Morality, Drugs, Surgery, and the Altering of Desires

Another one of a set of questions from the studio audience:

3. Why is morality concerned with affecting malleable desires with praise, reward, condemnation, and punishment? Why not, say, genetic engineering or brain surgery, too? Surely these would be effective techniques for "turning down the knob" on bad desires and turning UP the knob on good desires.

Let me start with two propositions that I think are quite certain.

Proposition 1: Desires are getting more malleable all the time

As scientists get a better and better understanding of the brain, this brings with it a larger and larger set of options on how to alter desires. Particularly in the realm of pharmaceuticals, we have far more options available when it comes to altering desires than we have had in the past.

One major example of these is the use of drugs to inhibit sex drive. These drugs are mostly used to inhibit the desire for sex in sex offenders. However, they will have the same effect on, for example, homosexuals.

For those who assert that homosexuality should be permitted because the homosexual has no choice with respect to his sexual desire, this is actually not the case. They have the option of using drugs to significantly inhibit their sexual desire. The question then comes up as to whether they ought to (or ought to be forced to) do so.

The decision to take or not take this option is a choice.

More importantly, it is a choice drawn on the fact that the desire to have sex (or not) is far more maleable than it has ever been in the past.

Proposition 2: There are reasons for action that exist for using or for refraining from the use of these options.

According to desire utilitarianism, the only reasons that exist are desires. However, it is still the case that if there are reasons for action that exist for using praise and condemnation to promote good desires and inhibit bad desires. Then there are reasons for action that exist for using drugs and surgery to promote good desires and alter bad desires.

Any argument built on an assumption of intrinsic value or on “God’s will” is a bad argument because it contains a false premise. Those reasons for action do not exist and cannot be used to support the conclusion that, in the real world, we ought or ought not use these tools in particular ways.

Question: Should the concept of morality include or exclude these options

The question from the studio audience asks whether the use of these techniques should or should not be covered under the term “morality.”

The answer is: It doesn’t matter.

The question of whether or not to apply the term “morality” to these options is very much the same as the question of whether or not to apply the term “planet” to Pluto.

We are faced with a choice.

Option 1: Limit the term “morality” to questions about how to use the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment and use some other term (e.g., medicine) for methods that involve drugs or surgery.

Option 2: Expand the term "morality" to include all tools that are available for altering the desires of others.

The fact of the matter is, no matter which option we choose, we are not changing any of the answers that we get when we examine the relationships between the object of evaluation (the use of one of these tools) and reasons for action that exist. Those relationships are unaffected.

So, it would be a mistake to think of this as voting for or against a particular set of right answers. We would only be voting for or against the use of a particular language in expressing those answers – in exactly the same way that astronomers are voting for or against particular definitions of the word 'planet'.

My vote is for the narrower definition of 'morality'. That definition fits common usage better. As a result, it is less likely to generate confusion and promote arguments of equivocation. And it fits a distinction that we actually seem to find in nature. We can recognize the use of praise and condemnation on the one hand, and the use of drugs and surgery on the other.

This is the same type of vote that I would cast if asked for a vote on whether to apply the term 'planet' to Pluto. The current usage generates confusion, asserting that Pluto has more in common with the other eight planets than it does with the hundreds of thousands of objects in the Kupyer Belt. In fact, it has more in common with Kupyer Belt Objects than with planets, and our language would better reflect that fact if Pluto were removed.

However, just as the latter vote does not affect what is true about planets, the former vote does not change what is true about the relationships between desires, the tools available for modifying desires, and the reasons for action that exist for or against using those tools.

The Possibility of External Reasons

A member of the studio audience pointed me to an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that contains the following passage critical of desire-based theories of value.

[A desire-based account of reasons for action] has been argued, for example by Parfit, to entail that if my motivational system were unusual enough, I could have reasons to do very odd things such as eating light bulbs; and that if I had a motivational system to which the concerns of morality failed to speak I might have no reason to act morally (Parfit, 2006, 354–355; see also Quinn, 1993; Mele 2003, 79; Heuer 2004, 49–53; and Parfit On What Matters—see Other Internet Resources).

(See: Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy Reasons, Justifications versus Explanations)

Yes, it is possible for a being to have reason to eat light bulbs.

Imagine a planet in which the life evolved a use for silica – a mineral found in glass. Because of this use, it grew silica-detectors on its taste buds and evolved a disposition to eat (from time to time) an object if its taste buds detected silica.

Ultimately, as this life form grew intelligence and developed entertainment, while out watching a sporting event (for example), they might order spun glass on a stick the same way that humans might order cotton candy.

Now, let us say, a space ship containing a group of these creatures crash lands on Earth. They might well come to see our light bulbs as a kind of lollipop or ice-cream cone.

In the mean time, back on their home planet, there are philosophers dismissing the idea that value is based on desires by arguing, “If my motivational system were unusual enough, I could have reason to do very odd things, such as eating sugar crystals.”

One could argue that I have given these creatures a reason to eat light bulbs because of their nutritional value – because they sustain the life of the creature the way that sugar sustains the life of a human.

However, we eat a lot of sugar even where we do not make good use of the calories that sugar provides. It is certainly not for reasons of maintaining life that we eat sugar. Our reason for eating sugar is often for no reason other than that we have come to enjoy doing so. Similarly, the species that has the same taste for silica that we have for sugar may come to eat a light bulb merely because they like the taste.

There is no objection here to the eating a light bulb that cannot be applied to the eating of cotton candy, for example.

As for the issue:

; and that if I had a motivational system to which the concerns of morality failed to speak I might have no reason to act morally

Well, many people do not have reason to act morally – or do not have sufficiently strong reasons to act morally. This is one of the reasons why there is so much evil in the world.

However, their lack of a reason to act morally does not change the fact that people generally have many and strong reasons to give him a reason (or to cause within him a reason) to act morally. This, in turn, would involve the use of social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment as a way of giving people (causing within people) reasons to act morally.

The assumption that everybody automatically has a reason to act morally is entirely unfounded. It is one of those assumptions that could stand a little bit of scrutiny and examination so that we may toss it and look, instead, at what is true in the real world.

In the real world, desires are the only reasons for action that exist, and some people simply do not have good desires (or have particularly strong bad desires). These people lack sufficient reason to do that which a person with good desires would do – reasons that we have reason to give him, because a person with good desires will tend to act so as to fulfill the desires of others.

Intuitionist Objections to Desire Utilitarianism

In considering objections to desire utilitarianism, one class of objections that I have no concern with are those of the intuitionists.

An intuitionist objection would involve constructing some type of story in which desire utilitarianism might yield a conclusion that the reader is uncomfortable with. This story might involve a doctor with an opportunity to kill one patient to save five others, or a runaway trolley car that can be diverted from one track where it would kill five people onto another where it would only kill one person.

However, intuitionist arguments are really arguments from personal preference. The intuitionist is attempting to give rhetorical legitimacy to the inference from, "I do not like your conclusion and do not wish to accept it," to, "Therefore, you must be mistaken."

I do not consider merely a rhetorical way to give the appearance of legitimacy to an argument that effectively says, "Since I do not like your conclusion, your premises must be mistaken."

The argument has as much validity as arguing, "If your theories are correct, our sun will burn itself out in about five billion years. I don't like the idea that our sun will burn out. Therefore, your theories must be incorrect."

