Chapter 14: Moral Value
I. Reflections
I came out of my Philosophy of Psychology class with a set of concepts that seemed applicable to all types of value; harm and abuse, hurt and bad knives. Every proposition using value-laden terms is making a statement about the object of evaluation being such as to fulfill (goodness) or thwart (badness) the desires in question.
There are, then, four components of any value claim:
(1) The relevant objects of evaluation.
(2) The relevant desires.
(3) Whether the object of evaluation fulfills or thwarts the desires in question.
(4) Whether the desires are fulfilled or thwarted directly or indirectly.
However, the type of value that I was most interested in was moral value. Can moral concepts be reduced to concepts having these four components?
Of course, I think that the answer to this question is ‘yes’. The purpose of this chapter is to defend that answer.
II. Moral Value
This is not a mystery novel, so I am not going to keep the answer a secret and reveal it at the end of the essay. The answers to these four questions, with respect to moral value, are as follows:
(1) Objects of evaluation. Primarily, moral terms evaluate desires themselves. Some moral terms evaluate actions, but they ultimately evaluate actions in terms of whether a person with good desires (a good person) would have performed those actions. If a good person would do A, then there is an obligation to do A. If a good person would refrain from A, then A is morally prohibited. And, if a good person would have no reason to care one way or the other, the action is permissible.
(2) The relevant desires. The desires used to evaluate desires are all other desires. This may raise objections about circularity, but it is the same type of circularity one finds in complex systems. For example, it is like the circularity in which the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere affects global warming, which in turn affects how much water vapor there is in the air.
(3) Fulfill or thwart? Obviously, moral goodness refers to desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and moral evil refers to desires that tend to thwart other desires.
(4) Direct or indirect? The answer is: Both. Moral concepts are not specifically focused on either the direct or the indirect effects of desires on other desires.
Ultimately, this ties in strongly with the theory of ethics that David Hume proposed over two centuries ago. Hume argued that the primary object of moral evaluations are character traits. Many of the character traits that Hume talked about can be understood in terms of ‘desires’ in the more modern language used here. Honesty is an aversion to reporting as truth that which one believes to be a lie. Charity is a desire to fulfill the desires of others.
In evaluating these character traits, Hume argued that evaluators use four basic criteria:
(1) Pleasing to self
(2) Useful to self
(3) Pleasing to others
(4) Useful to others.
In place of “pleasing to self” and “pleasing to others”, the account I am proposing here would substitute “directly fulfills the desires of self and others.”
In place of “useful to self” and “useful to others”, I would substitute “indirectly fulfills the desires of self and others.”
Please note, with regard to the first two substitutions, I am not saying that these are identical meaning. Hume’s concept of ‘pleasing to self’ has the same problems already discussed with theories that focus solely on pleasure. “Directly fulfills the desires of self and others” corrects for the mistakes found in Hume’s reliance on a pleasure principle.
We see, then, in Hume’s theory, a formula that states that a good character trait, then, is one that tends to fulfill all other desires; those of self and others, both directly and indirectly. A bad desire is a desire that tends to thwart the desires of others, regardless of who has them.
However, the fact that I can interpret Hume in a way consistent with this theory does not prove that the theory is correct. To do that, we must look at each of the four components in a bit more detail.
III. What is being evaluated?
Answer: Desires.
There is no reason that desires cannot be the object of evaluation. Desires exist in the objective, real world. Desires have effects. A ‘desire that P’ can bring about a state of affairs Q, and Q may either fulfill or thwart other desires. As such, a ‘desire that P’ has an effect of fulfilling or thwarting other desires, and there is no reason why we cannot talk about these relationships.
Desires can also be directly good or bad as well. There is nothing to prohibit a person from having a desire that P, where P = “nobody desires that Q”.
In short, there is nothing particularly problematic with determining whether a desire is such as to fulfill, or thwart, other desires.
A. Actions
It may seem to be the case that actions are the primary object of moral evaluation. However, a long history of trying to make good on this possibility yields an equally long history of problems and counter-examples. Those counter-examples can be easily handled if we shift the primary focus to desire, and say that a ‘right action’ is that action which a person with good desires would perform.
I would like to call, once again, to the witness stand the sheriff in the act-utilitarian counter-example discussed in several previous chapters (notably, Chapter 7). This is the sheriff who is faced with the option of framing an innocent person to prevent a riot.
There is a sense that for the sheriff to frame this person is wrong, even if it produces the best consequences. Some utilitarians try to address examples such as this with rule-utilitarianism, and argue that the action is wrong because it violates the best rule. But if consequences are the only thing that matter, it is inconsistent to argue that acting according to the best rule is better than acting to produce the best consequences. This would make sense only if acting according to a rule had value independent of consequences.
However, if rules are written onto the brain in such a way that they do not allow for exceptions, then the act that produces the best consequences is not causally possible. At this point, ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (or ‘cannot’ implies ‘it is not the case that one ought’) means that it is not the case that the agent ought to perform the act-utilitarian best action. What he ought to do is that act which a person with good desires would do, a sheriff with good desires would have a strong aversion to framing innocent people, so framing this innocent person is something that this sheriff ought not to do.
The same analysis applies to laws. What is a just law? Laws are created as a result of human action, and human action can never be motivated by just one desire (e.g., a desire to produce the best consequences). Humans are not built that way. The actions of a legislator will, by necessity, have a great many different motives (desires) behind it. If a desire exists, it will motivate action; we have no magical capacity to turn off desires at will.
