MORALITY WITHOUT “FOUNDATIONS”
The majority of philosophers will tell you that, if you are concerned with moral thought, you must begin by reading and rereading the great texts in the history of ideas in order to have “firm foundations.”
But it is not obvious that the best means of inviting the reader to undertake ethical reflection is to give him the feeling that he can calmly rest upon the doctrines elaborated by the “giants of thought”
This is why it seems to me that it would be more logical for him to be directly confronted with the difficulties of moral thought, by submitting to his perspicacity a certain number of problems, dilemmas, and paradoxes, and by exposing him to the results of scientific studies that run counter to certain received ideas within the philosophical tradition.
1. Utterly harebrained thought experiments (invisible criminals, mad doctors, killer trolleys, experience machines, and the like) submitted to huge samples, whose conclusions lead us to doubt the robustness or universality of our moral intuitions.
2. Laboratory experiments regarding human generosity or cruelty, whose results place in question the idea of there existing exemplary moral personalities.
3. Investigations into the causes of moral beliefs that lead us to doubt their moral character.
4. Psychological research into the morality of children, showing to what extent the idea that there exists a “moral instinct” or an “innate moral sense” is muddled.
5. Comparative anthropological studies of moral systems leaving us with the impression that morality is not always very clearly distinguished from religion or from social conventions.
These materials now form the “corpus” of experimental moral philosophy, a set of works that associate philosophical reflections and empirical research, such that we obviously do not know in advance where they will take us.
It seemed to me, at the outset, that we should not decide in advance that these works absolutely cannot clarify questions of moral philosophy, under the pretext that they are concerned with facts and not with norms or values, and that there exists an impassable abyss between the two kinds of investigation.
A deeper examination of these works has shown, I believe, that this initial stance was not unjustified.
Thus, experimental moral philosophy has already helped us to understand the following:
1. Virtue ethics rests upon a confused notion, that of the “moral personality.”
2. The existence of a moral instinct is far from having been proved.
3. The boundaries between the moral, the social, and the religious are not obvious.
4. The standard method used to justify moral theories by appealing to moral intuitions is not reliable.
What experimental moral philosophy can allow us to recognize is the fact that nothing in the concepts and methods of moral philosophy is immune from challenge and revision. This is a result that cannot leave those concerned with the possibility of authentic research in moral philosophy indifferent.
It allows us to think that moral debate is not completely irrational, and that it can advance through conceptual critique, the questioning of prejudices, and the exchange of arguments that are logical and that respect the facts.
VIRTUES AND MORAL INSTINCT
Two ancient theories are making a spectacular comeback in present-day debates: virtue ethics of an Aristotelian inspiration and the theories of the moral sense, according to which there exists an innate moral instinct that is peculiar to our own species and to a few other animal species.
These two theories are not obviously compatible.
Virtue ethics asserts that it is possible to acquire an exemplary moral personality through education, observation, and imitation. What is important from the moral point of view is not that virtue is natural, but that it becomes a sort of “second nature,” a set of habits of thinking and acting that no longer even need to be pondered.
For their part, the theories of a moral sense posit the existence of innate moral capacities, while at the same time conceding that these capacities require some time and a favorable milieu in order to pass from the potential to the actual.
These two conceptions of moral development are not necessarily contradictory. They can nevertheless become so, if the friends of virtue ethics reckon that it is not at all necessary to entertain the hypothesis that we have innate moral capacities in order to explain the acquisition of our “moral habits.”
Nothing, indeed, in virtue ethics excludes the idea that these habits could be inscribed on a “blank page,” that is to say, on a highly malleable mind, lacking in any “natural” predisposition toward good or evil, thanks to the work of competent educators, skilled in wielding the carrot and the stick.
Another question that experimental moral philosophy helps us to answer is: do the basic hypotheses of these theories have a foundation?
Virtue ethics rests upon the idea that there exist exemplary moral personalities. But according to certain psychologists, who are practitioners of a “situational” psychology, the very idea of “personality” is dubious. According to them, no one is funny, generous, or brave in every context. Defining people through a “character” and explaining their conduct through its manifestations arise from a tendency to judge people
globally. This “global” approach has nothing particularly rational about it, since it is also encountered in racist, sexist, and xenophobic judgments. Can the virtue ethics that is founded upon the notion of “personality” withstand these objections? It has to try in any case, if it is to retain the esteem that it has earned in recent decades.
For their part, moral sense theories have not managed to give a clear answer to the question that they themselves were raising. What part do the learned and the innate play in our moral judgments and behaviors? Do we have the methodological and conceptual means to rule out altogether the idea that our moral judgments and behaviors are entirely the product of an apprenticeship conducted through rewards and punishments? We have not really got there yet.
