Gensler, Chapters 1-2 PDF

Part One Popular Metaethics Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQues...

Part One Popular Metaethics Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  1 Cultural Relativism Cultural Relativism (CR): “Good” means “socially approved.” Pick your moral principles by following what your society approves of. Cultural relativism (CR) says that good and bad are relative to culture. What is “good” is what is “socially approved” in a given culture. We’ll begin by listening to the fictional Ima Relativist explain her belief in cultural relativism. As you read this, reflect on how plausible you find her view and how it fits your own thinking. We’ll later consider objections. 1.1 Ima Relativist My name is Ima Relativist. I’ve embraced cultural relativism as I’ve come to appreciate the deeply cultural basis for morality. I was brought up to believe that morality is about objective facts. Just as snow is white, so also infanticide is wrong. But attitudes vary with time and place. The norms I was taught are those of my own society; other societies have different ones. Morality is a cultural construct. Just as societies create different styles of food and clothing, so too they create different moral codes. I learned this in Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. anthropology class and experienced it as an exchange student in Mexico. Consider my belief that infanticide is wrong. I was taught this as an objective truth. But it isn’t; it’s just what my society holds. When I say “Infanticide is wrong,” this just means that my society disapproves of it. For ancient Romans, infanticide was all right. There’s no sense in asking which side is “correct.” Their view is true relative to their culture, and our view is true relative to ours. There are no objective truths about right or wrong. When we claim otherwise, we’re just imposing our culturally taught attitudes as the “objective truth.” “Good” is a relative term, and thus needs a further reference to complete its sense. Something isn’t “to the left” absolutely, but only “to the left ofx” this or that; the door might be to the left of me but to the right of you. Similarly, something isn’t “good” absolutely, but only “good in” this or that society; infanticide might be good in my society but bad in your society. We can express CR most clearly as a definition: “X is good” means “The Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Cultural Relativism 9 majority (of the society in question) approves of X.” Unless otherwise specified, the society is that of the person making the judgment. When I say “Hitler acted wrongly,” I mean “according to the standards of my society.” While I’ve emphasized good and bad actions, the same analysis applies to what goals are intrinsically good, what character traits are virtuous, and what moral rights we have. Society decides such questions for its members, and different societies may decide them in very different ways. The myth of objectivity says that things can be good or bad “absolutely” – not relative to this or that culture. I have three arguments for rejecting this and moving to cultural relativism. (1) My cultural differences argument points out that cultures can differ radically on moral issues, like infanticide, polygamy, and women’s rights. When we speak of good or bad absolutely, we’re just absolutizing the norms of our society and taking them to be objective facts; so, in dealing with conflicting norms from another culture, we think that we’re right and they’re wrong. Believing in objective values is provincial and narrow minded; those who accept this myth of objectiv- ity need to study anthropology or live for a time in another culture. (2) My product of culture argument begins by seeing that societies create value systems and teach them to their members. We shudder at the idea of infanticide, because we were taught to shudder; if we were brought up in ancient Rome, we’d think of infanticide as perfectly fine. Societies create different styles of clothing, different types of food, different ways of speaking, and different values. The clothing styles and the values of another culture aren’t objectively right or wrong; they’re just different. (3) My no neutral standpoint argument points out that there’s no neutral stand- point for arguing against another culture’s values. Scientific issues can be decided by experiments; if someone thinks heavy objects fall faster than light ones, we can drop objects of different weights and see which ones hit the ground first. Moral issues aren’t like this. When we argue about ethics, we just assume the values of our own culture. There’s nothing objective here. As I’ve come to believe in cultural relativism, I’ve grown in my acceptance of other cultures. Like many exchange students, I used to have this “we’re right and Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. they’re wrong” attitude. I struggled against this. I’ve come to realize that the other side isn’t “wrong” but just “different.” We have to see others from their point of view; if we criticize them, we’re just imposing the standards of our society. We cultural relativists are more tolerant. Through cultural relativism I’ve also come to be more accepting of the norms of my own society. CR gives a basis for a common morality within a culture – a democratic basis that pools everyone’s ideas and ensures that the norms have wide support. So I can feel solidarity with my own people, even though other groups have different values. Before going on, reflect on your reaction to cultural relativism. What do you like or dislike about it? Do you have objections? Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  10 Part 1: Popular Metaethics 1.2 Conformity Ima has given us a clear formulation of an approach that many find attractive. She’s beginning to think about morality and to grow in her moral thinking. Yet I’m convinced that her basic perspective on morality is wrong. Ima will likely agree as she gets clearer on her thinking. CR’s big problem is that it forces us to conform to society’s norms – or else we contradict ourselves. If “good” and “socially approved” mean the same thing, then whatever is one has to be the other. So this reasoning would be valid, and we could prove that something is good from the premise that it’s socially approved: X is socially approved. X is good. And this statement would be self-contradictory: X is socially approved but it isn’t good. If CR is true, then we have to conform completely to our society’s values – we can’t consistently disagree with them – we aren’t free to think for ourselves on moral issues. This is an absurd result. We surely can consistently disagree with our society’s values. We can consistently affirm that something is socially approved but deny that it’s good. This would be impossible if CR were true. Ima could bite the bullet (accept the implausible result), and hold that it is self-contradictory to disagree morally with the majority. But this is a difficult bullet to bite. Ima would have to hold that civil rights leaders contradicted them- selves when they disagreed with accepted views on segregation. She’d have to conform to the majority view on all moral issues – even if the majority is igno- rant. And if majority opinions change, then she’d have to change her moral beliefs too. With CR, the central virtue of the moral life is conformity (being a follower instead of an independent thinker); good actions are ones that are socially approved. By outlawing disagreements, CR would stagnate society and violate the Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. critical spirit that characterizes philosophy. 1.3 Race, climate, children As you consider a view about morality, don’t be too abstract. Apply the view to concrete issues, to see how it works. Look for areas where the view gives implausible results. Here we’ll consider how CR applies to racism, global warm- ing, and teaching morality to our children. (1) Racism. Imagine that you live in a society that practices and approves of extreme racism – perhaps America before the Civil War (with black slavery) or Nazi Germany (with the killing of Jews). A satisfying view of morality should show how to attack racist actions; CR fails at this, since it holds that racist actions are good in a society if they’re socially approved. Even worse, CR logically entails Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Cultural Relativism 11 that protesters who say “Racist actions are socially approved but not good” contradict themselves. These CR implications are difficult to accept. (2) Global warming. Roughly speaking, there are two main views. Climate-change affirmers say the earth is rapidly warming, this is mostly caused by human activity, and humanity ought to make radical changes, especially in its use of fossil fuels, to prevent catastrophic harm for future generations. Climate-change deniers, in contrast, claim that human activity isn’t a major cause for recent temperature increases (which take place for other random causes) and humanity needn’t change its use of fossil fuels. If we followed CR consistently, we’d go with which- ever view was socially accepted by the majority; this is the “good” view, even if people accept it out of ignorance of the scientific evidence. Applying CR to global warming could bring disastrous consequences to humanity. (3) Teaching morality to our children. If we accepted CR, how would we bring up our children to think about morality? We’d teach them to think and live by current social norms – whatever these were. We’d teach the virtue of conformity instead of critical thinking. We’d teach that these are correct reasoning: “My society approves of A, so A is good,” “My peer-group approves of driving while drunk, so this is good,” and “My Nazi society approves of racism, so racism is good.” Our children will grow up to be conformist professionals who think the “socially accepted” way is always the “good” way. Applying CR to moral educa- tion would have unhappy consequences. CR may sound good when viewed abstractly; but it applies poorly to issues like racism, global warming, and teaching morality to children.1 1.4 Cultural differences Moral realism claims that some things are objectively right or wrong, indepen- dently of what anyone may think or feel. Dr Martin Luther King (1963), for example, claimed that racist actions were objectively wrong. Racism’s wrongness was a fact; any person or culture that approved of racism was mistaken. In saying this, King wasn’t absolutizing accepted norms; instead, he rejected accepted norms. He appealed to a higher truth about right and wrong, one that didn’t depend on Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. human thinking or feeling. He appealed to objective values. Ima rejects this belief in objective values and calls it “the myth of objectivity.” On her view, actions are good or bad only relative to this or that culture; against 1 The anthropologist Ruth Benedict was a major defender of CR (1934): “We recognize that morality differs in every society and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, ‘It is morally good,’ rather than ‘It is habitual’ …. But historically the two phrases are synonymous.” However, in writing about American racism later, she ignored her CR and saw racism as both socially approved and bad (like a sickness). She used anthropology to counter ideas about racial inferiority, claiming that the top third of the human race – physically, intellectually, or morally – includes people of all races. She urged America to “treat people on their merits, without reference to any label of race or religion or country of origin” and “ensure human dignity to all Americans” – even though these ideas clashed with her view that good = socially approved. While CR may seem sophisticated when we study other cultures, CR is a very unsophisticated way to actually reason about moral issues. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  12 Part 1: Popular Metaethics King, actions can never be good or bad objectively. But are objective values really a “myth”? Against objective values, Ima gave the cultural differences, product of culture, and no neutral standpoint arguments. This is her first argument: My cultural differences argument points out that cultures can differ radically on moral issues, like infanticide, polygamy, and women’s rights. When we speak of good or bad absolutely, we’re just absolutiz- ing the norms of our society and taking them to be objective facts; so, in dealing with conflicting norms from another culture, we think that we’re right and they’re wrong. Believing in objective values is provin- cial and narrow minded; those who accept this myth of objectivity need to study anthropology or live for a time in another culture. Let’s express this reasoning more clearly. The desired conclusion is “No moral beliefs are objectively true.” Here’s a strict premise-conclusion formulation: No idea on which there is wide disagreement is objectively true. All moral beliefs are ideas on which there is wide disagreement. No moral beliefs are objectively true. While the conclusion follows validly from the premises,1 both premises are doubtful. Against premise 1, a wide disagreement doesn’t show that there’s no truth of the matter, that neither side is right or wrong. There’s much disagree- ment about cholesterol, religion, and the causes of global warming; yet there may still be a truth of the matter about these areas. Premise 2 is also doubtful. While some moral beliefs have wide disagreement, others have wide global agreement.2 Most cultures have similar norms against stealing, lying, adultery, and killing. Many moral differences come from applying similar basic values to different situations. The golden rule, “Treat others as you want to be treated,” is widely accepted across cultures. And the United Nations and the world religions have consensus statements about ethics. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Ima and CR distort ethical differences in at least six other ways. (1) CR sees the world as neatly divided into morally uniform societies. While there are big moral differences between societies, there’s little moral difference within each society, since the majority decides the norms. But the world isn’t like that. Instead, the world is a confusing mixture of overlapping societies and groups; and individuals in a given society, far from simply following the majority view, may differ widely among themselves on moral issues. Consider speed limits. We pretty much agree on what the “official speed limit” for a given place is (since the government decides this), but we disagree on whether it’s morally proper to go much over the speed limit (since this expresses our individual beliefs). CR leads us to see other societies in oversimplified stereotypes. Someone 1 This syllogistic reasoning (“No A is B, all C is A no C is B”) is clearly valid (Gensler 2017). 2 Kinnier (2000) summarizes recent scientific research about ethical universals. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Cultural Relativism 13 might say, “We Americans respect human rights and oppose terrorism; but soci- ety X believes in terrorism and opposes human rights.” But both societies likely have many people on both sides of the civil-rights issue. In America, the news often has a story about a white supremacy group or an individual who acts vio- lently against gays or Muslims. And society X likely has some individuals who push for civil rights and fair treatment for all. CR encourages a WE versus THEY mentality, where both groups are looked upon in an oversimplified way. (2) CR ignores the subgroup problem. We all belong to overlapping groups. I’m part of a specific nation, state, city, and neighborhood; and I’m also part of family, professional, religious, and peer groups. These groups often have conflicting values. According to CR, when I say “Racism is wrong” I mean “My society disapproves of racism.” But which society does this refer to? Maybe most in my national and religious societies disapprove of racism, while most in my professional and family societies approve of it. CR could give us clear guidance only if we belonged to just one society. But the world is more complicated than that. We’re all multicultural to some extent. Excessive partisanship is a problem in the United States. Citizens and politi- cians often identify strongly with their political subgroup, whether Republican or Democrat: “good” becomes what their party accepts and “bad” what the other party accepts. Conformity with party replaces a concern for truth, the common good, and a fair appraisal of arguments. (3) CR says that those who believe in objective values are just absolutizing the values they learned from their society. This needn’t be the case, as we see from Martin Luther King. In asserting racism’s objective wrongness, King didn’t absolutize accepted norms; instead, he disagreed with accepted norms. (4) Moral realists needn’t say “We’re right and they’re wrong.” Perhaps there’s a truth to be found in moral matters, but no culture has a monopoly on this truth. Different cultures may need to learn from each other. To see the errors and blind spots in our own values, we may need to see how other cultures do things, and how they react to what we do. Learning about other cultures can help to correct our cultural biases and move closer to the truth about how we ought to live. Ima rejects the dogmatic “We’re right and they’re wrong” attitude. And she Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. stresses the need to understand the other side from their point of view. These are positive ideas. But her view that neither side can be wrong limits our ability to learn from how other cultures do things. A culture that can’t be wrong thereby can’t correct its