B. Laws
So, a just law is a law that a person with good desires would support. Good desires include the same aversion to framing innocent people that the sheriff in the above example should have, or even convicting them; which argues for a right to trial by jury and other safeguards to minimize the thwarting of the aversion to framing innocent people. It will include an aversion to inhibiting the press, even when doing so may produce the best consequences. It will include an aversion to promoting one religion over others, given that such an aversion is the best way to keep the peace among different religions. It will include an aversion to violating privacy that must be weighed against the desire to protect innocent people from harm.
C. Persons
What is a good person as opposed to an evil person? An evil person has bad desires, and a good person has good desires. An evil person lacks the aversion to taking things that belong to others, or the aversion to taking innocent life, that a good person has. Thus, an evil person takes things when a good person would not, and kills people in situations where a good person would avoid killing.
D. Good Intentions: A Rejected Alternative
(a) Sidgwick’s Objections to Intention-Based Theories
There is an interpretation of this thesis that I would like to clear out of the way.
I am not saying that the rightness of an act is measured by the desires that actually motivate that act. This was the view of James Martineau, a turn-of-the-century philosopher who was very intent on defending a religious conception of right and wrong. That conception looked at actual intentions. If an act was motivated by good intentions, then the person’s heart was in the right place, and no blame could be cast.
Martineau’s contemporary, Henry Sidgwick, laid that account to rest. He asked about negligence. Here was a person going about his normal business — loading a shipment on a truck to haul to a client, for example. He has no intentions other than the intentions that were normal for a person in his line of work. However, he is not a careful individual, so he fails to load his truck safely. On the way, his load falls into oncoming traffic, landing on a car and killing the family inside.
Obviously, a wrong had been done, but that wrong cannot be blamed on the intentions that the person had at the time. This is a fatal weakness for intention-based theories.
(b) Handling Sidgwick’s Objections
Sidgwick’s case can be handled if we look at the difference between the desires that the agent had in fact, and those that he should have had. If the right act is that act which a person with good desires would have performed, and a person with good desires would have been concerned about the potential for harm to others and taken precautions to prevent that harm, then a good person would have secured the load. That the negligent person failed to do so shows evidence that he lacks the desires that a good person would have. This is what makes his action wrong.
Martineau was mistaken to base the moral value of an action sole on the value of the intentions the agent actually had. He needed to look also at the intentions that the agent should have had but did not have. If he would have done so, he would have avoided Sidgwick’s counter-example.
E. Praise, Blame, Reward, and Punishment
A counter-argument can be made that individuals do not have the capacity to choose their desires. If ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, and ‘cannot’ implies ‘it is not the case that one ought’, then blaming a person for having desires he could not have avoided seems to create a problem.
Here, we need to bring in the fact that some desires are hardwired, and others are malleable.
The proposition that some desires are malleable is proved by the great deal of variety that we see around us in the desires of different people.
A useful set of tools for manipulating the development of desires includes praise, blame, reward, and punishment. A person who is praised for performing a particular action may, at the start, desire to perform the action to fulfill his desire for praise. However, he may soon come to desire the action for its own sake, and perform it even when there is no praise to be had.
Similarly, a person who is threatened with punishment may refrain from performing an action out of fear of punishment. However, that particular pattern of behavior will eventually become habit, and the individual will refrain from that behavior even when he can get away with it, because he has acquired an aversion to the action itself, and not just the resulting punishment.
It makes no sense to apply these tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment to desires that are hard wired. We ‘ought’ to apply these tools only to traits that we ‘can’ influence through the use of these tools; anything else is irrational. We can use these tools to give sheriffs an aversion to framing innocent people, and to give legislators a desire to protect the freedom of the press.
So, when we say that the sheriff ‘ought not’ to frame the prisoner, we are saying that the relevant set of desires and aversions are malleable, and that he could have had such an aversion, meaning that the tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment can be usefully applied in the task of creating sheriffs with just such a set of desires and aversions.
F. Retribution and Deterrence
These elements — the focus on desires, and ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ — also provide a way to handle a problem that has long plagued those interested in theories of punishment.
One of the two dominant theories of punishment is retributivist theory. Retributivist theory is backwards looking and says, “Only punish the guilty, and punish him in a degree that is proportional to the crime.” The problem with retributivism is in trying to explain why we should only punish the guilty and have proportionate punishment without postulating some sort of intrinsic value.
The other dominant view is deterrence theory, which says that the purpose of punishment is to produce the best consequences. The problem with deterrence theory is that the best consequences pay no attention to the guilt of the person being punished or the severity of the crime. As in the sheriff example discussed above, we can sometimes produce the best consequences by punishing the innocent.
If we view praise, blame, reward, and punishment as tools that are to be used to promote the development of good desires and inhibit the development of bad desires, we can unify retributivist and deterrence theories.
The use of these tools involves praising and rewarding those with good desires (in order to promote the growth of these desires), and blaming and punishing those with bad desires (to inhibit the formation of bad desires). A ‘good desire’, in turn, is a desire with the best consequences, and a ‘bad desire’ is a desire with poor consequences.
The issue of proportionality is covered in the concern over the strength of a desire or aversion. If a bad desire produces relatively mild consequences, then more harm than good can be done if we act so as to promote a particularly strong counter to this desire.
