Integrity and the Demandingness of Morality
Bernard Williams famously claims that utilitarianism is incompatible with the integrity of individual agents, and is therefore too demanding to be taken seriously. Because utilitarianism, at least in the actual world, would require very many people to abandon their ground projects (that is, the projects that provide agents with a coherent sense of their identity over time), Williams claims that living up to utilitarian demands would, for many agents, result in a degree of psychological fragmentation that morality cannot demand that agents subject themselves to. Morality must, on his view, permit each individual to act according to at least those elements of her self-conception that are essential to her sense of identity.
Among the elements of one's self-conception that might provide one with a sense of identity are moral commitments. Williams discusses the case of George, a chemist who is opposed to chemical warfare, and who could reduce the amount of suffering in the world by taking a job in a chemical warfare factory, because in doing so he would be preventing a more talented and less humanitarian chemist from filling the position. Williams claims that morality cannot require George to take the job, since doing so would conflict with his moral self-conception, and thereby threaten his identity. As Elizabeth Ashford points out, Williams must assume that George is not a utilitarian in order to make this claim; but this implicit stipulation does not threaten Williams' argument, since he could simply have stated explicitly George's anti-utilitarian commitments.
One utilitarian response to this argument, as Ashford points out, is simply to claim that George ought to change his moral beliefs, and thereby his moral self-conception, in order to align it with his actual, utilitarian, obligations. By taking agents' actual moral self-conceptions for granted, and viewing them as constraints on what morality itself can demand, Williams' view seems to, as Ashford puts it, "preclude the possibility of a moral theory's claiming that [an agent's actual moral self-conception is] mistaken."
So Williams' view, according to Ashford, cannot make sense of the fact that a slaveowner who lives in a society in which slavery is widely thought to be permissible, and whose sense of identity and moral uprightness is bound up with her position in society and reinforced by her fellow citizens approbation of her behavior, nonetheless has a strong moral obligation to abandon her slaveholding ways. She has an obligation, that is, to abandon a significant part of her existing moral self-conception. If fulfilling this obligation would undermine her integrity, in Williams' subjective sense of integrity, then her integrity simply is not something that is worth preserving, and it certainly cannot limit what morality can demand of her with respect to her slaveholding.
Now given that Williams believes that there is not much in the way of moral criticism that we are justified in leveling at individuals and societies of the past, he would likely simply deny that we can say that a slaveowner in the early 1800's was morally obligated to give up her slaves. But given that Williams focuses on individuals', rather than societies', moral self-conceptions as the basis for limiting what morality can demand, and given that he also believes that we always have an obligation to provide aid to those in immediate rescue situations, we can construct an example that shows that Williams' is committed to holding that individuals can sometimes be morally required to act against their moral self-conception, even if doing so will severely compromise their subjective integrity:
Ann is an extremely religious member of a church that teaches, among other things, that individuals should not aid others who are in immediate extreme danger, because such danger is God's way of expressing anger toward those who are deserving of it. It is up to God, according to the church, whether such people live or die, and it is not man's place to interfere with his determinations. One day Ann comes across a child drowning in a shallow pond, whom she could easily and with little cost rescue if she made the effort. But, because of her devotion to the church's teachings, fidelity to which is an important part of her deeply held moral self-conception, she chooses not to help, and the child therefore drowns.
It seems that in this case it is true that rescuing the child would undermine Ann's moral self-conception, and therefore her subjective integrity. But it is also clear, and Williams himself is committed to the view, that Ann is morally obligated to rescue the child.
Against Williams' view that one's existing moral self-conception can limit what morality can demand of her, Ashford suggests that moral requirements provide limits on what counts as an acceptable moral self-conception. I think that Ashford's slavery example, along with my case of the religious zealot, shows that this is clearly right, and that any attempt to limit what morality can demand of agents that appeals to the psychological cost of acting against existing self-conceptions, moral or otherwise, fail as a result. If there is a good argument for the view that there are limits to what morality can demand of individuals, it must appeal to considerations other than the effects of certain moral demands on agents' existing self-conceptions.