In order to raise an objection to desire utilitarian, the critic needs to provide evidence that some other type of reason for action actually exists. This requires more than an intuition. It requires a set of observations that the proposition, "desires are the only reasons for action that exist" cannot adequately explain. We would have to include additional reasons for action to explain those observations.

Again, this is the same model that physicists use with respect to postulating forces that exist. The criticism, "I don't like what your calculations predict about the motions of these bodies," does not work. However, the criticism, "According to your theories those bodies over there should be behaving in a particular way. However, when we look at them, we do not see them behaving that way. Therefore, your theories must be incorrect."

As it turns out, the desire utilitarian has no problem accounting for the "observations" that the intuitionists draw upon. They are explained by the likes and dislikes of the intuitionist himself. "You don't like the idea of a doctor killing a healthy patient to save five other patients."

In fact, with respect to these intuitions, the desire utilitarian can go one step further. After noting that the intuitionist has an aversion to a particular conclusion, he can then ask whether having such an aversion is a good thing or a bad thing. He would evaluate the aversion by asking whether, if that aversion were universal, it would tend to fulfill other desires or thwart other desires.

He can go beyond the fact that the intuitionist does not like a particular conclusion and ask, "What is the value of that particular dislike?"

Maybe it is a good idea to cause in people those aversions that make them dislike the idea of a doctor killing a healthy patient even to save five sick patients. After all, ridding doctors of this aversion would require reducing the overall aversion to killing generally. Any of our lives would be at risk the moment somebody feels it might be useful to end our life to promote some perceived social good. As such, a blanket prohibition on killing innocent people, even where (one believes) it would do some overall good, will tend to fill more desires than a moral permission to kill innocent people.

All of this fits, as it turns out, within a desire utilitarian theory of value. There is nothing here that provides the types of "observations" necessary to show that some other type of reason for action must exist.

The Biggest Objection to Desire Utilitarianism

The most recent set of questions I have received on desire utilitarianism contained the following two questions.

6. What do you think are the greatest objections to desire utilitarianism?

2. If desire is a brain state, it requires a nervous system. So, I assume bacteria, plants, and lower animals have no morally relevant desires. But how do we tell when a creature has morally relevant desires, especially since you make no distinction between conscious and unconscious desires?

Okay, the greatest objection to desire utilitarianism says that there are no desires.

The reason we have for holding that there are no desires is because we have too many questions to answer about what a desire is and who has them. Some people predict that when we come up with a theory of intentional action that can handle all of these questions, that this theory will be so radically different from the theory of beliefs and desires that the later will face elimination.

One of the questions is: At what point do creatures actually acquire desires. Let’s say that plants and amoeba have no desires. Do worms? Oysters? Lobsters? Sharks/ Insects? Frogs? Snakes? Cattle? It seems difficult to draw a line somewhere.

Do thermostats have desires? Is it reasonable to explain what a themostat does as having a desire for the temperature of the room to be at 72 degrees, a belief that it is at 68 degrees, and thus it forms the intentional act of heating the room.

Impossible?

Explain what a desire is such that it rules out this possibility needs to explain what desires are in such a way that it makes sense of this ruling.

Another relevant question to ask is: Under what conditions do machines acquire desires?

I do not have answers to these questions. I decided, when I encountered these issues that I did not have the resources to investigate them separately. Instead, I would take the most widely held view among philosophers of mind that we have today. However, the popularity of a view has little to do with whether or not it is correct. That demands a different sort of evidence.

One of the faults with objections to the thesis that intentional actions are caused by the beliefs and desires is that there are no solid competing theories. There are a lot of people who are complaining that desire-based reasons has serious faults – faults enough to suggest that it may be replaced. However, that is not the same as having a theory that actually purports to do a better job of explaining intentional action (or whatever intentional action proves to be in fact).

On the bright side, there is work to be done, for anybody who might have an interest in doing it. I would not want this work to take the form of “proving that desire utilitarianism is the best theory around”. Instead, it should take the form of looking at intentional action (or what we currently conceive of as intentional action), improving on the belief-desire model of intentional action, then seeing how desire utilitarianism (or some other theory) deals with those objections.

There is one thing that can be said for the belief-desire model, however. We do use these terms in an attempt to explain and predict events in the universe that are very important to us – the behavior of others. These have come to be very valuable tools. Their usefulness, then, is one argument to be made that they refer to something real, and provide a challenge that any competing theory must match.

Fulfillment and Satisfaction

A member of the studio audience has sent in some more questions about desire utilitarianism that I wish to address. The first of these asked:

1. Why does good = "such as to fulfill the desires in question" instead of "such as to satisfy the desires in question"? If a desire is a brain state, shouldn't "good" mean that the brain state has been satisfied, not that something "out there", outside the brain state has been effected?

Answer: Because that is the way God did it and we mere mortals are incapable of understanding the infinite wisdom of a perfect being.

Um . . . okay . . . maybe not. However, I can see how pseudo-intellectuals can find this religion idea to be tempting. They have an easy out whenever it comes to addressing a serious but difficult question.

Actually, in answering this question, I have to ask what the question is really asking. There are two interpretations.

I could interpret this question as a question about language. "Alonzo, you have decided to use the set of squiggles that appear as 'fulfillment' to refer to the relationship between desires and states of affairs. I think that you should have used a different set of squiggles, 'satisfaction', instead."

In this interpretation, the second set of squiggles would replace the first set of squiggles in the theory without changing the theory at all. Instead of saying, "By 'fulfillment' I mean a situation in which there is a desire that P, a state of affairs S, and P is true in S," I would be saying," "By 'fulfillment' I mean a situation in which there is a desire that P, a state of affairs S, and P is true in S."

We could, for example, say that a desire that P establishes P as a condition for a state of affairs to have value. On this account, if P is true in S, we can say that the conditions established by the desire have been satisfied.

However, there is no particular justification for choosing one set of squiggles over another. I needed a set of squiggles to refer to such a relationship, grabbed a common term that was reasonably close, and commandeered it for my theory. A dispute over whether to call this relationship between states of affairs and desires one of 'fulfillment' rather than 'satisfaction' would be no different than the dispute over whether to call Pluto a planet or a dwarf planet.

I am going to stick with my original uses if for no other reason than I have a whole lot of writing that uses the first set of squiggles and to change squiggle sets when this does not imply a change in the theory would only cause confusion.

The second interpretation fixes the definitions of fulfillment and satisfaction the way that I have in this theory, but says that I have misidentified the nature of value. 'Satisfaction', in this case, refers to something like happiness or pleasure – a sense of contentment generated when a person believes that a desire has been fulfilled.

I reject this interpretation because it fails to adequately account for real-world observations.

First, it does not answer the question of how satisfaction comes to have value. What is the nature of goodness that it resides in satisfaction and that it motivates our actions? Recall that I do not need to answer the parallel question of why desire fulfillment has value, because it does not have value. For any state of affairs S, whether P is true in S has value to the person with a desire that P. However, ‘desire fulfillment’ is simply a term applied to a relationship in which there is a desire that P and P is true in S. Desire fulfillment itself need not have any value.

