Chapter 16: A Flock of Ethical Concepts
I. Hodgepodge
In this chapter, I want to look at a number of different issues in ethics, and show how desire utilitarianism handles those issues. In other words, I want to add some detail to the basic theory that I have been presenting through the last three chapters.
If I were to summarize the view I am defending here in a few short sentences, it would be this:
(1) All value claims are claims about relationships between states of affairs and desires. Different value claims concern different relationships. “Good” = “Is such as to fulfill the desires in question.”, “Bad” = “Is such as to fulfill the desires in question.” Different “desires in question” give rise to different senses of the words “good” and “bad”.
(2) Any value claim that cannot be reduced in this way is an error. Their argument is a work of fiction, and their consequence is to have us live in a universe that exists only in the imagination.
(3) Desires can be evaluated according to whether they are, or are not, ‘such as to fulfill the desires in question’. In this way, we can talk meaningfully about what ought and ought not to be desired. This, ultimately, is the question that moral value is primarily concerned with.
II. The Location Analogy
One of the terms that I sometimes use in defending this view is “objective moral relativism.”
A lot of people have a habit of viewing objectivism and relativism as opposites, so this term sometimes generates the same type of response that I would get if I started talking about round squares or married bachelors. Anybody who talks about such things can be easily dismissed.
However, objective relativism is not a contradiction in terms. In fact, there are very few (and possibly not any) scientific claims that cannot be categorized as “objective relativism”.
Location provides an every-day example how propositions describing a relationship can be objectively true or false.
A. Location Relativism
What would your answer be if I were to ask you, “Where are your car keys?” For the sake of convenience, let us assume that you have car keys and you know where they are. If you do not, then pick some similar item.
I guarantee that the answer you would have given would have involved describing the location of the keys relative to something else. They could be hanging on the key rack, or in your coat pocket, or in your purse, or sitting on the dining room table, sitting in the ignition of your car. Regardless of where they are, you give their location by describing where they are relative to something else.
Location is a relational property. The location of anything in the universe can only be known relative to something else. There is no absolute location. If we had to give a theory of location absolutism we would not even know where to start. We would, in fact, start with some arbitrary location in the universe and give every location relative to that choice. Yet, we would still be unable to escape location relativism.
So, does the absence of location absolutism lead us to location subjectivism? Are we forced to conclude from the fact that there are no absolute locations that where things are is merely a matter of opinion?
Of course not. If the keys are on the table, then the statement that the keys are on the table is an objectively true statement. The statement that the Earth orbits the Sun at a range of about 93 million miles is an objectively true statement — one that would fit comfortably inside any science book without anybody lifting an eyebrow in surprise over seeing it there.
This is objective relativism.
B. Picking a Starting Location
When it comes to picking the location of something, there is a trace of common subjectivism. I think that subjectivists see this trace, and then blow it all out of proportion.
When asked where the keys are, how do we answer? We have an infinite number of possible answers to give. I could say, right now, that my keys are in Colorado. They are at home. They are in my coat pocket. They are with my wallet. They are where I left them yesterday. They are within twenty feet of an apple. All of these answers are objectively true and accurate. Which one do I pick?
As far as the issue of objectivity or subjectivity goes, it does not matter. Whatever answer I gave is objectively true or false. Whatever answer I give, if it is true, cannot contradict any other true answer that I or anybody else could give. If “The keys are in my coat pocket” and “The keys are at home” are both true, it had better be the case that my coat pocket is at home (preferably, with the rest of my coat, but that is not required).
When I say that values are objective, too many people interpret this to mean that I think values are absolute. They answer by bombarding me with questions about this or that type of situation (e.g., “what about the child who steels a loaf of bread in a land of plenty because he will die of starvation otherwise”). When I say that values are relative, they misinterpret this to mean that I do not object to holocausts and slavery and people who rape and murder young children for pleasure.
This is a false dichotomy. We do not have to choose between the absurdities of absolutism on the one hand and the absurdities of common subjectivism on the other. There is a third option; objective relativism. What is right or wrong depends on a number of relevant relationships. However, given a specific set of relationships, there is an objective right answer as to whether the action is right or wrong.
C. What Relationships?
I mentioned above that, when asked where the keys are, we have an infinite number of correct (but non-contradictory) answers to select from. We have a certain amount of liberty in selecting a meaningful answer, but our liberty faces a number of constraints.