THE MORAL, THE SOCIAL, THE RELIGIOUS
One of the most recent and best-constructed theories of moral development maintains that we establish very early on the distinction between three domains:
1. the domain of morality, whereby we universally exclude actions consisting in doing harm to others;
2. the domain of the conventions, whereby we exclude certain actions in which the wrong done to others is not obvious, such as eating pork or dressing in pink to attend a funeral. These rules are only valid for the community and are justified or guaranteed by a sacred text or the word of an authority;
3. the personal domain, which is supposed to concern only our own selves, and which has to do with individual appraisal (it may, for example, concern a taste for such-and-such a sport or for such-and-such a bodily decoration).
This distinction between three domains may be refined in the course of moral development from childhood to the entry into adulthood, but it exists from the earliest age.
What is important is the fact that, according to this same distinction, the early moral sense is expressed in negative reactions toward actions that cause harm to others. Children are naturally “minimalist,” in the sense that, for them, ethics is reduced to the concern not to harm others.
A large part of current research consists in testing the validity of this construction. A diametrically opposed “maximalist” hypothesis has been devised and subjected to empirical testing.
It states that we develop very early on a tendency to judge as immoral all manner of actions that do not directly harm others: blasphemy, suicide, consuming impure food, ways of dressing or treating our own bodies that are deemed to be scandalous, and so on.
Furthermore, the majority of sexual prohibitions (the prohibition of incest between consenting adults included) and dietary prohibitions (not eating pork, shellfish, and the like) are considered by those who abide by them to be universal prohibitions and obligations, that is to say, moral norms. The same applies to obligations toward ourselves (shaving our heads, letting our beards grow, not drinking alcohol or taking drugs, and so on) and the dead (not burying them or burying them on the bare ground and so on).
To summarize the debate, we can say that it involves a confrontation between two camps, the maximalists and the minimalists.
For the maximalists, our basic morality is very rich. We develop very early a tendency to judge all manner of “victimless crimes” as immoral. We do not clearly separate the moral, the social, and the religious.
For the minimalists, our basic morality is much poorer. It only excludes those actions that deliberately cause harm to others. It clearly and universally separates the moral, the social, and the religious.
In order to discover what is the best theory from the normative point of view, the philosophers are in principle very well equipped. But they have every interest in taking account in their arguments of this empirical controversy, if only to gain some idea of the efforts that would have to be made in order to arrange things so that the norms they advocate could be implemented.
If our basic morality is poor or minimal, considerable social labor would be required to turn us into moralizers who are intolerant of styles of life differing from our own, and who are always tempted to poke our noses into other people’s affairs.
If our basic morality is rich or maximal, considerable social labor would be required to turn us into liberals who are tolerant of styles of life differing from our own, and who are ever respectful of other people’s privacy.
MORAL INTUITIONS
The method used to justify the great moral theories abides by the following protocol:
1. Construct bizarre thought experiments in order to reveal our moral intuitions.
2. Assert that the theories that are not to our liking are false because they contradict these moral intuitions.
It seems to me that we can doubt the trustworthiness of this method on account of its epistemological limits:
1. Intuitions are raw facts to which we can give all manner of interpretations. It is always possible to find an interpretation that leaves the theory we are defending intact.
2. Two theories can be incompatible with each other and yet compatible with the same intuitions, once the latter have been placed in a certain perspective. The appeal to intuitions does not enable us to know which is the best.
These epistemological limits in no way prevent us from seeking other means of refutation, such as the bringing out of internal contradictions or other criteria of justification, such as simplicity or coherence. But they do imply that it will be impossible to decide between two equally simple and coherent rival theories by appealing to intuitions.
In my opinion, this result should not discourage us and lead us into radical skepticism toward moral thought.
The epistemological limits of the appeal to intuitions should rather open our minds to pluralism, that is to say, to the idea that there exist several equally reasonable overarching moral conceptions, the permanent confrontation of which does not only have disadvantages. The positive aspect of this confrontation is that it prevents us from lapsing into a moral simple-mindedness. Thanks to it, each theory can become progressively more complex, more subtle, more aware of its own limits and also of its domain of legitimate intervention.
Obviously, we would find it hard to cheerfully accept this perspective, if we yearn to furnish foundations for morality, for example, to propose a single, ultimate, unshakeable, and unalterable principle, upon which the disparate ensemble of our moral beliefs could rest and be entirely secure intellectually.
But why should we seek to “furnish foundations for morality”? Why should we think that we should do more, or that we could do more, than try to somewhat ameliorate our moral beliefs through philosophical criticism, by eliminating the most absurd and the most exaggerated of our prejudices?