Take, for example, the aversion to lying. It is an aversion that everybody should have. However, we do not want the aversion to be so strong that we inhibit the person who would otherwise have sought to hide Jews in their attic to save them from the NAZIs. Indeed, the quality of life is improved through some deception, such as the white lie or setting up a surprise birthday party. Excessive blame and punishment for liars risks setting up an aversion that goes far beyond its usefulness.
In short, the amount of reward, or punishment, should be proportional to the best strength that a good desire should have.
G. Intermission: A Brief Recap
So, the story so far suggests that morality is going to be concerned ultimately with evaluating desires. Specifically, desires that can be molded by outside forces — that is to say, desires that are not hardwired. Of these outside forces, the most important are praise, blame, reward, and punishment.
H. Universalizability
Another basic component of morality is the principle of universalizability. A person who says that abortion is wrong is not saying that this or that person ought not to have an abortion. He is saying that nobody ought to have an abortion. A person who is opposed to mixing church and state does not argue that he alone ought not to mix church and state, but that nobody should do so.
In our quest to evaluate desires, we should be looking at the question of whether a desire, if universal, would have the best consequences. The moral condemnation of lying is best understood as a claim that an aversion to lying, if universal, would help fulfill desires overall. Morality is not concerned with desires that some people may have and others may not have. It is concerned with the desires and aversions that everybody should have, or that nobody should have.
There is an argument to be made for role-specific ethics. We can say that only those with a particular character trait ought to go into particular fields. A teacher, for example, should have a particularly strong interest in the welfare of children. A soldier needs a weaker aversion to killing than is best for the average citizen.
I believe that these issues should take care of themselves without making these moral concerns. The person who is going to be motivated to be a teacher will tend to be the person with a particularly strong interest in the welfare of children. People with a particularly strong aversion to killing will tend to avoid professions such as being a soldier (at least, so long as there is no conscription). The claim, then, is not that people of profession X ought to have desire Y, but that people with desire Y ought to consider profession X.
A similar line of reasoning can be offered for hiring people into these professions. It is the duty of the employer to find people who fit the job in question. It there is no moral duty to be the type of person that fits a particular job. One is free to have different traits, and to seek the job appropriate for those traits.
I. Harmony
If everybody wanted to be a teacher, that would be a bad thing. We would have no doctors, no engineers, no police officers, no judges. If the desire to be a teacher can’t be universalized without significant problems, then nobody ought to be a teacher. Right?
Of course not. With respect to some types of desires, it is not best that everybody have that desire — or that nobody have that desire. It is best that some have the desire and others do not.
With respect to lying, we have three options. Everybody have a preference for truth over lying, everybody have a preference for lying over truth, or it does not matter what peoples’ attitudes are. With lying, the best option is a universal aversion. Lying is wrong.
With respect to teaching, and most other professions (excluding hit-man and bank-robber), we face the same three questions. Is it best that everybody prefer teaching over all other professions? Is it best that nobody prefer teaching over any other option? Or is it best that some people prefer teaching, others do not, and each agent has the liberty to act on their own preferences? In this case, the last option is best. Therefore, the principle that is universalized is that it is morally permissible (neither obligatory nor prohibited) to be a teacher.
We could carry this a bit further and note that some professions are more honorable than others. Not all professions are equal in the degree to which they fulfill desires generally, all things considered. As a result, not all professions gain an equal evaluation. Some are downright heroic (fireman, paramedic), others downright villainous (hit man), with a wide range in between. The three-way distinction described above is not defined by hard boundaries, but by fields of gray.
IV. Which desires are used in making these evaluations?
Answer: Everybody’s.
The main argument here is that there is no intrinsic value — no ‘ought-to-be-included-ness’ and ‘ought-to-be-excluded-ness’ built into the fabric of any particular desire. Desires do not radiate goodons and badons making demands on our moral sensibilities. To exclude any particular desire is to make a value judgment, and there is no value judgment to be made in the real world except ‘it is such as to fulfill or thwart certain desires’.
If a person finds that he wishes to exclude certain desires, then his desire to exclude those others is still just one desire among many. It has no privileged status; no special ‘ought-to-be-considered-ness” that gives it priority over any other desire.
However, since we are evaluating desires according to their ability to fulfill or thwart other desires, desires that tend to thwart the desires of others come out fairly poorly. They end up being bad, not because of some intrinsic badness, but specifically because they are desires that tend to thwart other desires.
All of ethical theory is filled with statements that say that the desires of all people are to be included. Hume tells us that ethics is concerned with evaluations of traits that are useful and pleasing to self and others. The Utilitarians tell us, ‘everybody is to count for one, and nobody is to count for more than one.’ The Kantian says, ‘act in all ways such that you treat others as an end, and not merely as a means. Virtually every ethical system on the planet says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” All says that the desires of others are to be considered when making moral evaluations.
I believe that the Kantian phrase does a particularly good job of approaching this question. Kant says to ‘treat others, in all things, not merely as a means to an end, but always, at the same time, as an end.’ A sensible interpretation of the demand to treat somebody as an end is to include their ends in the moral calculation. To exclude a person’s desires from the moral calculation is precisely to treat him as if the only sense in which he has value is as a tool — a means — for the fulfillment of the desires of others. The fulfillment of his desires counts for nothing.
