In a complex world, an action is a complex matter, and any one action can be said to embody a variety of possible maxims. In the situation with the Nazi hunting for Jews, Kant would say that he is acting according to the maxim, "Tell the truth," and I am charged with acting according to the unrecommendable maxim, "Tell a lie." But I would respond to Kant, "No, that's not the maxim I'm following. What I am following, rather, is something more like "Do what you can to protect the weak and innocent from the depredations of their unjust persecutors." And then I would go on the offensive and challenge Kant, saying "How would you like for the whole world to follow your maxim of 'Act in such a way that you can tell yourself you've kept your moral purity, regardless of how much damage you do to other people's lives thereby?"
Any time we have to act in real life, we have to deal with a variety of moral issues at once. That means that we are continually required to weigh one moral value against another, which in turn means that no one of them can be treated as an absolute. Any weighing requires that all the competing values be translated into some common units of goodness, else the goodness of truth-telling and the goodness of life-saving can never become commensurate. And by that means, we are led out of the realm of the specifics of structural morality back into the overarching generality of something like my morality-as-consequences.
<em>Probability is not a pat hand. </em>
That doesn't mean that rules are unimportant for our moral thinking. Not at all. They can be extremely valuable guides. But they are not infallible guides, and they are not by themselves adequate to tell us what is the best thing to do. They may serve as good first approximations. Or as probabilistic statements: "Except in exceptional circumstances, this is a good rule to follow." But that means embedding the rules in a larger moral perspective, so that the exceptions can be examined with sound moral judgment.
Even the best of moral rules –like, for example, the Golden Rule-- can lead to morally disastrous results if it is treated as an invariable truth. Even a rule that is a good moral guide 99% of the time can lead to serious moral errors, I believe, if treated as if it were always adequate. Imagine a situation in which I have Hitler in the sites of my rifle. The angel on my shoulder is telling me how many millions of lives I can save if I will pull the trigger. Should I tell the angel, "No, I wouldn't want someone to shoot me, therefore I should treat Hitler in accordance with the maxim, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'"?
In the world as it is, there are times when treating another person as you would want to be treated is not the right thing to do. The problem with structural morality --if it is treated as if it were an adequate guide-- is that it reduces complex reality to more manageable and therefore comforting simplification. Another problem with that Categorical Imperative, as I see it, is that it is predicated on dealing not with the world as it is, but rather explicitly conjures up a magical fantasy. "Act as if you were legislating for all humanity."
Now, if I were acting in front of such a mirror, so that whatever I did would somehow magically be emulated by all humankind, that would be a consequence that would be powerfully determinative of my conduct. If I had the power --say by telling that Nazi the truth-- to make all people honest, that would weigh heavily in my decision. But in the world as it is, my conduct would have no such effect. The people whose whereabouts I betrayed would be herded off to their deaths, and humankind would still be as dishonest as ever. Admittedly, what we do does probably increase the probability that other people will do likewise, for better or for worse, and I will concede the possibility that my lie to the Nazi will have an infinitesimal effect on the general human propensity to lie. And on very rare occasions, an extraordinary person like Gandhi, by acting on his belief in non-violence, for example, will inspire many others to do similarly. Presumably, the angel sitting on Gandhi's shoulder would take into account his capacity to bring about such consequences when he whispered in Gandhi's ear, while still subordinating the ideal of non-violence to the more fluid maxim that I have proposed would guide the angel's counsel. Even Gandhi came to recognize that with a man like Hitler, non-violence was not going to suffice, that with some people there was no access to that better self on which his non-violent approach was predicated. The angel's advice is based on our real choices, not on what we might like to imagine they are.
A structural moralist like Kant seems to be saying that morality is not about what is but what ought to be. I would say that a worthwhile morality must deal with both. It must help us answer the question: given what is right now, how best can I act to help move things toward how they ought to be?
We should demand of our moral system that it deal with things as they are, even if that makes things harder to manage. What's the purpose of pretending that one has solved a problem --the problem of knowing what the moral thing to do is in each situation-- if one has not?
Only striving for a morality of consequences, such as the guidance I'm saying the angel would whisper in our ear, has any chance of meeting what I regard as the most ambitious virtue of a moral system. That is the virtue of being uncompromising. Just as the virtue of not being arbitrary was paramount in a definition of goodness so, I would argue, should we regard as most highly desirable in a moral perspective that it not define itself in ways that are compromised from the outset in the pursuit of the right course of conduct.
An uncompromising moral system, as I mean it, is one that strives to do everything possible to promote goodness. That means several things: that it is not satisfied to rest with a rule that is usually adequate, but sometimes quite inadequate; that it not be set up in a way that defines as true what is not or that ignores parts of the picture that are true and morally relevant; and that is not content to choose one course when a better course is possible.
I suggest that the structural approaches to morality, which appear to be uncompromising in their moral stands, fail to meet these criteria of an uncompromising moral approach. And that the way to strive for such an approach is to adopt a morality of consequences such as I have imputed to that hypothetical angel.
If I'm going to have to compromise, I want to have tried first really to know what the best service to goodness would require of me. And if I do end up compromising, I want to be honest with myself that this is what I have done, and not delude myself into thinking that I am in possession of adequate moral guidance when in fact I am not.
