Individual Obligations and the Army

Over at Right Reason, an interesting thought experiment has been posted, and a bizarre discussion has ensued.

Dr. Beckwith offers, in a nutshell, the following case. His goal is to prove that we have collective obligations that we do not choose to have.

1)Alice is a hermit in the Alaskan wilderness. She discovers a baby on her doorstep one day, presenting her with a moral dilemma. Alice did not choose to have this obligation to care for the unrelated child. Nonetheless, she now has a moral obligation to care for it. Dr. Beckwith says this shows that, "I suspect its wrongness [choosing to leave the child out to die] lies in an intuition we have about our moral obligation as a community to those members of the human family that are weak, vulnerable, and defenseless."


The problem with his conclusion is that "collective obligation" is a non-sequitur. Alice is not part of a community, and so a collective obligation cannot be derived from the example. Dr. Beckwith wants a collective obligation so that he can claim that abortion should be illegal, but all that he has shown is that it is immoral.

This is perhaps the foundation of my libertarianism: I believe that there are no collective obligations as such. We have many universal individual obligations, and the satisfaction of them may require the creation of a communitarian institution, but collective obligations do not exist. The United States does not have moral obligations of its own. If I have an obligation to aid the downtrodden persons, and the Iraqis are such persons, then the formation of a collective military force may be morally required.

Now, of course there are more instances of this obligation than I could possibly ever satisfy. This is a result of my finiteness. However, I am obligated to help the downtrodden as much as is possible without reducing my giving power. For example, it is possible that I could spread myself too thin with charitable activities and get an illness.

Thus, I am not necessarily required to join the military and satisfy my obligation to the Iraqis or Iranians. If I have obligations here as well then it is morally permissible for me to stay home and satisfy these obligations. However, the existence of a US army that I help fund in taxes does not fulfill my obligation to the Iraqis.

Slote and Deliberation I

Most accounts of ethics, whether utilitarian, deontological, or Aristotelian, are grounded in something external to the agent (pleasure/pain, God, etc.) Michael Slote takes a completely different position in Morals from Motives. He attempts to create a comprehensive account of morality that is based within the agent in his motives. Drawing on feminist ethics, Slote argues that we can distill everything morally admirable down to the motive of benevolence, specifically partialistic caring. I admire and support his efforts. Slote’s position seems to arise from the Aristotelian notion of the health of the soul. For Aristotle, a moral awareness is required on the part of agent: the virtuous agent is the agent who can see what the correct action in a situation is. Virtuous action is non-codifiable. This move away from rules by Aristotle is continued, in a sense, by Slote. Just as Aristotle did not believe in being guided by a code, Slote does not believe we should be guided by a principle. His attempt is an intriguing and potentially plausible interpretation of the Golden Rule.

However, there is at least one aspect of his theory I have trouble with. He believes that the most moral people are those that do not need to deliberate on what to do, but can intuit the moral action, even in the most difficult of situations. I disagree with this; probably in part because of my strong libertarian streak. My view is that there are two types of situations in which morality applies: analytic situations and situations that require use of perception and deliberation on the part of the agent. Any situation in which the correct action cannot be understood merely from the definition of the terms used must be deliberated upon. (I owe a nod to Jim Ryan in helping me articulate my view.)

Slote offers two situations in support of his theory. They are both classic moral examples. The first example is that of Stocker’s hospital visit, and the second Bernard Williams’ “one thought too many” case. I will discuss Slote’s interpretation of Stocker’s case first.

Stocker noted that if a person, when explaining to his hospitalized friend why he came, invoked an abstract moral principle, he would be seen callous and not nearly as praiseworthy as the friend who visited from a motivation of benevolent feeling. Slote believes that this tension between theory and actions is endemic to all philosophies of morality. What motivates us should not always be moral theory. Some parts of morality, like moral theory, exist to examine the actions after the fact.

I agree with Slote that this tension exists with all theories of morality, but I dispute the location of its origin. A friend who invokes a moral principle as the reason for his visit is not less praiseworthy because he came on account of the moral principle. The reduction of moral worth is due to conversational implicature. To invoke a theory of morality in everyday conversation as motivation implies an unwanted duty. The friend who just says he came because he is a friend unequivocally expresses that his actions are voluntary. It is the clarity of voluntariness that we find so appealing in the second case. I take it as a self-evident proposition that a moral action is never more praiseworthy when it is involuntary than when it is voluntary.

Slote and Deliberation II

The other example Slote offers is Williams’ scenario of the man who sees his wife and a stranger drowning. He can only save one, since there is only one life preserver. The husband pauses to ponder what his moral obligations and permissions are. Having settled the question in favor of saving his wife, the man throws the life preserver to his wife. Slote claims that this situation shows us that moral permissions and obligations should ideally be independent of moral thinking. We should just intuit the moral choice, and not have to deliberate. The husband is morally deficient for having deliberated.

This is a analytical situation; it is obvious that the husband must throw the preserver to his wife. Any deliberation in this situation can be assumed to be a function of the weakness of the husband’s will. There are two opportunities for deliberation, and Slote conflates them. Sometimes the agent must stop and deliberate about what the right action is (deliberation-1), and sometimes the agent will stop and deliberate whether to do the right action after he has determined what it is (deliberation-2). Deliberation-1 is necessary in any non-analytic moral situation and deliberation-2 concerns the virtuousness of the agent. The virtuousness of the agent is not dependent on his ability to figure out what is the right thing to do; it is dependent on his doing it wholeheartedly and quickly after deliberation. The most virtuous agent is of one mind and one will.

