” his five vital organs to the others? You lose one, you save five, just as with the trolleys. And yet, a real life doctor who acted that way would go straight to jail and would surely be regarded as a psychopath.

5. How do we deal with collective responsibility? Another of Sandel’s examples (this one from Justice). He discusses several cases of apologies and reparations by entire groups to other groups,  cases that are both complex and disturbingly common. Examples cited by Sandel include the Japanese non-apology for wartime atrocities that took place in the 1930s and 40s, including the coercion of women into sexual slavery for the benefit of its officers; or the apologies of the Australian government to the indigenous people of that continent; or the reparations of the American government to former slaves or to native Americans. The list goes on and on and on. What sort of scientific input would settle these matters? Yes, we need to know the facts on the ground as much as they are ascertainable, but beyond that the debate concerns the balance between collective and individual responsibility, made particularly difficult by the fact that many of these cases extend inter-generationally: the people who are apologizing or providing material reparations are not those who committed the crimes or injustices; nor are the beneficiaries of such apologies or material help the people who originally suffered the wrongs. These are delicate matters, and the answers are far from straightforward. But to boldly state that such answers require no philosophical reasoning seems just bizarre to me.

Of course, in all of the above cases “facts” do enter into the picture. After all, ethical reasoning is practical, it isn’t a matter of abstract mathematics or logic. We need to know the basic facts about felonies, voting, queues, Congressional hearings, sex / gender / religion / ethnicity, trolleys, war crimes, genocide, and slavery. From time to time we even need to know truly scientific facts in order to reason about ethics. My favorite example is the abortion debate: suppose we agree (after much, ahem, philosophical deliberation) that it is reasonable to allow abortion only up to the point at which fetuses begin to feel pain (perhaps with a number of explicitly stated exceptions, such as when the life of the mother is in danger). Then we need to turn to developmental and neuro-biologists in order to get the best estimate of where that line lies, which means that science does play a role in that sort of case.

Very well, gentle reader. It is now up to you: what other examples along the lines sketched above can you think of? Or, alternatively, can you argue that science (in the sense defined above) is all we need to make moral progress?

Moral Monster or Moral Master?

by Steve Neumann

It seems to me that all philosophizing ultimately boils down to ethics, broadly conceived. We just can’t help ourselves. We’re social primates who need to know how to act and how to tell others how to act. No matter which branch of philosophy we consider, the normative component is present like stink on a skunk. Metaphysics? We want to know what types of things exist in order to adjust our beliefs accordingly, because our beliefs guide our actions. Epistemology? We want our beliefs to be instances of genuine knowledge, so that we know how to live in light of that knowledge. Aesthetics? The genius of Kant notwithstanding, aesthetic valuation is decidedly not free of interest. If I think cyberpunk anime is the most beautiful cinematic experience possible, so should you. Ethics? Well, that’s just another word for philosophy.

Though I said that all philosophy is but broadly conceived ethics in fancy dress, what I really mean is that all philosophizing is really directed towards how we interact with others. Educating oneself in metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics certainly reaps benefits for one’s own life, for one’s own fulfillment; but equally important are the consequences for how we treat others. To that end, I’d like to conduct a little thought experiment. I’d like to tell you the tale of two brothers - let’s call them John and Peter.

John is of less than average height and build, affable, altruistic, circumspect and non-confrontational. There isn’t a mean bone in his body, and he’s been that way since childhood. Peter, on the other hand, is tall and muscular, aloof, self-centered, impulsive and combative.

Both John and Peter are soccer players, and they play on the same team. They have an unbreakable sibling bond. During one game, John gets fouled by one of the other team’s players and is temporarily injured. The foul was fairly dramatic, prompting the referee to give the offending player a red card. John winced in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his leg. Peter, seeing this, became enraged and rushed to the scene of the foul, knocking over the offending player by the sheer force of his stronger frame. Peter receives a red card for his blatant retaliation and is ejected from the game.

Peter has always been acutely aware of his superior physique. He’s always been taller and stronger than most of his peers and opponents. Whenever there was conflict, he had the confidence of his sinewy strength to bolster his engagement in it. Though he doesn’t necessarily like to start fights, he has no compunction about finishing them. And his confidence probably gets him into more confrontations than most others.

John, on the other hand, never really gave much thought to his physical presence. Though just as active as Peter, he rarely experienced any conflicts with peers or opponents. It’s not that he felt inadequate because of his size; the inclination toward friction simply isn’t present in him. He has always been the peacemaker. When others commanded, he obeyed. When others asserted authority, he submitted.

Peter is powerful and he knows it. Since he experiences so many conflicts, he regularly fantasizes about them: he rehearses various scenarios, imagining the potential thrusts and ripostes of both himself and his adversaries. He knows that he will always experience conflict, and he wants to be prepared. Sometimes he even looks forward to conflict because of his intensely competitive nature. But even though he is aware of his overwhelming physical and intellectual prowess, he has nevertheless been reared in the same moral milieu as his brother, John, and accordingly he refrains from gratuitously overpowering others or violating their equal rights.

For John, not only is he literally incapable of prevailing in most conflicts, the impulse to engage in them in the first place simply never arises. At the first sign of dissonance, he instinctively withdraws like a turtle into its shell. If he is inescapably drawn into the conflict, he seeks the path of least resistance for all parties involved. If by pure happenstance he ends up wronging someone, he immediately and thoroughly provides restitution. His mental rehearsals are filled with scenes of sympathy and unity. His reveries are of summer love affairs, and swallows dipping and swerving after insects over wind-kissed waters.

When it comes to morality, we have two basic options: there are things we should do, and things we shouldn’t do. We should perform certain actions, or we should refrain from performing certain actions. When it comes to Peter and John, we’ve seen that both of them are able to refrain from performing certain actions, but Peter is the only one with the capability to perform immoral actions. He has to fight himself, conquer himself, struggle against his nature. For John, it just comes naturally.

So now we come to the moral of our little tale: Is Peter a moral monster or a moral master? Who is more moral, Peter or John? Does one of them deserve our praise? Does one deserve our condemnation? Or do neither deserve our praise or blame?