Second, such a theory fails to account for a set of observations in the real world. It does not account for the possibility that an agent would prefer to live a life outside of a machine where there is a good chance of desires not being satisfied, as opposed to living in a machine where his brain can be stimulated in such a ways that an agent has a desire that P and a (false) belief that P is true. This would generate satisfaction, but it would not generate something that agents find they have a reason to choose.

Nor would satisfaction theory be able to explain actions that a person with a desire that P would take to realize a state of affairs in which P is true, but the agent would not live long enough to see that state. It does not account, for example, in an agent’s interest in being remembered after he was dead – because he can get no satisfaction from that remembrance. However, it could still fulfill a desire.

Desire fulfillment theory simply does a better job of explaining and predicting intentional actions.

Desire Utilitarian Implications for Theistic Ethics

In my last post, I compared the view that holds that those who believe in God are, by that fact alone, morally superior to those who do not to one that holds that people can disagree over the source of morality without recognizing that morality exists and its institutions are well disagreeing on the moral facts.

In that post I condemned theists who embraced arguments that allowed themselves to assert their own moral superiority over others. In this post I want to add that (1) atheists are also capable of presuming their own moral superiority over those who disagree with them, and (2) the moral principles on which this blog is built is capable of supporting the conclusion that atheists and theists are moral equals.

Let me start with the latter point.

There is no God. Consequently, man does not get his morality from God. Instead, God gets his morality from man. Like all fictitious characters, God gets his morality from the mind(s) of the author(s), who will inevitably assign to God his or her own view of what ought and what ought not to be done.

This view defaults to the position that the atheist and the theist are moral equals. Both get their morality from the same source . However, one group says that what is true of morality is a part of the world itself, while the other assigns morality to some set of facts the same moral facts to God.

Christian morality, the one that I am most familiar with, has a long history of writing new moral discoveries into its text – from the end of the Divine Right of Kings to the abolition of slavery. They have invented a number of distinctions whereby the give themselves permission to pick and chose whatever text they like.

Take, for example, the claim that the coming of Jesus enables the Christian to pick and choose among moral principles he does not like. He can declare the prohibition on eating shellfish to be purely ceremonial and thus not a prohibition that needs to be followed any more. At the same time, he can assert that homosexual relationships are still prohibited.

These types of distinctions do not spring from the mind or the word or the will of God. They spring from the mind of the person who is telling us what God thinks – which is actually telling us what the speaker thinks – his own prejudices which he then assigned to a god to give them more weight.

So, there is a reason why religious morality is on a par with secular morality. There is no basis for declaring, at least without proof, that one set of claims represent moral superiority over others, at least not based solely on the fact that one person assigned his prejudices to a God that does not exist and the other denies the existence of a God.

Now, let me go on to the first claim – that theists do not have a monopoly on the "we are morally superior to you" attitudes that are found in arguments alleging a link between atheism and immorality. There can be no doubt that there are atheists who link theism to immorality in the same way that there are theists who link atheism with immorality.

The practice of seeing other groups of people as morally inferior is not a religious problem. It is a human problem.

Remember, man does not get his morality from God. Instead, God gets his morality (or immorality) from man – from those who invent him. None of the evils that one person has ever visited on another has ever come from God. Every one of them is an evil that one person is capable of visiting on another in the absence of any divine source – because every one of them was, in fact, an evil that came from people living in a godless universe.

On Atheism and Immorality

A member of the studio audience had this to say about the relationship between atheism and immorality.

Reason why Atheism allows for evil:

1. If there is no God there is no such thing as objective morality

2. If morality is subjective then there is no reason why an evil man should not commit evil. As a matter of fact there is no such thing as evil if morality is subjective.

3. If morality is subjective there is no reason to resist an evil dictator when asked to do evil yourself.

4. The end result is the Soviet gulags.

What concerns me in this post is what would motivate a person to accept this relationship as opposed to an alternative relationship between atheism and morality.

This alternative says that, if it is the case that God created morality, then morality is built into the world. On this account, a person no more needs to believe in God to recognize and respond to (objective) morality than he needs to believe in God to recognize and respond to anything else that exists in the universe – such as trees.

Imagine hearing somebody starting an argument with the claim, If there is no God then there is no such thing as trees (because God made the trees and no trees would exist unless there was a God to make them). From here, that individual goes on to argue that as a result of the atheist denial of where trees come from, atheists are at constant risk of running into trees as they drive. From this, he concludes that no atheist should be allowed to drive.

It is clearly an absurd argument. Atheists and theists may disagree over how trees originated. However, this does not imply that they have any reason to disagree over the fact that trees currently exist.

The same model can be applied to morality. Atheists and theists may disagree over where morality comes from. However, if morality truly does exist as a part of the universe, the atheist should be able to detect and respond to it as well as theists, just as they are both equally qualified to detect and respond to trees that exist.

The question that I am asking in this post is, "What would motivate a theist to prefer the first option over the second?"

The difference between the two is that the second option casts the atheists as moral equals. It says that, in spite of the fact that there is a disagreement of how the universe came about, there is still the fact that we live in the same universe governed by the same physical and moral laws.

On this model, atheists and theists are capable of being equally competent (and equally incompetent) moralists just as they are capable of being equally competent (and equally incompetent) drivers.

The first option, on the other hand, allows the theist who adopts it to see the atheist as morally inferior and beneath him. It is a way of denigrating the atheist in the minds and hearts of the community at large. In doing so, it provides both political and economic dividends. It gives the illusion of justifying the practice of putting a sign on all elected offices and positions of public trust that says, "Reserved for those who trust in God or support a nation under God." – and to use that political influence to channel economic power to those who share these beliefs.

It is, in fact, the common practice of the unjust to first cast the victims of their injustice as being morally inferior. Arians and Jews, Europeans and the Native Americans, The slave holder and the slave. The first step is always to promote an alternative that says, "We are the morally superior group while they . . . they are the slime and the filth – the agents of all that you have good reason to hate and despise, such as the Soviet Galug and the Nazi death camps."

It's quite ironic, I think, that the very act by which the theist adopts the first model over the second - declaring that he morally superior to the lowly and despicable atheist - is an act that no morally decent person would perform or condone. It is, itself, an immoral and unjust adopted purely for the sake of unjust political, social, and economic advantage.

Why Desire Fulfillment Matters

A question from the studio audience reflects on the most common false assumption that gets in the way of somebody understanding the desire utilitarian theory that rests at the heart of this blog.

Christian Apologist asked:

Why does fulfillment of desire matter?

Eneasz answered:

You're asking the wrong question. There is no thing, no entity or law of nature or reason, which declares that the fulfillment of desires is what matters.

Which is correct. Desire utilitarianism is not a theory that declares that desire fulfillment matters.

Instead, what it says that, if A desires that P, then, for every state of affairs S, whether P is true in S matters to A.

P is what matters. Or, more specifically, ''P' is true' is what matters. And, in this example, it only matters to A. To the degree that A desires that P, and P is true in S, then A has a motivating reason to act to realize S.

Desire fulfillment is a term that I use to describe a state in which, "A desires that P and P is true."

What would it take for "A desires that P, and P is true" to matter?

Specifically, it would matter to B if B had a desire that Q, and Q is true in "A desires that P, and P is true". In this case, desire fulfillment would matter. But it would only matter to B, and only insofar as B has a desire that Q.