mistakes. (5) Moral realism can respect most cultural differences, even though it insists that some things are objectively right or wrong. Different societies often have dif- ferent ways to promote common objective values. Traffic laws everywhere ought to promote traffic safety; but societies can legitimately differ in which laws they set up to do this (for example, whether we should all drive on the left or all drive on the right). And all societies ought to have rules and customs that promote the goods of family life (loving relationships and raising children); but societies can differ on how to do this most effectively for their people (with perhaps arranged marriages in some places). Many cultural differences are experiments in living that Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  14 Part 1: Popular Metaethics test different ways to promote common objective values (like healthcare for all at an affordable price). Often cultures can learn from each other; so if we have a problem with weak family life or expensive healthcare, we might study other cul- tures who handle these issues better. Moral realism can accept strong principles about human rights. It can hold that hurting people because of their race is objectively wrong – and that any society that approves of this needs to change. CR cannot accept such things. Respecting a range of cultural differences doesn’t make you a cultural relativist. What makes you a cultural relativist is the claim that anything that’s socially approved must thereby be good (including hurting people because of their race). (6) CR does little to establish common norms between societies. As technology shrinks the planet, moral disputes between societies become more important. Nation A approves of equal rights for women (or for other races or religions), but nation B disapproves. What is a multinational corporation that works in both societies to do? Or societies A and B have value conflicts that lead to war. Since CR helps very little with such problems, it gives a poor basis for life in the twenty- first century. Maybe moral realism can do better. 1.5 Product of culture Here’s Ima Relativist’s second argument – and a stricter formulation: My product of culture argument begins by seeing that societies create value systems and teach them to their members. We shudder at the idea of infanticide, because we were taught to shudder; if we had been brought up in ancient Rome, we’d think of infanticide as perfectly fine. Societies create different styles of clothing, different types of food, different ways of speaking, and different values. The clothing styles and the values of another culture aren’t objectively right or wrong; they’re just different. No products of culture express objective truths. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. All moral beliefs are products of culture. No moral beliefs express objective truths. Again, both premises are doubtful. Against premise 1, some products of culture express objective truths. Every book is a product of culture; and yet many books express some objective truths. Every statement (since it’s expressed in a human language) is a product of culture; and yet many statements express objective truths. So too, a moral code could be a product of culture and yet still express some objective truths about how people ought to live. Against premise 2, it’s too simple just to say “All moral beliefs are products of culture.” Yes, our culture greatly influences our moral beliefs, even though we may reject some cultural norms. But other factors contribute much to our moral thinking, such as: Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Cultural Relativism 15 Individual differences. Individuals, based on their own thoughts, feel- ings, and experiences, may form moral beliefs that diverge from those of the larger group. Logic. When society teaches us a pair of logically incompatible norms, rationality may push us to reconsider both norms and reject one. Biology. To promote our survival, evolution built into us certain social instincts (like the golden rule and concern for the group), as it did for other social animals (like wolves and honey bees). Religion. Genuine religion can call us to a higher standard than does society, for example to love everyone instead of just our group. Developmental psychology. The psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (§1.9) claims that people of every culture develop moral thinking through set stages. CR is an immature conformism typical of teenagers; as we grow out of this, we begin to think for ourselves about morality more rationally. So not all social scientists accept CR; many oppose it. CR is one-sided in considering only culture and ignoring other factors (like indi- vidual differences, logic, biology, religion, and developmental psychology). 1.6 No neutral standpoint Here’s Ima Relativist’s third argument – and a stricter formulation: My no neutral standpoint argument points out that there’s no neutral standpoint for arguing against another culture’s values. Scientific issues can be decided by experiments; if someone thinks heavy objects fall faster than light ones, we can drop objects of different weights and see which ones hit the ground first. Moral issues aren’t like this. When we argue about ethics, we just assume the values of our own culture. There’s nothing objective here. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. No belief that can’t be strongly defended on culturally neutral grounds is objectively true. All moral beliefs are beliefs that can’t be strongly defended on culturally neutral grounds. No moral beliefs are objectively true. Again, both premises are doubtful. Against premise 1, there may be truths that we have no solid way of knowing about. Did it rain on this spot exactly 500 years ago today? There’s some truth about this, but we’ll never know it. Only a small percentage of all truths are knowable. So there could be objective moral truths, even if we had no solid way to know them. In addition, premise 1 is self-refuting, assuming that it itself can’t be strongly defended on culturally neutral grounds. Against premise 2, there may be strong, transcultural ways to argue ethical Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  16 Part 1: Popular Metaethics beliefs. Chapters 7 to 9 try to give a way to reason about ethics that would appeal to intelligent and open-minded people of practically every culture – thus doing for ethics what scientific method does for science. So Ima’s attack on objective values fails. But this isn’t the end of the matter; the dispute over objective values is important and will keep reappearing. 1.7 Tolerance CR seems to promote tolerance; but CR, in an intolerant society, supports intoler- ance. Suppose that most people in our society approved of extreme intolerance toward other cultures (so foreigners are continually ridiculed). If we followed CR, we’d have to conclude that this intolerance is good (since it’s socially approved). In addition, CR is intolerant toward minority views of our own culture, since such views are automatically wrong. Rebels who say “X is socially approved but bad” are always wrong (since social approval decides what’s good). CR blocks social change, since it outlaws disagreeing with socially accepted norms. Moral realism can provide a firmer foundation for tolerance. It can claim that, in general, we ought to respect and allow actions, beliefs, and attitudes of other individuals and cultures, and dissenting views in our own culture, even when these differ from our own views.1 1.8 CR’s challenge Cultural relativism challenges ethics: How can we reason together about ethics in a multicultural world with conflicting value systems? We can’t just assume that our values are correct and argue from this. But then what can we appeal to? In criticizing CR, we appealed to consistency. CR has implications (about con- formity, racism, global warming, and moral education) that are difficult to accept. And its defense (using the cultural differences, product of culture, and no neutral stand- point arguments) is based on faulty ideas. Those who find CR appealing will likely find CR impossible to hold consistently once they understand it. Appealing to consistency can be powerful in moral matters; instead of using our premises against an oppo- Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. nent’s view, consistency uses the opponent’s premises against the opponent’s view. CR in some situations leads to self-contradictions: Our society may have inconsistent norms. Early America insisted that (1) all people have a right to liberty and (2) black people who are slaves have no right to liberty. Then CR makes us accept self-contradictions. Our society may disapprove of automatically following what’s socially approved – while CR requires us to do this. Suppose you’re in Congress and your society disapproves of flip-flopping (changing your beliefs to 1 “In general” permits exceptions. We shouldn’t respect or allow hateful Nazi racist actions. And we should correct our children when they say “I hate people of such and such a group – because they’re all …” (giving a false stereotype). Still, in general, tolerance should rule. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  22 Part 1: Popular Metaethics 7. How does CR apply to racism, global warming, and moral education? (1.3) 8. What is moral realism? Why does Ima reject it? (1.4) 9. What are problems with Ima’s cultural differences argument? Mention a few ways that Ima distorts cultural differences about morality. 10. What are problems with Ima’s product of culture argument? (1.5) 11. What are problems with Ima’s no neutral standpoint argument? (1.6) 12. Does CR necessarily lead to tolerance toward other cultures? How might moral realism provide a firmer basis for tolerance? (1.7) 13. What is CR’s challenge for ethics? (1.8) 14. Sketch Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and how CR fits in. (1.9) 15. Explain Gilligan’s view that morality is gendered. (1.10) 16. What are some types of relativism? (1.11) 1.14 For further study Do the EthiCola exercise (see Preface) for “Ethics 01 – Cultural Relativism.” The Benedict, Gensler-Tokmenko, Kohlberg, and King readings in the companion anthology (Ethics: Contemporary Readings, Gensler-Spurgin-Swindal) fit with this chapter. For defenses of cultural relativism by prominent anthropologists, see Bene- dict’s brief “A defense of cultural relativism” and Sumner’s longer Folkways. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” shows moral realism in action. Kinnier’s “A short list of universal moral values” summarizes recent research about culturally universal values. For Kohlberg’s approach, see his brief “A cognitive-developmental approach to moral education” or his longer Essays on Moral Development. For Gilligan’s approach, see her In a Different Voice. The Bibli- ography at the end of the book has information on these works. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  2 Subjectivism Subjectivism (SB): “X is good” means “I like X.” Pick your moral principles by following your feelings. In this chapter, Ima Subjectivist defends subjectivism (that moral beliefs describe how we feel) and Ima Idealist defends the ideal-observer view (that moral beliefs describe how we’d feel if we were fully rational). We’ll also consider objections. 2.1 Ima Subjectivist My name is Ima Subjectivist. I’ve embraced subjectivism (SB) as I’ve come to see that morality is deeply emotional and personal. In my anthropology class, we all came to accept cultural relativism (CR) – the view that “good” means “socially approved.” Later I saw a big problem with CR, namely that it denies us the freedom to form our own moral beliefs. Moral free- dom is very important to me. CR would force me to accept all of society’s values. Suppose I found out that most people approve of racist actions; then I’d have to conclude that racist actions are good. I’d contradict myself if I said “Racism is socially approved but not good.” CR is repulsive because it imposes the answers from the outside and denies my freedom to think for myself on moral issues. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Growing up requires that we question our inherited values. Initially, we get values from parents, peers, and the wider society. But then we grow into adult- hood and question the values we’ve learned. We might accept these values, reject them, or partly accept them and partly reject them. The choice is up to us. Cultural relativists are right that “good” is a relative term; but it’s relative not to society but to the individual. When I say “This is good,” I’m talking about my own feelings – I’m saying “I like this.” My value judgments are about how I feel, not about how society feels; so when I say it’s bad for people to act in racist ways, I’m saying that I’m against it. We could call my view “subjective relativism.” Moral freedom is part of the process of growing up. We expect children to parrot the values they were taught; but adults who do this are stunted in their growth. We expect adults to think things out and form their own values. CR doesn’t let us do this; instead, it makes us conform to society. For my family, drinking was forbidden and thus “socially prohibited.” For my Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  24 Part 1: Popular Metaethics college friends, drinking heavily was cool and thus “socially demanded.” CR says to do what my society tells me – but which society? Should I follow my family or my friends? SB says to follow my feelings. So I thought about the conflicting norms and the reasons behind them. My family wanted to guard against the excesses of drinking, while my friends used drinking to promote sociability. I like both goals, and I thought about how best to promote them. After reflection, my feelings became clear. My feelings said to drink moderately. Heavy drinking may be “cool” (socially approved), but it often leads to fights, hangovers, alcoholism, unwanted pregnancies, and traffic deaths. I don’t like these, and so I’m against heavy drinking. I say it’s bad. Some of my friends drink too much because this is socially approved. They behave like children. They blindly follow group values instead of thinking for themselves. I said “X is good” means “I like X.” Some prefer another emotional term, like “feel positively about” or “desire”; I won’t worry about which term is the most accurate. “X is bad” likewise means “I dislike X.” And a similar analysis applies to which goals are intrinsically good, which character traits are virtuous, or which moral rights we have. My feelings decide how I answer such questions. The truth of SB is obvious from how we speak. We often say “I like it, it’s good.” The two phrases mean the same thing. And we ask “Do you like it? Do you think it’s good?” Both ask the same question but in different words. My roommate objects that we can say that we like things that aren’t good. So I say “I like smoking but it isn’t good.” But here I shift between evaluating the immediate satisfaction and evaluating the consequences. It would be clearer to say “I like the immediate satisfaction from smoking (the immediate satisfaction is good); but I don’t like the consequences (the consequences aren’t good).” Moral truths are relative to the individual. If I like it that people smoke but you don’t like it, then “It’s good that people smoke” is true for me but false for you. We use “good” to talk about our positive feelings. Nothing is good or bad in itself, apart from our feelings. Values exist only in the preferences of individual people. You have your preferences and I have mine; no preference is objectively correct or incorrect. Believing this made me more tolerant toward those who have different feelings and moral beliefs. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. My roommate thinks moral judgments make an objective claim about what’s true in itself, apart from feelings. But objectivity is an illusion that comes from objectifying our subjective reactions. We laugh at a joke and call it “funny” – as if funniness were an objective property. We have a feeling of strangeness about something and call it “weird” – as if weirdness were an objective property. Sim- ilarly, we like something and call it “good” – as if goodness were an objective property of the thing. We subjectivists aren’t fooled by this grammatical illusion. The objectivity of values (moral realism) is a myth and needs to be rejected. In practice, everyone follows their feelings in moral matters. Only we subjec- tivists are honest enough to admit this and avoid the pretense of objectivity. Reflect on how you react to this view. Do you have objections? Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Subjectivism 25 2.2 Objections to SB Ima Subjectivist gave us a clear formulation of an important approach to moral- ity. I agree with the importance of moral freedom and his rejection of CR. But I disagree with his analysis of “good.” And I think he needs to think more about moral rationality. A big problem is that subjectivism makes goodness depend completely on what we like. If “X is good” and “I like X” mean the same thing, then this reasoning is valid: I like X. X is good. Suppose that Ima Subjectivist’s irresponsible friends like to get drunk and hurt people. Then they can deduce that such actions are good: I like getting drunk and hurting people. Getting drunk and hurting people is good. This is bad logic (since what I like needn’t be good) and a crude way to think about values (since my feelings, which might fluctuate from hour to hour, could be egoistic or based on false beliefs). With SB, my likes and dislikes make things good or bad. Suppose that I liked hurting people; that would make it good to hurt people. Or suppose that I’m a teacher who likes to flunk