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.

Moral Sense and Dangerous False Beliefs

Some false beliefs are harmless and can lend themselves to casual debate. Some beliefs are dangerous, and dissuading people of those beliefs takes on an added importance.

Moral sense theories fall into the latter category.

Evolutionary ethics is not the only moral sense theory that is out there. Many religious views of ethics put them in the same category. They hold that God has written a true moral code into their brain. Reflecting on how they feel about a particular action is considered pretty much the same as asking God, "Is this right or wrong?" If it feels good to them, then this is taken as God's permission to go ahead and do it.

Common subjectivism is another moral sense theory. Only, the common subjectivist denies that there are any external moral values to sense. Consequently, one's feelings can never be mistaken - there is no fact of the matter to check them against. This, too, leads to the conclusion that "if it feels good to you, then do it."

Evolutionary ethics says that we evolved a faculty for sensing moral properties that we can consult to determine right from wrong. Though individuals might suffer from the occasional "moral illusion" (similar to optical illusions), this sense organ can still be trusted to be reliable.

What all of these theories have in common is that they tell people to answer moral questions by turning their attention inward - by asking and answering the question, "How do you feel about this?"

These internal theories of morality stand in contrast to external theories that say that, to determine moral facts, you have to look outside of yourself at the real world.

Desire utilitarianism, for example, is an externalist moral theory. Instead of looking inside yourself and asking how you feel about something to determine right from wrong, you need to look outside of yourself and ask whether people generally have reason to promote or discourage such a feeling.

If you are perfectly comfortable with the thought of torturing somebody, abusing a child, lynching a black, locking the members of a particular religion in a church and setting fire to it, herding Jews into death camps, enslaving a race, exterminating the Native Americans, raping, stealing, lying, or engaging in reckless conduct that puts others at risk, this is not morally relevant. What is relevant is whether people generally have reason to promote or discourage that feeling.

The reason that moral sense theories are not just wrong, but dangerous, is because it tells people like those listed in the paragraph above that they can trust their feelings when it comes to measuring the morality of their conduct. In telling them this, it gives them a moral permission to act on those feelings. In the cases listed above, this is not a good thing.

Internalist theories of ethics are fine to the degree that an agent has an aversion to harming others, a desire to tell the truth, and aversion to breaking promises, a desire to repay debts, a fondness for liberty, an aversion to punishing innocent people, and the like. That is to say, internalist theories of ethics are fine for people who are already good.

However, it represents terrible advice when given to somebody who lacks a certain amount of virtue.

We can assume that, among the desires that most people have a desire to do that which is right (or, perhaps more commonly, an aversion to doing that which is wrong). If a person has such an aversion then all we need to do is to point out that X is wrong and he will acquire a motivating reason not to do X. It might not always be a sufficiently strong motivating reason. However, in some cases, it will be.

Now, we tell such a person that to judge whether X is right they need to focus their attention on their own feelings. "To determine the morality of your actions you should look inside yourself, at your moral sense, and determine if you are comfortable doing X. If you are comfortable with it, then it is permissible, and your aversion to doing that which is wrong should not be triggered."

Or, we can tell such a person, "How you feel about performing these actions is not relevant. What is relevant is whether people in the world have reason to encourage or discourage people from having those feelings. If they have reason to promote an aversions to this type of action, then you should consider the action to be wrong, and your aversion to doing wrong actions can be triggered."

Of these two options, the first option is going to get people defrauded, robbed, raped, murdered, enslaved, and otherwise abused. The latter option has the potential to reduce some of those frauds, robberies, rapes, murders, enslavements and abuse.

The moral question is not, "How do you feel about this?" The moral question is "How should you (and everybody else) feel about this?"

Moral sense theories – telling people that they can judge moral qualities by measuring their feelings – are not only wrong; they are dangerous. Externalist theories that tell people to look outside of their own feelings at the reason for action that other people have are a little safer.

Just a final note: I am not arguing that a proposition should be considered false if it is dangerous. I am arguing that false propositions exist on a scale - some false beliefs are more dangerous than others, and we have legitimate reason to be more concerned about dangerous false beliefs than harmless false beliefs.

A Statement on Moral Sense

I want to thank Kevin, a heavily contributing member of the studio audience, for providing me with a statement that I can use to illustrate the bulk of my objections to any type of "moral sense" theory in general, and to the idea of an evolved moral sense in specific.