However, A’s desire that P gives P a motivating reason to realize states of affairs in which P is true. A is not, in this case, seeking desire fulfillment. A is seeking P. That is to say that A has a motivating reason to organize things in the universe in such a way so as to make P true, or to keep it true.

One of the things that A can do to create or preserve a state of affairs in which P is true is to manipulate the desires of other people. This further implies that, to the degree that he can influence whatever desires other people has, he has a motivating reason to cause them to have desires that would bring about states of affairs in which P is true.

Again, A is not doing this because he seeks desire fulfillment or because :desire fulfillment is what matters". He is doing this because he seeks to make or keep the proposition P true, and P is rue in S.

To the degree that B seeks to make or keep Q true, B has reason to promote in A those desires that will cause A to act in ways that make or keep Q true. This could involve giving A a desire that Q. It could involve giving A a desire that R, where R causes Q (or, at least, makes Q more lilely).

If we look at all of the reasons for action that exist, we will discover that there are some malleable desires that people generally have a great many strong reasons to promote, and desires that people generally have many strong reasons to inhibit.

None of this requires anybody to put any value in desire fulfillment itself. All of this could still be true and accurate even if absolutely nobody cared about desire fulfillment per se. That is to say, all of this would still make sense even if desire fulfillment per se did not matter to even one individual.

So, the objection that I always face is actually an objection that I do not have to answer. The objection is, "Alonzo, I want to hear your proof that desire fulfillment is what matters." The person raising the objection then asserts, implicitly or explicitly, that since I can offer no proof that desire fulfillment is what matters, that he has therefore disproved desire utilitarianism and can then move on.

What the person raising this objection does not understand is that desire utilitarianism denies that desire fulfillment is what matters. What matters are those things that are the objects of desires – the 'proposition P' that one finds in a "desire that P".

So, it is not an objection to desire utilitarianism that I have no argument to defend the proposition, "Why does the fulfillment of desires matter?" It is not an objection to a theory that it cannot do what it says cannot be done.

The Heliocentric Analogy

I hold that questions of God’s existence – whether you believe in a god or not – are irrelevant to questions of morality. I look at the proposition that it is almost certainly the case that no god exists in the same way that I look at the proposition that it is almost certainly the case that the earth orbits the sun. It is a claim about what is true or false in the universe, but it tells me almost nothing about how we should behave.

For a moment, let’s pretend that we were locked in a dispute between those who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, and those who believe that the Earth orbits the sun. Let us imagine the possibility that some people thought that this view had moral implications.

We could imagine somebody saying how important it is to teach geocentrism – the theory that the earth is the center of the universe – in our schools. I can well imagine somebody making the following argument:

Heliocentrism – or the sun-centered theory – threatens to drown civilization in a sea of immorality and chaos.

If we teach students that humans are infinitesimal specks on a piece of dust orbiting an average star lost in a sea of stars in an average galaxy lost in a sea of galaxies – they are going to view themselves and their neighbors as trivial and insignificant. This, in turn, can only be expected to lead to moral degeneration and chaos and, ultimately, the destruction of society.

Furthermore, we have proof of this. All we need to do is to compare the numbers of people who have been killed in human history by those who believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, compared to those who believed that the Earth orbits the sun.

We see that all of the great wars – the great atrocities of the 20th century were committed by people who believed the Earth orbited the Sun. Hitler. Stalin, Mao. Pol Pot. Every one of them believed in the earth-orbit theory. Every one of them believed that humans were specks circling an insignificant star.

On the other hand, if we returned geocentrism to our schools – if we once again filled our children with the sense of importance that comes from believing that they are the most important characters on the most important piece of real estate in the universe – the one place that the whole rest of the universe revolves around – we can have a return to morality and then, and only then, can we have a civilization that flourishes, free from the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and other heliocentrists.

We can imagine that argument. But, unfortunately, the earth still orbits an average main-sequence star in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, and we are just going to have to learn to live with that fact. None of these arguments about how heliocentrism will lead to the immorality and the end of civilization, even if those claims are true, has anything to do with whether the Earth is, in fact, the center of the universe, or whether it orbits the sun is true.

And, of course, the argument is bogus anyway. Heliocentrism did not lead to Hitler and Stalin and Mao. A great many heliocentrists were opposed to these systems – and were a part of the armies that fought against those tyrannies. And they had good reason to do so. The fact that they were heliocentrists did not change the fact that they had no reason to live in a brutal dictatorship.

The fact that one is an atheist does not imply that one suddenly acquires a taste for living in a brutal and violent dictatorship. Atheists, have exactly the same reason to oppose those types of regimes – for their own sake, for the sake of their family, for the sake of their friends – as theists do. Perhaps more . . . because this life is the only life we have, and who wants to live this life under the heals of a brutal and violent dictator, or starving to death in a system that cannot feed its own people?

In fact, this proposition is so obvious it then raises the following question: What type of person is it who would make the absurd claim that atheists (or evolutionists) somehow lose their reasons to avoid subjecting themselves and their loved ones to tyrannical oppression, brutal violence, wonton imprisonment, and starvation?

Actually, it would be somebody who wants you to hate and fear those who disagree with him.

It’s a very common tactic – using hatred and fear as rhetorical tools. History is filled with examples of people asserting that “we” are the noble and good people and “that tribe over there” is filled with sin and evil who want nothing more than to rape your women and slaughter your children unless you take up arms – political arms, if not military arms - against them.

These people . . . those who want you to learn the history of the 20th century as being a conflict between the angelic Christians against the demonic atheists – are people who have learned to use unprincipled hatred and fear as political tools. Though they claim that their access to God gives them direct access to virtue somehow missed the part about how virtue is not found in using fear and hatred as a weapon.

The next time somebody uses the name of Hitler and Stalin as reasons for you to hate and fear atheists or evolutionists, think of what you would say if they were using the names Hitler and Stalin to teach you to hate heliocentrists. Think of the reasons that heliocentrists still have to oppose tyranny, brutality, and starvation, and you will see the argument as the piece of hate-mongering bigotry it is in fact.

Atheists Speaking about Morality

Allow me to step back a moment and put the posts of the last three weeks in a larger context.

This series of posts started with a complaint about a debate between Dan Barker and Dinesh D’Souza on the possibility of being good without God. Barker gave a definition of 'good' that left him unable to answer basic questions such as, "Why is this thing good and not something else?" and "How do you get people to actually be good?"

I then expanded my criticism to evolutionary ethicists – those who postulate that we have an evolved sense of right and wrong.

Their theory faces the same Euthyphro question that religious ethics faces.

They cannot provide an account of true good or true bad bad against which this alleged sense can be calibrated.

They do not have anything to say about how to prevent the horrendous evils that it is still within our evolved nature to perform – as proven by the fact that we are surrounded by those evils.

They fail to account for the role of praise and condemnation in morality. Does it truly make sense to praise or blame people for having or failing to have a particular gene?

Ultimately, I was understandably asked to provide what I think would be better answers than those that I criticized. I went ahead and did so. However, that defense of desire utilitarianism was substantially a side show. Even if I am totally insane with regard to the merits of desire utilitarianism, the main point of my objection still stands.

We have spokesmen attempting to answer the question of how there can be morality without God who are substantially ignorant of 400 years of moral philosophy in which this topic was discussed.