students just for fun; my liking would make it good to flunk students just for fun. Whatever I liked would thereby become good – even if my liking came from stupidity and ignorance. And good and bad would change when my likes and dislikes changed; if I liked hurting people only on even days of the month, then hurting people would be good only on these days. Society would fall apart if everyone followed the subjectivist model of moral reasoning – where we do just what we like, regardless of how this affects other people. SB shows further weaknesses when we apply it to racism, global warming, and Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. teaching morality to children. (1) Racism. On SB, if I like hurting people of other races then hurting such people is good.1 Hitler manipulated people’s feelings and got them to hate others. So basing ethics on feelings, as SB does, doesn’t make a society resistant to dictators. We need some way to rationally criticize racist feelings and norms. (2) Global warming. On SB, whatever policy about energy and the environment I like is thereby good – even if my thinking is confused, ignorant, or selfish. So SB thinking could be very harmful to the planet and to future generations. (3) Teaching morality to children. On SB, we’d teach children to follow their feel- ings, to go by their likes and dislikes. We’d teach children that “I like bullying others and skipping homework – therefore these are good” is correct reasoning. 1 We need to use “I” examples. On SB, if I like racism then racism is good. But it needn’t be that if you like racism then racism is good (since “Racism is good” means “I like racism”). Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  26 Part 1: Popular Metaethics So SB has bizarre implications about moral education. It’s easy to poke holes in subjectivism. Why then does it seem so plausible? One reason is that my feelings tend to correspond with what I think is good. SB explains this: calling something “good” just means that I like it. But other expla- nations are possible; maybe I’m motivated to like what my mind discovers (by reason or religion) to be good. So other views can explain the harmony between feelings and moral judgments. But this harmony sometimes fails. I may like things that I think bad, such as hurting others. Morality is supposed to constrain likes and dislikes; the thought that hurting others is bad can keep me from doing it, although I’d like to do it. So we can’t identity “X is good” with “I like X.” Few philosophers today accept subjectivism. Some with SB tendencies have moved to emotivism (Chapter 5), which differs in a subtle way: Subjectivism: “X is good” means “I like X.” Emotivism: “X is good” means “Hurrah for X!” Emotivism says that moral judgments are emotional exclamations and not truth claims; this is much like SB but harder to refute. Others with SB tendencies have moved to the ideal-observer view, which takes “good” to refer not to our actual feelings but to how we’d feel if we were fully rational; this approach combines reason and feeling. We’ll hear about this view in the next section. Ima Subjectivist talked about our freedom to form our own moral beliefs. But he didn’t say how to use this freedom in a responsible way. He said we need to follow our feelings, but he didn’t say how to develop wise feelings. Our next view deals with these deficiencies by bringing in a richer view of moral rationality. 2.3 Ima Idealist Ideal-Observer View (IO): “X is good” means “We’d desire X if we were fully informed and had impartial concern for everyone.” Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. Pick your moral principles by trying to become as informed and impartial as possible, and then seeing what you desire. My name is Ima Idealist. I’ve embraced the ideal-observer view as I’ve come to see the need to combine feelings with reason in our moral thinking. Feelings and reason are both part of life; they should work together in every- thing we do. Consider grammar. Before I turn in an essay, I read it over looking for grammatical errors. My feelings alert me to such errors; my distress over a sentence tips me off that it may be ungrammatical. My feelings about grammar have been trained by reason – by rules and examples; so my sense of grammar combines feelings with reason. Football also requires feelings (which give you energy) and reason (about strategy and executing plays). Teaching requires feel- ings (positive feelings toward your subject matter and students) and reason (for Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Subjectivism 27 organizing and explaining the material). We need feelings and reason to be successful in practically any area of life, including moral thinking. You might know my roommate, Ima Subjectivist. He has some fine ideas, but they lack balance. He preaches “Follow your feelings.” This advice isn’t bad if you have wise and rational feelings; but it’s very bad if your feelings are foolish (e.g., ignorant or hateful). I followed Ima Subjectivist’s advice, and it led to problems. I followed my feelings about eating – and I gained fifty pounds. I followed my feelings about when to attend class – and I nearly flunked out of school. I insulted people when I felt like doing so – and I alienated myself from others. Now I don’t like what I made of my life. In retaliation against my room- mate’s bad advice, I put this sign on our wall, about how SB is self-defeating: If we do just as we like, we soon won’t like what we’ve made of our lives. We need to discipline our feelings instead of following them blindly. I used to like skipping class, over- eating, and insulting people; but I saw that these weren’t rational things to like, and so eventually I came to dislike them. My roommate was puzzled that we can say “I like smoking but it isn’t good.” He had a convoluted explanation of how this statement makes sense. My expla- nation is better. “Liking” is about our actual