Bow ties are cool

by Massimo Pigliucci

If you follow the British scifi series Doctor Who you’ll know where the title of this post comes from. As it turns out, bow ties are indeed making a come back, just visit the appropriate isle at the main Macy’s store in Manhattan and prepare to be bewildered by the huge variety of colors and patterns!

So, naturally, I bought a bow tie (actually, several) some time ago. Which immediately led to the problem of how to, well, tie them! I have known how to deal with regular ties since I was a, ahem, significantly younger man, but I’d never dealt with the bow variety before.

So the first thing I did was to head toYouTube and search for a video that would teach me how to accomplish the trick. Sure enough, a quick search brought up exactly what I was looking for. After a bit of practice, I got pretty good at it (see accompanying photo). Still, it often takes more than one attempt, and it doesn’t always come out perfectly.

Which is why I became intrigued when I discovered that there is a short cut. Hey, this is America! We like immediate gratification, and in the easiest way possible (and if it’s cheap, better yet, though there are often trade-offs among those requirements — think fast food, for instance). Enter the pre-tied bow tie!

Now, here comes the interesting part: while I was tempted to switch to pre-tied bows, I also felt like that would be cheating, suddenly transforming a mere issue of fashion into one of ethics. Sure enough, my girlfriend immediately registered her disapproval for the easy path, an attitude that store owner Ben Silver summarized in the New York Times thus: “A bow tie makes a statement of individuality, and nothing contradicts that statement more readily than having it pre-tied.”

Of course, there are counterpoints to Mr. Silver’s position (read the above-linked article for an amusing sampler), but I think he has a point. Wearing a pre-tied bow tie would be like having someone else tie your shoes. Or driving an automatic transmission car (an absolute no-no for any self-respecting Italian!).

But I could, if I wanted to, get away with it. From the outside, you can’t really tell that easily whether a bow tie is pre-tied or of the “T.I.Y.” (tie your own) variety. But even if I could negotiate tolerance from my girlfriend, the problem is that I would know it’s a fake, and that would make me uncomfortable.

The reason I’m bringing all this up, of course, is not to bother you with my fashion-related issues, but because of the parallel between the bow tie problem and ethical decision making. (No, I’m not saying that the bow tie in itself presents an ethical dilemma, only that there is a parallel!). After all, the same two mechanisms I described above are the ones that make ethics work: pressure from without (my girlfriend, the opinion of fashionistas like Mr. Silver) and pressure from within (my conscience).

Of course, the two sources of pressure shape each other. As a virtue ethicist I recognize that a nurturing family and social environment are crucial for one’s eudaimonic development, so that clearly, and to a large extent, what we come to think of as moral (or, even more so, fashionable) is the result of whatever society we live in. Aristotle, for instance, had some pretty sophisticated ideas about ethics (so much so that we still take them seriously 24 centuries later), but he also had a low opinion of women and accepted slavery — just like most of his compatriots did in ancient Athens.

Then again, society itself is shaped — over the long run — by the novel ideas of some of its most influential members. Plato, for instance, even though he grew up in the same society that Aristotle experienced, made the leap forward to take women's equality seriously (in Book V of The Republic). That idea, of course, was still far from being implemented when John Stuart Mill wrote about it more than two millennia later, and it hasn’t reached full maturity even today, especially in many non-Western societies. Cultural evolution, it seems, can be painfully slow despite its multiple, very efficient, mechanisms of transmission of information!

The big difference between my bow tie (or any other fashion-related) problem and ethics is that the first one is ruled by arbitrary conventions, while the latter is not. I am not arguing that there are cosmic moral laws “out there” for us to discover. Ethics is a human invention, and it serves human, not cosmic purposes. But it isn’t arbitrary in the sense that ethics is a way of thinking about societal problems that helps us to live cooperatively together (qua intelligent, self-reflecting social primates) and at the same time pursue our own goals and ways to flourish. It is in this sense that, say, wearing or not wearing a bow tie is an entirely capricious decision, while granting or not granting equal rights to gay couples isn’t. Though gay marriage is cool too.

Toward a science of morality. An annotated response to Michael Shermer.

by Massimo Pigliucci

Michael Shermer and I have been engaged in what I hope has been a productive discussion on the relationship between science and philosophy as it concerns the field of ethics. Roughly speaking, Michael contends that science has a lot to say about ethical questions (though he is not quite as reductive as Sam Harris, who contends that science is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to ethics). I respond that science provides informative background but grossly underdetermines ethical issues, which therefore require philosophical reflection. Michael’s opening salvo was followed by my response, with Shermer recently adding some thoughts, further articulating his position. The notes below are my point-by-point commentary on that third round. (Throughout, italics indicates Michael’s writing, with my comments immediately following.)

...I begin with a Principle of Moral Good: Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that leads to someone else’s moral loss...

Well, that sounds good (and mighty close to Kant’s famous categorical imperative), except for the significant degree of begging the question hidden in Michael’s principle (but not in Kant’s). What is a moral good? Reading the principle as it stands I would have pretty much no idea of how to actually act, or whether my acting would lead to someone else’s moral good or loss.

...Even if there is a God, divine command theory was refuted 2500 years ago by Plato through his “Euthyphro’s dilemma”...

Good point. So we have at least one example of a philosopher arriving at a major — and still standing — conclusion about morality regardless of empirical evidence or scientific insight...

...The Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) has a severe limitation to it: What if the moral receiver thinks differently from the moral doer? ... This is why in my book The Science of Good and Evil I introduced the Ask-First Principle: To find out whether an action is right or wrong ask first.

Besides the fact that the golden rule is strictly speaking a religious, not a philosophical precept, I don’t see the difference at all. The ask-first principle seems to suffer from precisely the same problem as the golden rule. What if someone wanted to be hurt, or humiliated, or being treated as inferior? Would that make it ok? It’s not just 12-yr old girls belonging to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (to use Michael’s example) who may be morally incompetent or not sufficiently mature.

Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women.

This is just a parenthetical observation, Michael, but that study has been debunked, together with a lot of the other questionable “science” about gender we get from a certain brand of evolutionary psychology...

... applying evolutionary theory to not only the origins of morality but to its ultimate foundation as well, it seems to me that the individual is a reasonable starting point...

Two problems here: first, Michael confuses evolutionary explanations for the origin of morality with the much more complex, and extremely culturally dependent, context of modern-day moral decision making. Natural selection has pretty much nothing to tell us about under what circumstances abortion may be acceptable or not, whether we should pursue drone warfare, or whether health and education should be considered as human rights. Second, morality is an inherently social phenomenon, so I’d say that the individual is precisely the wrong place to start.

... The survival and flourishing of the individual is the foundation for establishing values and morals, and so determining the conditions by which humans best survive and flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality.

Natural selection has everything to do with survival (and reproduction), but pretty much nothing to do with flourishing. The latter, in turn, is an inherently cultural concept, that is difficult to articulate and whose specifics vary with time and geography. Which means that Michael’s “smooth transition” between is and ought is anything but smooth.

In his annual letter Bill Gates outlined how and why the progress of the human condition can best be implemented when tracked through scientific data...

This seems to me a good example of a recurring confusion on the part of those who claim that science can answer moral questions. No philosopher would doubt Gates’ statement. But that data becomes relevant only after one has already engaged in moral judgment and decided that we ought to reduce poverty. It is, rather, a very sensible way to check whether our actual policies are having the desired effect. Shermer et al. seem to confuse ethics with social policy. It is the first that informs the second, not the other way around.

This is why Bill Gates is backing with his considerable wealth and talent the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals program...

Good for Gates. But Bill Gates has also decided that public education is a rotten concept and has put his considerable wealth and talent in the service of undermining it. I think that was a bad decision, and yet I’m sure Mr. Gates can easily produce statistics that measure how well his misguided policy is being implemented.

A second example may be found on the opposite end of the economic scale in a study conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “Subjective Well-Being, Income, Economic Development and Growth” by the University of Pennsylvania economists Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers, in which they compared survey data on subjective well-being (“happiness”) with income and economic growth rates in 140 countries.

I am aware of that sort of survey, and I appreciate their value, as is clear in several chapters of my Answers for Aristotle (where I explore the relationship between science and philosophy in a number of areas of human interest, from morality to love). But “subjective” well-being has little to do with morality, since it is about the psychological satisfaction of an individual. That satisfaction can be easily increased by just hooking said individual to a perpetual drug machine, as philosopher Robert Nozick famously pointed out, something that can straightforwardly be argued would actually be morally wrong. Besides, again, morality is about how we behave towards others, not about how happy we feel.

Why does money matter morally? Because it leads to a higher standard of living. Why does a higher standard of living matter morally? Because it increases the probability that an individual will survive and flourish. Why does survival and flourishing matter morally? Because it is the basis of the evolution of all life on earth through natural selection.

Given what I have written so far, and in my previous post, I’ll leave it to the reader to unpack the above chain of reasoning and show where he goes wrong (hint: there are at two problems with it, but I may have missed an additional one or two).

The fact that there may be many types of democracies (direct v. representative) and economies (with various trade agreements or membership in trading blocks) only reveals that human survival and flourishing is multi-faceted and multi-causal, and not that because there is more than one way to survive and flourish means that all political, economic, and social systems are equal.

I’m afraid this is a straight straw man. To my knowledge, no moral or political philosopher has argued that “all political, economic, and social systems are equal,” so I don’t think this requires a response, except insofar as it shows that science enthusiasts tend to read little philosophy, moral or otherwise. (Which, of course, is fine, except when they then go on to make major claims about the limitations of moral philosophy.)

We know that belief in supernatural sorcery and witchcraft and their concomitant consequences of torturing and murdering those so accused is wrong because it decreases the survival and flourishing of individuals — just ask first the woman about to be torched. ... The ultimate solution is science and education in understanding the natural causes of things and the debunking of supernatural beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. And it is science that tells us why witchcraft and sorcery is immoral.

Not at all. Science tells us that witchcraft and sorcery are unfounded superstitions, not that they are immoral. If they were real, and people really used them to kill innocents, then it would be perfectly moral to prosecute the perpetrators (though not to burn them alive. But again, why not? Because we think torture and the death penalty are immoral on ethical grounds, since they respectively cause needless suffering and are done out of revenge, neither of which are morally salient reasons). Also, about Shermer’s “just ask” principle: clearly it won’t work. Just ask the murderer who is serving life in prison if he’d rather do something else with his life. Certainly his ability to flourish has been curtailed by society, but presumably this is happening because of a (philosophically) justified moral judgment.

There seem to be two major sources of error in Michael’s reasoning about science and morality. First, his insistence on evidence-based decisions is perfectly appropriate to the implementation of policies, but it is entirely unclear how it applies to the sort of issues that moral philosophers actually discuss. Just as an exercise, try reading any chapter of Michael Sandel’s Justice and let me know which of the questions that Sandel discusses so clearly would be settled by empirical evidence. Again, empirical evidence is relevant to our ethical choices but it grossly underdetermines them.

Second, Michael keeps talking about survival and flourishing in a single breadth, invoking natural selection as working to increase both. This is absolutely wrong. Natural selection increases survival, and even that only insofar as it assures reproduction (after that, good luck to you, my friend!). Selection has nothing whatsoever to do with flourishing, the realization of which completely breaks any evolutionarily based “smooth transition” between is and ought. Not to mention, of course, that Michael should know that natural selection likely also produced a number of nasty behavioral patterns in humans (e.g., xenophobia), which we have been trying  — in good part through philosophizing about them! — to get rid of throughout the past couple of millennia.