How do we pick the right one?
We do so by a number of ways, one of which is by context.
Imagine two different circumstances in which somebody might ask you, “Where are your keys?”
Situation 1: You are at work. You ask a fellow employee to let you into a room that you normally have a key to. She asks you, “Where are your keys?” If you were to answer, “At home”, it would be a perfectly legitimate answer. It means that you did not lose them, and that you will likely have your keys the next day and not have to bother your co-workers.
Situation 2: You and your partner are home, preparing to go out to an event. You’re running a little bit late but, if you hurry, you can arrive on time. Your partner is particularly anxious to get there on time and is already blaming you for being late. Your partner comes rushing up stairs as you finish dressing and asks, “Where are the keys?”
Trust me, if you answer, “At home,” you are probably going to get bruised.
When people ask us location questions, we cannot answer them without answering a prior question, “relative to what?” We pick up the answer to this logically prior question in context. We form a theory as to why the person asking the question wants it answered, and we give the answer that fits the theory. It is an easy skill to learn – we begin practicing this skill as soon as we learn to talk. We are very adept at it.
We do the same thing with respect to value.
Assume that, in a conversation with a friend of mine over our different weekend plans, she suggests that she may go to a movie and asks, “Are there any good movies showing in town?” I know from the context of this question that she is not asking me to evaluate movies according to my own desires. If I were to start listing off the movies that I like, she would have me skewered and served up with a good orange sauce for wasting her time — just as my spouse would if I answered her question about the keys in the scenario where we are late by saying “at home”. “You know what I mean,” she would protest. My movie-going friend is asking me to take what I know about her desires (her tastes and preferences) and evaluate the movies on that standard. We pick up on the relationships we are being asked to address from the context within which the question gets asked.
D. Absolutism and Subjectivism
Now, I would like to take the concepts of moral absolutism and moral subjectivism, and examine them through the analogy to location. What would a location absolutist, and a location subjectivist, be like?
The location absolutist is looking for a fixed way to describe where things are in the world — looking for a way of making location claims that are not, ultimately, relative to something else. He is going to find the task very difficult. No such absolute location exists, so the absolutist ultimately makes an arbitrary pick — for example, the center of the earth. In the worst of all possible worlds, these location absolutists will get into the habit of taking those who describe location relative to something else (e.g., the sun) as people to be ridiculed or, worse, burned at the stake for their blasphemy. All of this aims at enforcing their arbitrary pick as the universal standard for all location claims.
Then the location subjectivist comes along. She boasts that she has transcended the simple mindedness of thinking that locations are absolute. Locations differ from individual to individual. However, every claim about the location of something must be understood as a claim about where it is in relation to the individual making the claim. People cannot, or will not, or should not, for some absurd reason known only to the subjectivist, give the location of anything relative to anything other than their own body. When asked where my keys are, it would be legitimate to answer, ‘Bearing 046 mark 339; range 10 meters’, but not ‘they are on the table’.
It should be obvious by now that location relative to things other than the agent is no great mystery. People can and do make such claims all the time. The mystery would rest in the subjectivists assertion, that they put forward with almost religious enthusiasm, that all location claims must be understood as references relative to the speaker, and nothing else. This is what the value-subjectivist gives us. The value-subjectivist says that all value statements must be made in relation to the desires of the speaker, and no other. The limitation is absurd.
E. Intentions and Purposes
Perhaps the subjectivist gets confused over the fact that the best answer to the question (such as the location question) depends on the interests of the person asking it. When my wife asks me where the keys are, I interpret her question, in part, by forming a theory about why she cares, and forming an answer that addresses those concerns. In the case where we are at home preparing to leave for an important engagement, the best theory is that she wants to get the keys and get the car ready while I finish dressing. The answer “the keys are at home” does not address her concerns.
Similarly, when she asks me a value question (such as my advice about a good movie), there too I use the context in which the question is asked to determine which relationship she is truly interested in so that I can provide a meaningful answer. In both cases, I look at her interests to determine a meaningful answer.
This is different from science and math. If she asks me for the product of 12 x 24, her interests are not at all relevant in determining a meaningful answer. The correct answer is 288, regardless of the reasons she had for asking the question. I might lie, but any answer inconsistent with 288 would still be a lie.
