Philosophy is real.  It is dynamic.  It is dangerous.

I shouldn't need to defend myself.  In fact I don't intend to.  I have absolutely no reason to want to.  Life is exciting.  It is also impossibly difficult.

Yesterday I was bashed for sunbathing naked on a beach.  I guess that is a reason for everything.  Including the motif I have appended to the top of this page.

I hope there is something useful here.

A Modern Ethic.
In four parts.
Part One.
Part Two.
Part Three.
Part Four.

A MODERN ETHIC.

By Noel S E Conway.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

An introduction to Best-Interest Utilitarianism.

 

As it Begins.

Writers struggle to explain the difference - if there is one - between ethics and morality.  For the purposes of this essay morality is considered to be something which is imposed on us from outside, whereas an ethic arises from within, whether from our reason or our passions I will let the reader decide.

I finally understand existentialism - if I do.  Without god everything is permissible, it leaves me alone to choose.  I am free.  But it is a terrible freedom.  It is not a joyous freedom.  And why not?  Why does Sartre demand that my freedom is not a passion, not a driving force?  This seems strange to me.  Should not freedom rather be exhilarating, like jumping off a cliff is exhilarating, sure it is dangerous, but it is a leap into the unknown, a perilous leap, a commanding leap, it is, after all, a permissible leap.

So I don't very much like Sartre's forlorn freedom.  I think freedom has much more to offer than to damn you.  Freedom is itself a resurrection, a salvation, a coming to be.

Meta Ethics.

 

What has this got to do with ethics, you might well ask.  Well I came across this rendering of existentialism in a reading on Ethics.  The question moral ethicists have worried themselves silly over is: where does an ethic come from?  It seems to me to be the age old nature versus nurture discussion.  Put it another way:  Where do I start and the world end?  What is me and what is not me?  Isn't that what we want to know?  After all, if ethics is a matter of reason, of the intelligence, then it is a matter of learning and upbringing.  It is also limited to our rationality, to our ability to rationalise, whereas if ethics are intrinsic, say, and arise from our passions, or desires, then they are something else again, except, that is, where our passions and desires have been dictated to us through the world without, where they are a product of our learning and upbringing.

I love the examples that ethicists throw at us.  So here am I, throwing an example.  In the middle ages if I saw a mob of people throwing stones at a woman I would think nothing untoward was happening, indeed I would reason that she must be a contemptible being, and my passion and repulsion might be sufficiently aroused that I too would join with the mob in hurling stones at her.  Now let us think that it is a day like any other in Melbourne, 2009, and I see this same situation.  I would be shocked and horrified.  I would rush to protect the woman and chastise those throwing the stones, whatever she had done.  And this isn't just a cultural difference between the then and the now, it is something that is so ingrained in us that we would not think twice about our response, either then or now.  At least this is how it appears to me.

It is interesting, if we accept the above, to consider the idea of mob mentality where a paedophile may have moved recently to a neighbourhood after spending 20 years behind bars for the most terrible of crimes.  The news suddenly passes through the community that a terrible convicted paedophile now lives in their midst, and a mob mentality takes hold, scores of people go to his house and start hurling stones and abuse at him.  If I was an innocent passerby I would naturally be horrified by this conduct, knowing not anything about the case.  Is it right that after acquiring the facts I should be no less horrified?  And yet, presumably, I would be less horrified.  I would probably consider that the monster deserves what he is getting.  And yet the situation remains exactly the same, but our attitude toward it has changed.

As I have said, I love these instances, these examples, which moralists feed us.

I'm going to hurry on from the meta-ethical question, where do ethics arise from, because it is something which we cannot reasonably answer.  Where does the world stop and I begin?  That is what you would have to answer to provide a true understanding of the question of meta ethics.

So let's be brutal and move on.  There are a number of ethical theories.

Utilitarianism! Bah! Humbug!

When, thirty years ago, I first came across utilitarianism, I was appalled.  It was such a modern way of dealing with a problem.  By modern I mean so 18th century, and so very British.  The greatest happiness for the greatest number!!!  It shames me to think that great thinkers could not only believe this, but build modern government institutions based upon it.  And not only modern government institutions, but economic foundations.  Where happiness is ascribed a value, that is greater than any other value.  Where the greatest number is determined as an imperative, and damn the rest!  Aldous Huxley, bless his soul, dealt very well with the concept of the greatest happiness in Brave New World.  Give everyone soma and you have achieved your desired end.  But as the noble savage asks us, what of art, what of the sciences?  Even if happiness is a desired end, it takes more than soma to give it us!  There may be higher levels of happiness to be experienced by going through a moderate amount of pain.  Do you think the exhilaration of an artist at mastering their work is not achieved without great struggle and pain before s/he gets there?

So let us pass quickly over the greatest happiness for the greatest number, or if you want to say it so, pleasure over pain.  Modern utilitarianism has taken a different approach.  Modern utilitarianism talks about something called preferences.  It says a lot about what makes humans special, and one of those special things about us is that we can conceive of ourselves, we can reflect upon the past and contemplate a future, and in so doing, we have certain preferences which we consider important to ourselves, and to others who also enjoy preferences.  Let's not debate here about what makes a person, let's just consider the preference imperative.  What makes preferences special?  It appears that preferences are special because only humans have them.  Nonetheless I contend that a fish that is happily foraging in the sea has a contrary desire to the hook in its mouth that is dragging it away from where it wants to be.  Now the value of the fishes' desire may be less than the value of the desire of the man with the rod, but nonetheless, I contend that both of these, the man and the fish, have a desire that ought to be valued.  So it is not so that our preference is valuable because we have it, it is valuable because we give it value.

Relativism.

 

And isn't this a very subjectivist view of ethics?  An absolute subjectivist - and can we consider the idea of an absolute subjectivist?! - holds that there are no moral truths, just things that we express as our feeling about a thing.

On a train recently I overheard a man say "Graffiti harms society."

Now this is, according to a subjectivist, neither true nor false, but simply an expression of his antagonism towards graffiti.

Nonetheless it is a moral argument, unlike if he had said "Graffiti!!!"

The argument is represented as:

Graffiti harms society.
What harms society is bad.
Therefore graffiti is bad.

I challenged him on this point.  As we know, there is much that is attractive about some elements of graffiti.  It is not graffiti that is bad, but certain types of graffiti that are less desirable than some other types.  At least I take this to be the generally accepted view.

Debunking Preference Utilitarianism.

 

Okay, I've done my favourite thing, which is to go off at a tangent.  I like tangents.  You are able to explore so much more with them.  I find morality strange.  And the idea that we should jointly adopt normative moral values seems very strange indeed. 

 

The universiality of ethics is presented as being an imperative.  If your view is not universal, then it fails as an ethical theory.  So I think Huxley sufficiently debunks classical utilitarianism, and with my struggling fish, rebelling against the inexorable pull of the line, I consider that preference utilitarianism is on shaky ground also.  But the main reason it is on shaky ground, is that it is a nonsense.  It is impossible - without being god - to weigh up all of the competing preferences in the world to arrive at an outcome that makes any sense to the world.  The formulae to do so is impossible to conceive. 

 

With the fish we know that every person and every creature has preferences.  Does the mountain prefer to exist?  You say that it does not confirm that it does.  I say that it does not deny it.  Cannot I accord it that preference?  I think we can accord inanimate natural things preferences.  They will be conferred preferences, but nonetheless I think that natural law suggests of itself that things have such intrinsic preferences.

 

Indeed, in the situation of a pregnant woman, are not the preferences of the woman taken to be also the preferences of the unborn?  And how can they not be?  For what she does to herself she also does to the infant inside of her.  And everything that I am, and everything that I do, accommodates a space that excludes you from it.  To that end I deny any possible preference you can have to be me or occupy my space. 

 

Put it another way, preferences are not sacrosanct, they have no special place, there is no reason to expect that they provide any moral basis whatsoever.

An Interest-Based Utilitarian Model.

Let us remember that I am untrained in this.  To that end I want you to consider a third type of utilitarianism.  The idea I have is of an "interest-based" form of utilitarianism, or to be even more exact, a "best-interest-based" utilitarianism model.  You can perhaps grasp from its title the idea that it embraces. 

 

The best utile factor in making moral decisions is to consider the best interests of those impacted by the consideration.  Not their preferences, but their interests.  It is both ends and means based, for it cannot consider the consequences without considering the interests of those affected in getting there.  It is by necessity a weighted model, it does not assume that everyone has the same interests.  Or that everyone has interests of equal value. 

 

A well fed man has a much less interest in a loaf of bread than a starving man, for example.  Even though the well fed man might be a glutton and greatly desire the loaf, whereas the starving man is a stoic who keeps a tight lid on his desires.  It is a judgment that starvation is generally undesirable, we can see societies where starvation takes a very heavy toll, and we can agree that a society that has starving citizens is less desirable than one that does not.  In the pleasure versus pain utilitarianism model the stoic man may not feel pain and may not be made happy by eating, even though it is in his interest to eat, but the glutton will definitely feel great joy at fulfilling his gluttonous appetite.  Under the preference model the fat man can hardly help himself, his preference to eat the loaf is exceedingly great, and the stoic man has no or little desire.  Nonetheless it is in the best interest that the starving man be fed.  His stoicism is no reason to deny him his loaf.  Now this is oversimplified, and as I have entertained this utilitarian model for less than a day, I expect to have it expediently dealt with.  Nonetheless I am happy that it is a first step.

Under the interest based utilitarian model rights play a limited role.  Autonomy does play a role.  There are no intrinsic rights that exist of themselves simply because we exist, we do not have a right to life, or to prosperity, or to property, or to freedom.

 

However we may have a form of right that is intrinsic to ourselves related to our autonomy.  As an autonomous human I may have a right not to be unnecessarily infringed upon by others, I might have a right to my body, and following from that, a right to my life that would be respected by a best interest model, considering that autonomy would be considered a best interest, as would the preservation of life, where it is in the best interests of the person involved, and of those others concerned with the life.  One's personal motives or preferences or desires are only important insofar as they may be considered as a part of the best interest principle.

The "right to life" is an expression of my autonomy.  Autonomy I think is a very strong principle.  It is the only thing that can confer rights.  And only those rights that are relate to my autonomy are rights that can be respected.  But rights in this sense are conferred by society.  Granted, I'm in troubled water here, I have presented a contradiction, between what is intrinsic, and what is conferred.  But the rights could not be conferred by society if they did not exist intrinsically as a part of my autonomy.  For example, different societies can respect my autonomy but will not necessarily confer the same rights.  In a developed country the right to an education might be necessary to fulfil my autonomy in that society, whereas in an undeveloped nation it might be necessary that I labour instead to feed the family, I do not have a right to an education, apart form all other considerations, unless it is conferred, but I am still an autonomous being with certain rights.

In a best-interest utilitarianism model, autonomy matters.  An individual's interests should rarely be traded off against the interests of another.  But it is not the individual interests, or the competing interests, that matters as much as the totality of interests that can be met, and the value that is accorded them.