So, again, science — or more broadly, factual evidence — most certainly has a place at the high table of any meaningful discussion about how to achieve human goals and fulfill human desires. But philosophical reflection remains central to ethics because ethics is about reasoning on the implications of and conflicts generated by those goals and desires. To put it as Kant did: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

Phi2Phi, an amusing app for social philosophy

by Massimo Pigliucci

Philosophers have a reputation for being stuffy, moldy, and constantly behind the times. But in fact the profession has embraced novel ways of doing things, for instance with the highly popular “and Philosophy” book series, a more modern way to introduce the public to philosophical thinking; or via the development of PhilPapers, an incredible online resource to connect professionally and stay up to date on what your colleagues are doing; and let’s not forget the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a peer review source that is rapidly becoming the first stop for graduate students and faculty when they want to quickly look up something that is a bit beyond Wikipedia level.

Recently I’ve been playing with another cool little tool, just released: the Phi2Phi app for iPhone and iPad (I don’t think there is a version for Android, yet). It’s produced by Jonathan Weisberg, and it allows a broad, anonymous, community of philosophers and people interested in philosophy to ask each other questions and later check out the answers that have been coming in from the community. The interface is very easy to use, and the submitted questions are organized by broad categories (art, continental, epistemology, ethics, feminism, and so on). The app allows the user to answer any question, after which one can go to the “results” section and see a graphic of the answers so far. A separate button makes it possible for you to ask questions, and a fourth one for you to tell (again, anonymously) the community something about yourself, like what areas of philosophy you are interested in; whether you are an academic philosopher, a graduate student, or someone with a different background; and your level of education. The personal info is then used when you look up answers, because you can filter them to examine what sub-communities of users think, comparing professional philosophers vs lay people, or continental vs analytic philosophers, and so on.

For instance, one of the questions I’ve contributed to concerns what happens when Captain Kirk steps into a transporter device. Possible answers included:

A) Kirk dies, a Trekkie cries
B) Kirk is Kirk1, or Kirk2, whichever you like
C) Kirk is (Kirk1 and Kirk2) before and after
D) Kirk is (Kirk1 and Kirk2) only after transport
E) Kirk is Kirk1 and Kirk is Kirk2, adios transitivity of identity
F) It’s “indeterminate,” in your favorite flavor
G) It’s “nonsense,” colorless, green and sleeping furiously
H) Insoluble paradox
I) Unsure which way to go
J) Huh? What’s this all about?
K) My favorite response isn’t listed (comments please)

As of this morning, there were 41 answers logged in, distributed as follows:

As you can see, a good majority of responders went for option (A), which reflects the metaphysical notion that physical continuity is necessary for personal identity (so much for mind uploading...), though several other of the possible answers got about half the votes as the most common one.

Here is what happens if you filter by users that are involved with academic philosophy:

The relative advantage of (A) is now significantly increased. Finally, if you add a filter that leaves only academics interested in metaphysics, (A) becomes even more clearly the answer of choice, even though now the sample size becomes perilously low, at n=15:

I contributed to a few other questions, and asked a couple of my own (you can see how this can become a very amusing way to procrastinate actual work...), one of my favorite being “What ethical theory do you most identify or subscribe to? The raw (i.e., unfiltered) responses so far (n=45) put virtue ethics in first place (13 votes), followed by utilitarianism (8), existentialism (6), and deontology (5). Interestingly, filtering by academic philosophers pretty much leaves only virtue ethics and utilitarianism standing, and adding an “interest in ethics” filter eliminates pretty much everything but virtue ethics (though, again, now the sample size is low, at 12 total responses).

Of course none of the above should be taken either as a substitute for actually reading and thinking about these topics, or for a scientific survey of a well sampled population. Nonetheless, some of the results may give you a surprising amount of food for thought, and of course the app is going to be more useful as more users sign up for it (it was released on November 21st, and it seems to be doing already pretty well).

I’m not aware of anything similar in the sciences, but it would be equally interesting to, say, probe a community of physicists about what they think of string theory, or the various interpretations of quantum mechanics; or evolutionary biologists on their opinions about species concepts or evolutionary mechanisms. At the very least playing with these social media may make people a bit more cautious when they say — usually without any empirical evidence whatsoever — things like “a majority of philosophers think that utilitarianism and deontology are the best contenders for a workable moral framework.” No, they don’t. At least not those philosophers who are techno savvy and cool enough to use Phi2Phi...

Answers for Aristotle: response to the Weekly Standard

by Massimo Pigliucci

My new book, Answers for Aristotle, is about to come out. It is an excursion, aimed at a general public, into what I call “sci-phi,” the practical conjunction of science and philosophy — a theme familiar to readers of this blog. If you wish, you can think of it as a self-help book for people who dislike self-help books. The basic idea is to explore “the big questions” (you know, the usual suspects: morality, relationships, politics) from the joint perspective of the best science and the most compelling philosophy available to date. After all, the standard answers to those questions come from either religion or folk wisdom, the first one being based on imaginary entities and their arbitrary pronouncements, and the second being, shall we say, somewhat more fallible than one would wish.

The first couple of pre-publication reviews were positive. Kirkus called it “a useful introduction to sources on both sides of the science-philosophy divide,” while Publishers Weekly said that it is a “careful examination of the surprising connections between science and philosophy ... a witty and insightful look at the relevance of philosophy today.” So far so good!

Then the review by Mark Blitz was published in The Weekly Standard (the neo-con magazine directed by Bill Kristol), and I knew there would be, ahem, misunderstandings. Blitz is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy and director of the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom (of which Kristol is Chairman), at Claremont McKenna College, and is kind enough to say that Answers for Aristotle “is not a bad book,” but it’s clear that there isn’t much he likes about it.

Blitz begins by remarking that Answers joins “the current gaggle of semi-popular works meant to inform the eager, but ignorant, about what neuroscience and psychology say about this, that, or the other thing.” Well, no, actually, it is precisely that crowd that I don’t wish to join, hence my emphasis on both science and philosophy, an approach that Blitz blithely dismisses as a marketing ploy on my part. Besides, isn’t the point of popular books about topic X to inform those who are “ignorant” (literally, the ones who do not know) of X?