Yet, this distinction is not as clear as it first appears. When she asks me about the location of the key, or a question about value, all that I am doing is using the context to determine which question she is really asking. Asking for the product of 12 x 24 is clear and unambiguous; the words have a precise definition. If they did not have such a precise definition, if the terms were vague in any way, I would have to look for additional information to determine which meaning she had in mind. I would get this from the context. Once I know the question, I can give an accurate answer.
For example, she might simply ask, “How many?” This is the full question that I am being asked. Before I can answer the question, I need to determine, “How many what?” Assume that we were talking about a dinner party she is catering, and we have just been discussing the fact that there will be 24 tables with 12 people per table. From the context, I pick up that she wants to know how many people there will be. The answer does not lose its objectivity from the fact that I have to go through this exercise to figure out what the question was.
Location claims and value claims are, by their nature, ambiguous. Each question could be asking about an infinite number of possible relationships. Yet, once the person being asked knows what the question is, there is an accurate and objective answer to that question. The answer is just as objective as an answer to provide a mathematical sum. The keys are either in my jeans pocket, or they are not. An action is either an action either fulfills the desires in question better than any other alternative, or it does not.
F. The Desires In Question
Finally, I want to revisit the question of what these “desires in question” are when we use moral terms. When my wife asks me, “Where are the keys?” I have to think and come up with the answer to the question, “What is she really after when she asks me this?” This determines the best answer to her question. When somebody else asks me, “Is capital punishment morally permissible?” or “Should church and state be separate?” I have to ask a similar question.
The subjectivist answer — that the person asking the question is asking about the value of capital punishment or separation of church and state relative to their own preferences — makes no sense. If this is the interpretation we should be giving to such questions, then the answers people give are laughably absurd. We can be asked the question by people we never met (and whose desires we do not know), and yet we offer an answer. In our answers, are we to be understood as confidently asserting how the other person feels about such things? Or, are we, instead, stating what the stranger should feel?
The answer we give is never couched in terms of “This is how you feel about capital punishment, and this is how I know that you feel this way.” Rather, our answers are couched in terms of “This is how you should feel about capital punishment, and these are the reasons why you should feel that way.” Those reasons never focus exclusively on the desires of the person asking the question. Instead, they include the desires of others.
The subjectivist interpretation of moral questions performs the same stunt that I pull when my wife asks, “Where are the keys?” and I answer, “At home”, when we are already at home preparing for an important engagement. The subjectivist is changing the question that is being asked into a different question, and providing an answer that misses the point of the original question entirely. They are using a pun — a joke. The problem is that they don’t recognize that their answer is a joke.
In order to give a meaningful answer to questions about whether something is right and wrong, we must start with a meaningful interpretation of the question. To do this, we look at the relationships that the questioner is concerned with. The nature and the context of the question suggests that it is absurd to interpret a question such as “Should we have capital punishment?” as “Would I like capital punishment?” or “Would capital punishment benefit me?” The person asking this question is ultimately asking about whether a good person could support the institution.
In the last three chapters, I have attempted to show that the question is best interpreted as “Would a person with good desires support this, where a person with good desires is a person whose desires are compatible with the fulfillment of the desires of others.”
I might well be wrong in my hypothesis that this is the relationship that moral questions are addressing. However wrong this view may be, it is not nearly as wrong as the subjectivist claim that the person asking the question is asking about an evaluation relative to their own desires alone.
G. Summary
Objective relativism, then, is a view that holds that value claims — like location claims — necessarily describes relationships. Value claims describe relationships between states of affairs and desires. Moral value claims describe relationships between desires and (other) desires (or, more precisely, between malleable desires subject to the influences of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) and other desires. These relationships are objective — they cannot shift simply at the whim of the person asking the question, or at the whim of the person answering it.
The desire to rape retains its overall badness regardless of the whim of any particular agent; a universal aversion to killing will prevent the thwarting of desires over all regardless of the thrill that any particular person may get out of killing. Right and wrong are no more subject to change at a whim than the location of my keys can change on a whim. Their moral value is objective — as objective as the location of my keys.
III. The Is/Ought Gap
Now, I want to return to the question of the is/ought gap.
David Hume proposed that there was a distinction between value and fact. He stated that ‘is’ premises (factual premises) cannot yield an ‘ought’ conclusion (a value conclusion). This is because ‘is’ and ‘ought’ describe two different types of relationships, and any who holds that the latter relationship can be derived from the former needs to explain how this is done.