Among the elements of one's self-conception that might provide one with a sense of identity are moral commitments. Williams discusses the case of George, a chemist who is opposed to chemical warfare, and who could reduce the amount of suffering in the world by taking a job in a chemical warfare factory, because in doing so he would be preventing a more talented and less humanitarian chemist from filling the position. Williams claims that morality cannot require George to take the job, since doing so would conflict with his moral self-conception, and thereby threaten his identity. As Elizabeth Ashford points out, Williams must assume that George is not a utilitarian in order to make this claim; but this implicit stipulation does not threaten Williams' argument, since he could simply have stated explicitly George's anti-utilitarian commitments.
One utilitarian response to this argument, as Ashford points out, is simply to claim that George ought to change his moral beliefs, and thereby his moral self-conception, in order to align it with his actual, utilitarian, obligations. By taking agents' actual moral self-conceptions for granted, and viewing them as constraints on what morality itself can demand, Williams' view seems to, as Ashford puts it, "preclude the possibility of a moral theory's claiming that [an agent's actual moral self-conception is] mistaken."
So Williams' view, according to Ashford, cannot make sense of the fact that a slaveowner who lives in a society in which slavery is widely thought to be permissible, and whose sense of identity and moral uprightness is bound up with her position in society and reinforced by her fellow citizens approbation of her behavior, nonetheless has a strong moral obligation to abandon her slaveholding ways. She has an obligation, that is, to abandon a significant part of her existing moral self-conception. If fulfilling this obligation would undermine her integrity, in Williams' subjective sense of integrity, then her integrity simply is not something that is worth preserving, and it certainly cannot limit what morality can demand of her with respect to her slaveholding.
Now given that Williams believes that there is not much in the way of moral criticism that we are justified in leveling at individuals and societies of the past, he would likely simply deny that we can say that a slaveowner in the early 1800's was morally obligated to give up her slaves. But given that Williams focuses on individuals', rather than societies', moral self-conceptions as the basis for limiting what morality can demand, and given that he also believes that we always have an obligation to provide aid to those in immediate rescue situations, we can construct an example that shows that Williams' is committed to holding that individuals can sometimes be morally required to act against their moral self-conception, even if doing so will severely compromise their subjective integrity:
Ann is an extremely religious member of a church that teaches, among other things, that individuals should not aid others who are in immediate extreme danger, because such danger is God's way of expressing anger toward those who are deserving of it. It is up to God, according to the church, whether such people live or die, and it is not man's place to interfere with his determinations. One day Ann comes across a child drowning in a shallow pond, whom she could easily and with little cost rescue if she made the effort. But, because of her devotion to the church's teachings, fidelity to which is an important part of her deeply held moral self-conception, she chooses not to help, and the child therefore drowns.
It seems that in this case it is true that rescuing the child would undermine Ann's moral self-conception, and therefore her subjective integrity. But it is also clear, and Williams himself is committed to the view, that Ann is morally obligated to rescue the child.
Against Williams' view that one's existing moral self-conception can limit what morality can demand of her, Ashford suggests that moral requirements provide limits on what counts as an acceptable moral self-conception. I think that Ashford's slavery example, along with my case of the religious zealot, shows that this is clearly right, and that any attempt to limit what morality can demand of agents that appeals to the psychological cost of acting against existing self-conceptions, moral or otherwise, fail as a result. If there is a good argument for the view that there are limits to what morality can demand of individuals, it must appeal to considerations other than the effects of certain moral demands on agents' existing self-conceptions.
posted by Brian Berkey at 12:58 AM
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18266847&postID=8736425892862724674&isPopup=true Comments:
I'm more familiar with Scheffler's arguments against utilitarianism, for principally the same reasons.
If humans were "calculators," we could calculate the consequences impartially, and through some Boolean string, produce the "best" or most "useful" consequence. Likewise, if humans were "calculators," we could take Kant's three-step categorical imperative, devise a universal law, and act on that law as if nothing else mattered.
But humans are not "calculators." We may reason, we may even use Boole's Laws of Thought, but not all of us can regard a stranger in Calcutta with the same "veil of ignorance" that we regard a family member. For one very important reason: We are not biologically disposed to do so.
Kin selection is just the obvious negation of that impossibility. Physical proximity also makes such hypotheticals impossible. If someone in Calcutta and someone in San Francisco are in near unequal danger, since I live in San Francisco, the individual in San Francisco is close enough for me to act on his/her danger, even if the individual in Calcutta is a more precarious danger, in greater need. I may try to think globally, but I act locally. I choose where my act is most likely to affect the most good based on nothing more than physical proximity.