The first substantive issue raised by Blitz is that I am allegedly “a bit too beholden to academic authority” (hey, I’m a university professor!) on the odd ground that whenever I cite a source in the book I use the form “psychologist x, political scientist y, neurobiologist z.” I wondered what exactly is wrong with acknowledging the proper field of expertise of the people you mention, particularly in a book that deals with a multiplicity of disciplines. After all, you wouldn’t want me to cite psychologist x’s likely naive opinion of a philosophical argument, or neurobiologist z’s personal political opinion.

I didn’t need to wonder past the end of the same sentence: “and, most desperately, philosopher Peter Singer, as if his job title makes his views less, rather than more, ridiculous.” Ah! It shouldn’t surprise me that a writer for a neo-con magazine despises (not just disagrees with, but feels compelled to ridicule) one of the most influential (and, yes, controversial) contemporary professional philosophers. After all, Singer is known not just for his work in defense of animal welfare, but also for advocating pretty unpopular positions among the political Right, including euthanasia and infanticide (under very restricted conditions, but still). Unlike Blitz, however, I think it intellectually healthy to help oneself to good arguments regardless of who advanced them, which does not imply buying someone’s opinions wholesale. In fact, I disagree with much of what Singer says, largely because he is a utilitarian and I am a virtue ethicist, so I don’t find several of his conclusions compelling. But when he takes interesting positions, I cite him appropriately (professional affiliation and all).

“Pigliucci’s general point is that if we know more, we will choose better and be happier. Oddly, he never argues this point, and some of his own discussions call it into question. He does not analyze, let alone debunk, obvious ways in which ignorance can be bliss or its handmaiden.”

I always find it disconcerting when an intellectual seriously argues that people should be kept ignorant “for their own good.” Yes, there is indeed some research (mentioned in the book) showing that — to a small but measurable degree — ignorance and even superstition may ease our way through life (see, for instance, a RS podcast episode on the latter point, as well as a couple of posts we have published about it). But Answers for Aristotle is written from the point of view of virtue ethics, and ignorance is most definitely not a virtue, for Aristotle as well as for most of us, neo-con wishes to the contrary notwithstanding. If Blitz’s ideal society is one of ignoramuses who do not question authority and common wisdom, happy with the modern version of panem et circenses (what would that be, cheeseburgers and Netflix?), that is his prerogative, but my entire career as a public writer is informed by the exact opposite stance.

And then I read this stunner, mid-way through the review: “Locating, say, certain moral choices in this or that part of the brain, or uncovering hormones or chemicals involved in love, or seeing what brain scans show when someone makes a political judgment tells one about love, morality, politics, poetry, and philosophy only to the degree that one grasps these phenomena in the first place. Thoughts and feelings are directed toward what they are about, and are influenced by what they are about. They are mediated or structured by reason and what is general. Sight is not only about seeing, but about what is there to be seen. Mathematics is about what is true, not only about what happens in the brain. Politics is not only about my feelings and transitory opinions, but about ways of life and the common institutions that direct and help to form these opinions and passions. One needs to know the range and intricacy of love before one ascribes, locates, or reduces the experience to brain chemistry.”

Yes, indeed, all of the above! But at this point I have to question whether Blitz has actually read the book. Seriously, I know authors always throw that sort of line to their critics, but the above paragraph is a very good summary of what the book is about, because of my basic thesis that wisdom results from the best knowledge of facts (science) and the best reflections about those facts (philosophy). Blitz ought to have been very happy with a book like Answers, but he isn’t. I suspect this is simply because my reflections aren’t to his liking, not because I reduce love, politics and math to fMRI scans (since I most certainly do not).

Or perhaps Blitz just didn’t understand what I was after, despite my careful and (I thought) accessible treatment of the subject matter: “Pigliucci’s project seems precisely to be finding guidance for values in the facts that science (apparently) discovers.” That’s exactly what I don’t do! I don’t expect Blitz to have read my critical review of Harris’ nonsense about science answering moral questions. But surely science (or, more broadly, facts) aren’t irrelevant to ethical reasoning. If, for instance, we are debating abortion, and one of the salient points of our argument is that it is an acceptable procedure, say, before the point in development at which the fetus is capable of feeling pain, then obviously we need science to give us its best estimate of when that point factually occurs. But notice that science isn’t in the business of telling us why pain is an ethically relevant consideration, or how it is to be balanced against, say, the interests of the mother.

The chief problem Blitz seems to have with Answers for Aristotle is ideological in nature. He complains of me: “He honestly confesses his standard left-of-center political preferences, but also tendentiously skews things in this political direction.” Well, if I am honest about my political preferences (unlike, say, Blitz, who doesn’t say what his are anywhere in the review, even though they are clearly pertinent) it is hard to imagine how I can then dishonestly skew things for the reader, unless the latter simply wasn’t paying attention.

Here is an example of what Blitz is complaining about: “He acts as if John Rawls’s views have never been seriously challenged,” a fair criticism if I had set out to write a book about political philosophy, or a book pretending to have a “view from nowhere.” But I didn’t. I set out to advise readers interested in reflecting about the big questions in life, and I did so from a clearly stated progressive perspective. In my mind (and that of most political philosophers, from what I get from the primary literature) Rawls is the defining figure in the field in the latter part of the 20th century. Yes, he has had his critics, chief amongst them Robert Nozick, but even Nozick by the end of his life had serious doubts about libertarianism and embraced a type of collectivism, and at any rate his criticism of Rawls was far too nuanced to be of much comfort to the neo-con agenda.

And then we come to the other big issue from the perspective of the political Right, religion: “One place Pigliucci shows intellectual energy is in his discussion of religion. He thinks that religious belief is rooted in superstition, and argues that Plato has proved in the Euthyphro that we do not need gods to be moral. Although his discussions raise important questions, he ignores the place of belief in securing obedience to law, in advancing ethical action, and in elevating our understanding of ourselves and others.” [I take it as a point in my favor, by the way, that Blitz, who has written professionally about Plato does not substantially object to my take on the import of the Euthyphro.]