And, yet, this creates a problem. These ‘ought’ relationships can move objects in the real world. The human body is made of atoms — of substance in the real world. Its movement through space is governed by the laws of physics. Whatever these ‘ought’ properties are, either they have the power to influence the movement of substance through space, or they have no role to play in answering questions about why people do the things they do. ‘Oughts’ either exist somewhere in the world of ‘is’, or they are not relevant and we can quit talking about them entirely.
But, if ‘ought’ lives in the world of ‘is’, where does it live?
A. Hypothetical Imperatives
‘Ought’, in this case, evaluates actions in terms of their ability to fulfill certain desires, either directly or indirectly. Every ‘ought’ claim, like every value claim, presupposes a set of desires, and asks about the fulfillment of those desires. Every ‘ought’ claim asks about an ‘is’ relationship.
There is some sense to the is/ought distinction, which explains why it is a meaningful objection to raise in most cases. Only certain types of premises yield ‘ought’ conclusions. At least one of those premises must take the form “X desires that P” or something similar. The rest of the arguments concern the relationship between some action and P. The conclusion, then, reports nothing more than that the action has a particular relationship to the desires.
That is to say, the argument takes the following form:
(1) Agent desires that D
(2) Action A will bring about D
Therefore, the agent ought to do A
Where ‘ought’ means nothing more than, ‘Doing A will bring about D, which is desired”.
A huge block of our standard ‘ought’ statements fit into this general model. Like, “I ought to get my work in on time if I want to keep my job,” and “If I want to use my laptop on the bus ride to work tomorrow I had better plug it in tonight.”
This form of the statement has nothing to do with morality. It works just as well for immoral acts. For example, “If I don’t want to be punished for murdering my boss, then I should find a way to make it look like her husband did it.”
But it provides a useful example for beginning to understand how ‘ought’ can be derived from ‘is’.
‘Ought” = “Is such as to fulfill the desires in question.”
These inferences generate what are known as hypothetical imperatives – hypothetical because they are only identify what should be done IF the relevant desires exist.
B. More Practical Ought
All of our real-world decisions involve weighing the effect of our actions on several desires, not just one. In conversation, we sometimes simplify an issue by focusing the discussion on a key desire, but in reality the other desires are always there, making their voices heard.
Why do I want to keep my job? So that I can pay the rent, buy food, save for my retirement — there are a great many things that I desire associated with keeping my job. There are also desires that are thwarted when I do my job — my desire to write philosophy essays being at the top of the list.
So, practical ‘ought’ looks more like this:
(1) Agent desires that {D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}
(2) Action A will bring about max{D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}
Therefore, Agent ought to do A.
The terms such as D1S1 and DnSn represent the fact that desires come in degrees of strength — where a single strong desire can have more of an influence on our actions than a large number of weak desires. We do not just take a poll of our desires and ask, “All of those in favor of A, say ‘aye’?” We give some desires more votes than others.
An important set of mistakes can be avoided by noting that the argument contains no premise about what the agent believes. A person who is thirsty, who sees a pitcher containing a clear, odorless liquid on the center of the table, may think that he ought to poor some into a glass and drink it. But, if the pitcher contains a poison, it is not the case that he ought to drink from it. What the agent believes he ought to do may be entirely different from what he ought to do in fact.
C. Ought to Desire
The simple way to look at ‘ought to desire’ in terms of the above analysis is to simply plug it into the formula.
(1) Agent desires that {D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}
(2) Desire DxSx will bring about max{D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}
Therefore, agent ought to desire DxSx.
This is still the same basic formula. This is still a derivation of ‘ought’ from ‘is’.
I can sense a number of people chomping at the bit to bring up problems with this formulation. I would like to look at two that I think will be the most likely.
(a) Objection 1: Changing Desires
(1) If the agent comes to desire DxSx, then premise 1 will be false. The agent will no longer desire {D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}. Instead, the agent will desire {DxSx, D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}.
Answer: There has been a lot of work done on complex systems with complex feedback mechanisms, where an adjustment in one component of the system (e.g., carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere effects other systems (temperature), which in turn causes plants to grow faster (CO2 fertilization), which lowers the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Another such system involves predicting the movement of the starts in a triple star system. The gravity of each star affects the other stars in the system, and their gravity effects the first star. The mathematical formulae for determining the motion of stars in a triple star system are very complex.