Trolley and Transplant.

In utilitarianism a lot of time is spent considering Trolley and Transplant.  It is considered appropriate that we condemn the man in Trolley but not in Transplant.

I want to save my man in transplant, and I think the best interest model can find us a way to do this.  I cannot guarantee his life, but I can at least defend our right not to act.

Isn't it funny how in Trolley and Transplant the person at the switch or with the scalpel is not considered?  S/he is considered not to have any feelings in the matter.  It is just a situation where I will choose based upon whatever model to save either the one or the five.  It is considered that acting in this instance is no different to not acting.  There are not six people in these scenarios, there are seven.  The seventh is the decision maker.  And wherefore should I choose?  I measure very strongly the autonomy of myself, and also of the man that has in all good faith gone to the tunnel or gone to the operating theatre.  There is no difference.  There is no means and ends.  There is no "If the man was not there."  The man is there! 

 

Trading off one autonomous life, asking an autonomous being to trade off that life, seems, on the surface, to be too much to ask.  Nor can I conceive of anything significant that singles out the trolley case from the transplant case.  One death or five, and one person to decide, that is the question that is presented to us.

But it is even more difficult.  We are taught, and encouraged, almost championed, not to kill, not to murder our fellow human beings.  This is a very strong motive in itself not to act in the Trolley case.  It seems to me to be an overpowering motive.  Under my theory, of the best interest model, you might think it hard to find a reason not to act, to save the five, isn't the survival of five lives in the best interests of all?  Well no, it is not in the best interest of the one, and it is not in the best interest of the person asked to throw the switch.  And I have said before that values are weighted.  I think you could argue that the life of the one, the interest of the one, and the interest of the person not to have to kill, override the interests of the five, who after all might be foolhardy adventurers out for a thrill.  Well let them have their thrill.  And hold fast to your resolve.  And save the one. 

 

On the other hand, if the person at the switch values five lives over one, and has no hesitancy to throw the switch to save the five, then the best interest is resolved in the negative for the one, and he is condemned to his death.

First I Have a Mountain; Then I Have No Mountain.

There is a mountain near a seaside.  A very rich man owns property on the land based side of the mountain.  The mountain precludes his view of the seaside, moreover the mountain adds 30 minutes to his drive to the seaside.  Other people visit the seaside, and in the early morning they are kept in shade for approximately two hours each day because of the shadow of the mountain.  It would appear that it would be in everyone's best interests if the mountain did not exist.  And the very rich man has said that he would be very happy to pay the cost for the removal of the mountain.  Should they proceed?

It is not only humans that have interests, it is all things, both living and non living.  One might argue that the mountain has a right to exist.  This right does not exist of itself, but is conferred upon the mountain by the general consensus of humanity, due to respect for its autonomy.  This is the case even when the rest of humanity does not visit the area unless it wants to go to the beach in the early morning.  It is in the best interest of the existence of the mountain that it exist, notwithstanding the best interest of the rich man to access the beach with sight and vehicle more readily. 

 

The right to exist, like the right to life, is a very powerful right, and once conferred, only the most powerful reasons could be used to overturn it.  The mountain might be a rich source of uranium, and it might be considered that uranium is essential to ward off the worst effects of global warming.  Then the mountain's right to existence is compromised.  But surely not because a rich man wants a better view!

Now in a preference utilitarian model, or the classical utilitarian model, I think the mountain's existence is very precarious indeed.  Look at all those preferences and happinnesses possibly thwarted if we do not bulldoze the mountain!  But in the best interest scenario we have some very strong reasons for not bulldozing.  You yourself might think, why not bulldoze the mountain, but the best interest module does not lend itself to this thought.  Its emphasis in environmental matters is protectionism. 

 

This scenario has real instances that we can refer to.  In my previous town where I lived a number of people removed long standing stands of trees to improve their sight of the beach, although those trees existed on public land.  They were breaking the law, but it is only a minor infringement law, they have money, they will not have to carry a conviction, and they will pay the fine.  It is as if it were at no cost to themselves.  But at great cost to the existence of the trees.  There are real life situations in which our moral decisions matter.  We need to be very sure of ourselves in order to walk this moral landscape.  We need to develop an ethic that is able to be prosecuted in each instance.  What does Singer say about the mountain or the trees?  What does classical utilitarianism say about them?  What do you say about them?

 

(My personal thought is that perhaps all three forms of utilitarianism would save the trees, but only the best-interest model would save the mountain.)

The Crucial Weakness of the Best-Interest Utilitarian Model.

How is it possible to know in all instances what the best interest outcome is?  For example we might find uranium on the mountain.  Everyone is overjoyed, the rich man, the sun bakers, the uranium exporters, the miners, the economy, literally everyone - not withstanding those who oppose uranium on moral grounds per se.  Let us forget about them for a moment at least.  It appears that the best interest scenario is well met in this instance, and though by itself it will not prevent global warming it will certainly play a part in ameliorating its impact. 

 

Ten years later three nuclear power plants in and around Sydney fail, there is a massive exposure to uranium, millions either die in a very short space of time or acquire radiation based cancers, surely it would have been in the best interest of everyone if we had left the mountain to its uranium!?

 

Now this is not such a difficult situation as it would first appear.  In fact it is the exact debate that is going on and has been going on for six decades.  Is uranium too dangerous to consider mining or using?  The jury is still out here. The best interest utilitarian model is predicated on our ideas about things, if we think it is right to mine uranium and only good things will come of it, or there is a very minor chance that something bad might come of it, then we will judge that we should mine the uranium, and that would meet the best interest scenario.  The best interest model does not insist that you must know the future.  Rather it insists that you must know your own minds.  Remember, it is we who confer the mountain's right to exist.  We do that, not out of thin air, but for a reason, that is, because the mountain is already existing autonomously of us.  So we have it in us to deny that mountain also, but if we so do we want to be sure that we have very strong reasons for doing so.

I don't like uranium, but it is not for me to convince you of particular instances.  I want to demonstrate scenarios, and how they impact upon my ethical contention.

The Relevance of Contradictions.

People may say "Stop!  You already have too many contradictions," but my response is that I simply haven't finished explaining myself.  In the instance of rights, it might be said that there are no unequivocal rights, that is, rights that exist of themselves, but there are equivocal rights which exist by virtue of our being, and of the conference of rights by agreement. 

 

The conferment of rights happens as a respect of our autonomy.  Our autonomy may be as an individual, or as a group, or as a race, or as a sex, or as a nation, or as a species.  Which is not to say that rights can necessarily be taken away from a group, but we may well confer a particular right to a particular group.  For example, I live in a very White Anglo Saxon society. I don't need a right not to be discriminated against.  I can hardly be discriminated against.  But within that society there are groups which may well be discriminated against, and what best-interest teaches us is that we can confer a right not to be discriminated against, and refer it to a particular group, where we can see something that needs addressing.  The right does not exist of itself, or without the group, but is conferred by general consensus.  Or by whatever means the society takes to confer rights.  This is why each country should have a Bill of Rights, to confer rights that otherwise would not exist.  For if I confer upon the Jewish community a right not to be discriminated against based upon their Judaism, I could not confer that right if there were no Jews.  Rights exist because things exist, they do not exist of themselves.

The first right to be granted is the right to life, and the obvious person to grant that original right is the mother.  She has the capacity to deny that right to life, and she has the right to have that right.  It is her body.  It is her autonomy she is sacrificing for the sake of the child.  Or not.  To bring a child into the world is one of the greatest things a creature can do. 

 

We can assume that every species desires - although this word is inadequate - its own continuing existence.  That is why species procreate, even if this procreation is of itself, as it were, a natural compulsion of the environment for it to happen.  This represents the extraordinary autonomy of life.  And even in society each group wants to see its own interests pursued.  No race on earth has desired its own non-being.  But being of itself does not confer rights.  Humans confer rights.  Nature is rightless. 

 

It is humanity that is the noble savage, although when you look at an ape, and see clearly into its eyes, tell me that there is no nobility there and I will question you about it.  Nonetheless the point is made.  Humans are set apart.  We are the measuring stick of existence.  We have made ourselves so.  These are not moral statements, or ethical statements, but factual reflections.  Or show me a right that was not made by man.  Of course this discounts religion, and the Good Book, which is meant to be the Word of God.  But I am in the fortunate position of not having to go there. 

 

I think however, that if I refer back to the beginning, where I commented that according to Sartre "everything is permissible" where "god does not exist" we can reasonably argue that not everything is permissible.  And we know this, or we would not be bothered with ethical enquiry, except insofar as we might want to shoot down the ethicist for being hopelessly wrong.

Homosexuality, Beastiality, Paedophilia.

How does utilitarianism deal with the above three issues?  I understand classical utilitarianism to permit all three, and preference utilitarianism to permit the first two.  With a best-interest based form of utilitarianism, homosexuality would be permitted, but neither beastiality or paedophilia.  According to the best interest principle, there is no reason to suggest that it is not in the best interest of individuals to pursue their chosen sexuality.  Indeed it may be said that their sexuality is not chosen, but happens of itself, as it were, and it is not in the best interests of homosexuals to deny their sexuality or to not practice their sexuality, as Catholics insist they do, any more than heterosexuals should do likewise.  Homosexuals have sexual desires, they do not harm others by the practice of their sexuality, and there is little else to be said about the matter.  As long as they infringe no other person's autonomy not to practice homosexuality, they are free to practice away to their hearts content.

The same cannot be said for beastiality.  We recognise, as best-interest utilitarians, that other species also have rights.  They are unable to consent to any act of beastiality from a human.  Moreover in nature inter-species sexual activity is rare indeed.  It doesn't happen.  It is considered abnormal between species.  And I do not mean that humans consider it abnormal, I am saying that it is in point of fact abnormal between species, it is an aberration, it does not happen of itself in the natural world. 

 

Well I have already argued that humans are the yardstick of all things, why not in this instance?  Because we respect the autonomy of creatures, and confer rights to them.  Moreover I have said that when I at least look into the eyes of an ape I witness a certain level of nobility there.  It is inappropriate to deny those noble creatures the right to their own sexual activity amongst their own kind.  And it is not inappropriate because of this nobility, but because we recognise that they have rights, one of those rights is to not be interfered with. 

 

By interfere I do not only mean sexually.  I think best-interest based utilitarianism would have much to say about the conduct that goes on in laboratories all over the world where animals are involved.  Nor can it be argued that it is in the best-interest of the person who wishes to indulge in beastiality to so indulge.  It may well not be in their interest.  Their best interest might well be in being denied their desire, and educated about the moral wrongness of inter-species sexual activity.  Educated about the rights and nobility of apes and other creates of the earth.  Perhaps they could spend some time in an animal laboratory and see the lengths to which animals can be abused.

In the case of paedophilia, there can be no case for it.  A child is an autonomous being.  Once they have been conferred the right to life, they are protected from the depravity of others through rights which we confer.  A child cannot consent to sex.  That is not a moral fact, but an actual fact.  We know that we have given "consent" a meaning that cannot be conferred until a certain level of understanding and reflection is possible.  Consent by its very nature must be a comprehendible idea in the person imparting the consent.  Likewise sex between a carer and a mentally handicapped person is inappropriate.  Wherefore can consent be given? 