Ah, but the point of those three chapters in Answers is precisely that the intelligent and educated person (clearly, not Blitz’s ideal audience) does not need the crutch of religion in order to follow the law (as well as questioning it when called for), to work one’s way through ethical dilemmas for which the Big Ten are woefully inadequate, or to arrive at a fact-based, rather than myth-based “understanding of ourselves and others.”

Finally, Blitz — perhaps feeling that his case wasn’t strong enough — resorted to the weapon of last resort available to the critical reviewer, questioning the author’s competence, or at least his intellectual depth: “The examination [of a better book] would discuss studies in enough detail that we would know on whom they were conducted, how they understood the phenomena that compose their research question, how reliable and long-lasting their results are, and whether they have been replicated. ... Such a book would be a tall order, but anything less distorts understanding.”

But that sort of book, which Blitz is of course more than welcome to write himself (or he could check the abundant references in the “Digging Deeper” section at the end of mine), would have been a long technical tome, while Answers for Aristotle is expressly designed for the (intelligent, educated) general public. It would be like complaining that Stephen Hawking should have engaged in a lot of quantum mathematics to make his case in The Grand Design. It simply doesn’t work that way, and Blitz ought to know better. Perhaps the Weekly Standard’s readers will.

Superman Rises Some More (And Why That's Bad)

images2.wikia.nocookie.net

by Leonard Finkelman

After two years of writing a dissertation, I’m generally not a fan of continuity. Emerson was onto something when he advised that one should “speak now what you think in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again,” since “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Few experiences in my life have been more tedious than having to revise a section of chapter three because of something I’ve written in chapter four, then having to make changes to chapter one in turn because of the edits in chapter three (1).

In my last post, I extolled Superman’s virtues as a role model because of his moral perfection. This followed an earlier post wherein I off-handedly dismissed the character’s actions in the ending of Superman: The Movie as a crime against Man and Reason. I never intended any relation there. In retrospect, maintenance of a foolish consistency requires that I offer some further commentary, and so I offer this follow-up. Alas: despite my preference otherwise, I am a man who writes dissertations (2).

Last time, I argued that (in virtue ethics, at least) a perfect role model is preferable to an imperfect one, and so Superman should be a better role model than the more-popular Batman. Virtue ethics requires role models for us to imitate and a good life is one that includes continuous self-improvement; therefore, an attainable standard of excellence is actually worse than an unattainable one.

By that reckoning, the aforementioned ending to the first Superman movie — wherein Superman turns back time so that he can have a second chance at rescuing Lois Lane — ought to provide a perfect demonstration of why the character is such a good role model. The ability to go back in time at will sure would solve a lot of problems. I can’t go back in time. You can’t go back in time. How can my little mind’s hobgoblin take offense at Superman going back in time?

Similarly, I nearly started a row at one of Massimo’s periodic Meetups when I suggested that the beloved British spacetime traveler, Doctor Who, couldn’t serve as a good moral role model (3). Here’s a character with abilities that sometimes dwarf even Superman’s. Had my hobgoblin taken the night off?

I do think that this can all be made quite coherent. It just requires that we delve a bit deeper into moral philosophy. So strap yourselves in: we’re gonna make the jump to meta-ethics.

Immanuel Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason that “the idea of an ought or of duty indicates a possible action,” and the vast majority of moral philosophers accept that the proposition “I ought to do such-and-such” implies the proposition “I can do such-and-such.” One’s moral obligations are therefore inextricably linked to her abilities: the less she can do, the fewer things she ought to do.

Far more controversial is the inverse of that last claim. If one can do more, does it follow that she should do more? I think there’s a case to be made along those lines. Consider one of the more famous works of philosophy written in the past century: Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (4). In the essay, Singer asserts that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it,” and this does seem like an intuitively appealing moral principle. It’s also not very far from the inversion of the last claim given in the last paragraph. The more one can do, the more bad she can prevent; therefore, she has more obligations than those who can do less.

Suppose we combine these two propositions: first, if one has fewer abilities, then she has fewer obligations; second, if one has more abilities, then she has more obligations. Intuitively, then, the number of obligations one has can be expressed as a ratio of abilities to restrictions. Heuristically, and very broadly: (things one should do) = (things one can do) / (things one can’t do).

I think this heuristic fits a number of moral intuitions that we tend to share. If I have an obligation that can only sometimes be fulfilled, then I’m only bound by that obligation a fraction of the time. We don’t place a heavy moral burden on the severely disabled; contrapositively, our sense of fairness is violated when those upon whom Fortune has smiled do little (5). It works well enough, so I’ll go with it.

Returning now to Doctor Who and Superman with Time Traveling Action: it strikes me that someone who can travel backwards through time at will is someone whose power is entirely unrestricted. This is more obvious in Superman’s case: a being with the demonstrated ability to prevent earthquakes, turn back tsunamis, deflect meteors, and prevent kittens from getting stuck up trees — all with a wink and a smile, no less — has the ability to prevent all evil when he has free reign over time and space (as volitional time travel would allow). Such a being would be omnipotent.

Here’s the thing about omnipotent beings: there’s nothing they can’t do (6). If the above heuristic correctly captures our system of morality, then human ethics is completely insufficient to capture the obligations of omnipotence: the omnipotent being’s number of obligations would be undefined in our system. Omnipotence therefore represents a limit, in the mathematical sense, for human morality. An omnipotent being is necessarily removed from our moral concern, just as a function that approaches a limit can never have a value at the limit (7).

Remember that I’m approaching this all as a virtue ethicist. To recap, that means that I take it to be the case that moral virtue is type-relative, i.e., the word “good” is used differently when referring to good people and good dogs. People are all the same type of thing (at least in part) because they can share common concerns (8). Anything that doesn’t share our concerns isn’t the same type of thing that we are.

I can feel my hobgoblin tapping on my shoulder. He’s whispering in my ear, “Psst! You just wrote than an attainable standard of excellence is worse than an unattainable one!” He’s asking, “How could you have ever said that Superman, with powers and abilities far beyond those of other men, is a better role model than Batman?”