If my "tribe" (put in any associated identities) is presumably at the "same" risk as some other "tribe" to which I am not a member, even at less risk, I'll chose to help the tribe I belong to, not one I may or may not care on wit about.
And no amount of "veil of ignorance" will change these proclivities. For one thing, it's not in our biologies. For another, no "veil" can ever be claimed. We are never capable of such a "veil." The only "impartiality" I can muster is that of Smith's Impartial Spectator, which is my construct, not someone else's, to reflect on my actions. Any other claim to impartiality, even in the courts of justice, is always to some way or another impartial. It's not how we are biologically constituted, and no amount of deceptive devices will over ride our biological natures.
Darwin not only trumps god, he trumps the impartial calculus.
GS,
First, the truth of utilitarianism would not require us to be, or think like, calculators; sophisticated consequentialists such as Railton have defended the view that we ought, for consequentialist reasons, to develop dispositions to act out of motives such as love and loyalty in at least some cases.
On your point about physical proximity, while it's true that we're often in a much better position to help those who are nearer to us, the extent of the suffering around the world makes it the case, I think, that we ought to (and can) be doing much more for the world's worst off people.
Impartiality of the sort that consequentialist theories require may not be wired into our brains, but neither are many of the prejudices that lead us to act in unacceptably partial ways. We can debate the extent to which we are biologically programmed to act selfishly or to give significant priority to our children, but "tribal" identity, as you put it, which I take to suggest categories such as race, ethnicity, national origin or nation of citizenship, is not any part of our biology. We are conditioned by social and cultural factors to give weight to these largely arbitrary and socially constructed categories, and consequentialism rightly tells us that they carry no moral significance. Nothing in my DNA makes me an American rather than a Mexican or an Iraqi, so no appeal to biology can ground a justification for giving greater weight to the interests of compatriots.
Your final paragraph is certainly worth reiterating. Just because there are "biological" facts, does not mean we cannot "adjust" for the less pleasant ones. Only a Social Darwinist, like Spencer, would make such a claim. Indeed, Huxley's "Ethics and Evolution" makes precisely the opposite "adjustment" recognizing implicitly the Fact/Value distinction.
But our biologicalhuman nature cannot be ignored or simply over-ridden by rational fiat. We have limits, like all material things. Even our imaginations, as creative as they are, cannot encapsulate every possible conception.
One of the significant objections I have with all consequentialist schemes is that they ignore the first biological law of Darwinism: Humans are a hugely diverse species. We're not, as Boethius posited, "rational animals." We are political, social, linguistic, emotional, pleasure-seeking, bonding, pain-avoiding, reasoning, etc. etc. etc. "animals." While our linguistic and reasoning and emotional abilities seem to separate and distinguish us from other species, even those few variables alone, if they were the only variables, would still make human complexity and diversity the norm -- as well as normative. Indeed, when one human posits the "answers," some of us doubt enough of the diversity have been considered.
Every consequentialist scheme, esp. utilitarianism, seems to ignore this salient point. We can let Kant and Benthan off the hook, but Mill? Hare? And of all people, Singer? One might mistake the utter simplicity of the utilitarian calculus and its maxim as a simple "solution" to this diversity, offering the simplest of maxims. But as you well know, it is not that simple. Hare's contortions to avoid "vulgar" utilitarianism should put that "simplicity" claim to rest. When Kant's three-step categorical imperative becomes plausible, however supremely rational, we'll still have to ignore human diversity to achieve their "answers."
Yet, on some level, as complex entities, simple ideas and maxims are usually the most socially useful. Some of us can discuss all sorts of nuances to fine-tune our ideas and thoughts, but most do not. Walk outside Moses Hall into Sproul Plaza and inquire of the smartest students on the West Coast what supererogation means? You know. I know. But most do not, nor do they care.
For many of the same reasons, some individuals have no "use" for either ethics or morality. Yet, one would assume few features are more valuable to human flourishing. But, with all the divine commands (that are largely nonsense), all the nuances of a hyper-rational calculus that Hare's utilitarianism entails, or Rawls' adaptation of Kant's categorical imperatives to a "theory of justice," or that Singer's absurdities yield -- that seem to require the most acrobatic mental masturbations and impossibilities -- sometimes simplicity is either over-simplistic or over-generalized, and often both.