 

This is why consensual sex is considered to occur at the age of sixteen in most western democracies, because I take it this is considered to be the age at which a young person can legitimately give consent to sex.  According to custom this age may vary, it might be more appropriate to make it eighteen years of age, or fourteen, this is something which law makers must bust their brains over, given the best factual evidence they have, but so long as the child is unable to give consent, the autonomy of the child must be respected, the right of the child not to be violated must be respected, the paedophile has no case. 

 

And yet a classical utilitarian could argue that if both adult and child receive pleasure from the act, then it is okay.  A preference utilitarian would consider the preferences of society at large not to have child abuse, and would therefore not condone such activity.

 

Paedophiles believe that what they do is in the best interest of the child.  This is demonstrably false, as can be seen by the litany of very anxious, depressed, and otherwise unhappy people for whom child sexual abuse was the norm.  And of course the social and economic costs demonstrate clearly that the best interest of society as a whole is not achieved through the abuse of children.  Indeed it may be argued that the costs to society and individuals is so great that the punishment meted out to paedophiles ought to be much tougher.

Moral Philosophy.

Why moral philosophy?  Moral philosophy attempts to provide us with a basis for our conduct, and acts as a tool in our decision making.  It might help us arrive at the perfect political and economic institutions.  Of course in this sense 'best" is a very arbitrary term.  It is not like mathematics, where you input the numbers, consume them with formulae, and come to a final conclusion.  In some ways moral philosophy is our "best guess." 

 

The insistence upon a universal theory makes it difficult to pursue moral philosophy.  After all, if someone demonstrates to you one instance where your theory does not work, or fails to achieve the best outcome, then it is no longer universal.  And if it does not help us come to a decision, then it is not much of a theory at all.  But if it does help us get to a conclusion, then this conclusion is still only our "best guess," it is not an absolute conclusion like you might arrive at in mathematics.  The true test of the theory is whether or not it is consistent and can be applied to various - if not all - scenarios.

Why would anyone choose to be a moral philosopher?  You are bound to upset somebody.  The moment you begin you are upsetting the church, or religion generally, that generally believes all morality issues from God.  So according to the church unless you are examining why god chooses to consent to certain conduct, then you should leave it alone.  The church after all is concerned with how people conduct their lives.  But many of us are not church goers, and even many church goers accept that society and reason and our desires can play a part in the types of decision making we do.  Not everything is dictated by the church.  So there is a place for moral philosophy, the real test of a moral philosopher is as I stated before, is s/he consistent, and can it be applied in our daily life.  It's not much good having a philosophy, particularly an ethic, that has nowhere where it can be applied.

This is what is so annoying about Trolley and Transplant, they are tools for discussion rather than decision making.  In real life our circumstances are rarely as clear cut.  My good friend said to me, why are we considering cutting up one to save five, when we could just as easily, and at much reduced angst or outrage to our senses, cut up one of the five to provide for the other four?  And in trolley the train is not rushing down a dead end tunnel, you would yell, "Run for your lives, a train is coming," and hope for the best possible outcome.  I guess if you were mute it would be very frustrating indeed, but indeed, as Sartre has said, "You are free, so use your freedom to decide!" 

 

Not much of that seems to be much at all to do with a moral philosophy, but I have already said in the Trolley case that the most important person is you yourself, you matter in this case, your choice is the only one that matters and can have an impact upon the outcome, whatever you decide must be resolved in seconds, and you will weigh up all the possibilities, all the knowledge, and inherited customs and values, and so act, and you will be vindicated just because of that, because you were acting in the best interest as you saw it.  It is, after all, a best guess...

I think this does not diminish moral philosophy, it strengthens it.  A view is always strengthened when it is properly understood.  The lovely thing about philosophy is how often rash generalisations are stated and go unquestioned.  The idea that a view is always strengthened when it is properly understood is one such instance of this.  Whenever someone makes a generalisation, make sure you question it.  It is not in the best interest of philosophy for such things to go uncommented or unquestioned.  Nonetheless I think that truth in philosophy demands that we be true.  This is a tautology, but it is necessary.

We want to know what is right conduct.  This is another generalisation.  Most people want to get on with conducting their lives, they are not inclined to murder, or to hurt others, or to  intrude on the autonomy of others, people want to enjoy their freedoms and want others to be able to enjoy their freedoms also.  And it is the arbitration of freedoms that requires the rule of law.  People want government to interfere only insofar as this is best met.  All societies have government.  In tribal situations it may be a matter of elders and nothing more, as societies become more developed their political institutions often become more developed as well.  But if it could be so, people would prefer their government to be invisible, and to conduct their business with as little interference to one’s autonomy and freedom as possible.

When society seems to be providing good outcomes, all is well and good.  The police do their job, and people who make bad decisions are dealt with.  When the society is not producing such good outcomes government is perhaps much more visible, and perhaps acting contrary to the best interests of its citizens.  Then you have civil unrest and perhaps a change of government or a change of government institutions.  And so on it goes.  Morality is important because we construct our laws out of it.

Economic Models.

 

One such law is the economic base of society.  Of course there are several, if not many, laws that impact upon our economics.  Nonetheless the models of economics are really models of social conduct, or models of morality.  Within these models of economics there is of course room for many other aspirational moral norms, nonetheless the economic base of a society often dictates the morality of that society.  I'm not being very clever here, or explaining myself very well. 

 

For example, a free market economy believes that freedom of the individual is paramount and there should be as little government intervention in our daily lives as possible.  This is a very strong moral position, and impacts upon the laws of society, particularly in the recognition of things like property rights and personal liberties. 

 

A socialist economy, by contrast, believes that government should be heavily involved in the distribution of the market place, and the freedom of its citizens.  In the Soviet Union we saw firsthand a failed socialist experiment, and at present around the globe we are witnessing the failure of the free market, where the governments of many countries have been required to heavily involve themselves in the capitalist institutions of their societies.

The question a moralist has to ask is what system produces the best overall outcomes, and therefore the model of moral theory is important in determining the best system.  Thankfully, at least for the time being, I am not going to go there.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Understanding Ethical Enquiry.

Knowing Right from Wrong.

All ethical theory supposes that we can know right from wrong, whether absolutely, or empirically, or subjectively within the constraints of our being.

The question remains, is it possible to know right from wrong?  To begin with, is it possible to know?  That is, to acquire knowledge of any sort.  And if it is possible to know something, is it possible to know that we know?

Most people who have considered philosophy of any kind will appreciate the can of worms I have just opened, it is, after all, philosophy’s Pandora’s Box, where nothing is certain.

Of course it is not as if this question has not been pursued, ad infinitum, by many others before me.  And I don’t expect to add anything to the discussion, just to bring it to our attention once again. 

 

Descartes came in a roundabout way to absolute doubt, where he considered there could be no basis for any kind of knowledge, not even knowledge of when we are awake and when we are dreaming, let alone if there is a cat in our room that we are stroking affectionately.  And yet he found a way around this absurdum.  “I think, therefore I am.”  And so everything was resolved, so long as God was acknowledged as the creator.

Now many people have seen fit to tear Descartes to shreds, and for good reason, but if Descartes is torn to shreds, aren’t we then left with this doubt, this absence in knowing?  And we know that Sartre has said, without god we are ultimately free, but everything is permissible.  If everything is permissible then nothing can be morally condemned.  So do we have to choose between god and morality on the one hand and godlessness and immorality on the other?  If there is no knowable external reality can we really consider right and wrong as concepts that have any external reality?

I put forward the proposition that it is possible to know external reality.  But it is not possible to know that you know it, or if you do know that you know it, you cannot be sure in that knowledge, for you might be insane, or dreaming, or under the influence of drugs. 

Nonetheless you might actually know something, and does it really matter that you know that you know, or that you hope at least that your knowledge is based on something external in the world that you have observed and acknowledged the existence of? If you think that you know, isn't that just as empowering as knowledge per se, and if later you are proved wrong about your knowledge, then that is just a matter of further knowledge correcting a misapprehension you previously held. 

Most people know things, such as that the world is solid, even when a scientist will tell us that the world indeed is in flux.  What the scientist tells us doesn't matter, for, for our purposes, the fact that things seem solid is reason enough for our knowledge in the day to day.

Likewise we can posit that we can arrive at right and wrong, and though perhaps we cannot have absolute faith that we will not change our minds on acquiring further knowledge that impacts upon our knowledge or belief, nonetheless that we hold a view and deem it as true is sufficient for the day to day understanding of morality.  Let our scientists or philosophers tell us that morals are in flux!  Don't we already acknowledge that?  So the moral philosopher is hardly adding anything new, and we can carry on with our small amount of knowledge regardless

So we are assuming for the sake of argument that we can arrive at knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, and that what is important is how we get there.

For how we get there may well impact upon what we finally decide upon as being moral behaviour.  Or more precisely, good moral behaviour.  And this gets us back to best-interest-based utilitarianism.

Why utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism posits that the maximisation of positive outcomes is the best possible moral outcome in all situations.  So whilst utilitarians may argue about the measure of positive outcomes, vis. a vis. classical utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism, nonetheless both forms agree that maximising the positive or desirable outcomes is of paramount importance to critical moral thinking.

It is hard to justifiably argue against this.  If we have full knowledge, and are fully rational beings with the ability to arrive at correct conclusions, then arriving at conclusions that have the most benefit in totality is indeed, or seems to be, a desirable thing.  Utilitarianism commends itself to common sense, and unless we have sound reasons for supposing differently, we are compelled to consider utilitarianism as a sound basis for rational decision making within a moral framework. 

So there is a sense in which we are drawn to some form of utilitarianism, unless we are purely selfish or evil and only want to maximise our own outcomes irrespective of what harm it might cause others, or because we enjoy watching others suffer.  But it is important to remember that our considerations ought to be played out in the everyday, and in the everyday we think that people ought not to act totally selfishly where it inflicts pain or suffering on others, nor should people be diabolical criminals that enjoy inflicting suffering. 

We are everyday people who live in the real world.  Nor, it can be argued, can any world be legitimately conceived of that does not, by its nature, fulfil these crucial imperatives of maximising positive outcomes.  Societies founded on diabolical fiends would not last long, once he has killed or enslaved everyone, what is our diabolical fiend going to do?  And imagine a world full of diabolical fiends each plotting the downfall of the other, and of inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible.  Such a world is exceedingly difficult to conceive of, and it is especially hard to conceive of it lasting in that form for some indefinite span of time.  There is only ever room for one dastardly mastermind at a time, and a world controlled by one is not going to be much concerned with the study of ethics.