Very simply: the standard that Superman represents is practically unattainable, but not logically so (9), and this is why he can be considered the same type of thing as other people — at least until he starts flying fast enough to turn time backwards. That’s the point at which I’d say that Superman flies from the realm of human role model and into the realm of omnipotence. Even Aristotle was ambivalent about emulating anything in the latter realm (10).

In the end, this is why I’m offended by time-traveling Superman, and why I’d advise against turning to Doctor Who for moral guidance. These are beings whose infinite power elevates them above all human concern; consequently, they can’t be good role models for humans. Knock them down a few pegs, though, and the story changes.

Through it all, I hope that we can agree on one thing: Spider-man is pretty lame.

_____

Notes

(1) If you think that was tough to read, just think about how tough it was to live. Before going any further, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my sister and brother-in-law, who recently provided the company and conversation that was not only a welcome distraction from dissertating but also the inspiration for these last two posts of mine.

(2) Yet here I stand blissfully free of any existential despair. That ad in the subway was right: philosophy works!

(3) My own preference is for Inspector Spacetime.

(4) Really: consider it. While I disagree with Singer’s ultimate conclusion — slavish devotion to a principle of utility strikes me as both irrational and unreasonable, and therefore not virtuous — I can’t deny that his paper has proved to be one of the two or three most thought-provoking works of philosophy I’ve ever read.

(5) Please register all political objections at your local polling station in November (assuming, of course, that you’re an American eligible to vote; if not, the odds that you agree increase exponentially, anyway).

(6) At this point, there would normally be a student of mine who pipes in with the question: “Could he make 2+2=5?” I prefer the answer most recently given by Richard Swinburne (among others): no, because that’s an impossibility, and to prevent one from doing the impossible does not impose any restrictions on her. Put it this way: if the only rule of Fight Club is that you can’t fight if 2+2=5, then there are no rules in Fight Club.

(7) This also provides an easy rejoinder to anyone who responded to my last post with the well-worn geekism that “Batman always wins.” Superman sometimes loses, and so is clearly not omnipotent. I am willing to grant, however, that Batman does have one thing over Superman.

(8) Kant’s categorical imperative uses this very idea to determine our moral obligations, as does Rawls’ veil of ignorance. What each of those heuristics asks of us is to imagine the entire range of concerns we might have under all practically possible circumstances.

(9) It’s logically possible that biotechnology could develop the means for humans to defy gravity (to some extent, at least), or see in the x-ray spectrum, or lift things with the proportionate strength of an ant. By contrast, can you imagine climbing the social ladder high enough to make $1 billion per year? “More realistic,” indeed!

(10) Aristotle didn’t believe in anything like the Abrahamic God, but his description of unmoved movers in De Caelo would be appropriated towards consideration of that deity by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian thinkers. While the theologians clearly endorsed adoption of the Unmoved Mover as the one true moral standard, Aristotle was less clear in Book X of his Nicomachean Ethics. Although he admitted that his unmoved movers (he posited several), as beings of pure thought, should be emulated on an intellectual level, he also admits that humans have other concerns; the life of philosophy is the best kind of human life, he argued, because is was the closest humans could come to divinity. But this is a case for philosophers, not the unmoved movers, to serve as humanity’s moral standard. (Seems like a good idea to me...)

Superman Rises

by Leonard Finkelman

There are two sorts of people in this world: those who draw arbitrary distinctions and those who don’t (1). Through thirty years of geek living, I’ve come to see the world through one particular bipolar lens. My view is that the arbitrary distinction most worth drawing is the one between Supermen and Batmen (2).

Those in the Superman camp tend to hold an optimistic view of human nature (Nietzsche notwithstanding). They believe that we’re all fundamentally kind and helpful, and always open to self-improvement. Despite the character’s alien background, Superman stands as this camp’s role model because Superman is a moral saint: he exemplifies all the best traits that a human can have, even if no human can ever hope to have them all.

By contrast, the Batman camp is pessimistic about humanity. Those in this camp tend to believe (to quote one of my favorite sitcoms) that people are “bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling,” and that it’s only through a great deal of discipline and training that our intrinsic fear, loathing, and selfishness can be overcome. These pessimists see Batman as their role model specifically because he’s a moral human rather than a moral saint: the character has shortcomings, but so too do we all. His is an attainable standard.

I would discourage you, dear reader, from turning to Hollywood for any sort of moral guidance; still, one need only to look at box-office receipts to see which camp has more followers. I’ve even heard apparently cogent arguments as to why this is appropriate. “Superman is too perfect,” say many of my fellow geeks. “Nobody’s perfect; nobody can relate to Superman.”

It’s true: there are no moral saints and it’s doubtful that there ever could be. It’s true: we owe our imperfection to deep-seated drives that must be overcome through willpower and discipline (if at all). But my allegiance on this matter should be clear (see attached photo), and I’d be a poor philosopher (or perhaps a good political commentator) if I didn’t make some attempt to justify that allegiance (3).

The relevant question here is one about the importance of role models. Certainly, not every moral theory recognizes any need for particular exemplary people. Deontological ethics demands only that people follow moral rules determined a priori; in principle, even the proverbial stepchild of wild wolves ought to be able to figure those rules out. Consequentialist ethics can also dispense with exemplars: when the only standard for moral right is the increase of utility, actors matter less than actions. Existentialist theories place greater value on the actor, but that actor is meant to determine moral right for herself; following another person’s example would only undermine whatever rational struggle the existentialist has undergone. In virtue ethics, however, the role model takes on unmatched importance.

In my own dealings with virtue ethics, I find it helpful to bear in mind the work of biological taxonomy. After all, the moral theory is most clearly associated with Aristotle (4), and Plato’s star pupil is often (inappropriately) blamed for what many evolutionary biologists see as an archaic practice (5). In classifying organisms into species, taxonomists first identify a type specimen which is meant to serve as a sort of standard against which other organisms are measured; those deemed sufficiently similar to the type specimen are then considered members of the same species. Virtue ethics defines virtues relative to types. This is why the virtue ethicist’s choice of role model is so vitally important. According to the theory, a person is judged as good or bad by their similarity to or dissimilarity from a standard role model.