The type of relationship between desires described here is no different than the relationships between variables in any complex system. In the field of recursive mathematics, these relationships are not considered to be a problem. In logic, they are called “virtuous circles” and are not to be confused with the smaller and tighter “vicious circles”.
(b) Objection 2: Choosing Desires
(2) We cannot choose our desires.
Answer: Yes we can. One example of choosing a desire is my own decision not to smoke. I know that smoking will cause me to desire smoking – because smoking is addictive. I do not wish to desire smoking, so I do not perform those actions that will set up a chemical reaction that is known to bring about a desire to smoke.
Another example of choosing a desire is that, behavior we adopt as a rule, can become desired for its own sake. This is particularly noticeable in the raising of children. If a parent makes it a rule that a child brushes his teeth after every meal, the child will come to desire that he brush his teeth after every meal — and will do so even when the parents are not around. If we want to break a bad habit, we make it a rule not to act on that habit (a rule which is hard to obey, because the desire will always tempt us to break the rule). After a while, the habit becomes its own desire. The problem is that we need the desire to obey the rule — or to recognize that the desires fulfilled by obeying the rule — to be stronger than the desire that one is trying to break. This problem is aggravated by the fact that future desires have no direct effect on present action, so a realization that a present desire will thwart future desires is not sufficient to alter present behavior.
C. Moral Ought
Not only do we have the ability to choose our own desires, we can choose (or, at least, influence) the desires that others have. We learn many of our desires through interaction with the external world. That external world includes other people — and we are a part of the external world for those others. As a part of their environment, we have the ability to influence the desires that they acquire.
The main tools for molding the desires of others are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment. Praise or reward people who do X, and the desire for X grows stronger (in general). Condemn or punish people who do X, and the aversion for X grows stronger.
So, since we can mold the desires of others, the question arises, “What desires ought we to create in others and what strength should we give them?”
The formula looks something like this:
(1) Agents desire that {D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn} for all desires.
(2) If everybody has desire DxSx, then max{D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}.
Therefore, everyone ought to desire DxSx.
Again, “everyone ought to desire DxSx” means nothing more than if everybody desired DxSx, then max{D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}.
These moral ‘ought’ conclusions are derived entirely from ‘is’ premises, and in this they are as objective as any proposition in any science can be. It may be difficult to know if a universal desire that DxSx will lead to max{D1S1, D2S3, D3S3,... DnSn}, but ‘difficult to know’ still presupposes an objective truth that is difficult to know.
There is no additional hidden ought premise in this argument. Everything contained in the conclusion is contained in the premises as written. People can add a third premise if they want to. However, it does not do any work, and can be cut just as easily without affecting the validity of the argument in the slightest.
D. The Elimination of Non-Natural Ought
This formulation ultimately still has some problems. However, there is one additional argument standing in the way of asserting that the existence of these problems proves the inability to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.
As soon as one introduces an irreducible ‘ought’ statement into the premise of an argument, one has turned the argument into a work of fiction. The irreducible ‘ought’ is false. Desires are real. Relationships between actions and desires (or between desires and other desires) are real. Irreducible ‘ought’ premises are fiction. If they cannot be reduced to things in the world of ‘is’, then they have no place or relevance in the real world.
(a) A Warning Against Apparent Counter Examples
There is room for confusion in that there are a number of possible senses of the word ‘ought’. Each sense relates to a different set of desires.
There is a perfectly good sense of the word ‘ought’ (or ‘should’) that relates the object of evaluation directly to the desires of the agent. The thief who gets caught, kidnaps the witness and says, “I ought to just kill you right now!” He is certainly not using ‘ought’ in its moral sense. He would probably be among the first to deny that he is speaking about an obligation or a duty. He is simply saying that it would be in his own best interests to kill the (potential) witness.
Similarly, I can tell my wife, “We ought to do something about that hole in the wall.” Again, I would not be speaking about a duty or an obligation. I am merely saying that my wife and I would eliminate some problems and frustrations if we just got busy and took care of that hole in the wall.
So, it may not be immediately intuitive that the ‘ought’ conclusion can be derived from premises containing an ‘is’ desire proposition. Equivocating on different senses of the word ‘ought’ would yield a conclusion that might not refer specifically to the desires contained in the premises.
However, where the ‘ought’ conclusion does not seem to follow, it is because one is understanding the ‘ought’ in the conclusion in a sense that concerns a different set of desires than those contained in the premise.