We could, of course, include some of a person’s desires in the moral calculation and exclude others, but it is still the case that insofar as we neglect to include desires, to that degree we treat him as a means only and not, at the same time, as an end. If there is a grain of truth in the Kantian formula, this, I think, is where it can be found.
I am not going to pretend that this is what Kant himself actually meant by his ‘categorical imperative’. Kant’s categorical imperative described a type of desire-independent value that simply does not exist. Yet, there is an intuitive appeal behind this formula, and I think that it counts as a mark in favor of a theory that it can capture that intuitive appeal.
A. Can there be bad desires?
Yes, bad desires exist. They are desires that tend to thwart other desires. However, we must look at those other desires to see which ones are thwarted and which are not.
The killing of an innocent person is bad simply because it thwarts other desires. A fondness for the truth fulfills other desires. The other desires must exist in order for these evaluations to make sense.
The reader may ask, “So, as we evaluate desires according to other desires, we aren’t going to be evaluating them according to their capacity to fulfill the desires of the rapist and the sadist, are we? Some desires just ought not to be included?”
They will end up getting ruled out on their own quickly enough without our stacking the desk against them with mythological entities such as intrinsic value. Rape, theft, deception, all have their tendency to thwart other desires. They all measure up as bad in this system.
So, it’s not like desire utilitarianism calls desires ‘good’ that everybody can obviously see does not deserve the title. We are simply admitting that the mechanism for determining that these desires are bad has to be one that respects what is objectively true in the real world. Intrinsic values do not exist. “Ought-to-be-included-ness’ and ‘ought-to-be-excluded-ness’ are not a part of the real world. To evaluate a desire, our only measure is to determine if it is such as to fulfill or thwart other desires.
B. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value of Desires
When I explain this theory to people, the most common mistake that they make is to confuse desire utilitarianism with a theory that can most accurately be called desire-fulfilling act-utilitarianism. The competing theory known as “preference utilitarianism” is captured by this name as well.
The theory known as “preference utilitarianism” actually has a confusing name. The traditional distinction in utilitarian theory is that which exists between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism says do that act that has the best consequences. Rule utilitarianism says do that act which obeys the rule set that has the best consequences. Following this pattern, one is tempted to assume that preference utilitarianism says do that act that would satisfy the preferences that have the best consequences.
However, preference utilitarianism, as it is commonly understood, lies along a different line of distinctions.
Act-utilitarian (and rule-utilitarian) theories can be divided up among the different things that the theorists believe have intrinsic value. Hedonistic utilitarianism says to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Eudaemonistic utilitarianism says to maximize happiness and minimize unhappiness. Preference utilitarianism says to maximize preference satisfaction and minimize preference frustration.
What distinguishes preference utilitarianism from the other two is that, while a person cannot feel pleasure without knowing it, or be happy without knowing it, his preferences can be satisfied or frustrated without his knowledge. A person who would prefer to have a good reputation, for example, may have that preference frustrated by somebody spreading lies about him that he does not know about. The lies do not cause him pain, nor do they contribute to his unhappiness, because he does not know about them. However, they do frustrate his preferences.
One may be interpreted to list desire utilitarianism as a fourth option in this latter set of distinctions. That theory would hold that we are to maximize the fulfillment of desire and minimize the thwarting of desire. However, when I speak of desire utilitarianism, this is not the type of distinction I have in mind. I am talking about adding a third option to the distinction that exists between act and rule utilitarianism. “Do that act which a person with good desires would do, where good desires are those that tend to fulfill the desires of others.”
The act that will fulfill the most desires and thwart the least desires is not necessarily the right act.
These act-utilitarian alternatives commit two significant mistakes.
(a) Desire fulfillment has no intrinsic merit.
First, desire fulfillment (or preference satisfaction) does not have any type of intrinsic value. It is not a “goodon emitter”. There are no “goodon emitters”. Desire fulfillment, like everything else in the universe, only has value in terms of its ability to fulfill or thwart (other) desires. This is the only type of value that exists. This is the only type of value that any desire, or any instance of desire fulfillment, or anything in the universe, actually has.
To illustrate this distinction, I would like to return to the world (or worlds) of G.E. Moore. Specifically, I want to return to his question where he asks us to pick between an ugly world continuing to exist, and a beautiful world continuing to exist. We pick a beautiful world, but a beautiful world is merely that world which directly fulfills our desires (or which would fulfill our desires if we were to experience it).
Now, instead of comparing a beautiful world and an ugly world, we are comparing two worlds having different levels of desire fulfillment. World 1 is a lifeless hunk of rock in space; an asteroid covered in a layer of dirt and dust. World 2, on the other hand, has an agent with a desire that P (for some proposition P), and P is true.
In other words, World 1 has no desire fulfillment. There are no desires to be fulfilled. World 2, on the other hand, has a desire that is fulfilled. Our new question is, “Which world should we select from this pair, and why?”
The person who treats desire fulfillment as a goodon emitter — as an intrinsic good — would say that World 2 has more merit than World 1. After all, World 2 has a fulfilled desire; World 1 does not. If desire-fulfillment has intrinsic value, then there is more of this value existing in World 2 than in World 1.
I do not see any grounds for selecting the world that has the fulfilled desire over the empty rock. What happens, in this case, is that the world with the fulfilled desire is more pleasing to the person making the choice than the empty rock. However, using this as a criterion introduces another set of desire into the equation, the desires of the person answering the question. It may well be the case that we all have this preference. However, it does not follow from this that the person with a fascination for empty rocks would necessarily be wrong in selecting the other world.