On the other hand, you want to conflate the ethical/moral divide, and I want to preserve it, for these very reasons. Most individuals understand the distinction, and why it may be important. They can agree on one thing: No one can harm another. Surprisingly, that's progress. Yes, it's a "limit," a "containment," but it always produces "agreement." It may not be sufficient, but it's necessary. And no one quarrels with it. Some may try a special pleading to exempt "this" or "that" harm, but it cannot be sustained without self-evident contradictions.
Once that step is secured, then the next (for we virtue theorists) is to propose ethics. Surprisingly, as difficult as Aristotle's thought may seem to the novice, his ethics in plain English does not require an elite patriarchical Athenian society to comprehend, as even Aristotle (and Nussbaum) contends. Imagine the individual who comprehends instantly that virtue is the "mean" between excess and deficiency (vice), after citing a mere few examples? What? No divine commands? No labyrinthine Laws of Reason and implausible maxims? No nuances that no one but moralists understand? Subjective ethics is a virtue?
Yes, but it also takes into account our human diversity, in fact it prizes it, unlike all those hyper-rationalist schemes of the social planners deluxe. The ones who "know" better than you and I, the ones who devised the calculus, input the variables, and still came out wrong. -- Must have forgot a variable in the "vulgar" calculations. Back to reformulations of the nuances to the Maxim and its Calculus.
The wonderful appeal of virtue theory (ethics) is that it has no certitudes, no calculus diviners, no intermediaries who decide in others' stead, on the arrogance that they lack the proper nuances and calculations that should obtain if the consequences are all that matter in a rational calculation. Because, the consequences alone are yet another reductionism that again leads to some arbitrary "good" that is maximized by some arbitrary "calculus" according to a "maxim" that is so ambiguous that even Hitler could use it, as did Stalin, as did Pol Pot, Mao. Even Lyndon's Great Society thought he had it all calculated.
But then look who the Special Pleaders are: The very utilitarians who decry "vulgar" utilitarianism (not unlike the Marxists who decried "vulgar" Marxism). In the public's mind, it's ALL VULGAR, special pleadings and all. Why? Because at their roots, they all prize the abstract rather than first biological law of Darwin: Diversity. Not that they're Social Darwinists, as Lysenko himself proved, but they answer to a "higher" call, as did Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin in assailing their fellow Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson for his fidelity to the truth of human diversity, which as Marxists first, and as biologists second, Gould and Lewontin could not "permit," since human perfectability denied is Darwin's adaptionism affirmed. The "truth" of Wilson's defense of adaptationism finally prevailed, despite Gould's and Lewontin's "orthodox" Marxism. Another rationalist wrong?
In summary, hyper-rationalism is not a "human" quality. It, too, is a perversion of human diversity, no less than Spencer's Social Darwinism, the Harvard Marxists' orthodoxy, and whoever else hails or espouses otherwise. If humans are by nature diverse, then they'll never "fit" some hyper-rationalist's scheme of the "truth," of a "calculus," of a "rational animal," because, it's all too reductionistic. It may not mean no "means to an end," but it does mean "not by YOUR means alone."
If "efficiency" (utility) were itself a self-sufficient raison d'etre, as former-Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan claims, then the economists have joined the reductonist's bandwagon of utilitarians and the Bush Administration. Utility is neither sufficient nor necessary, where human diversity is concerned. Therein your predecessors like Williams and Scheffler glimpsed a "truth" that denialists are wont to insist they "know better." Many of us DOUBT it seriously.
If utility and consequences matter most, then humans don't. Because diversity is not only a biological norm, it is also normative. Not that facts beget values, but values that deny the facts have no value.
Interesting and provocative.
"Now given that Williams believes that there is not much in the way of moral criticism that we are justified in leveling at individuals and societies of the past, he would likely simply deny that we can say that a slaveowner in the early 1800's was morally obligated to give up her slaves."
Well if you consider Williams' view on cultural relativism (for example in the article "the truth in relativism") it might as well be that we can't appraise the system of beliefs of the slaveowner and therefore can't say that he was morally obligated (it being a notional confrontation).
Anyway, this doesn't disturb what you where writing in any way.
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