This is particularly relevant where the desires mentioned in the premises are limited to those of the agent, and the ‘ought’ in the conclusion is a moral ought. If I am right in my previous arguments, moral ‘ought’ assumes desires other than those of the agent. It simply does not follow that a set of premises that are concerned with a limited set of desires (those of the agent) will yield a conclusion of what ‘ought’ to be done relative to a much larger set of desires (those of everybody in the group). It fails to follow in the same way that a sum of a partial set of numbers does not yield an answer that is necessarily identical to the sum of an entire column of numbers.
IV. Coherence and Harmony
At one point in my graduate school life I took a course on epistemology. Epistemology has to do with theories of knowledge. In this class I learned, for example, that knowledge is defined as justified, true belief. Though there is some dispute over whether this definition is strictly the case in all circumstances, it is close enough for my purposes. I have no intention to offer a theory of knowledge. I am interested in the concept of justification.
The relevant question then becomes: What does it take for a belief to be justified? Different theories exist. One theory holds that there are certain foundational axioms and a justified belief builds from that according to a set of principles, such as the rules of logic. This view is called ‘foundationalism’.
A competing view, ‘coherentism’, denies that there are foundational axioms; that what we are looking for is a coherent web of beliefs. Each belief is tied to others, and a belief is justified in virtue of its membership of the most coherent interconnection with other beliefs.
There are other theories, but coherentism caught my attention. Coherentism seemed to accurately reflect a great deal of what happens in debate. What debaters were doing — and, indeed, what each person does when he encounters a new idea — is fit it into a web of other ideas, looking for the most coherent fit.
One of the principles of coherentism is that if one person believes that X (e.g., all roses are red), and another person believes that not-X (some roses are not red), then this is a contradiction. This disturbs coherence. One of the two people has to have made a mistake, and adjustments are necessary in the structure of at one of their belief webs.
However, if one person desires that X, and another person desires that not-X, is this a problem? Does this imply a need for one of them to revise their desire-web?
The answer is, no. For beliefs, coherence is an issue. For desires, we look for a different type of relationship. I name this relationship ‘harmony’.
A. One Universe, One Desire
To illustrate the concept of a harmony of desires, let us begin with one universe, with one being, and one desire. I will call this being Kree. And Kree’s one desire is to scatter stones.
Immediately, we must be careful to note exactly what Kree’s desire is. Specifically, Kree desires that P, where P = “Kree is engaged in the activity of scattering stones.” It is not a desire that the stones be scattered; Kree has no interest one way or the other in the end result. It is the activity itself that interests him.
Sex provides a viable way of clarifying this point. Many people with a desire for sex have no interest in the end product of sex (e.g., pregnancy). They are not driven to engage in sex as a means to some further end in many cases. Sex is an end in itself, and pregnancy (if it happens) is often an unintended (and, even, undesired) consequence. For Kree, scattering stones is an end in itself. The scattered stones that result is an unintended consequence.
However, Kree has a problem. What is he going to do once all of the stones on his world have been scattered?
He is going to have to engage in work. He has to take time away from doing the things that he enjoys, in order to do something he does not like, in order to create a situation where he can do what he wants to do. In this case, he must go through the agony of gathering stones together. Only after he has gathered enough stones, can he get back to his true passion in life, scattering stones.
Now, let us introduce a second creature into Kree’s world. I will call him, Sec.
Now, if desires are supposed to be coherent, as beliefs are, then if Kree desires that P, then if Sec desires that not-P their desires would lack coherence. That is to say, if coherence was important for desires, then Sec should also have a desire to scatter stones.
This is the view of the intrinsic value theorist — the ‘hard objectivist’. If Sec comes along and starts doing something other than scattering stones, Kree scowls at Sec and calls him perverted or sick (for liking that which ought not to be liked, where Kree infers what ‘ought not to be liked’ from his own desires). The judgment is based on the assumption that scattering stones has intrinsic value, and on the basis of some defect, either Sec cannot see and appreciate that value, or Sec sees it yet fails to respond appropriately. Kree is drawn by his false assumptions to conclude that a healthy person would respond to the activity of scattering stones with interest, and this perverted, sick, Sec shrugs it off as unimportant.
Yet, the strong objectivist is mistaken. Scattering stones has no intrinsic value. Its value springs from Kree’s desire to scatter stones.