In general terms, the only way to argue that the planet with the fulfilled desire is ‘better’ than the other is to say that the planet with the fulfilled desire itself fulfills a meta-desire that desire fulfillment exists. When we say that it is better that World 2 exist than that World 1 exist, we give the answer relative to our own desires. We prefer World 2 existing over World 1 existing. But, in the absence of those desires, there is no choice to be made.
Here, we have to make an important distinction. On Planet Y, there is an agent who desires that P, and P is true. P, then, has value within the context of Planet Y. Assume that P is also true on Planet X. But, without anybody to desire that P, P has no value.
To say that “P has value on World 2” does not imply in any way that “‘P has value on World 2’ has value.” The thesis that desire fulfillment has intrinsic value, as well as the thesis that the best act is the act that maximizes desire fulfillment (desire-fulfilling act utilitarianism) are to be rejected.
(b) Act Utilitarianism ignores the causes of action
I have already dealt extensively with the second problem of act-utilitarianism, the problem that makes it so easy to come up with counter-examples to the theory. The “ought” of act-utilitarian theories applies only to creatures that can have one desire only — a desire to maximize fulfillment of any other desires. Any other desire or aversion will, depending on its strength, outweigh the desire to maximize desire fulfillment in some circumstances. Since it is not the case that we can perform the act-utilitarian best act, it is not always the case that we ought to do the act-utilitarian best act.
C. Subsets of Desires
Before moving on to the next question, I wish to point out that I am not saying that there is anything wrong with talking about value relative to subsets of desires. In fact, we do it all the time. ‘Health’ and ‘harm’ evaluate states of affairs relative to the desires of the person whose state is being evaluated. ‘Useful’ makes an evaluation relative to desires that are determined by context. Value relative to subsets of desires are just as real as value relative to all desires. However, the nature of moral debate, the way moral terms are used, and the components of morality suggest that this is not one of those cases.
I will have more to say on these issues later.
V. Are the relevant desires fulfilled or thwarted?
Answer: It depends on whether we are talking about ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
‘Harm’, ‘injury’, ‘abuse’, are always bad, so we can say that these terms always refer to the thwarting of desires. ‘Health’, ‘fortunate’, ‘useful’, are always good, so these things are always desire-fulfilling. However, moral terms lie on both sides of the spectrum. ‘Evil’, ‘unjust’, ‘wrong’, ‘immoral’, ‘prohibited’, all refer to desire-thwarting desires. ‘Good’, ‘just’, ‘right’, ‘moral’, ‘obligatory’, all refer to desire-fulfilling desires.
VI. Does value depend on direct or indirect fulfillment?
Answer: Both
Again, this answer is grounded on the fact that there are no intrinsic values. There is no justification for saying that certain desires (or certain links between desires and objects of evaluation) ought to be included, or ought not to be included. So, all links are relevant.
VI. Examples
To illustrate the points made so far in this chapter, I would like to look at a couple of categories within which moral terms are readily used.
A. The NAZIs
It seems a standard test for an ethical theory to ask whether it can properly categorize the evil of the NAZIs. Subjectivist ethical systems fail to do this, and that is a fatal flaw. Utilitarianism theories, it is said, cannot account for this either. If the NAZIs get more utility out of killing the Jews, then the Jews suffer from being killed, utilitarian theory seems to recommend that the Jews be killed.
This is a problem.
Desire utilitarianism does not look primarily at acts such as killing the Jews. It looks primarily at desires.
If some people desire to kill the Jews, then the Jews, it seems, would have their desires thwarted. The desire to kill the Jews is desire-thwarting.
But, what would the situation be if nobody had a desire to kill the Jews? The Jews would not have their desires thwarted, because they would be no holocaust. Nobody else would have their desires thwarted either, because there would be no desire to kill the Jews. So, if nobody had a desire to kill the Jews, there would be no desire-thwarting.
Desire-utilitarianism holds that “no desire to kill the Jews” would be the better option. From this, it brings forth the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to inhibit any desire to kill the Jews.
B. Killing
It is plausible to argue that, in a substantial majority of the cases, life is a useful tool for fulfilling one’s desires. A person who takes the life of another will tend to introduces a great deal of desire-thwarting as a result. Not only are the desires of the person killed being thwarted, but so are the desires of everybody who cared for the victim, and everybody who benefited from the victim. For example, assume that the victim was a doctor who was on the verge of discovering a vaccine for diabetes; killing this doctor would be tremendously desire-thwarting to those who are at risk of developing diabetes.
From this, it is obvious that a universal aversion to killing has much to recommend it. A universal aversion to killing would fulfill (or, at least prevent) the thwarting of other desires directly and indirectly.
We recognize that the killing itself may fulfill a few desires. A coldly rational killer who knows he could get away with it and does not have the aversion to killing he should have, could fulfill his own desires through murder. It has happened.
None of this, however, detracts from the fact that a universal aversion to killing would fulfill (or prevent the thwarting of) desires generally. None of this detracts from the argument that it is rational, all things considered, to employ the tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment to promote and strengthen a universal aversion to killing. None of this counts as an argument against the proposition that the paid assassin is evil — has desires that tend to thwart the desires of others, or fails to have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others.