They have obviously taken upon themselves to get a superficial understanding of the subject matter. They demonstrate this with casual references to “the naturalistic fallacy” and “the impossibility of deriving 'ought' from 'is'". However, they continue to make claims that moral philosophers have discussed for centuries without any clear indication that they understand the problems with those theories.

I had one of my cringe moments a few years ago listening to Michael Newdow defend his lawsuit against 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance in a debate on C-span. Naturally, he argued that it violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. Then he was asked to explain what maid the First Amendment such a good idea – whether he could argue for the First Amendment itself. Newdow's gifts as a legal scholar left him unable to answer the moral question, "Should there be a First Amendment to start with?"

Of course, the priest he was debating then argued that the First Amendment itself came from God, it was one of our God given rights, and that it was absurd not to declare that a right that came from God would prohibit us from acknowledging Him as the true source of our rights in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Another cringe moment was listening to (I bought the audio book) Sam Harris give an act-utilitarian defense of torture in The End of Faith without acknowledging that moral philosophers had raised nearly 200 years’ worth of objections to act utilitarian theories.

If somebody is going to be a spokesperson for atheists, then that person should recognize that one of (if not the) core issues is the relationship between morality and religion and the relationship between immorality and atheism. They should recognize that moral philosophy should be something about which they have some significant understanding.

Right Actions: Summary

I have been spending the last several posts attempting to demonstrate how the desire utilitarianism account of right actions can explain a number of elements of morality. Those propositions are:

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

In those posts I have sought to provide accounts of:

Negligence (and recklessness) – wrong actions made so because the show the absence of an aversion to causing harm to others that people generally have many strong reasons to promote and that a person with good desires would have.

The Bad Samaritan – a person with desires that people generally have reason to inhibit who nevertheless performs the same action as that which a person with good desires would have performed. In spite of the bad motives, the act itself is not wrong.

Non-Obligatory Permissions – In addition to desires that we have reason to universally promote and universally prohibit, there are areas where we have reason to promote a diversity of desires. These include areas such as what to eat, where to live, who to marry, and what careers to pursue, where a diversity of desires reduces competition and makes it easier for everybody to get what they want.

Excuses – Excuses are claims that block an implication from a state that suggests bad desires (or the absence of good desires) to actual desires. A claim of 'accident', for example, if true implies that even a person with good desires could not have prevented the unfortunate event.

Mens Rea – the guilty mind that must be demonstrated in order to prove that a person deserves to be punished. This guilty mind cannot be found in beliefs and can only sensibly be found in desires.

Moral Dilemmas – rare circumstances in which desires that we have reason to promote because of their good effect in day-to-day circumstances are made to come into conflict – creating situations where an agent must thwart a desire that it is good for everybody to have.

Supererogatory Actions – actions above and beyond the call of duty suggesting that the agent has desires that it would be good for everybody to have, but at a degree of strength we can expect only a few people to acquire.

This is only a partial list. I could add others.

For example, the theory explains why praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment are such core components of morality. It is because these are the tools for molding malleable desires. It explains what subjectivists get right about value – that value depends on desire and, without desire, there would be no value.

It explains what the objectivists get right about value – that right and wrong is substantially independent of the beliefs or the desires of the speaker, and is something about which whole societies can be wrong (much to their detriment).

And so forth.

Furthermore, this account does not make any use of gods, intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, "ultimate goods", contra-causal free will, or any other supernatural or exotic entity. It talks about desires, states of affairs, and relationships between them.

Right Actions Beyond the Call of Duty

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as “morality”. In this post, I focus on acts above and beyond the call of duty.

The term that moral philosophers use to refer to these acts is ‘supererogatory’.

Act utilitarian theories have a difficult time accounting for supererogatory actions. To the act utilitarian, one is obligated to do the act that maximizes utility. That act is not “above and beyond the call of duty.” It is one’s duty.

However, we do recognize that some people perform heroic actions that we do not expect people generally to perform. These are actions that we praise – and typically praise strongly. Yet, we do not assert that everybody has a duty to act as the praised individual acted. It is morally permissible to fall short of that ideal.

In desire utilitarian terms we begin with the recognition that people are not all alike. When it comes to malleable desires, some people’s desires are more malleable than others. Of these, some people’s desires are subjected to stronger effects of social conditioning than others.

As a result of these factors, we can actually expect a bell curve of effects of social forces on molding desires. This means that we can reasonably expect a “top five percent” or even a “top one percent” when it comes to adopting good desires.

When it comes to supererogatory actions, our attitude is that, “Yes, it would certainly be a good thing if everybody had that desire. Furthermore, we have many and strong reasons to encourage everybody to have that desire.

However, the laws of human nature are such that we cannot actually expect everybody to have that desire. It is within the realm of possibility only for a small number of people to qualify. Still, our interest in promoting that desire translates into an interest in praising and encouraging as much of that desire as we can get away with.”

So, while charity is a good thing and something we have reason to promote in ourselves and others, there are limits to what we can expect to accomplish in molding people’s desires.

Those who do better than we have reason to expect are those who go above and beyond the call of duty. They become the role models that we encourage others to strive for, even if it is reasonable to expect that they will fall short of the target. It is at least worth aiming for.

Right Actions and Moral Dilemmas

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on moral dilemmas.

Moral dilemmas are situations where, no matter what option the agent chooses, it is a "wrong action". He must do something that he ought not to do.

A classic example of a moral dilemma involves Sophie's Choice. As the story goes, a Nazi soldier gave Sophie a choice. She could choose which of her children he was going to kill. If she did not choose one, he would kill both of them.

A modified version of this says that Sophie herself must kill one of her two children, or the Nazi guard will kill both of them.

We may have an evolved disposition to care for our children. However, a cursory glance at the news each day tells us that this desire is not naturally so widespread and so strong as we have reason to want it to be. In order to strengthen this set of desires above and beyond what nature provides, we add a layer of moral duty to it. We use praise and condemnation to augment what nature has provided us.

This moral component is what makes Sophie’s Choice a moral dilemma, as opposed to ‘merely’ a painful choice having no moral component.

Act-utilitarian theories have trouble with moral dilemmas. On an act utilitarian theory, Sophie should just kill the child that she thinks will provide the least benefit to society and be done with it. It would be better if Sophie could joyfully kill one of the children because, then, overall utility would be highest. The more Sophie enjoys killing the one child, the more overall utility there will be, and the better the action.

The desire utilitarian account of moral dilemmas rests on the fact that the desires we have reason to promote has a lot to do with the types of situations people encounter every day. The degree to which a desire tends to fulfill other desires is dependent in part on how often that desire has a role to play in real-world decision making.

A moral dilemma exists when desires that we have reason to strongly encourage people to have in virtue of day-to-day living comes into conflict with another desire that we have reason to strongly encourage people to have in some rare circumstance, such as Sophie’s Choice.

It is relevant, when considering a desire’s tendency to fulfill other desires, to note how often it will come into effect. A desire for the welfare of one’s children is a desire that be expected to effect a large number of every day actions. And it is a desire that we have reason to make, through social forces, significantly stronger than nature seems to allow by default,

Furthermore, desires are persistent entities, We have no capacity to turn a desire on and off like a light. If it is active at one time, it will remain active, even as the situation changes and the desire ceases to motivate action that tends to fulfill the desires of others.