Kevin wrote:

[O]n introspection, we know that we don't like to suffer. Many, including myself, hold that we have evolved a 'moral sense' akin to the ‘golden rule’ which gives us the ability to sympathize/empathize with others, and therefore, want others to avoid suffering when at all possible

First problem: Some people have acquired a desire to rape and kill children. What justification is there for denying that they, too, have evolved a 'moral sense', that gives them the capacity to rape and kill children when at all possible?

There are those who have an aversion to homosexual relationships. The mere thought of a homosexual relationship causes in them a sense of revulsion. What argument is there against the claim that they have evolved a 'moral sense' against those sex acts that are 'unnatural' that gives them the ability to recognize the wrongness of homosexual relationships and to put obstacles to engaging in those types of relationships whenever possible?

It is not sufficient to answer this question by saying, "Well, if we consider all of the evidence then we can come to see how some of our perceptions are right and some are wrong, in the same way that we can come to see that a straight stick appears bent if it is sticking out of the water."

It is necessary to get beyond this and at least provide an example of this 'considered judgment' in action.

My view is that this 'considered judgment' ultimately takes us to the conclusion that no 'moral sense' exists, that value is a relationship between states of affairs and desires. It is entirely question begging for somebody to assert that we can answer the difficulty I mention above by applying our 'considered judgment' without providing some evidence that this 'considered judgment' actually supports the claim of a “moral sense”.

Second problem: Introducing the concept of a 'moral sense' brings with it a huge amount of conceptual baggage. It includes concepts of duty, obligation, moral prohibition, right, and wrong. Of particular importance is the fact that it imports assumptions about justifications for harming others through fines, imprisonment, and even death. What justification is there for bringing all of this conceptual baggage into the picture.

A person may well be able to argue that we have evolved an aversion to doing harm to others. He may be able to argue that this aversion itself is linked to mirror neurons by which we experience some of the pain that others experience as our own pain.

Actually, I not only hold that a person can argue this. I believe it is true and well supported by empirical research.

However, the leap from this to 'moral sense' is entirely without justification. In fact, it is the very leap from 'is' to 'ought' that Hume warned us about. Hume wrote that in all vulgar systems of morality people begin with all sorts of claims about what is the case, then suddenly jump to claims about what ought to be the case, without explaining how their 'ought' claims can be inferred from the 'is' claims they began with.

The leap from 'aversion to the suffering of others' to 'moral sense' is precisely that – an unjustified and unfounded leap from 'is' to 'ought'.

Third problem: This account of a 'moral sense' faces the same Euthyphro problem that religious ethics has.

Let us assume that we never evolved motor neurons that allowed us to experience the pain of others as our own and, through this, acquire an aversion to the suffering of others. What would this imply?

Would it imply that it is permissible to bring about the suffering of others?

Or would it be the case that causing the suffering of others is still wrong, only it is a wrongness that we lack the ability to sense?

If we go with the first option, then the claim that we have a 'moral sense' is a meaningless tautology. What we sense to be moral, and what is moral in fact, is necessarily the same thing. If we evolved a disposition to kill our step children when we took over a pride, that would be moral. If we evolved a disposition to decapitate our lovers and eat them after sex, that would be moral. If we sensed an interest in slaughtering anybody who belongs to another tribe, that would be moral.

If we go with the second option, we are left with the question, "What is this thing called 'moral' that can exist independent of our ability to sense it? How can we find it? And how can we know that what we 'sense' to be moral is calibrated correctly to what is moral in fact?"

The latter question becomes particularly problematic because evolution would hijack any true moral sense and turn it into a sense of genetic fitness. Unless we assume a remarkable coincidence between genetic fitness and moral value, we must assume that it is likely that at least one state with moral value does not promote genetic fitness.

Fourth problem: People concerned with morality as an institution are not concerned with the harms we cannot do because of some evolved disposition to behave in a particular way. They are concerned with the crimes that, even with our evolved dispositions, are a very real possibility and a very real object of concern.

Allowing that we have some evolved aversion to the suffering of others, it is not nearly as strong as we have reason to want it to be. There are a great many careless accidents (e.g., from drunk driving), lies, thefts, frauds, rapes, assaults, murders, terrorist attacks, political corruption, all forms of tyranny and abuse, holocausts and other attempts at genocide, the slaughter of whole villages, all of them making it plain that whatever aversion to the suffering we may have acquired through evolution is far weaker than we have reason to want it to be.