feelings; “good” is about how we’d feel if we were rational. Here our pro-smoking impulses conflict with what we’d feel from a rational perspective (which includes knowing and taking account of the harmful consequences of smoking). SB has a divided-self problem (which is something like CR’s subgroup problem). Toward the same activity we can have a complex mix of likes and dislikes. We might have feelings that incline us toward smoking (we like the taste, we’re moved by habit, we like to fit in with our friends who smoke, etc.) – and feelings that incline us against smoking (we dislike the health problems that smoking leads to, we dislike harming others by second-hand smoke, we dislike the cost, etc.). So if I’m to follow my feelings, then which feelings should I follow? Subjectivism doesn’t give a clear guideline here. Long ago, Plato (§2.7, c. 428–347 BC) proposed a solution to this divided-self problem: the rational (thinking) part should rule. That too is my answer. We need to ask: What do I like on the whole when I rationally reflect on all these partial likes Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. and dislikes? I need to explain how this rational reflection works. 2.4 Rational feelings This is still Ima. Since I think we need to combine feelings with rationality, my motto now is “Develop rational moral feelings first, and then follow your feel- ings.” But how can we develop rational moral feelings? I have two suggestions: Be informed: Base your moral feelings on a correct assessment of the situation. As far as possible, avoid factual errors and learn about cir- cumstances, alternatives, and consequences. Our moral judgments are less rational if they’re based on error or ignorance. While we can’t know everything, we can strive for greater knowledge. Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  28 Part 1: Popular Metaethics Be impartial: Make your moral judgments from an impartial stand- point that shows equal concern for everyone. Don’t be biased toward yourself and your group, but consider everyone’s good. We need impartial concern to regulate our selfish inclinations, so we can all live together in peace and harmony. Rational moral feelings are feelings that are informed and impartial. We could also express the IO view in terms of knowledge and (universal) love: “X is good” means “We’d desire X if we had maximal knowledge and love.” Moral judgments don’t describe our actual feelings, our momentary impulses, what we happen to like at the moment. Instead, moral judgments describe how we’d feel if we were fully rational. “X is good” means “We’d desire X if we were fully informed and had impartial concern for everyone.” This is called the ideal- observer view. On this view, we pick our moral principles by trying to be as informed and impartial as possible, and then seeing how we feel. Let me explain my view in another way. An ideal observer is an imaginary person of supreme moral wisdom – a person who’s fully informed and has impartial concern for everyone. To call something “good” means that we’d desire it (on the whole) if we were ideal observers. Of course, we’ll never be ideal observers, since we’ll always have some ignorance and bias. But the idea is useful, since it gives a vivid picture of moral wisdom and a way to understand the mean- ing and methodology of moral judgments. It gives us an ideal goal so that we can try to improve our moral thinking. 2.5 IO examples This is still Ima. I want to explain how my ideal-observer view works. Consider these arguments that are valid on subjectivism but invalid on my IO view: I like smoking. I like hurting people. Smoking is good. Hurting people is good. Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. IO would lead to “Smoking is bad” – since we’d be against smoking if we understood and reflected on the frightful things that smoking does to our bodies. And IO would lead to “Hurting people is bad” – since we’d be against hurting people if we were impartially concerned for everyone. Suppose you were elected to Congress; on what basis would you vote about proposed laws? On cultural relativism, you’d vote for bills that are socially accepted by the majority in your society (even if the majority is ignorant or short- sighted); because of subgroup ambiguity, “your society” might mean the country as a whole, the district you represent, your party, or something else. On subjec- tivism, you’d vote for bills that you personally like; of course, you might like them because you’re ignorant or bribed. On the ideal-observer view, you’d become as informed as possible about the bill (including how it and its alternatives would affect people) and as impartially concerned as possible for those affected by the Gensler, Harry J.. Ethics : A Contemporary Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ualberta/detail.action?docID=5178444. Created from ualberta on 2024-09-06 02:49:01.  Subjectivism 29 bill; you’d see what you favor on this basis. And if you were instead voting for government officials, you’d evaluate them largely on their decision-making abil- ity, in terms of their detailed knowledge and impartial concern for everyone. If the main job of government officials is to make good decisions, then they ought to be selected and judged on this basis. My approach clearly gives a better basis for democracy. Finally, let’s apply IO to three key areas: racism, global warming, and teaching morality to children. (1) Racism. In forming our beliefs on this, and in debating with Nazis, we’d first get clear on the facts (understanding how racism hurts people, how races have similar capacities when given the chance to develop these, how diverse races in many places have learned to live together in harmony, and so on) – and we’d avoid false stereotypes). Then we’d develop an impartial, equal concern for everyone, including those of every race. Finally, we’d see what we favor on that basis. Since being informed and impartial would lead us