On the other hand, the state of being in a position where one has to decide which child to kill (or which child to tell somebody else to kill) is a state that should never occur – or occur quite rarely. It is not an every-day circumstances that we must guard against in deciding which desires to promote and which desires to inhibit.

So, desires that we have many and strong reasons to promote due to every-day concerns become desires that lead to moral dilemmas in extraordinary and unusual circumstances.

Right Actions and Mens Rea

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on mens rea or guilty mind.

We typically encounter discussion of 'mens rea' in the philosophy of law. However, it is actually a moral concept. In fact, much of what we encounter in the criminal law actually has a moral foundation. The actions that we seek to make criminal are those actions that are actually immoral – those actions where the people who commit them deserve (in the moral sense) punishment.

Deviations between criminal law and morality are typically categorized as 'unjust' (or 'immoral') law.

Anyway, before a person can be said to deserve punishment the accuser must demonstrate mens rea. That is to say, she must prove not only that the accused committed the act, but that the accused had those mental states that would make him somebody who deserves to be punished.

So, we know that an agent pointed a gun at somebody and pulled the trigger, thus shooting our alleged victim and rendering him dead.

But did he do anything wrong?

We can see that, whatever we are concerned with in making a moral judgment, it is not in the act itself. We can know everything there is to know about the action – the pointing of the gun and pulling the trigger – and not know anything about the guilt of the accused. In order to determine guilt, we need to know why he pulled the trigger.

Let us assume, for a moment, that we discover that the accused had a brain implant, and that the pointing of a gun and pulling the trigger was controlled by somebody else entirely sitting at a key board. In this case, the act cannot even be said to be the accused's action. It is the keyboard operator's action. We don't need to know why the accused pulled the trigger because the accused did not pull the trigger. We need to know why the keyboard operator pressed whatever combination of keys that resulted in the gun firing.

Just as the wrongness of an action does not preside in the specific twitching of muscles that constitute the action itself, it also does not reside in any belief. Perhaps the agent believed that the person he shot was a police officer out to arrest him on an outstanding warrant. In shooting the police officer, we certainly are not arguing that the wrongness of his conduct resides in having this belief.

After all, the statement may be true – and may be something that the prosecutor seeks to get the jury to believe as well. They may well inform the jury, "The victim, in this case, was a police officer who was seeking to arrest the accused on an outstanding warrant." This would be bizarre if the moral culpability rests in having such a belief.

So, if the wrongness is not found in the particular muscle twitching that make up the actions, or in the beliefs of the accused, we really are left with no other option but to seat the moral culpability – the mens rea – in the desires that motivated the action (or the absence of desires that could have prevented it).

We may well understand that the accused wanted to avoid arrest and imprisonment. In fact, punishment is characterized primarily as creating a state that thwarts the desires (directly or indirectly) of the one being punished. It is a way of giving people a reason for action not to perform a crime based on the threat, "If you perform this action (and we catch you), you risk the thwarting of those other desires – and you have motivating reason to act so as to prevent the thwarting of those desires."

Ultimately, the mens rea of criminal law involves demonstrating that the accused had, at the time of the crime, faulty desires. It is not the muscle twitching themselves that we are interested in, or the agent's beliefs. In determining mens rea we are seeking to determine whether the accused had desires people generally have reason to inhibit, or lacked desires that people generally have reason to promote.

Right Actions and Excuses

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as 'morality'. In this post, I focus on excuses.

What is an excuse, and why are they a part of a moral system?

Excuses are propositions that block implications from what appears on the surface to be a wrong action (an action that a person with good desires would not have performed) to the desires of the agent.

An agent drives through a red light, striking and killing a pedestrian. Or our agent points a gun at another person, pulls the trigger, and kills that person. We come upon one of these actions and we have reason to suspect that we are dealing with an agent who does not have the desires that a person with good desires would have.

Desires are like black holes. We cannot see desires directly. We know that they exist and what their properties are entirely by their effects on other things. So, we look for the signs of desires that we have reason to inhibit or the absence of desires that we have reason to promote. Going through a red light and striking a pedestrian, or shooting somebody, are good initial indicators that bad desires are present or good desires are lacking.

But, they may not be good enough. The agent has the opportunity to throw out an excuse and, in doing so, trump any implication that can be drawn from a prima facie wrong act to the conclusion that the agent had bad desires.

So, the agent who goes through the red light and strikes the pedestrian tells us that the car had a mechanical failing and he could not stop the car, even if he had wanted to. That is to say, even a person with good desires would not have been able to stop the car – so the prima facie bad act fails to show that I lacked good desires.

Or, the person who shot another tells us that he thought the other person was going to kill him. He acted in self-defense. Even a person with good desires can be expected to defend himself – with deadly force, if necessary. So, the self-defense excuse blocks the implication from the reasonable prima-facie claim that the agent had desires a good person would not have or lacked desires that a good person would have.

Let us assume that the agent who shot in self-defense discovers that the person he shot had a toy gun. In fact, the agent was not in any danger at all (since the would-be assailant had no potential to do real harm. However, our agent did not know that. The agent can offer the excuse that he made a reasonable mistake of fact.

It must be pointed out that just any old mistake of fact will work as an excuse. It must be a mistake that a person with good desires would not have made. The excuse, "I did not know the gun was loaded," is not good enough if the agent acquired that belief using less care than a person with good desires would have used. The moral concept of negligence is fully as applicable to the person who adopts beliefs carelessly as it is to the person who drives a care carelessly.

Perhaps the agents were on the set of a movie where one agent points a gun at another and pulls the trigger. Movie production allows stunt men and women to agree to accept a certain amount of risk in exchange for compensation (pay). In general, people can voluntarily assume risk.

This is justified in a desire utilitarian system because we have reason to leave decisions over what to do to the agents who participate in doing them. The person who obtains consent learns that the person with the most knowledge and most incentive to avoid mistakes believes that the action will fulfill the most and strongest of the agent’s desires. So, who are we to disagree – unless the agent is known to be incompetent at making such a decision (e.g., children).

So, the excuse of consent says that the agent trusted the best informed person’s judgment as to whether the act will fulfill or thwart desires. We have many and strong reason to promote an interest in trusting the judgment of the best informed, least corruptible agent.

So, here are four categories of excuse: (1) accident, (2) a greater value, (3) a mistake of fact, and (4) consent.

Each of them function to block the implication from a prima facie wrong act to the conclusion that an agent has some bad desires or lacks a good desire. Each of them is fully accounted for in desire utilitarian terms.

Name another theory that can explain what excuses are and how they work as well as desire utilitarianism does in explaining the elements of a moral system such as the element of excuse.

Right Actions and Non-Obligatory Permissions

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am writing a series of posts to show how these propositions explain a number of the elements that we find in this institution we know as "morality". In this post, I focus on the issue of non-obligatory permissions.

Non-obligatory permissions refer to actions that a person may perform (if one wants to), but which one has no obligation to perform. It is permissible for the agent to do something else if the agent chooses to do so.

Huge sections of our life are dominated by choices made within this realm of non-obligatory permissions. Imagine yourself going grocery shopping, walking up an down the isles deciding your meals for the week, not on the basis of taste, but on the basis of maximizing utility.