At the same time, we recognize problems if the aversion to killing is too strong. If everybody but one had a very strong aversion to killing, then one who did not have such an aversion could easily impose his will on others. Though the tyrant’s desires would be fulfilled, desires generally will be thwarted. So, we have reason to argue for an aversion to killing ‘except in self defense’.
An aversion to killing is always going to be there. We still have reason to condemn the person who kills too willingly, even in ‘self defense’. But we allow that the desire for self-preservation to outweigh the aversion to killing where the person killed is the one making the threat. As hard as it may be to kill such a person, it is permissible.
C. Consent
Another useful tool for promoting desire-fulfillment is consent.
It can be generally assumed (thought not without exception) that a person who consents to an activity will do so because she believes that the activity will fulfill her desires more than any other option available to her. She will deny consent if she sees the activity as more desire-thwarting than any alternative. Furthermore, in the vast majority of cases, the agent herself is the best (though, by no means, perfect) judge of what will or will not fulfill her desires.
Thus, it is reasonable to put the tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment to work to manufacture a universal (or, as close as we can get) desire to obtain consent. We reward and praise those who obtain consent; we blame and punish those who exhibit insufficient interest in obtaining consent.
Yet, it would be unreasonable to demand consent from all those who may be affected by an agent’s choice. We would be able to do nothing while we sent out our requests for universal consent (and we answered the requests for universal consent from others). Thus, a demand for universal consent itself, will lead to a great deal of desire thwarting. Therefore, we demand that consent be obtained from those who will be directly and significantly affected, while allowing those indirectly and weakly affected to simply ride the waves of fortune.
VIII. Another Look at Subjective and Objective Value
Question: “Is morality objective?”
Answer: “It depends on what you mean by ‘objective.’”
There are, in fact, many different meanings of these terms. In one sense, I would say that morality is subjective. After all, there is no value without desire, and this is taken to be a defining characteristic of subjectivity.
Yet, people often claim that there is no right answer to moral questions, or that value is something distinct from fact and cannot be examined scientifically. If this is what is meant by ‘subjective’, then morality is not subjective. Moral propositions are as universally true or false, and as verifiable, as any proposition in any scientific field can be.
In order to answer the question of whether morality is objective or subjective, we need to specify the different meanings that these terms can have.
A. Subjective(1) vs. Objective(1)
There are some people who ask whether moral propositions are propositions at all. Propositions are capable of being true or false. However, moral statements may well be merely complex ways of grunting approval or disapproval. A statement like “capital punishment is wrong” may instead be a verbal equivalent of wrinkling one’s nose and saying, “Capital punishment — ewwww!” Such a statement has no truth value, it is not subject to debate. Like laughing or crying, it is simply an expression of emotion.
Those who hold that moral claims are expressions of emotion are typically called ‘non-cognitivists’ and their opponents called ‘cognitivists’.
In this debate, I side with the cognitivists. Or, more precisely, I do not see much use for the distinction. Even if moral claims are expressions of emotion, there is an equivalent cognitive proposition to go along with it. The expression “Capital punishment — ewwww!” can still be rewritten as “I feel ewwwwness toward capital punishment,” which is a proposition that is capable of being true or false.
So, in this sense, values are objective(1). Moral claims are propositions with a truth value.
B. Subjective(3) vs. Objective(3)
A voice shouts out from the back row.
“Um….Alonzo….Didn’t you, perchance, miss school the day that they taught counting. Three does not follow one.”
I know that, but I think things are clearer this way.
The debate between whether values are subjective(3) or objective(3) concerns the debate as to whether values exist as mind-independent entities. I have argued this extensively in previous sections, to the point that I hope to simply summarize my previous here.
There are no goodon emitters. All value terms describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. Desires (an essential component of all value) are mind-dependent. Therefore, value is mind dependent.
In this sense, there are no objective(3) values.
C. Subjective(2) vs. Objective(2)
This distinction recognizes that value is relative to desire, but asks if this is subjective in any meaningful sense.
The concept of “subjective(2) value” claims that the evaluation of states of affairs relate to the speaker’s desires. “I do not like chocolate ice-cream” or “I dig rock and roll music” are subjective(2) statements.
Objective(2) value claims relate states of affairs to desires that are not those of the speaker. If I am right about terms like ‘harm’ and ‘illness’, these relate states of affairs to the desires of the person whose state is being evaluated. The statement, ‘Susan was injured in the accident’ is not a statement that says, “I don’t like what happened to Susan.” In fact, I might not even like Susan and hear the news of Susan’s injury with great glee. None of this would have any relevance to whether Susan has been injured. The truth of the claim about Susan’s injury depends on how the accident changed Susan’s physical state inv ways that thwart her own desires. My desires are irrelevant.
Statements about harm, injury, illness, benefit, health, and the like, when made about other people, are objective(2) value claims, not subjective(2) value claims. I can be as objectively wrong about whether Susan has been harmed or injured as I can be about the chemical composition of a banana or the number of stars in a nearby galaxy.
So, subjective(2) values (like beauty and taste) and objective(2) values (like harm and injury) both exist.
The relevant question here is whether moral claims are subjective(2) claims (claims merely about the desires of the speaker), or objective(2) claims (claims about desires substantially independent of those of the speaker.
The proposal that I give in the first part of this essay are that moral claims are objective(2) claims. People making moral claims are not making “I like” or “Good for me” claims, they are making “We should like” or “good for us to like” claims.