So we can leave the dastardly mind alone, and get on with utilitarianism.  But we know that not all utilitarianism models produce always good outcomes, as above.  Last week our Ethics class got into such a kerfuffle that the students actually justified the holocaust!  And not a little of this had to do with considerations of Hume and relativism and preference utilitarianism.  And just today I was compelled by preference utilitarianism to give up my one in the Case of Trolley because there are twenty million Australians who prefer this outcome, based it has to be said on Thomson’s tacit consent idea that the maximisation of positive outcomes concurs with a rights based theory of 9am in the morning!  And still no-one is considering my woman at the switch, and her daughter who is on the other line.  Or, moreover, they think this is irrelevant!

This is not irrelevant.  People matter.  Individuals matter.  When we forget that people are persons too, then we are apt to arm the individual for the sake of the greater good, but you could not have the greater good if it were not for individual.  In the case of Trolley, indeed your fate rests in the hand of God, there is no-one at the switch, you will live, or die, as fate alone would have it.  And if there is someone at the switch, then it is their decision making that is crucial, and you cannot put that down to an exercise in ethics.  It is so much more than that.  You can’t condemn the one any more than you can condemn the five, and you condemn yourself by trying to do so.

Cognivitism versus Non-Cognivitism.

I said in the previous section, that we can, for all reasonable purposes, come to a knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.  I did not explain this fully. 

By right and wrong, I did not mean to suggest that there is an external right and wrong which exists independent of us, which we can arrive at through pure reason.  Whether we can do this is a matter that cognitivists are convinced of.  If that is true, then that is what our knowledge will arrive at through consideration of all the possible facts.  But if that is not the case, it does not diminish the statement that we can know right and wrong.  We can know it for ourselves, and it makes no lesser of it that it is a subjective right or wrong, based on our own inner emotions etc. 

The point is that under either system we can reach an understanding of right and wrong, only in the second case we cannot insist that our form of right and wrong will fit comfortably with others.  Others may think, or feel differently, and we will have different moral values.  Some people question whether even this is so, or whether we are just misunderstanding what our beliefs are, because we have either not full knowledge, or have not fully considered all things in our determination.  That is, that our morals can be universally applied, even be they subjective, because we all share in the same moral norms universally, even when we seem to hold different values in certain circumstances or instances.

So these are claims that are made, but the point for now remains solid, that we can acquire knowledge of right and wrong, even if it is not objective, or even if it may be able to be swayed by evidence to the contrary.  The idea that right and wrong must be absolute and for always is a fallacy.  If you demand that much then you are not living in the real world, where understanding changes with time and circumstance.

The Individual.

You cannot take the individual out of the equation, any more than you can take real life out of the equation.  Moral philosophy that does not ascribe to real life situations is a failed philosophy.  Or let me put it another way.  If you really want to consider impossible situations in order to arrive at normative decision making models, then when you get together your six trolley people in the Thomson example, don’t simply explain the situation to them, and let them draw lots, get them to read and understand Thomson and to write an essay on her verifying that they fully comprehend the full responsibility they are taking upon themselves in agreeing to draw lots.  For this really is what she insists upon, that we have fully endorsed the tacit consent principle before we embark on our life’s journey.  But this is a nonsense.  No such circumstance will prevail.  Thomson discriminates against lone workers in every instance, or lone people generally wherever they may be found.  We may as well say, we will always divert the trolley onto Blacks, or Jews.  Of course Thomson does not say this.  But she may as well.

Thomson is a rights-based ethicist.  Rights are something which it is claimed can come between a decision maker and his or her decision in making the given decision.  Where a decision impacts upon the rights of others those rights must be protected unless there are justifiable reasons for infringing those rights.  In the case of the right to life, which is considered the most stringent of rights, there must be overwhelmingly persuasive reasons for infringing that right.

I have argued that rights are given, they are not intrinsic, they are conferred onto autonomous beings, where ‘being” is a state of existence, rather than a state of “life.”  But of course in the case we have been talking about, that right has been conferred, as stated elsewhere, and the person at the switch also has a right of freedom to choose, and this right also should not be lightly traded.

According to classical utilitarianism we must sacrifice my one.  According to Singer and preference utilitarianism we must sacrifice my one.  According to Thomson’s model of rights, we must sacrifice my one.  But according to best-interest-based utilitarianism we are not so compelled, we are free to choose, and our reasons are legion, and do not come from a book.

Logical Imperatives of Preference Utilitarianism.

I can imagine that a preference utilitarian will always want to support a pay rise for wage earners.  This is because most people are wage earners, and it is their preference to be rewarded more highly for their work.  But every time there is a wage increase some people – a minority, maybe Blacks, maybe Jews – lose their jobs.  I say “maybe Blacks, maybe Jews,” to suggest possible discrimination that may occur with the loss of jobs, it might be the most expendable, low paid workers, uneducated people with large families, that are more likely to lose their jobs, the more valuable jobs are held by educated and better-off people, nonetheless the vast majority will all receive a substantial wage increase and a very small percentage will lose their jobs.  It may well not be discriminatory, it might just be as if it was by lottery, someone has to go, the person who was employed most recently might be the first to go, after all, they have been with us for the shortest time.  So it is chance, it could be anyone, rich or poor, male or female, black or white, Jewish or non-Jewish. Preference utilitarianism seems to suggest that the preferences of the overwhelming mass of people who will be better off should be given more weight than the few dissenting preferences of a handful of people who have lost their jobs.  So preference utilitarianism seems to support higher unemployment, even though people generally prefer lower unemployment, but not as strongly as they desire a wage increase.

I admit that I am not cognisant of Singer’s view of this situation, or how he would resolve it in order to preserve jobs, there are many ways in which we can find more and more preferences to defend the protection of jobs, but if those preferences are not as insistent as the preference to receive a wage increase then it will not avail them.  And surely when times are tight everyone wants a wage increase, and perhaps sees it as a necessary evil that unemployment rise.

Indeed preference utilitarianism lends itself to the accusation that what the majority wants, the majority gets.  Of course that is only so if what the majority wants is for the majority to get what it wants.  And this does not always have the unhappy consequences mentioned in the previous example, or the apparent unhappy consequences, certainly for those who lose their jobs. 

For example, instead of a wage increase, the wage earners all get a tax reduction.  Now it is not so apparent here that job losses will be the necessary outcome.  Indeed job losses seem to be not involved at all.  There seems to be a very clear connection between increased wages and higher unemployment.  This is an aspect of the real world, everyone recognises it.  But when it comes to more complex economic matters, the connections are less clear.

In the situation of the lower taxes, for wage earners, the government can do either of two things, given that it wants to maintain the status quo in terms of budgetary deficit or surplus.  It can reduce services, or increase other forms of taxation to maintain the equivalent income. 

Now if the second option is chosen, the government could increase the consumption tax to reflect the decrease in taxes.  But this really does nothing.  People pay less tax in one place and more in another.  People might feel good, “I appear to have more money,” but they will not be better off, “My money doesn’t seem to last as long,” So replacing one tax with another tax of the same sort is not really a preference anyone has. 

So perhaps we can find someone who has more than they need and increase taxes accordingly? And so the government increase taxes on those who have the most money in order to provide tax cuts to the lower wage earners.  This seems to work, on the surface at least, and most preferences will be satisfied, that is that the status quo in overall taxation policy is maintained, but the burden is shifted from those with a little to those with a lot.  Now the people with more will not share this preference for a redistribution, but their preferences will be outweighed by the preferences of all those many wage earners who are going to have more money in their pockets to spend on the essentials of life.  And the bad outcomes in this instance seem to have been minimised, if you are not someone rich who hates paying taxes, and particularly detests paying more taxes.

I guess the point of this exercise is to see where the preference utilitarian will discriminate between the two cases and say that we should not accept a wage increase in A but we should receive a tax decrease in B.  I’m assuming that preference utilitarian would like to be able to do this.  I may be wrong in this belief.

It is surprising that political conservatives usually seek to obstruct both wage increases to workers, and tax redistribution from the rich to the poor.  Of course conservatives do not lobby for lower wages on the basis that it will protect employment, or, moreover, they may argue that, but what they mean is that it will lead to reduced profits, therefore the well-off will have less riches than they otherwise would have, and in order to maximise their riches they may well disemploy some when wages increase so that their maximum profit is maintained.

Of course it is needless to say that the effect of losing a job is much more profound for the newly unemployed person than the loss of income due to a higher taxation burden for the very rich.  The very rich will still have their millions tucked away, but the unemployed may lose everything.

On the Origins of Ethics.    

As a student, and by student I simply mean one who has not stopped learning, I find it disagreeable in the extreme when I read a passage in a book or journal which is meant to instruct me, or to impart knowledge, or the substance of a particular study, but which is so obviously wrong that it makes the idea of further reading seem purposeless.

I am on a journey.  I am not at an end.  And I must find my meat where I can.  To that end I am reading A Companion to Ethics, edited by Singer,1993, and my journey has taken me to the chapter, The Origin of Ethics.

The question of how morals arise is of course quintessential to any understanding of ethics.  Now Midgley does quite well with her subject, but she makes a fundamental error.  In Part V she states”...They are able to live together, and sometimes to co-operate in remarkable tasks of hunting, building, joint protection and the like, simply because they are naturally disposed to love and trust one another.” (My emphasis).  She is referring of course to the world of beasts.  Now she posits absolutely no evidence that they “co-operate,” etc, because of love or any other such thing. 

In fact animals act together because of necessity, because it is essential to the survival of the group.  Species are specie-ist, they have built into their motors as a species the methods of survival, this includes working and co-operating as a group, grooming each other, caring for young.

Why would someone commit such a fundamental error of thought?  Even if the reasons I have put forth are not sufficiently cogent, nonetheless they have at least a semblance of reasoning within them.  The claim that it is out of “love” that they do this is without any cogency or argumentation whatsoever.  So even if it is true, it is utterly without foundation.  And it is not true.

Getting Past the Nonsense of Religious Thought.

I notice a seeming disinclination of ethicists to get into a fight or dispute over religious dogma.  Indeed it almost seems as a great satisfaction when religious dogma agrees with our own particular version of ethical understanding, so that we do not have to dispute the former.  Midgley quotes an interesting passage from Darwin, which I will here quote. “...any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed... as in man....  [] the social instincts... naturally lead to the Golden Rule, ‘As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye to them likewise,’ and this lies at the foundation of morality.”

Why am I unconvinced?  Animals so act out of need, not out of a deference to a golden rule.  The human animal is not so unlike any other, and is governed by the same principles of interdependence, and the survival of the species requires co-operation on an everyday basis.  This to me seems self-evident, and I see neither reason to quote Darwin or the Gospel in its defence.

The State of Nature.

Now getting past religious dogma is quite important.  Our culture, our history, our laws, and beliefs, our customs have been dictated by religious or other dogma for millennia.  It is only now, with the apparatus of modern civilisation available to us, post Nietzsche, when Nietzsche wrote once and for all, “God is dead,” that we are able to postulate ethics on the pure basis of reason.

This does not suggest or imply that reason alone determines moral outcomes.  It has already been said that we have certain propensities and inclinations as human beings. Just as all existent things have such propensities or inclinations.