We are in the realm of non-obligatory permissions when we decide what to watch on television or what music to listen to, what to read, what to study in school and what to choose as a vocation.

Perhaps one of the most important areas where non-obligatory permissions rule is in choosing a marriage partner. If there were no such thing as non-obligatory permissions then every given marriage would either be morally obligatory (required), or morally prohibited. Act utilitarian theories have a special problem with non-obligatory permissions. Act utilitarian theories say, "Perform that act that maximizes utility." Utility, in turn, can be measured in terms of pleasure minus pain, happiness minus unhappiness, preference satisfaction versus preference dissatisfaction, or desire fulfillment versus desire thwarting.

The act that maximizes utility then becomes morally obligatory. All other possible actions become morally prohibited. There is no moral permission to do an act that does not have the best consequences because consequences are all that matter when determining the moral quality of an action.

We can say that that the agent's own utility counts in making these decisions. However, the agent's own utility counts for one seven billionth of the total utility. It would be strange to find a case in which, after everybody else’s total utility has been considered, that the result is so close to a tie that the agent’s own utility decides the issue.

Imagine going up to somebody and saying, "I have done the utilitarian calculations and I have determined that the act of marrying you will bring the most utility to the world as a whole. I happen also to have some affection for you, but that necessarily is substantially irrelevant in making this proposal – my utility being such an infinitesimal proportion of overall utility.”

Of course, that other person’s decision to accept would also have to be based on the same calculation of total utility.

The propositions above leave room for whole section of our lives to be governed by non-obligatory permissions. There are some desires that we have many and strong reasons to promote universally (e.g., a love of truth and honesty), and some we have many and strong reasons to inhibit (e.g., out-group hostility). However, there are other desires that have reason neither to inhibit nor to promote universally.

Those desires that would lead to the choice of a profession, for example, are desires that we have reason to inhibit or promote. We have no reason to use social forces to try to make sure that nobody has a love of engineering, for example. Nor do we have reason to promote a universal love of engineering. What we have, instead, is reason to promote a society in which some people love engineering more than teaching (let’s say), and some people enjoy teaching more than engineering.

Food preferences, actually, represents another area where we have no reason to promote universal likes and dislikes. If everybody liked the same food, then we would face scarcities in that food as more and more marginal methods of production are brought on line to satisfy the demand. However, a rich diversity in food tastes means that we can grow different types of food – growing each type in circumstances best for that type.

Of course, when it comes to marriage partners, there would be fierce competition for the few people who would fit that universal criteria. A diversity of interests in marriage partners means that each of us has a chance of finding somebody that matches our own interests.

None of us need to make our decisions about what careers to enter, what foods to each, or who to marry based on some sort of universal standard. In these areas, we are free to turn our attention inward and choose what we like and dislike – within certain limits, of course.

"Do that act that a person with good desires would have performed," where career, food, and mating preferences are free to vary from one person to the next, yields the conclusion that choices in this area fall into the realm of non-obligatory permissions. The person with good desires would certainly not make some choices. However, this leaves a whole realm of choices where the deciding factor is desires that society generally has no particular reason to promote or inhibit.

Right Actions and the Bad Samaritan

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am going to defend these propositions in a series of posts where I hope to show how well it explains a number of elements of morality; including such things as negligence, non-obligatory permissions, and moral dilemmas.

Here, I am going to discuss the moral concept of the “bad Samaritan”

The problem of the Bad Samaritan represents another problem (in addition to negligence and recklessness) for theories that base the morality of an action on the morality of the desires that motivate that action.

In the case of the bad Samaritan, a person performs a right action, but does so for reasons that would consider bad.

Imagine a person who wants nothing more than to see his brother suffer. He discovers that his brother has raped and murdered some children. Therefore, for the sole purpose of causing his brother grief, he turns his brother into the authorities.

For the sake of this example, we are assuming that the agent in this case cares nothing about saving children from being raped and tortured. He is entirely indifferent to the plight of the children and, if not for the fact that this is an effective way to harm his brother, he would act against his brother. In fact, let’s go so far as to say that the agent in this case knows of other people who have raped and murdered children. Only, he does not turn them in to the authorities because he does not wish to.

If it were the case that right action was determined by the value of the desires that motivated them, then we would have a moral rule that states, “If your dominant reason for reporting somebody who rapes and murders children to the authorities is your want to do harm to that person, then you should keep quiet about those rapes and murders.”

However, we have no such principle. We hold that the agent has an obligation to report the person who rapes and murders children in to the authorities even if he does so for a bad reason. We would prefer it (and we have many strong reasons to prefer it) to be the case that the agent works out of concern for the children and respect for the law. However, the rightness of the action does not demand that this criteria be met.

The principle that the right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed is consistent with the idea of this agent having the right to report his brother to the authorities, even if he does so for no good reason.

It is still the act that the person with good desires would have performed.

This is not to say that desire utilitarianism classifies the agent a good person. Quite the opposite. A good person is actually a person with good desires. The Bad Samaritan is truly a bad person. Yet, even as a bad person, in this one case, he does the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Right Actions and Negligence

The right act is the act that a person with good desires would have performed.

Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. For an account of how desires can be evaluated, and the sense in which agents can have motivating reasons to promote and inhibit desires, please see A Harmony of Desires

I am going to defend this proposition in a series of posts where I hope to show how well it explains a number of elements of morality; including such things as negligence, non-obligatory permissions, and moral dilemmas. I am going to start with the subject of negligence.

Please note, I am not going to defend it by showing how well it conforms to popular moral judgments. I am not testing this proposition by showing that it yields the “correct” conclusions on slavery, rape, the obligation to repay debts, the legitimacy of lying to the Nazis when they come looking for Jews, or the right to freedom of speech.

People who make those types of arguments assume that their prejudices are already correct, and that we only need to account for them in a moral system.

The arguments I am making aim to show how the proposition above accounts for the elements that define a system as a moral system.

One of the elements of a moral system is that it contains the moral categories of "negligence" and "recklessness." What are these categories and what makes them legitimate objects of moral condemnation?

The problem of accounting for negligence was a fatal blow to a moral theory proposed by James Martineau about 100 years ago. He argued that the moral quality of an action is derived from the moral quality of the motives (desires) from which it sprang. If an agent’s motives were good, then his actions were praiseworthy. If, instead, he acted from bad motives, his actions were wrong or blameworthy.

A contemporary of Martineau's, Henry Sidgwick, wrote that this method of ethics did not account for the wrongness of negligence.

In my previous post, I described a case of negligence that involved somebody transporting goods on a truck, but failing to secure his load well. As a result, part of his load fell onto a freeway, putting other people at risk of serious harm.

It is almost certainly the case that this agent's only motive was to transport the goods from one place to another. This is not a bad motive – not the type of motive that would generally make a person worthy of condemnation. In fact, it is a very common motive – one that almost every one of us share every day.

Sidgwick was an act utilitarian. He sought to defend the thesis that acts can be measured by their consequences. One of the problems with this theory is that it generates a great deal of moral luck. Because I saw the load on the truck shift seconds before it fell, I was able to prevent an accident. This reduced the bad consequences of the agent’s actions. How is it the case that the agent can claim moral credit for the actions that I performed?

The proposition above can account for the moral category of negligence.

The negligent person is not to be condemned for the motives that he had. Instead, negligent people are to be condemned for the motives that they lack.