For the sake of simplicity, I am speaking of fostering the "good," but it should be understood that the avoidance of fostering the "evil," or the not-good, is just as important and is continuously implied. To do good and not to do evil, to benefit and not to harm, are inextricably connected here as part of the same moral calculus.
(Indeed, I touch upon some aspects of it in my book <em>Fool's Gold: The Fate of Values in a World of Goods</em>.)
I am lumping together, under the category "structural morality," an admittedly very diverse set of moral philosophies. This is not to deny that the differences among these form of (what I'm calling) structural morality are important. Following God's commandments is not the same as seeking to embody certain virtues, which is not the same as following other maxims generated by reason, which again is not the same as obeying the law or adhering to tradition, etc.
Any time we have to act in real life, we have to deal with a variety of moral issues at once. That means that we are continually required to weigh one moral value against another, which in turn means that no one of them can be treated as an absolute. Any weighing requires that all the competing values be translated into some common units of goodness, else the goodness of truth-telling and the goodness of life-saving can never become commensurate. And by that means, we are led out of the realm of the specifics of structural morality back into the overarching generality of something like my morality-as-consequences.
<em>Probability is not a pat hand. </em>
That doesn't mean that rules are unimportant for our moral thinking. Not at all. They can be extremely valuable guides. But they are not infallible guides, and they are not by themselves adequate to tell us what is the best thing to do. They may serve as good first approximations. Or as probabilistic statements: "Except in exceptional circumstances, this is a good rule to follow." But that means embedding the rules in a larger moral perspective, so that the exceptions can be examined with sound moral judgment.
In the world as it is, there are times when treating another person as you would want to be treated is not the right thing to do. The problem with structural morality --if it is treated as if it were an adequate guide-- is that it reduces complex reality to more manageable and therefore comforting simplification. Another problem with that Categorical Imperative, as I see it, is that it is predicated on dealing not with the world as it is, but rather explicitly conjures up a magical fantasy. "Act as if you were legislating for all humanity."
Now, if I were acting in front of such a mirror, so that whatever I did would somehow magically be emulated by all humankind, that would be a consequence that would be powerfully determinative of my conduct. If I had the power --say by telling that Nazi the truth-- to make all people honest, that would weigh heavily in my decision. But in the world as it is, my conduct would have no such effect. The people whose whereabouts I betrayed would be herded off to their deaths, and humankind would still be as dishonest as ever. Admittedly, what we do does probably increase the probability that other people will do likewise, for better or for worse, and I will concede the possibility that my lie to the Nazi will have an infinitesimal effect on the general human propensity to lie. And on very rare occasions, an extraordinary person like Gandhi, by acting on his belief in non-violence, for example, will inspire many others to do similarly. Presumably, the angel sitting on Gandhi's shoulder would take into account his capacity to bring about such consequences when he whispered in Gandhi's ear, while still subordinating the ideal of non-violence to the more fluid maxim that I have proposed would guide the angel's counsel. Even Gandhi came to recognize that with a man like Hitler, non-violence was not going to suffice, that with some people there was no access to that better self on which his non-violent approach was predicated. The angel's advice is based on our real choices, not on what we might like to imagine they are.
A structural moralist like Kant seems to be saying that morality is not about what is but what ought to be. I would say that a worthwhile morality must deal with both. It must help us answer the question: given what is right now, how best can I act to help move things toward how they ought to be?
We should demand of our moral system that it deal with things as they are, even if that makes things harder to manage. What's the purpose of pretending that one has solved a problem --the problem of knowing what the moral thing to do is in each situation-- if one has not?
Only striving for a morality of consequences, such as the guidance I'm saying the angel would whisper in our ear, has any chance of meeting what I regard as the most ambitious virtue of a moral system. That is the virtue of being uncompromising. Just as the virtue of not being arbitrary was paramount in a definition of goodness so, I would argue, should we regard as most highly desirable in a moral perspective that it not define itself in ways that are compromised from the outset in the pursuit of the right course of conduct.
An uncompromising moral system, as I mean it, is one that strives to do everything possible to promote goodness. That means several things: that it is not satisfied to rest with a rule that is usually adequate, but sometimes quite inadequate; that it not be set up in a way that defines as true what is not or that ignores parts of the picture that are true and morally relevant; and that is not content to choose one course when a better course is possible.
I suggest that the structural approaches to morality, which appear to be uncompromising in their moral stands, fail to meet these criteria of an uncompromising moral approach. And that the way to strive for such an approach is to adopt a morality of consequences such as I have imputed to that hypothetical angel.
If I'm going to have to compromise, I want to have tried first really to know what the best service to goodness would require of me. And if I do end up compromising, I want to be honest with myself that this is what I have done, and not delude myself into thinking that I am in possession of adequate moral guidance when in fact I am not.
For the sake of simplicity, I am speaking of fostering the "good," but it should be understood that the avoidance of fostering the "evil," or the not-good, is just as important and is continuously implied. To do good and not to do evil, to benefit and not to harm, are inextricably connected here as part of the same moral calculus.
(Indeed, I touch upon some aspects of it in my book <em>Fool's Gold: The Fate of Values in a World of Goods</em>.)
I am lumping together, under the category "structural morality," an admittedly very diverse set of moral philosophies. This is not to deny that the differences among these form of (what I'm calling) structural morality are important. Following God's commandments is not the same as seeking to embody certain virtues, which is not the same as following other maxims generated by reason, which again is not the same as obeying the law or adhering to tradition, etc.
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