So, the next questions to come up are, is it possible to cause people to have an even stronger aversion to suffering than nature provided us with and, if so, how? If there is, we certainly have many and strong reason to promote those institutions that would boost this innate desire.

That is what morality is concerned with – not the aversion to suffering that we acquired through evolution, but any additional aversion to suffering that we could acquire as a result of the way we organize our society.

Fifth problem: It makes no sense to hold that people are morally accountable for their genetic makeup. To claim that a person is evil because he has a particular strand of DNA assumes that, somehow, he acquired the choice to determine his DNA. Which is absurd.

Moral concepts are applicable only to those things that involve some element of choice. Which is one of the reasons why I argue that moral concepts are applicable only to malleable desires – desires that are not fixed by nature, but are susceptible to change from social forces.

Ultimately, we are better off abandoning the idea of any kind of moral sense. Our observations are adequately handled by merely postulating an aversion to the suffering of others generated by the firing of mirror neurons. We can also make sense of reasons that exist to promote this aversion to the suffering of others beyond the level that nature provides for us – which is obviously far weaker than we have reason to want it to be. It is this additional aversion, molded through praise and condemnation, that is the concern of morality.

On Monkey Morality

An article in New Science declares that scientists say that "Monkeys have a sense of morality."

See: New Scientist Monkeys Have a Sense of Morality, Say Scientists

Since I have been arguing that there is no evolved sense of morality, I thought it would be useful to look at these findings.

Before I begin, I want to point out that desire utilitarianism suggests that we can find moral systems among any population that has maleable desires. Creatures in such a system have desire-baced "reasons for action" for promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires.

The dispute here is not going to be answered by deciding whether morality among animals exists, but how best to understand that morality.

So, animals allegedly understand the idea of fairness.

The animals were asked to perform a set of simple tasks and then rewarded with food or affection. The rewards were varied, seemingly at random. De Waal found the animals had an acute sense of fairness and objected strongly when others were rewarded more than themselves for the same task, often sulking and refusing to take part any further.

This is question-begging. De Waal might well have found that animals objected strongly when others were rewarded more then themselves for the same task. However, is this a "sense of fairness?"

One question that comes up is whether the animals objected strongly when others were rewarded less than themselves for the same task. Because this, too, is a part of fairness. where they reacting to a lack of fairness in the state of affairs, or just to the lack of reward?

Consider the possibility that the monkeys are not responding to "unfairness", but to a lack of reward. Non-participation is a strategy that tends to have the effect of causing the target to offer greater rewards in the future. There is no "sense of fairness" involved. There is only a "desire for more reward in the future."

It would seem, if we employ Occam's Razor, that the person who wants to add a "sense of fairness" into a set of observations that seem adequately explained in terms of "desire for future reward", that the person who wishes to introduce the entity needs to explain why it is necessary. Otherwise, we are justified in calling for its elimination.

Another study looked at altruism in chimps - and found they were often willing to help others even when there was no obvious reward.

Okay, chimps have desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others - other humans, and other chimps.

Bees are also willing to help others even there is no obvious reward. In fact, they are willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve the hive. Only, it may be a stretch to say that they are intentionally acting to preserve the hive. Instead, it is quite likely that they are simply responding to certain environmental conditions with attack behavior. We have no justification for muddying up our explanation by throwing in entities such as a "sense of duty" or even "self-sacrifice" The bee is just doing what bees do in a given situation, with no moral component at all.

Related research found primates can remember individuals who have done them a favour and will make an effort to repay them.

The objection to the evolutionary ethicist is not that this type of behavior exists, but what counts as the best explanation of this behavior. Do we need to postulate a "moral sense" in order to explain it?

The desire utilitarian explanation would be that primates are generally more intelligent than most mammals in that they have longer-term memories and can plan better (make more efficient use of their tools). It is useful to be surrounded by creatures that tend to behave in ways that fulfill the desires of others. So, one rewards those beings (in order to keep them around) and punishes/condemns those who lack this trait (in order to drive them off).

Furthermore, as the first experiment that I mentioned shows, monkeys pay attention to when others are being rewarded. Reward (and punishment) have effects on the behavior of others – not just on the one being rewarded or punished. A being that gives unequal rewards for the same behavior generates confusion and uncertainty. There is no way to predict how such a creature will behave, so no way to make plans governing their behavior. On the other hand, if a being is consistent in its rewards, one can better predict the effects of certain types of actions.