We might want to know why understanding “the state of nature” is important, that is to say, we may suggest that we have no way of knowing what the state of nature is, or was, and that it has little to do with modern ethical considerations.  But it does have something to do with it, because surely our moral code must conform with our innate sense of self, with our intrinsic nature?  And if it does not, we want to have good reasons why it does not.

Imagine, if you can, not the blank page of the behaviourist, waiting for a mark to be put upon it, but rather arriving at, or coming to a clean slate, that is, emptying yourself of your prejudices, your assumptions, you knowledge and learning, and being the free entity that, perhaps, Sartre wants or desires us to be.  Can you be entirely free without so emptying yourself, or at least contemplating from that place, at least once in your life?  I imagine that if you could get to that place, free of guilt, or of associations, or of culture, or of desire, or of prejudice, then you would, in a way, arrive at a state of nature.

Now people have written about the natural state, from time out of mind, but surely no-one has arrived at that point, has been able to impart to us that knowledge, has realised an unadulterated state of being and shared with others that experience?  One person who wrote – perhaps only in passing and not as a matter of fact – about such a state was the famous Czech writer, Franz Kafka.

Kafka’s State of Nature.                                                                    

Description of a Struggle is Kafka’s earliest extant work. Indeed it was in a reading this story to his great friend Max Brod, that Brod came to realise that in his friend Kafka he had found a unique genius.  Many people today consider this to be a lesser piece of his, but nonetheless it is to be read in a literal sense, for everything that Kafka wrote was, in essence, literal, but so excruciatingly literal that is became excessive and for all intents and purposes, absurd.

Kafka wrote, “nothing seemed more natural than to lie here on the grass, my arms beside my body, my face hidden.  And I tried to convince myself  that I ought to be pleased to be already in this natural position, for otherwise many painful contortions, such as steps or words, would be required to arrive at it.”

Does Kafka really mean that if we were left to our own devices in a natural state that we would lay on the grass with our face hidden?  I think Kafka is perhaps referring to a natural state of repose, and it is not so unlike a position one might take up on the beach whilst sun-baking.  We should not think that a natural state is always battling nature to derive our daily meat. 

But this is by-the-by.  The really profound thing in this passage is that Kafka states that it is possible to reach a natural state through steps and words, that is, through modern civilization, and, as importantly, that steps and words are unnatural, indeed, that they are painful contortions.  Well this is a very Kafkaesque way of looking at the world, and we ought not to lay too much by it.  Nonetheless Kafka is said to have painful insights into the modern predicament.  He sees apparent contradictions that most of us remain thankfully unaware of.

We can reach a state of nature, according to Kafka, and it may happen by chance, or accident, or it may arise as an outcome of our learning and socialisation.  And what a state of nature implies, is a state outside of our learning and socialisation.  From this position we can consider what our natural inclinations, our untarnished desires, our innate tendencies, are.  It is doubtful that we can be in a position to consider these things without being able to at least imagine what such a state might be like.

If Kafka, then Nietzsche...

Whilst we are referring to some of the great writers of recent times, I would like to provide a quote I came across recently from Nietzsche.  As the author of the words, God is Dead, Nietzsche is often considered the father of existentialism, although it is arguable wether or no he was himself an existentialist.  I would think not.  But upon the edifice of his thought existentialism, considered particularly through the works and thoughts of Sartre and Camus, was built.

Nietzsche wrote, "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."  This seems clearly to lump Nietzsche with the relativists, denying any objective reality to possible moral theories.

If he is true, and I think Nietzsche always needs to be considered in the totality of his thought, rather than in mere fragments, nonetheless, if he is true, and if Kafka is also true, then it implies, that my natural state is unlike your natural state, that is, our natural states are different, and there is no fundamental union of souls, so to speak.  If it does not imply this, then it implies that changes to our natural state are what determine changes in our individual moral outlook, and we cannot use the natural state to determine what is true or false in moral considerations.

My personal view is that we are imbued with propensity rather than inclination at birth.  Our propensities may be biological in nature, and dependent on our gene pool, so that some of us have the propensity to be a great mathematician, others great swimmers, and so on.  Bu the inclination to be a mathematician or a swimmer will depend very much on the culture into which we are born, and the socialisation we receive.  Indeed, as Kafka would have it, I am at rest on the ground in this natural position, but it is time to stand, and stretch, and walk, and run, and do and be.  And that cannot be achieved by remaining in my natural state of repose forever...

Common Themes in Natural Morality.

Is there any commonality in morality that can be demonstrated across all cultures?  And if so, what are they?  Silberbauer in Singer’s Companion to Ethics arrives at the view that “sociability is a universal human trait and reciprocity appears to be a functional necessity of sustained relationships.  Respect for human life could also perhaps be regarded as a universal value...”  Note that Silberbauer is much less certain in the last statement, indeed he qualifies it immediately by suggesting it “is subject to wide variation in the extent of recognition and of priority accorded to life preservation relative to other interests.”  So socialisation is more important than the sanctity of life.  And “do unto others...” seems to have some universal application that is not based on mere religious dogma, but is bound up in the reciprocity of society.  It will be interesting to see the extent to which these three imperatives underpin modern ethical thinking in the modern developed world.

I think that we can hazard to say that killing is morally right when circumstances permit.  But generally speaking, killing is unacceptable unless there are very strong reasons for killing.  And indeed in modern society we see this reflected in our laws, where not all deaths are considered murder, and people can get off from homicide.  But homicide is by no means normally morally acceptable, and you must have very legitimate reasons for ending another person’s life.  The scenario we have been considering is whether it is permissible to proceed in Trolley.  This is where our critical thinking is required to deliberate on the matter, in order to make an appropriate determination.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE.

Considerations and Reflections on Freedom.

Journeying to Journey’s End.

According to Padmasiri De Silva in Singer’s Companion to Ethic’s, p 61, “when we evaluate an action, we can look at its genesis.  If the action has as its roots greed, hatred and delusion, it is an unwholesome or bad action, and if it was generated by the opposite roots of liberality, compassionate love and wisdom, it is a good action.  But we also have to see its consequences to others as well as oneself, as they play a part in the moral evaluation.”  This is the idea of ethics according to Buddhist thought.  The author claims that Siddhartha was both a consequentialist and a utilitarian, but it is questionable whether he would be either a classical utilitarian or a preference utilitarian.

Buddhism suggests that there is a strong tie between knowledge and truth and ethics per se.  It is indeed the self-realized being, or perhaps the being that has acknowledged or seen the state of nature, that is best able to make correct moral judgements, to see clearly the implications and ramifications of their actions, not only on others, but on the self.  In Buddhism, when you harm yourself, you harm others, for we are one, and comprise a totality.  In this sense I would argue that Buddhism would embrace the best-interest-based ethical model, for it embraces consideration both of the self and of others, it is the model that most looks at consequences and outcomes for all and everyone, and weights things according to true knowledge of self and other.  Of course, this is a self-satisfying justification on my part, but it would not be the first time a philosopher has made a statement that seems self-supporting to his or her view of things in the world!

Buddhism embraces all life.  It does not discriminate to value one form of life, such as humanity, and render everything else as a means to meeting the needs of human requirements.  So again, in consideration of things beyond persons, as Singer describes them, we are able to take account of all the implications of our conduct.  Of course, Buddhism took this to certain extremes, for example Siddhartha taught his disciples not to dig the earth for fear of harming life within the ground.  The weighting of outcomes provides the best-interest-based ethicist with a way forward.  Indeed, we may till the earth for the benefit of humanity!

But the question remains, is Buddha Journey’s End, or only its Beginning?  I recall an episode from the television show Monkey where Monkey meets the Buddha and then attempts to fly from her to the very ends of the universe.  After what seems like an eternity of flying he reaches what he believes to be Journey’s End.  But the post on which he then urinates proves to be but the index finger of the Buddha!  Monkey is left with the limits of his humanity, which can never amount to anything measured against the immensity of the universe.

Christianity, the Crusades, Everything.

We live in a world that has been dominated by thoughts of the Almighty.  So much of human history has been couched in religiosity, from simple spiritualism and terror of the dark to The Inquisition and the dominance of church and doctrine.  This has hamstrung, and aborted, the progress of civilisation.  From Aristotle to Aquinas almost two thousand years passed in darkness, in the puritanical preaching and expansion of the Christian Church in the Western World.  In other cultures other religions dominated, and superstition triumphed over reason.

No wonder in The Brothers Karamazov the Grand Inquisitor is abashed that Jesus should present himself to the Inquisition.  They had been busy getting on with the job of purification, of cleansing society of free thinkers, and Jesus himself was a free thinker.  There is no place for Jesus in the Church.  Just ask Pope Benedict.  Does anyone seriously think Jesus would deny condoms to the third world to reduce childbirth rates and protect their populations from the spread of sexually transmitted disease?  And yet Pope Benedict is God’s representative on earth, God speaks through him, and the force of the Pope’s words are as if God itself had uttered them.

After the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages came a time when science could at least co-exist with religion, and people were not necessarily burnt at the stake because of it.  In the pursuit of truth in ideas it is nice to know that you will not be burnt alive for having them.  The church found that it had to share its seat of power with popular institution of government and law.  The church did not cease to have a powerful impact upon society and the individual, but at least it was not a requirement of life that you observe the church in all you think and do.  And indeed even in modern democracies the impact of Christian morals on society and the laws and institutions that govern us cannot be understated.  Parliament opens with instruction from the Bible, likewise we swear on the Bible in our Courts, and we look to the Church for moral guidance when new and challenging questions of ethics and morality arise.

Back to the Beginning.

Sartre tells us that we are free, even if it is a terrible freedom.  But what is this notion of free?  Are we free?  Don’t we necessarily have to take many steps and use many words before we can hope to become free?  Freedom is not something we are born with, we have to acquire it, after emptying ourselves of all the foul, unfree thoughts and trappings of the world.

We are not free.  That is the true nature of things.  We are inculcated with a veritable legion of ideas, prejudices, feelings, resentments, happinesses, and beliefs.  These are not born into us, they come after, whatever the propensity of the empty slate with which we are born.

And to argue that the slate is not clean does not gainsay the point.  That only makes us less free.  And it make the possibility of becoming free less sure, for how are we to free ourselves from our innate being?

So we are not free, but we can hope to realise at least some form of superficial freedom in our lives.  Modern thought tends to think that we are free if we have the freedom to choose between different brands of toilet roll.  But this is hardly freedom.  It is a choice, but it’s a poor substitute for being truly free. 

Now the idea is that the truly free person, if you want, the self-realised person, is entirely free, and for him or her, everything is permissible.  This is a furthering of the thought which we began with, which Sartre gave us, that “everything is permissible” when God is dead, or does not exist.  It is not just that there is no objective reality, it is that only I am free, because I have arrived at a certain state of being.  So for me, everything is permissible, but for everyone else, everything remains as it was.