A good person is a person who would have a certain level of concern that his actions not put others at risk of harm. We (those who would otherwise be harmed and who care about people who would otherwise be harmed) have many and strong reason to promote in others a desire to take care to foresee and avoid accidents such as this. So, we have reason to use our tools of praise and condemnation to help to ensure that others take care to avoid accidents such as this.

It is not the motives of the action itself that determines its moral quality. Nor is it the consequences of the actions. It is, instead, whether the action is one that would have been performed by a person who has desires (and aversions) that people generally have reason to promote and discourage.

This theory not only shows how the concept of "right action" given above accounts for the moral categories of negligence (and recklessness). It also explains why condemnation is a reasonable response to negligence and why praise is a reasonable response for those who are careful and responsible. This is how we make concern for the welfare of others more common in the population as a whole – and how we better secure ourselves from accidents that less careful people will tend to cause.

Right Actions Defined

I have been asked a question by a member of the studio audience that is going to touch off a series of posts.

The question that would decide it for me (and for the record, I take the subjectivist interpretation of DU) is this: In any moral case - say, acting to inhibit the desire of someone to engage in insider trading - what decides that rightness or wrongness of the action? Is the rightness or wrongness up to whatever subject is opining on the matter, or is the rightness or wrongness of the action independent of any subject?

For the record (and I am certain that Kevin understands this) the "subjectivist interpretation of DU" is identical to the "objectivist interpretation of DU." This is true in the same way that DU, spoken in Spanish, should be identical to DU spoken in English. The difference that Kevin is referring to is not differences in interpretation, but differences in languages.

Now, on to the issue of right actions.

The right action is the action that a person with good desires would have performed.

This is in contrast with the theory that says that right actions are the actions that fulfill the most and strongest desires. This competing theory is a theory that I call “desire fulfillment act utilitarianism” – and is quite close to the more popular theory “preference utilitarianism” (the right act is the act that satisfies the most preferences).

However, desire utilitarianism is a rule-utilitarian theory, not an act-utilitarian theory. The right act is the act that conforms to the best rules (where the rules, in this case, are written into the brain in the form of desires), and the rules are evaluated according to their (utilitarian) consequences.

An agent always acts so as to fulfill the most and strongest of his own desires. To say that an agent ought to have done something different is to say that the agent ought to have had those desires that would have caused him to do something different.

This then requires us to ask whether it would really be a good idea to universally promote those particular desires. If those desires would do more harm than good, we retract the statement about what the agent ought to have desired. This, in turn, requires that we retract the statement about what the agent ought to have done. Either that or we declare than agent is obligated to be in an inconsistent state of performing an action in violation of the laws of nature.

The right act is not necessarily the act that fulfills the most and strongest desires – not if that act requires desires that are either impossible or that will generally do more harm than good.

This concept of right action is also in contrast to the view that holds that the right act is the act motivated by the best desires (or intentions).

James Martineau presented such a theory about 100 years ago where he said that, in order to judge an action, we must look at the motives from which the action sprang. If the motives were good, then the action was good. On the other hand, if the motives were bad, the actions were bad.

A contemporary of Martineau, Henry Sidgwick, specifically attacked Martinau’s theory, providing a number of counter-examples. One of his counter-examples was that of negligence or recklessness.

The example that I use comes from a real case. I had just pulled onto a freeway and ended up behind a truck with a large load (for that truck). I noticed that the load looked unstable and immediately moved to back away. I had just started to slow down when a part of the load fell off of the truck. Because I was already slowing down I was able to avoid a serious accident.

The driver of that truck had no malicious desire motivating his actions. He simply wanted to get his load from Point A to Point B. Yet, his actions could be legitimately condemned. He was negligent in securing his load and, as such, he put others at risk.

This, then, describes the desire utilitarian account of right actions. In the rest of this series, I will apply this account to a number of moral concepts and show how the desire utilitarian concept of right action provides the best fit.

(1) Right Actions Defined (this post)

(2) Right Actions and Negligence

(3) Right Actions and the Bad Samaritan

(4) Right Actions and Non-Obligatory Permissions

(5) Right Actions and Excuses

(6) Right Actions and Mens Rea

(7) Right Actions and Moral Dilemmas

(8) Right Actions Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

On Subjective and Objective Value

The debate among members of the studio audience has wandered into questions about objectivity and subjectivity.

This is an area where I think that the concepts are so muddled and inconsistent that they are guaranteed to keep debates going indefiniately as participants talk past each other at every step.

At one point I had been asked to participate in two debates on the objectivity of ethics. In one case, I was billed as defending subjectivism, because I hold that there is no value without desires. That is to say, no desire (or brain-state) independent value exists in the universe.

At about the same time, in a second debate, I was held billed as the defender of moral objectivism. This is because I hold that moral properties are substantially independent of the beliefs or desires (mental states) of the speaker. They exist in the real world as properties that existed before the assessor was even born, and will continue to live long after his death.

The way that this happened is that I tend to shun labels. I simply declared that I will present my views and allow people to determine how they want to categorize me.

People do not, in fact, all have the same understanding of subjetivism. So, some people hold a definition of subjectivism where they classify me as a subjectivist. Others use a definition of subjectivism that results in their classifying me as an objectivist.

These are not inconsistent views. While I hold that moral properties are dependent on mental states, they are at the same time substantially independent of the mental states of the speaker. They are dependent, instead, on the desires that people generally have the most and strongest reasons to promote or inhibit.

There is a discoverable fact of the matter regarding how these desires relate to each other that is substantially indepdendent of the beliefs and desires of the assessor.

Intentional actions are explained by the interaction of beliefs and desires.

Beliefs and desires are propositional attitude. A belief that P is the attitude that P is true. A desire that P is a motivational state that drives the agent to create or preserve states of affairs in which P is true.

Desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

People act so as to fulfill the most and the strongest of their desires, given their beliefs. However, they seek to act so as to fulfill the most and strongest of their desires.

We know that (beliefs and) desires exist because we use them to fairly reliably explain and predict a huge set of real-world observations - intentional actions.

Desires are the only (ends-producing) reasons for action that exist. If there are any other, ends-producing reasons for action, let me know what evidence there is of their existence.

Some maleable desires tend to fulfill the desires of others, Those others, then, have reasons to act so as to promote those desires.

Some maleable desires tend to thwart the desires of others. Those others, then, have reason to act so as to inhibit those desires.

The tools for promoting the first type of desire and inhibiting the latter type of desire are praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

The fact that a desire tends to fulfill other desires means that people generally have motivating reasons to promote those desires using the tools described above. That fact that a desire tends to thwart other desires means that people generally have motivating reason to inhibit that desire using those same tools.

You can call me a subjectivist if you wish - based on the fact that I deny the existence of desire-independent reasons for action. However, do not equivocate from this to the conclusion that I am the type of subjectivist who denies the existence of moral facts - that all it takes for the rape of a child to be "right for me" is for me to adopt a particular attitude towards the rape of a child.

You can call me an objectivist if you wish - based on the fact that I assert that there are moral facts and that those facts are substantially independent of the beliefs or desires of the assessor. However, do not equivocate from this to the conclusion that I hold that there are desire-independent values - some sort of intrinsic prescriptivity that adheres to states of affairs independent of any human mental state.