Value-laden

I had a conversation with my good friend Richard which was a replay, really, of another conversation we had maybe a year ago… which may have been a replay of one yet further back.

Anyway, the point of contention was morality.

I was speaking of this as I had been reading James Hollis’ A Life of Meaning. I thought it might help with my shadow work project. In the audiobook, he asks the listener to list a couple of their virtues and then the opposite of those virtues; next to consider when the virtues have brought harm or the opposites have arisen in the listener’s life. The purpose of the exercise was to break down the ego’s narrow identification with its light side, as it were.

So, I had tried to think of what I would classify as my virtues. Now, I’m not being self-deprecating here, but I really couldn’t think of anything. People say I’m kind, and I often am…. But not always, I mean, I don’t think I’d DEFINE myself as kind or compassionate. I wear jeans a lot but I’m not sort of defined by jeans-wearing. I’m not entirely honest or trustworthy… Well, I am most of the time, but just like any other vaguely decent person. It’s not something that stands out. Generous? Moderately, but like any averagely giving type. What other virtues might I have? I considered tolerant, but I am very intolerant of intolerant people. Curious? Yes, but is that a virtue? Willing to consider both sides of the story and see the reasons and justifications on both sides, thereby not being hugely judgemental? Yes, I could say that for myself. But one could also describe it as 'inclined to sit on the fence'.

I wanted to ask Richard what he thought. He said, 'The only MORAL virtues are those that impact others.' Fair enough - hence curiosity is not a moral virtue. That was fine.

Then he got into the terrain we'd debated before. Richard says nothing is moral unless it DOES GOOD. Morality has to be enacted. Thinking a kind thought is irrelevant - only doing a good act matters. Now, I can accept this as a starting place, but Richard goes further: intentions don't matter; only the action. All that counts is the consequences.

There is a rigid pragmatism to this. In the accounting of a person's life, you don't need to know what they think or feel, just what they do. So, surely, the world would be better if full of simulations programmed to do good acts but with no inner life whatsoever. One problem is that if no one has any inner life, then what is the urgency to do them good? I mean, it's not going to ease their suffering, is it? I know, that's a reductio ad absurdem.

But it points toward one thing I think is wrong with this what I would regard as reductionist approach to morality: it fails to acknowledge our inevitably limited knowledge, our blindness of the whole stream of consequences resulting from an action. We give antibiotics to make people feel better and over time that leads to antibiotic resistant bacteria. We help a person feel confident enough to apply for and land a job they don't really want but feel they ought to apply for and can't really do without stress and frustration. We save the life of an animal who suffers for a prolonged period and then cannot be released into the wild and lives the rest of his life lonely and sad. These actions all do 'good' in a sense or in the short term, but bring negative consequences as well or in the long term. It is only that we meant well that lifts us from demon to human.

What is a good action? He says, one that has the best consequences. But, for whom and when and at what cost?

Me, I think we can't try to do good because we just don't know. So we have to resort to being good - and be guided by what a good person would do.

I suppose this sums up my argument against utilitarianism.

Also, I think there is more to 'the good' than simply the survival (and happiness) of humans (of course) and even than the survival and happiness of sentient beings. And not just because sentient beings are reliant on trees and soil and clean water and phytoplankton and so on. But also because there is value in something rather than nothing - because nothing has no value and something is qualitatively different; because there is value in life rather than non-life - because life has purposive action and where there is a purpose, a purpose can be impeded. There is value in forces, like gravity, and energy, like light or sound-waves, because they are part of the causal framework of being. There is value in being. Being an atom or a stone or a planet or a frog or a doe or a wolf or even a politician. There is value in feeling, because what is that if not a force or an energy? There is value in beauty and in music and in every muscle fibre in Buji's body.