But the idea that everything is permissible is an erroneous one.  It was indeed Nietzsche who proposed that “God is dead.”  And he wrote Beyond Good and Evil.  But he was also heard to remark to Lou Salome, when she said to him, “I am an immoralist,” that “I am an absolute moralist!”  We need to understand this.  If we are free, it is up to us to determine our morality.  We are free to choose, after all.  And this makes our path perilous, like Sartre suggested, but it is also redeeming, for if, like Nietzsche, we want to take the path of the creator, then we must possess our morality, we must live and breathe it, we must create it.  It is not enough to suggest that he was objectivist, that he believed that there was a true morality that can be realised, but nor was he a relativist, as some people have considered, he did not believe that freedom from morality meant freedom from any morality, just freedom from the one you have been given, he was not a relativist in the sense that he thought just anybody could have their own morality, he believed that in order to create a morality you had to be a creator, and the first part of this meant being free.  It is not enough that you have no morality, in order to be free you must be able to recreate the world around you, to, perhaps, discover true morality. You cannot be a judge who demands others tell the truth, but who he himself lies.  Nietzsche did not pass on morality.  He just wasn’t happy with the type of Christian morality that was being foisted his way.  He wanted to be a creator of morality, but to be no less moral than either you or I.

Crime and Punishment.

Raskolnikov decides, in Dostoievsky’s famous work, that if he kills an old evil woman in order to rob her, then he will be able to put himself through college and return a thousand fold benefits to the general community through good deeds of his later on.  “Everything is permissible,” is one of his thoughts, and it is this theme that Dostoievsky struggles with throughout his four famous novels.

This idea seems to have some merit.  It is not as if Raskalnikov has given up all morality.  He only wants to kill a ruthless old woman who is a miserly type who would not hesitate to harm others when she can.  He does not intend to kill just anybody, just someone that everyone will be happy to see the end of.  I am interested to know what utilitarianism has to say about this scenario.

It is interesting to note that in Dostoievsky’s novel, of course Raskalnikov does not go on to make the world a better place, he suffers for his crime and in the end confesses and spends a lot of time in Siberia doing penance for his awful deed.  So the idea that anyone in reality benefits is a misguided one. Although it could be argued that people were generally better off without the old lady, and through his puniary Raskalnikov himself became a better person in the end.  But this is hardly the sort of outcome a classical or preference utilitarian is looking for.  A best-interest model might come to a different conclusion, but it is at best debateable.  Moreover it is doubtful whether any of the utilitarian models would support people thinking they are above the law and willy-nilly murdering people to their own personal advantage, regardless of the motives that person may have.

Dostoievsky is one of the great moral thinkers of the nineteenth century, and in his major novels he captured the intellectual mood of his modern Russia.  These ideas were sweeping the whole of Europe, and the intellectuals of the time spent many hours of their lives considering such ideas.  It is a misnomer then to think that Nietzsche and Dostoievsky were alone with their thoughts, it was the nineteenth century and the world was being swept up by a whirlwind of ideas.  And it was not only the out and out philosophical elite who were at the forefront of ideas, it was poets, and novelists, and painters, and sculptors, and revolutionaries.  It was as much about Marx and Engels as about Hume, Hobbes, Bentham, and those that followed, and thus was laid the foundation for the modern thoughts and thinkers of the twentieth century and beyond.

Camus.

Camus in The Outsider made the mistake of thinking that Nietzsche was a relativist and that this leads to indifference.  But Williams has argued that indifferentism does not follow from relativism.  Mersault looks up through the bars of his gaol on the night before his execution to witness the “benign indifference of the stars.”  The universe itself, so Camus argues, is indifferent, and indifference is the true response of humanity.  But Camus’ Mersault lacks the basic feelings that define humanity, the fact that he is without feeling is an aberration, an abnormality, it is not a conclusion of life, it is a mistake of life.  Mersault is indifferent to the extent that he cares as little about his own execution as he does about murder or the death of his mother.  And Camus seems to be arguing in favour of this indifference.

Williams argues that this is a mistake.  It is an aspect of life that we care, we know this, it is verifiable, and we can argue that it is necessary to care for a functional society, and for change and progress.  If everyone acted like Mersault it would be a bland and uncomfortable existence, there would be no reason to do anything, just our raw passions, that are dictated by heat and cold, hunger and thirst, rape and murder.  Nothing would matter.  Whether our life was brutal and brief would be of no concern, either to ourselves, or to the universe.  It can be hard to imagine how Kafka’s man would have any reason to rise up from the place on the ground to which he had fallen.  But he does, of necessity, rise, and take those steps and words, that may, perhaps lead him back to a natural state, but it is a product of endeavour, not indifference.

This Obsession With Freedom.

Preferences are not pure.  They do not exist in a pure world.  They do not exist in a fanciful world where simply desiring something is sufficient for it to happen.

Preferences are not pure, they are results of something.  They are usually a response to a set of choices, although it is possible to posit a situation where a preference exists, as it were, of itself without any relationship to the real world.

But in the real world preferences are the product of processes.  They are not free.  And they are open to manipulation.  This is a truism.  Our preferences are not an original thing in themselves, they come about through a whole host of competing things within the real world, they are determined by place and placement, by culture, by society, by our means, by Hollywood, and the media, and companies like Coca Cola, preferences are not real things.

Thus preferences become a very hazardous thing to base a form of utilitarianism upon.  For if we are not free to choose our preferences, if we are choosing someone else’s preferences, for instance, such as the company bosses of Coca Cola, who inundate us with colossal amounts of the most invasive advertising imaginable, hosting sporting and other events, being placed in movies, being shown in conjunction with celebrities, being in every shop, being a requirement of having a refrigerator supplied free of charge to many shops in return for stocking only Coca Cola products, being so firmly fixed in to the culture that you can be rejected by your peers for drinking anything else.  Such considerations must be a part of preference utilitarianism.  And it cannot easily escape it, by referring to “Philosophy World” where all our choices are pure and free. 

They are not pure and free.  They are consequential upon something else.  Freedom is such an elusive thing that it is hard to imagine anyone having it, let alone being able to share it, so in no world can we suppose that beings might be free to have preferences unadulterated by the world in which they live.  In this case, having a preference is a bit like having irritable bowel syndrome, and basing a form of utilitarianism on irritable bowel syndrome seems a bit far-fetched.  In no way is best-interest utilitarianism handicapped by this constraint.

The main point is, if preferences are open to manipulation, then they cannot be a basis for morality, for that would make morality open to manipulation, and that does not seem to be a good outcome for anyone.

So this seems to be a substantial and not easily dismissed criticism of preference utilitarianism.

A Search for Meaning.

Is life a search for meaning and freedom, or perhaps meaning amongst our unfreedom?  This is one of life’s fundamental questions, and particularly writers seem to have been interested in it.  A writer might be considered a philosopher coming at philosophy from a different angle.  Nietzsche was certainly a philosopher, although his greatest work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was a novel, of sorts.  Sartre and Camus were also undoubtedly philosophers but it is their works of fiction that people are most likely to refer to.  Roads to Freedom almost rewrote the language of literature.  As did Zarathustra for that matter.  Other writers have considered other related problems of humanity.  Alienation seems to pervade Kafka’s work, but was also a crucial element of Marxist theory.  Our connection to things, and for Marx, our connection to the products of our labour, was a key component of life. 

If life has no meaning then we might very well think that classical utilitarianism or preference utilitarianism is justified.  But Huxley argued that a life bereft of higher forms of art and science and the humanities was a poorer world.  Yet if all you need is preference satisfaction, and you can convince enough people that consumerism and pleasure are the greatest pursuits of humanity, then where does meaning come in, where do those higher forms of life come in?  Or perhaps we can have two different sets of preferences – as indeed we do - one for the rich or articulate or those driven to the higher pursuits in life, and one for the less noble human, the one that is satisfied with football and beer and labouring for a wage.  Is this something that preference utilitarianism drives us towards? 

To satisfy the greatest number of preferences don’t we really need to establishes classes of different preferences, and maximising the means of satisfying them?  Perhaps capitalist society and war are noble forms of outcomes for humanity?  The vulgar form of democracy we employ to suggest that people enjoy freedom certainly seems to work well, and for all its faults capitalism after all might be the best form of preference satisfaction going around.  If everyone can enjoy a coca cola during work and a beer afterwards aren’t we all happy?  Aren’t our preferences being met?

We might say, ad absurdum, we have a preference to have different preferences!  And this is not as oblique as it first appears.  We may well have a preference that our preferences were more free and less manipulated.  But if we do, it is difficult to imagine how we are going to make that happen.  How can we know what preferences we might like to have?  After all, we cannot trust our preferences!!!

Hungering for Meaning.

So where do we look for meaning, for surely determining the meaning of our lives will help to determine how we are going to live our lives to realise that meaning?  This takes us back to ideas of religion and spirituality.  Are we condemned to return to the chains that bind us?  Do we have to rest our ideas somewhere in order to move forward?  How are we to life ourselves off the ground where we have fallen, free but destitute, without thought, or desire, or purpose?

Do humans have souls?  And if we have souls, how does this form something concrete that we can hang our hats on as meaning?  These are questions that have mesmerised thinkers for time out of mind.

This is the time when the Good Christian pulls out his or her bible and refers to Jesus as Lord and Saviour.  If we do not accept the testament, either the old or the new, and moreover we are not convinced by other spiritualists who place faith in the afterlife as if it were an answer to this life, then we have to deal with things as they are.  If no-one can prove the existence of a creator, or of a soul, or of an afterlife, and I think we can confidently say that these things require a certain degree of faith and belief, rather than evidence in the strict sense of the word, then we can, indeed, as Sartre states, be free from the idea that there are a set of principles out there that can provide order to our world.

Of course many people will continue to believe, the majority of people on earth have faith, but that faith cannot help us, not simply because it is unproved, but because faith is so polarised between different belief systems that what is right for one group is not right for another.  If those with faith cannot agree on the form of faith to adopt, or a set of rules and principles to draw from it, then we need to resort to the more mundane form of philosophy to help us seek for ways forward.  Perhaps there are similarities between systems of faith that also parallel ideas in the world of philosophy, that make searching for answers common to all.  Unless fundamentalists insist on the words in a book that are often open to dispute within the religion they purport to speak for, we are able to consider complex ideas and thoughts in pursuit of meaning and understanding of life on earth.

This is understandably and oversimplification of these issues.  But theists have written many volumes to support their faith, and I am not in a position to consider that weight of information here.  The fact that so many countless volumes have been written indicates to my mind that the jury is still out, things are not resolved amongst theists themselves, let alone between theist and non-theists.  I think that we can be confident that these debates will follow for many centuries to come, if they are ever to be resolved at all.  Perhaps science will locate the soul!  Well, that would be a bolster for the theists of the world!

Hungering for Meaning Continued.

Let us imagine we are in a world without theists.  I will not refer to an atheistic world, for others will undermine such an idea.  Suppose a world where theism has not been considered.  There are neither theists nor atheists.  And yet the search for meaning is no less.  Philosophers and thinkers and writers, artists and poets, mathematicians and scientists and musicians have all pondered heavily upon the problem.  And after millennia they are no closer to the end of their search.