This does not involve any type of moral instinct. All this involves is the application of general intelligence to the fact that one is living in a community of creatures with malleable desires.

The article asks a question about human morality.

The big question now is why, alone among the primates, humans have developed morality to such a high level. It implies that humans were once subjected to some kind of powerful evolutionary pressure to develop a conscience.

If morality is the application of general intelligence in a community of creatures with malleable desires, we have an easy explanation as to why humans have developed morality to such a high level. It is the same reason why we have developed medicine to such a high level, engineering to such a high level, and math to such a high level.

Our intelligence allows us to better understand the world around us. This, in turn, allows us to more efficiently use tools – including the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

De Waal also said the following:

De Waal, who has written a book called Primates and Philosophers, said morality appeared to have evolved in the same way as organs such as the eye and the heart, through natural selection.

Actually, it does not appear that way at all. It appears that morality has evolved the same way that tool use has evolved. In the same way that we have learned to build more complex houses, communication systems, and transportation systems, we have learned to build more complex moral systems. We have good reason to do so. The better job we do promoting desires (in others) that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires, the better off each of us is (on the whole).

Our ability to use tools has, indeed, evolved. However, the evidence of tool use in primates is hardly proof that primates have an evolved "sense of tool use". It only requires that primates have evolved a better grasp of increasingly complex relationships between means (including actions such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment) and ends (the fulfillment of desires). It is useful that we do so.

More Questions from the Studio Audience

It is easier to build than to tear down. So, with that in mind, I want to focus on building rather than tearing down.

I have said that an answer to the theist's question of the possibility of morality without God has to focus on ways to reduce the suffering that it is perfectly within one person's ability to cause others in spite of any evolved altruism.

I suggested that this task is done by using social forces such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote (malleable) desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting (malleable) desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Now: Questions

Do I understand that everything hinges on malleable desires? Does this leave room for instinctual action such as fight or flight?

Well, fight or flight are, to some degree, grounded on malleable desires. Environmental forces can influence not only the likelihood of whether a person fights or flees.

However, to get at your general question, there is certainly room for fixed desires. Fixed desires simply have nothing to do with morality. It makes no sense to condemn a person because he has a gene that causes him to act violently towards others.

Such a person is sick, not evil. We still have reason to prevent him from acting on his desires. What we lack is reason to condemn him for those actions.

How do you actually define morality itself? Must it be absolute and universal to be true morality?

Regular readers know that I detest the trap of talking about definitions as if talking about the thing defined. How anybody defines morality turns out to be irrelevant. If all moral terms were tossed out as garbage, I could still say everything I need to say about desire utilitarianism without it.

On this account, there are no absolute prescriptions. Morality has to do with relationships between states of affairs and desires, and those relationships shift over time.

However, the absence of absolute prescriptions is not a threat against objectivity. Many scientific facts change over time. One of the best examples of this is age. My age changes at a rate of approximately 1 year per year. I am not the same age today as I was a year ago.

However, there is still an objective, scientifically acceptable answer to the question, "How old are you?" The fact that relationships change does not mean that statements about those relationships do not belong in the realm of science.

As for universality, there is good reason to ask whether there are some desires that people generally have reason to make universal - and whether there are desires that people generally have reason to make universally extinct.

Moral terms tend to be concerned with desires that people generally have reason to promote or inhibit throughout the whole population. Eliminate moral terms, and desires that people generally have reason to make universal or make universally extinct will still exist.

There seems to be a presumption of sorts that simply condemning someone is sufficient to actually change a malleable desire. However, the field of psychology suggests that reliably changing desires is much more complex than delivering a simple condemnation. For example, people often redouble their positions when simply condemned.

There is no such presumption.

One point I would like to be here is that a person does not need to be condemned to have his desires molded through condemnation. He could be the witness of another person being condemned.

The other person need not even be real. The condemned individual might be a character in a story or parable. However, the condemnation directed at this fictitious character can alter the desires of those who read or hear the story.

These relationships of cause and effect are, indeed, complex. The better we are at understanding them the better we will be at using them effectively. Yet, however complex they happen to be, we do manage to promote and inhibit desires in others through praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Summary: Morality Without God Debate

n a recent series of posts I have been concerned with atheists going up against theists on the question of morality without God armed with arguments that, to put it kindly, tend to misfire.