The question at hand, then, is whether Superman or Batman — the moral saint or the moral human — serves as the better moral type specimen. Nobody’s perfect, so it can’t be the moral saint, or else none of us will ever measure up. Batman it is! Atomic batteries to power; turbines to speed!

Before we go and start practicing our best emphysema-addled voices, however, let’s pause to take stock of what it means to say that “nobody’s perfect.” We all accept it as a truism. But is it an explanation or an excuse?

In everyday discourse, we tend to see the difference between explanations and excuses as purely semantic. If I’m late for an appointment, for example, and say that the reason for my being late was a badly delayed train, your inclination to accept that reason as an explanation or to accuse me of using it as an excuse will depend largely on how charitable you are. Still: the difference is there. Appropriately enough, it has to do with moral content.

Strictly speaking, explanations are devoid of any moral content. If I offer the delayed train as an explanation of my being late, then I’m not asking for any judgment one way or another. I’m merely detailing the cause of my lateness, and any moral content — praise or (more likely) blame — is added by others (you might say, for example, that I should have left earlier and deserve blame for that, and my explanation doesn’t militate against that). But if I offer the delayed train as an excuse of my being late, then I am asking for judgment of a sort. I am saying, in effect, that the delayed train is the cause of my being late, and that because of this fact I should be absolved from moral responsibility for the result.

The bottom line: excuses pardon actors from responsibility; explanations do not.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham City...

If we accept Batman as an appropriate role model — that is, as a standard of virtue — then the fact that no human is actually a moral saint excuses us all from trying to attain that higher standard of moral perfection. Since the purpose of a role model is to set a standard against which we judge ourselves, an imperfect role model (such as Batman) make imperfection exemplary. If I occasionally have lapses of judgment, or sometimes act selfishly, then that’s okay; in fact, since I ought to imitate Batman — who has similar lapses himself — then I’d be doing something wrong if I wasn’t imperfect to some degree (i.e., the degree to which Batman is imperfect). Using Batman as a role model therefore treats “nobody’s perfect” as an excuse: I failed to be a moral saint, but our moral standard isn’t a moral saint, so I shouldn’t bear any responsibility for my shortcoming.

Maybe this sounds hopelessly confusing. If it does, that would be because it is. (Go figure.)

The argument that Superman isn’t a good role model because he’s too perfect is very simply self-contradictory in the only moral context wherein role models mean anything. In virtue theory, the role model sets a standard that should be imitated by all other members of the same kind. That would mean that any role model is by definition a moral saint: the role model sets the standard for morality. Virtue theoretical role models are for all practical purposes perfect.

Batman is certainly a more tempting role model because his is an attainable standard, and many of our sins would be forgiven if the bar for moral perfection were lowered to a more human level. Everyone can be a saint when saints are made human (6).

But there’s something to be said for a standard of moral perfection sufficiently high that reaching it is a practical impossibility. After all, what’s left to do once one attains moral perfection? Does she hang up her tights, lock up the Batmobile, and call it a day? That seems anti-climactic (7).

Indeed, one of the primary points that Aristotle makes in his exposition of virtue ethics is that the quest for truth and justice is a never-ending one. As he wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics: attainment of moral perfection requires “a complete life. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one fine day; and so too one day, or any short period of time, does not make a man blessed and happy.” The good life is incomplete as long as it’s being lived.

At no point in our lives should we ever stop trying to be better people. That nobody is perfect should therefore only ever be an explanation, and never an excuse: I’m not a moral saint for such-and-such a reason, I may deserve some level of blame for falling short, and so I’ll pick myself up and try again. This is what the adoption of Superman as a role represents: a moral standard to pursue throughout one’s life, with the hope that one has come as close as one can despite the knowledge that one will never quite get there.

Look: I don’t want to denigrate the Batmen of my arbitrary dichotomy too much; after all, there are worse choices for a role model (see note 7). But, like Kant, I am continually filled with wonder by the starry heavens above and the moral law within, and to be a Superman is to bring the one closer to the other.

Notes

(1) Apologies to Parmenides, who was either trivially right or empirically wrong (the worst kind of wrong!), but fun to read in either event.

(2) Words are ephemeral, weightless; it’s due to that fact alone that our shared information network hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the commentary that followed the shooting in Aurora (and, to a disgracefully lesser extent, the one in Milwaukee). In light of the cultural context in which the Aurora shooting took place it may be tempting to read this essay as an attempt to pile on. I did originally intend to publish this essay in coincidence with the release of “The Dark Knight Rises,” but decided to delay after the tragedy. This essay is meant to be my final word on a debate that I’ve been having with fellow comic book enthusiasts for decades now; there’s nothing I can say about the recent spate of mass shootings that hasn’t already been said by thinkers more and less competent than myself.

(3) I recognize that there are those among you who have no truck with discussions of moral obligation or any ethics broader than cultural etiquette. There are others among you who think that all philosophical questions were settled by Sam Harris when he conveniently skipped the past three centuries of philosophical progress. To those of you in both camps, I say: thanks for reading this far, and no hard feelings, but your blood pressure would benefit immensely if we parted ways here, and I’d certainly recommend reading that last link.

(4) Apologies to modern virtue ethicists such as Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum, but it’s not as if any of them would deny that they’re carrying Aristotle’s torch.

(5) Sources that fancy themselves more enlightened will forgive Aristotle his purported sins against theoretical progress and blame Carl von Linné (aka Carolus Linnaeus) instead for what is known as typological essentialism. Those sources are wrong. Taxonomy’s intrinsic type-essentialism is most directly due to the influence of Hugh Edwin Strickland, a staunch typological creationist whose rules of biological nomenclature were adopted by the British Science Association in 1842.

(6) I was raised Catholic, so I know how that line would seem nonsensical to someone who believes in saints, but let’s not go there today.

(7) It also seems to be Spider-man’s solution to every single problem. I’m not a fan.