In this sense, moral values are objective(2).
Note: Here, I am not saying that people do not base their moral claims on what they like or dislike. It may well be the case that a person’s claim that X is wrong is based, ultimately, on a feeling of ewwwwness toward X. But we ought not to confuse a person’s method of determining X with the meaning of the claim that it is X. I take my child’s temperature and conclude that my child is ill, but the claim. “my child is ill” does not MEAN that my child is running an abnormally high temperature. High temperature is common symptom of illness, not the illness itself.
Furthermore, just as the absence of a high temperature is no guarantee of health, the absence of ewwwwness is no guarantee of moral permissibility.
Here, I am offering a bare assertion to illustrate the points that I made in the previous section. Later, I will look at this issue a little more closely in order to derive some arguments in defense of this view.
D. Summary
So, ultimately, when asked, “Do you believe moral values are objective?” I answer: “It depends.”
Moral values are objective(1) — they are genuine propositions capable of being true or false.
Moral values are subjective(3) — they are dependent on desires. “Good” means “is such as to fulfill the desires in question”. If there are no “desires in question”, then there is no “good”.
Moral values are objective(2) — they are propositions that are at least in part about minds. However, minds are real — they exist. We can make objective statements about minds. Furthermore, the speaker’s own mind is an insignificantly small portion of the minds that one is talking about when one makes a moral claim. Moral statements are not “I” subjective(2) statements but “we” objective(2) statements.
E. A Shift in Terms
For the rest of these discussions, I am going to shift terms slightly. I am dropping Subjective(1), Objective(1), and the property of ewwwness from the discussion — I will have no more use for these.
In place of the term ‘objective(3)’, I will speak of ‘hard objectivism’ or ‘intrinsic value’. I will argue against any type of hard objectivism.
In place of the term “subjective(2)” I will use the phrase ‘common subjectivism’, given that this is what it seems that most people who make the claim that morality is not objective seem to be claiming.
For the complementary terms “subjective(3)” and “objective(2)”, I will use the term “soft objectivism”. Sometimes I may also speak of this as “subjective/objective compatibilism”
I am borrowing these terms from the distinction that exists in the free will debate between “hard determinism,” “soft determinism,” and “compatibilism.”
I do not think that the parallels found in these two sets of concepts are accidental. In both cases, moral debate is blocked by widespread acceptance of a false dichotomy. In the case of free will and determinism, it was blocked by the inability to conceive of determined choice, until computer programmers showed us how determined choice is possible. In the case of objective and subjective value, the problem was caused by an inability to conceive of an area of overlap between subjectivism and objectivism — a realm of compatibilism within which we can make objective claims about mental properties.
IX. The Subjective/Objective Debate Revisited
In Chapter 11, I wrote a dialogue involving me and two advisors. One advisor held that morality is objective, and the other represented subjectivism. I would like to call those two advisors back into the room.
“Take a seat, make yourselves comfortable.” I would say to them. “Objectivist, you can sit over here on my right, if you don’t mind. The Subjectivist, on my left. That seems fitting.
“I have some bad news for both of you, I’m afraid. I have thought it over and feel that we must move ahead in a new direction. I am afraid that I have decided to let you go. Though, before you go anywhere, I want to introduce you to your replacement.
“For years, the two of you have been telling me that I must choose between you. Both of you have largely been arguing that I had to accept you as my primary advisor, because of all of the problems with the other view. I have become aware, recently, that neither of you really argued for the strength of your own position. Instead, you have shouted at me over and over again that the weaknesses in your opponent’s position left me with no alternative but to choose you.
“I’m afraid to say, you were wrong. Both of you were wrong.
“Subjectivist, you are right in arguing that there are severe problems with the idea that value is something that exists independent of desire and preference. The Objectivist is always making laughable attempts to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, and is continually confusing ‘fact’ and ‘value’. His reasoning is unsound, and his conclusions poorly justified. Therefore, you told me that I really should not be listening to his advice.”
While the Subjectivist beams with pride, I turn to the Objectivist. “You were also right when you said that your opponent is basically telling me that morality has the same status as a work of fiction. What the Subjectivist is telling me is that we make it all up, just as we make up Frodo Baggins and the Lord of the Rings. Each person makes up his or her own story. Only, unlike these other works of fiction, we are somehow obligated to pretend that these moral fictions are real, and are permitted to punish others when they act in ways that our made-up story says they should not act. It’s Subjectivism itself that is a work of fiction, and I should not be listening to the Subjectivist’s advice.”
I notice the look of hurt and confusion in each of their eyes. It makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I should not be so harsh on them. Then I am distracted as the door to the office opens, I look up, and my two guests turn to look at the visitor.
“Ah, right on time,” I tell the guest. “Subjectivist, Objectivist, meet your replacement. This is Soft Objectivism, and what he tells me actually makes sense.
“You see, Subjectivist, Soft Objectivist here agrees with you about a great many things. There is no value without desires. All value depends on desires and, if there were no desires, there would be no value.
“Objectivist, my new Soft Objectivist friend agrees with you on many things as well. Moral claims are either true or false. People can be wrong. The subjectivist who says that slavery is moral in a society that allows slavery is mistaken. Slavery is no more moral in a society that allows slavery than planets are flat in a society that believes that planets are flat.