Should we suppose that there is no meaning?  But isn’t this too great a leap?  Surely there may be no meaning, but it isn’t clear that there isn’t.  We can safely say, “Perhaps there is, we just don’t know it, or what it is.”  Perhaps it is not the meaning that is really important in this case, perhaps it is the search that is important.  Perhaps it is that search that enables us to evolve as a species, allows us to explore the universe, both without and within.  Perhaps it is necessary that we do not arrive at a meaning, for if we did, what then?  Well the scriptures will tell us one thing of “What then,” but we are in a world without scriptures. 

Perhaps it is possible to come to a point where the search is over, where the meaning is known, but isn’t it as important, to know the path to get there, to live a right life, to not compromise your being in the search for the purpose of your life?  This is the true task of moralists, to provide a framework in which we can conduct the search for the meaning of life. 

The search for the meaning of life ought to be placed with those one or two others as things which define humanity as a species.  All societies throughout history have had a belief structure of one form or another, and it is these systems that are the focus of life’s meaning.  If we believe that sacrificing virgins will take their souls straight to heaven, then that is a very powerful thought.  Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead,” but he believed that hitherto God was humanity’s greatest idea.  Nietzsche believed that the world needed new meaning, and he gave us the Ubermensch, and said let the Ubermensch be the meaning of humanity from now on.  The Ubermensch is an atheistic thought, but nonetheless part of the chain of finding meaning for our lives.  This indicates that our belief system may impact upon right conduct, and ways of living.  The challenge is to be able to agree on right conduct without necessarily agreeing on our belief systems.

 

 

Chapter Four.

The Failings of Preference Utilitarianism.

Real Vs. Imaginary Preferences.

By arguing against preference utilitarianism, I am arguing for an interest-based utilitarian model. 

Preference utilitarianism seems to have a problem differentiating  between real and imaginary preferences.  Real preferences are those experienced by people in the world, in the actual world, not the "philosophers world".  They are the real preferences that people have.  Singer wants us to imagine, when making a preference utilitarian decision, what preferences people might have, all things being considered, even where a preference or desire has not previously been expressed.

I debated this at some length in my last Ethics class, trying to determine whether or not preference utilitarianism justifies the Holocaust.  I argued that you have 100 million (for example) very strongly opinionated German citizens who have been sufficiently incited to consider all jews to be unworthy of their place in society.  They agree, very strongly, that is, they have the preference, the actual, true, realised, experienced preference, that Jews should be sent to death camps, to either work, or die.  They have absolutely no consideration for them beyond this.  Now there are six million Jews who are in danger of going to these death camps, and of course they have a realised aversion, a true and real preference, not to go, and potentially die.  So you have a case of 100 million preferences versus 6 million preferences.  We can argue all day about the weight of those preferences, in life and death situations I think the benefit of the doubt still rests with the Jews in this instance, but the fact is that this is open to debate.  If the jews were lethargic, say, or did not realise, until too late, what was happening to them, then perhaps the weight of the preferences would be in the Germans favour after all.

The point I am alluding to is that we are meant, in our deliberations, to give consideration to preferences that do not exist.  For our example we are imagining - as was the case - that the entire world is ignorantly unaware of what is happening to the Jews.  But preference utilitarianism insists that these six billion other citizens of the world, would, if asked, have a preference in favour of protecting Jews form genocide.  But aren't these simply imaginary preferences?  They have no reality about them.  We are simply saying that. 

Certainly once the atrocities of the war came to light, many people were aghast at the Holocaust.  So we might imagine that at least some of our six billion imaginary preferences would have been actual had they been in full knowledge and able to cast a preference at the time.  Nonetheless it seems to me too much to insist that we input "imaginary" preferences into preference utilitarianism.  It makes it too convenient for anyone to claim anything about what people might prefer in a given situation.  It has no substance, no reality, beyond this might, this best guess.  Preference utilitarianism wants us to take a lot on faith, particularly supposed imaginary preferences that do not exist and have not existed.

Another example.  In the time of Idi Amin's atrocities the entire world was made aware of those things.  The media was able to create a wave of concern and there is no doubt what people's preferences were.  Those preferences were real, and actual.  They were not imagined, although certainly they were orchestrated by the media.  This takes us back to the manipulation of ideas, the adulteration of pure preferences, but that is not the issue here.  We can assume, that with sufficient information and education and reflection, that people generally reject genocide or the mass killings of civilians. 

But it is only after we witness the wave of concern over the acts of Idi Amin, that we are able truly to know what preferences the wider community would have had, if they had been informed at the time of the Holocaust. 

It seems to me that preference utilitarianism might be a useful tool for condemning certain actions, but it is not a useful tool in stopping them.  The Gestapo are required, according to preference utilitarianism, to judge based upon possible preferences, real and imaginary, but certainly the weight of preference must be given to the real preferences over those that might be imagined into the world, without real knowledge.

This cannot happen with best-interest utilitarianism.  It is already written into its ethic that what is right is what is best for all parties, irrespective of preference.

Understanding the Difference Between Desires and Interests.

Our desires are not the same as our interests.  In can be argued that at times when we achieve our desires then our interests are being met, but this is not true in all cases or all of the time.  We may be utterly ignorant of what is in our best interests, and our desire might be exactly the opposite of what is in our interests.

For example, take the recent case of the tragic bushfires in Victoria.  In this instance many people desired to stay at home and protect what they could from the worst of the fire.  This was despite conflicting reports about how safe or dangerous such a desire, such an idea of what might have been in someone's interest, if you want to put it that way, was, and despite the fact that these were the most dangerous fire conditions ever experienced in Australia in recorded history.

Obviously it is in a person's best-interest to survive the fires, even if this means abandoning everything else.  We know that now, but no clear idea was forthcoming at the time, nor has there been anything forthcoming since, about what one ought to do if a similar situation arises.  "Be aware, have a plan," such platitudes are empty, and hardly reassuring.  If preference utilitarianism posits desires as being our interests in matters of importance, where we must make real life decisions for the maximum benefit to all, then I suggest it fails in this case.

It is not as if this was something in which peoples desires were simply mistaken.  The desire to protect property was essential to the outcome, to the tragedy of Black Saturday.  And yet it did not take a rocket scientist at 10a.m. in the morning to work out that these conditions would make any fire a potential fire-storm, a disaster waiting to happen.  Best interest utilitarianism would have insisted upon evacuation as being the only safe outcome, and therefore the best-interest outcome, on that day.  The decision makers gave too much weight to the preferences of people to protect property at the risk of their lives, on the worst day scenario, and surely we should have a plan in place for the worst day scenario!

Our desires are strikingly different to what is in our best interests.  Best interest utilitarianism teaches us that preparation is the best safeguard against disaster.  Preparedness is what makes important decisions work.  Cultivating discussion of what it means to have a moral and life philosophy that works in maximising best-interest outcomes is an important first step to creating a culture where people themselves are empowered to make life decisions for themselves and others.

You cannot just willy nilly say anything is a best-interest.  As Singer says, it really comes to the fore when we are discussing critical issues of life, where we are able to weigh the evidence and come to a conclusion.  But it is also empowering for the individual to cultivate an understanding of what is meant by best-interest, that we respect the autonomy of our fellow human beings, who have been conferred certain rights.  We also respect that human life is the most highly weighted of all values for the human species, so life preservation is much more important than property preservation.

It might also tell us something about the risks associated with cutting up our fragile environment to create life-style building blocks for people who don't necessarily need to live in the midst of a forest.  The idea that we should simply cut down all the trees to safeguard against fires is a fallacy.  Without trees life cannot go on.  The real mistake is building envelopes in forested areas.  Conservationists have been insisting on better building codes, that respect and protect the environment, for many years.  And yet even these best-interests are being ignored by the short-term interests of the decison makers, which is to appease the general uproar without really doing anything except provide us with those empty platitudes I mentioned earlier.

The Dangers of Populism to Public Policy.

The danger, it seems to me, is that preference utilitarianism can be confused with common populism, which panders to any present wind in the public domain.  Whilst issues have a high profile in the community, they are given more emphasis in public policy.  Often popular issues are not the best policy.  Whenever a new mass killing, or horrific series of murders takes place, there is a call for blood and a return of capital punishment.  Such public sentiment is real, and difficult to control.  Public policy has a tendency to knee jerk reactions to situations.. When preferences of the community seem to be made up a certain way, in present issues before them, policy can be hastily drawn up to reflect the mood of the public.

But such knee jerk reactions are not necessarily in the best interest.  Populism leads to bad policy, might be a cliche, or if it is not, perhaps it should be.  But preference utilitarianism seems to be a populist doctrine, rather than challenging the desires of people, it wants to make policy to reflect those desires.  This is not a small matter.  Of course it might be argued that short term preferences are not real preferences, that preferences are really only when all things are considered and upon reflection, in the cool calm of reason.

How long do we need to give people before we decide that reason has had time to return?  If we took a popular vote on capital punishment at the next election what would be the result?  And surely that would be a true indication of the preference of people?  Moreover, a number of times it has been asserted, what is the true preference of all people on earth?  But isn't it true that in the majority of the world capital punishment is an accepted part of society?  Should we not then in Australia embrace that will, that desire of the earth's population to behead the worst of all criminals, and perhaps to cut off the hands of thieves as well?

These seem to be dangers of populism and preference utilitarianism.  I find it difficult to see how it can argue against such sentiments, when they arise.  If we are left to the dictates of the majority, then it becomes a dangerous place for people to live.  Of course it is also a dangerous place when we allow minorities to dictate policy.  This is why the best-interest principle is required to vouchsafe our decisions, and test them, in the calm waters of reason.

Another example.  In the present economic circumstances one might be forgiven to think that there was no environmental threat that posed the greatest threat to life on earth that we have ever known.  According to reliable reports, including the Garnault report, the cost of not acting far surpasses the cost of acting, and the risk of not acting is to imperil, perhaps, hundreds of millions of lives and livelihoods within the seeable future.  That is, possibly in our children's lifetimes, if not our own.

The very real concern over the breakdown of capitalism, the hip-pocket reaction, if you want to call it something, for it is most evident in people's wealth and income, their possible loss of employment and inability to meet debts etc., has overshadowed in the past year, almost to the point of non-existence, the gravest peril to life on earth. Indeed we have witnessed literally trillions of dollars emptied into the hungry bottomless bucket of securing the world's financial institutions.

Popular theory endorsed radical action on the environment, similar to what is being seen in reaction to the global financial meltdown.  Climate change and global warming might be referred to as the environment's sub-prime mortgage crisis, but with more profound repercussions.

The point I am alluding to is that moment when effective action could have been taken has already passed.  Post economic tsunami people are less inclined to endorse radical and costly policies that do not immediately impact upon them.  This is simply an observation, based upon recent polling, that indicates people are less willing to pay the cost associated with ameliorating global warming.  If popular opinion swings against taking action to reduce carbon emissions and seek more expensive but less environmentally hostile forms of energy production, preference utilitarianism may be bound to endorse a reduction in action, based upon the desires of a majority of people across the globe.