As we can see, once again, the scenario is better explained by the admirability of voluntariness. Voluntariness contains connotations (if not strict denotations) of wholeheartedness. Williams’ situation is not a difficult moral quandary; rather, it is presumably the clearest possible that he could think of. Only the shortest moment of thought is required to understand the situation and act. Anyone who hesitates when in this situation can be assumed to be in the midst of the deliberation-2 and have a divided will. In essence, Slote is not playing fairly. He picks an example of deliberation2 to prove that deliberation-1 is less praiseworthy. We do not need philosophy to help us with intuitive, analytic situations. The quandaries are where we need the aid of moral theory.

It may be objected that Slote’s intention was to extrapolate and thus claim that the virtuousness of the agent is correlated with the moral difficulty of the situations that the agent can solve intuitively. This extrapolation, however, is lacking in data points. Slote needs at least one more situation, one in which about half of us would act correctly intuitively. I believe that there are no such situations and that rather, discovering the moral action in some situations is intuitive, and in others, it requires deliberation. There is no middle ground for intuition. Habituation is a complex issue that I won't cover here, except to say that at least in the beginning of habit-forming, deliberation must occur.

The lack of hesitation that Slote and others find appealing comes from the unification of the will to do the right action. The time here is on a gradient correlated with the virtuousness of the agent. The most virtuous agent has no second thoughts for anything but benevolence. Moral theory is still important for action; indeed, even the most virtuous are aware of it every time they face a dilemma. I will also note that deliberation-1 could be very quick for some of the ideally moral agents.

Why do I care so much about this (somewhat minor) part of Slote's theory? I think it is because my personal experience has led me to deep beliefs about the vital nature of voluntariness, deliberation, and intentionality in ethics.

Another Unoriginal Post

Rather than give my readers (If there are any out there) original material, I'm just adding another 2 blogs to my roll.

The Maverick Philosopher is an interesting blog by an eccentric philosopher.

dangerous idea is new blog by Victor Reppert, the guy I wrote about in the previous post.

PS - I am revising one of my midterm papers for a post. It is on intuition and deliberation in Slote's Morals from Motives. It'll be up by Saturday, hopefully.

Reppert and CS Lewis: The "Grab bag" and Reduction

I read Victor Reppert's book, C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea over break. As Lewis and his writings continually inspire and challenge me, it was very cool to read a book attempting to formalize Lewis's argument from reason. The gist of the book is that Lewis's argument (which I will describe in a second) is actually a good analytical philosophical argument. Lewis argued in the 3rd chapter of Miracles something like this:

1. Naturalism tells me that my brain is no more than an aggregate of molecules interacting according to nonrational causes.
2. If the thoughts in my brain are caused by nonrational causes, then I have no reason to trust their rationality.
3. Thus, if naturalism is true, then I have no reason to trust my thought process that informed me it is true.

While I enjoyed Reppert's attempts to formalize Lewis, it felt unsatisfying. Reppert offers 7(!) different formulations. My initial reaction was that these werenothing more than a "grab bag" of the traditional objections to reductive naturalism.

However, on reflection, I realized that this "grab bag" is actually not to be despised. Assuming that the world is structured the way Lewis thought it was, a reductive program would explain most phenomena, but not all. There would be various unexplainable phenomena scattered around, troubling us. That is indeed what we see. While I am still dubious of the stylistic value of offering 7 equally competing formulations, I respect the "grab bag" much more now.

The Heritage Argument for the 10 Commandments

I have been disturbed by the arguments for the display of the Ten Commandments on government property for a while now, but it wasn't until I woke up this morning that I realized what exactly my objection is. Supporters usually claim that the 10C deserve to be displayed because they are 1)part of our heritage and 2)what 80%-90% of citizens believe. 2) is clearly ridiculous: America was founded as a secular, inclusive nation, opposed to both the theocratic and French Revolutionary models. Even if 98% of citizens believe x, x is neither more valid nor supposed to be written into law. This is where 1) comes in. If the 10C are part of our heritage, then it adds weight to claim 2). However, 1) is misleading: it is a content-free claim, while the problem is the content. Let's assume that the claim that the Bible was a critically important document in the founding of America. It is at least theoretically possible that another book could have been the foundation of America. The pro-10C people would not support the display of the Koran or the works of Spinoza if either turned out to be the "founding book" of America. In this hypothetical, I imagine that they would still support the display of the 10C. The reason for the display of the 10C is not heritage. I strongly believe that the heritage claim should only be applied to documents that were clearly instrumental in our nation's founding: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If the Declaration of Independence turned out to be a hoax, and we found the real DoI, then the real document would be deserving of the heritage status. The heritage claims of the DoI are content-independent, and thus valid. We should not display the 10C; we should display the DoI: it is part of our heritage.

Norwegian PM accuses IKEA of Discrimination

The Prime Minister of Norway has accused IKEA of sexual discrimination, and it's not the normal use of hiring statistics. No, it is because there are no women depicted in IKEA's manual. Surely the Prime Minister has more important things to do than to worry about than this. Even he, I am sure, does not think it is intentional ill-will towards women on IKEA's part. Surely he has something better to do. This is just another case of the nanny state (admittedly, it is too easy to find them in Scandinavia).

Result of the Spat: Right Reason

Max Goss and several other philosophers just started a new blog, entitled Right Reason. It promises to be entertaining and thought-provoking. You can find the link here as well as on the blogroll, which I have added a philosophy of action blog I stumbled upon the other day (The Garden of Forking Paths).