“So, you see, you are both right. You both said that the other person was making grave mistakes, and you were both right.
“Yet, you are both wrong in telling me that in rejecting the other position I am stuck with yours. My new advisor, the Soft Objectivist, tells me that value depends on minds, and simply adds the obvious fact that minds exist. They exist all around us, and mine is not the only one.
“Subjectivist, you once told me that value is subjective because, if we eliminated all the people, there would be no value. However, you failed to mention that, if we eliminated all of the humans, that we also would not have any humans. Humans exist. Humans have minds. Human minds have objective, knowable properties, including beliefs and desires.
“Actually, I have to say, it is time for both of you to leave my office. In all honesty, I have to add that I would consider it a blessing if I never saw either of you again — not here, not out on the street, nowhere. You have both done quite enough damage already.”
X. A Better World
I had started this journey with a single question. “What is ‘better’?” Or, specifically, if I wish to leave the world better than it would have otherwise been, then how do I determine success or failure?
Here is the answer:
To make the world better is to make it such as to fulfill more of the desires in question. Different “desires in question” result in different concepts of “better”. For “desires in question” when we look at the moral concept of “better” are good desires — desires that tend to fulfill other desires. A “better world” then is one that would appeal to the person with good desires — desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others.
How does one go about making the world a better place?
Most notably, by using the tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment to promote the development of desires that fulfill the desires of others, and inhibit the development of desires that thwart the desires of others.
Of course, a person who has desires that fulfill the desires of others will also tend to perform those acts that fulfill the desires of others — not because they are right or good or proper, but because he wants to. He will suffer no conflict between getting what he wants and helping others, because these will be the same thing, as much as possible.
A. Why Make the World Better?
One question that I am always asked looks at the fact that I starts with the question, “How do I make the world better than it would have otherwise been?” and asks, “What makes this such a good thing?” This question is typically asked by somebody who wants to show that my system is just as subjective (depending on my own desires) as any other.
It’s a fair question.
To the person asking it, I first point out that there is no place in this argument where I use the premise one ought to make the world a better place. The link between my desire to make the world better, and my development of this theory of “better”, is a causal relationship, not a logical relationship. I could have just as easily began this quest with a goal of wanting to make the world a worse place than it would have otherwise been. The arguments would have been the same, and I would have reached the conclusion that ‘worse’ is ‘such as to thwart the desires in question.’
Think of a case of a research doctor who discovers that his daughter has leukemia. She then changes the focus of her study to leukemia, and comes up with a number of claims about leukemia. The fact that a personal issue sent her in a quest to discover the answer to this question does not make her answer any less objective.
Because ‘making the world better than it would have otherwise been’ is not a premise in my argument, I do not need to justify it. The claim that it is a subjective preference may well be accurate, but it is certainly irrelevant.
I cannot even recommend ‘leaving the world better than it would have otherwise been’ as THE true and proper end for a moral being. To begin with, doing so would violate the principle of “ought” implies “can”. People are going to have a number of other desires, regardless of how strongly I promote this one. What a person ought to desire needs to conform to what a person can desire. Desiring only “to leave the world better than it would have otherwise been” is not possible.
Furthermore, I think that there are practical problems with teaching people to make the world better than it would have otherwise been. It would be far simpler to each people to have an aversion to lying, an aversion to harming innocent people, a desire to help those in need, a love of liberty, an interest in learning, an desire to obtain consent before engaging in actions that directly affect others, an aversion to taking things that belong to others, and a desire that one’s beliefs that may affect others are well founded and not recklessly assembled, among other things. If you desire these things, you are a good person, and will likely end up leaving the world better than it would have otherwise been.
B. How do I make the world better?
Assume that one does have a desire to make the world better than it would have otherwise been. How does one accomplish this?
Ultimately, it is by promoting the widespread development of desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and interfering with the development of desires that tend to thwart other desires.
This, in turn, involves employing the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. A major component of this task is to help in directing the tools of praise and reward to promoting the development of those desires that fulfill the desires of others. The other side of the same coin is in directing the tools of blame and punishment in such a way so as to inhibit the formation of desires that tend to thwart the desires of others.
I already mentioned that one of the most deserving targets that I would make of these tools are popular forms of reasoning. I would use the tools of praise and reward on those who reason well, in order to promote a love of reason. Correspondingly, I think that condemnation and punishment are appropriate against those who reason poorly, as a way of forming an aversion to rhetoric and demagoguery. Perhaps, the best punishment against deceivers and manipulators is not legal sanctions, but social sanctions. Simply condemning (harshly and in public) the person who makes his living by deception would be an admirable use of these tools.
XI. More Work
I still have a lot of work to do in order to flesh out the idea that moral value concerns the evaluation of desires according to their capacity to fulfill other desires. In future chapters I will look at the issue of law and morality and critically examine, in more detail, the Subjectivist Commandment, “Thou shalt not force thy morality upon others.” I will look at specific issues such as homosexuality, capital punishment, abortion, cloning, space exploration, and politics.
However, before I could get very far with my ideas in graduate school, I would like to report an unfortunate discovery that I made in one of my classes. The class was meta-ethics, taught by Dr. Patricia Greenspan. There, I discovered that a well-known philosopher, J.L. Mackie, had already made many of the same claims that I was defending. As a result, his writings provide me with an opportunity to clarify many of the claims I have made, by contrasting them to the claims that Mackie raised in his book.