 

The Problem with Democracy.

Government is almost always driven by populist opinion.  The times when they choose to go against the majority view, as gathered by polling, it usually means all those dissatisfied voters will be getting a tax cut or some other sweetener to offset the discontent over the issue in which the government of the day has rejected popular opinion.

This is a huge boon for preference utilitarianism.  If public debate engages important issues, and the consensus is drawn towards good outcomes, then preference utilitarianism will not only succeed amongst the population, but within government as well.

But again, it is open to the domination of they majority over minorities, preferences and desires of the community are easily swayed, and often, when fear or xenophobia is an issue, for the worst, and it can be manipulated by vested interests through a heavy reliance on advertising or other means, for example the government has many tools at its disposal to distort public opinion, such as the Tampa and “children overboard” incidents.

It can be argued that popular support was for the invasion of Iraq, despite the fact that a very vocal opposition to this invasion, form the UN down, belaboured the point for peaceful means to be pursued.  George Bush was re-elected on the basis that he had achieved victory in Iraq, although this was later proven to be wishful thinking.

At what point does preference utilitarianism say the time for reflection over your preferences is past, and we are going to make a judgement based upon the available information, and the known preferences of the people?  I think if preference utilitarianism cannot provide a cogent response to this question, then it has failed as an ethical theory.

This is a problem for preference utilitarianism, but it is also a problem for democracy in providing good outcomes, or best-interest outcomes, which are not necessarily populist policies.  It is very easy for oppositions to launch fear campaigns and undermine legitimate strategies, such as to counter global warming, when popular opinion is uncertain, or only in its formative stages.  The best way to deal with strategies which undermine governments ability to deliver good outcomes, is public engagement and involvement, at all stages of policy decision making.

It might be argued that democracy is the least able form of government to deliver best-interest utilitarianism.  On the other hand I would suggest that it is the best safeguard against the types of totalitarian abuses we have witnessed in recent history.  I think we are compelled to a form of democracy, but democracy can take many forms.  It does not have to simply oversee the good management of free market capitalism.  There might be many changes and safeguards we can build into capitalism that create a more just and fair society.

It is when we begin to consider such issues that we realise how difficult it is to achieve real change in society.  Almost all media is controlled by vested interest groups.  It is only at the present moment that the fundamentals of free market capitalism are truly being questioned in western democracies.  It is a moment in history when populist opinion may be able to effect real change, if governments seize the opportunity that has been given.  This becomes a merging between preference utilitarianism and best-interest utilitarianism, providing that both models seek a fairer distribution of wealth and a cap on the excesses of wealth that we have witnessed in certain sections of society.

Indeed government has many roles to play.  There are many issues on which the free market is indifferent, but other sectional groups have a powerful say, and they are often tied into media and have contacts within government and other social institutions.  For example, religious leaders are able to grab the attention of decision makers on important decisions, such as abortion, the availability of condoms, and safe “shooting up” galleries.

The people who aspire to political office are often sectionalised within society, that is, they come from particular groups or sections of society.  They are almost always university educated, they have enjoyed affluence, they might be religious and go to church, etc., etc., etc.  So often these people already have firm opinions on different matters that come before them for consideration.  Of course tis is why some sections are drawn towards on party over another, for example trade union officials are drawn to the Labour Party.

Popular opinion then is not always the driving force it appears to be, after all popular opinion is generally only sought when something appears on the political landscape.  And the reason things appear on the political landscape are many and varied.  An obvious example of this is the issue of water distribution and the health of our river systems, which is a product of ten years of drought in our country.  It is also a product of previous mismanagement of a resource that was not ever free or infinite.  Past decisions contribute to present problems.

Governments are not always interested in populist decisions, but when they ignore popular opinion they put their office in jeopardy.  That is the nature of democracy.  And this can have good and bad outcomes.  But only through a process of engagement and education is best-interest utilitarianism going to be able to compete on a level playing field with preference utilitarianism, and neither will hold up against campaigns engineered to undermine the free ability of government decision making.

The Importance of Government.

It is the role of government to decide on contentious issues of state, and many of these issues are ethical in nature.  Deciding what road to take on ethical issues is something which people feel unwilling to leave to those who are, perhaps, most involved in practising certain procedures, such as gene development and stem cell research, to decide what is right or best for society.

This is why a sound ethical approach is likely to reward government with the ability to make the right decision at the appropriate time.  This is considered critical ethical decision making.  Many of our personal decisions are arrived at through intuition or common sense, we do not have to debate in our heads ad infinitum on simple questions of when to tell the truth, or when not to kill.  The answers are obvious.  If we are presented with a more complex problem, then we will need to draw on more than just our intuition, it might be a question of whether we have a right to self defence in a particular situation, and one of our considerations might be what will be the view of the courts if I take such and such an action.  This does not seem to be rationalising ethically, but by understand how the courts deem our action we are in a way universalising the situation, and considering it from a third person perspective.

Governments have to do this every day of every week, although many issues are not issues as such, they are not controversial, even if they involve ethics, and they are determined by the mandate of the government in having been elected to office.  For example, the Labour Government did not need to justify its fair work practices Bill, it had already received a mandate to introduce that legislation.

On other issues, such as the tax on alcopops, the government had no mandate, and it was something they were required to justify through parliament.  In introducing the alcopops tax the government obviously had several intentions.  One was to raise taxes.  Taxation is a fundamental requirement of government.  Otherwise it cannot implement its others policies.  The other issue was that they considered an increased tax on alcopops would lead to a reduction in young people being attracted to these alcoholic drinks.  You can argue in this instance that the government was pursuing best-interest utilitarianism.  Any increase in any tax is likely to attract opposition, but the government felt it could make a strong case for the introduction of this tax based upon the overall health benefits that would accrue from its implementation.  Quite a complex rationalisation would need to take place if it was to be resolved that preference utilitarianism supported the same outcome.

The government’s introduction of the alcopops tax failed.  Our democracy has both an upper and a lower house, and in the upper house it was rejected by one vote, despite the popular vote of the people to elect the government in the lower house.  One person, who received less than two percent of the total vote in his state, decided the outcome.

But the government did not go to the people seeking a mandate for the alcopops tax, and it was rejected by the vote of someone who was democratically elected to parliament according to the law of the land.  And it is generally accepted that people desire the house of review in our democracy.  If people desire the house of review, does this mean that they desire bad outcomes, based upon the deliberation of the house of review and the vote of one man that represents two percent of his state’s population base?

Ethical theory concerns not only the decisions which governments make, but the legal structures of government.  Let us remember that Adolf Hitler was a democratically elected as the Head of State of Germany in 1936.  The point is, if you are going to have a democracy, at least ensure that it is going to be democratic. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating referred to the Upper House as “unrepresentative swill.”  As of course it is.  When the state of Western Australia, with a population of one million people, has the same number of votes as New South Wales, with a population of six million people, obviously there are shortcomings in the democratic nature of the House.  Look at the House of Lords, in England, which is the equivalent house to our Senate, and until very recently it was a House comprised solely of the landed gentry, it was not democratically elected at all.

I guess i am suggesting that it is possible for government to deliver broad-based best-interest utilitarianism, where it sufficiently engages the community so that factional interests or fear campaigns of the opposition  do not derail the process.  Of course individuals are best placed to deliver best-interest utilitarianism in their daily lives, and government can never take the place of the autonomous individual in that day to day decision making.  But again, by educating and engaging people in best-interest, they are more likely to arrive at decisions that respect the autonomy of others whilst bringing out the best outcome, not just for themselves, but for all affected by the decisions taking place.

Some Conclusions.

Preference utilitarianism fails crucial tests of fairness and reliability.  It relies on imaginary, or inferred preferences that may be open to manipulation.  It falls into the trap of having to concede to populist thought.  In that sense it can be considered changeable.  It does not provide a framework  for rational decision making in real life situations, it possibly needs the “philosopher’s world” in order to succeed.  Also preference utilitarianism seems to be backwards looking, everything is decided “upon reflection,” rather than at the time when it is required.  It id desire focused, which seems to be a poor rationale for drawing conclusions about what is a good moral outcome.  Indeed our desires are a nonsense.  Desires have no rational basis, they come into being often as a result of stimuli, but are not the result of well-considered deliberations about what makes for a good, or a bad, desire.  According to preference utilitarianism desires are amoral, and yet we build our moral foundations upon them.

Best-interest utilitarianism is a more complex system.  It rejects the notion of universalisability,  preferring (sic) to focus on autonomy as a key foundation of decision making.  It accepts certain aspects of human nature as being critical to how we arrive at decisions.  It weights values, so that egoism has a presence in real life situations.  Best-interest utilitarianism, whilst being a more complex animal than its close relation preference utilitarianism, does not require complex formulae to arrive at conclusions on how to act.  It does not require a best guess as to what the totality of all known or knowable preferences may be, it does not rely on preferences or desires at all.

Best-interest utilitarianism accepts democracy, with all its limitations, as the vehicle best able to deliver best interests to the community.  It recognises that the community itself must be educated and engaged in decision making.  So it recognises the need for a fuller form of active participation in the political processes to negate vested interests that might seek to undermine best-interest decision making.

Best-interest utilitarianism isn’t some magic quick fix, it requires thoughtful and engaged application, it relies on education and engagement for it to work.  There is no such thing as the benign dictator.  Nor is the Church mandated to arrive at conclusions on substantive moral issues that ought to be binding on government and the community.  A robust system of engagement and discussion is the best way to resolve difficult decisions.

We also call for a Bill of Rights to be formulated, to make it very clear what rights are conferred onto things that are existent in the world.  A Bill of Rights would not only consider the rights of humans, or persons, but of all things, nor would it mandate that things exist of themselves without the rights of others also in a competing environment of constant change.

Whilst best-interest utilitarianism would not be universalisable, nonetheless conferred rights would have that aspect against them.  This is the surest way to protect people from bad outcome and wrong-headed decision making.  You can imagine that a Bill of Rights would require the best minds to critically consider what ought to be included.  But it would not just be a process of the best minds, a Bill of Rights would be arrived at through referenda, and we know what an exhausting process that is.  It would require critical engagement of the community over a long period of time, and would need the good will of all parties to succeed, in whatever shape or form it took.

Best –interest utilitarianism means taking hard decisions, and tackling the hard issues, with the full engagement of the community in a robust democracy.  And the democracy must be truly democratic to succeed.

Respect for the Autonomy of Others.

It might be said that bikie gangs are Hobbesian in nature, and their laws lead to a life that is “nasty, brutish and short.”  Indeed, we might say they live not so much by laws, but by lawlessness.  Certainly they have a code for each gang, one of which is the code of silence, don’t tell anyone our business, especially not the police.  But they appear to be a law unto themselves.

Recent gang related violence has called for a crackdown on bikie thugs.  It would seem appropriate, if we did nothing else, to draw these gangs together for a two oe five day workshop where we thrashed out the notion of “Respect for the Autonomy of Others.”  Of course the gangs would laugh and say, “We have respect for others, but not for our enemies.”