Let us now give Sec his own desire; a desire to gather stones together. Now, Kree is out there in the world engaged in his favorite activity, scattering stones. He goes to one region, scatters all of the stones he finds there, and he moves on. Eventually, he comes back to the first region and discovers Sec, who has been pursuing his favorite activity, has gathered all of the stones together. Kree finds piles of gathered stones just sitting there waiting to be scattered. As Kree starts to scatter stones, Sec moves off to the section Kree had just left, and begins gathering those stones together.
This is where it is important to be precise about what Sec and Kree desired. Both have a desire for the activity; neither have a desire for the end result. These desires are in harmony, because Sec, acting on his desire, produces a state of affairs that fits in well with Kree, acting on his desire.
But, if the desires were slightly different — if Kree had a desire that the stones be scattered, and Sec had a desire that the stones be gathered together, then in place of harmony, there is conflict. In place of two people living happily together in the same community, we have two people who, at best, grudgingly accept the other and lives in a community with half the stones gathered and half the stones scattered, and neither perfectly happy with the results.
In our much larger world, it is easy to see how it is to our advantage that some people like to deal with mathematics and complex formulae, while others like to get their hands dirty and spend their days actually building something. Some like to teach, while others like to learn. Some like to write, while others like to read. Some like to design and build, while others look for a nice house that they can call their own. This is a world in which there is a harmony of desires.
B. Another Strike Against Hard Objectivism
Hard, intrinsic-value objectivism, then, can be seen as more than just a f false doctrine, making the mistake of treating values as intrinsic properties when they are not. It is a pernicious doctrine that replaces harmony with conflict. It does so by condemning those who want something different as being defective, and insisting that only those whose desires are like ours are acceptable.
The case against homosexuality, I think, follows this pattern. Evolution has provided a disposition toward heterosexual relationships; without them the species would have died out. Yet, it is only a disposition. Evolution does not need everybody to have an interest in such relationships, only for enough people to do so that the species continues. So, if the species is one in which a few people like something else, evolution has no objection to raise against it.
The homosexual’s desires are easily in harmony with the desires of other homosexuals. There is nothing wrong or bad in this, because neither desire has a tendency to thwart other desires.
However, many heterosexuals make the mistake of objectifying their interest in heterosexual relationships — the same way that Kree objectified his interest in scattering stones. They make the mistake of conceiving what they want as something of intrinsic merit (e.g., natural) in their activity and condemn those who do not respond to that activity the same way they do. As a result, they promote conflict where harmony could otherwise exist. Objectification of values — the mistake of thinking that objective(3) type values exist — thwarts desires and makes the world a worse place than it would have otherwise had been.
There are some who would argue that homosexuality itself thwarts desires, and that is why it is bad. Like drug addiction and alcoholism, it gets in the way of a person getting what he really wants. If true, these would be good reasons indeed to hold that homosexuality is, in a sense, bad.
I repeat, “If true.” It may well be the case that the person making such a claim is attempting to rationalize his own bigotry. I will discuss rationalization will be discussed in detail in Chapter 18.
None of this changes the fact that objectification of value, the quest for a coherence of desires in place of a harmony of desires, promotes conflict.
VI. Summary
These sections were meant to add decoration to the moral theory defended in the previous three chapters. They were meant to clarify some of the elements that might have been confusing.
I think, once one wraps one’s mind around the concept of objective-relative location, the notion of an objective-relative ethics is not far behind. There is no great mystery here.
The mystery is also removed from the question of how values (‘ought’ claims) can have the power to influence the motion of physical items in the universe — things that are described through ‘is’ claims. The essence of the ‘ought’ is embedded in desires, while desires themselves exist fully in the world of ‘is’. Desires provide both the essential ingredient for claims about what we ought to do, and provide the causal power behind the human action that gets done what ought to be done.
Finally, while we need to find coherence among our different beliefs, including beliefs belonging to different people, when it comes to desires we have reason to look for a different type of relationship. A coherence of desires would generate only conflict, misery, and even death and destruction as different groups with the same desires pursue ends that cannot be shared.
There are important advantages to be found by pursuing, instead, a harmony of desires. Where desires are harmonious, people do not always desire the same thing. Where useful, they desire different things, where one person obtaining what he desires makes it easier for another to obtain what she desires.
With these additional sets of details, I hope that the theory that I am seeking to propose becomes a bit easier to understand.