I think that it is important to look at the issue that people are truly concerned with when they ask questions about the possibility of morality without God. They look at the world and see a great deal of unpleasantness caused by other humans - rape, genocide, tyranny, torture, slavery, theft, lies - and they ask, "How can we prevent these things from happening?"

The way most Americans are taught to see this problem is that they have a choice. They can choose atheism, which leads to Nazi Germany and Salinist Russia (rampant and unrestricted rape, genocide, tyranny, torture, slavery, theft, and lies), or theism with its trust in God and a nation under God which gives us American constitutional democracy.

Given these options, one would have to be a fool to reject theism.

It does not help that the U.S. Government itself has a massive program going on that aims to convince young children to associate theism with liberty and justice for all, and to equate atheism with tyranny and injustice.

I suspect that the vast majority of readers realize that this alleged choice is simply false. However, this is the fear that the atheist confronts when he enters into battle with a theist on the possibility of morality without God. The atheist will be well served to know the terrain that the battle will be fought on and address themselves to the audience’s actual concerns.

"Can you, the atheist, give me some form of protection from these evils?"

The theist says, "Yes, I can do this because I will convince people that there is a God who will deliver eternal torture to those who engage in these types of actions. The atheist cannot give you this. This is why theism gives you American democracy and atheism gives you Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.”

What is the atheist’s answer?

I have criticized the suggestion that we can simply assert that "good" is "an intent to reduce suffering." After all, the theist has just as much of a claim that they are out to reduce suffering as the atheist. This type of atheist cannot explain why morality is concerned with minimizing suffering, or provide a mechanism for motivating agents to do that which minimizes suffering.

I have criticized the idea that we can turn to evolution for an answer to our problems. Evidence that we have evolved certain forms of altruism (kin selection, reciprocity) does absolutely nothing to protect us from evils that we know humans are capable of committing against each other. You simply can't argue that evolution rules out the possibility of a Nazi Germany or a Stalinist Russia . . . or rape, slavery, tyranny, torture, theft, fraud, and wanton violence.

I have suggested that we can find our answer in a project to use social forces to promote desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibit desires that tend to thwart other desires.

We can find motivation to do so in the very desires to be fulfilled if we succeed, or thwarted if we fail. Once a person has desires that tend to fulfill other desires and lacks desires that tend to thwart other desires, we can trust him to do the "right thing" even when there is nobody watching over his shoulder. He will tell the truth because he hates lying, and oppose tyranny because he has an aversion to tyranny.

On the other hand, the vast majority of what currently passes for religion actually gives us is blind obedience to religious leaders. Man does not get his morality from God. God gets his morality from man, and God is exactly as moral (or immoral) as the people who invented him.

These are people who realize that, "Obey me, or I will make you suffer the consequences" is a weak argument. However, "Obey me, or my invisible, omnipotent and omniscient friend will make you suffer for eternity," is a substantially more effective way of enslaving people to one's will.

We have seen, just in the last eight years, how blind obedience to the "feelings" of a leader who thinks that his own sentiments are the word of God can give us torture, imprisonment without trials, wars of aggression, lies, theft (of the national treasury to reward campaign contributors with no-bid government contracts), and a whole host of evils.

President Bush did not get his morality from God, Bush's God got his morality from Bush himself (or, probably more accurately, from Vice President Cheney).

This is the risk we face when we go with religious ethics – that the leaders who assign their morality to God and claim that their own sentiments are the word of God written into their heart. That the person who is assigning his morality to God is evil, and that we all suffer the consequences.

God is only as good (and as evil) as the people who invent him. Sometimes, the people who assign their morality to God are not very good people.

Questions from the Studio Audience

My recent series on evolutionary ethics have generated a lot of comments. Some of them have been handled by others making comments.

I wish to supplement some of that exchange.

One flaw I do find, though, is that, like all forms of utilitarianism, you run up against GE Moore's criticism that "good" is simply not reducible to "those actions which tends to fulfill other desires" or any other such formula.

There are two arguments from GE Moore that would apply here.

The first is his famous "naturalistic fallacy". He declares that "good" cannot be the same as "is such as to fulfill the desires in question" because the question, "X is such as to fulfill the desires in question, but is it good?" is an "open question." It is not an obvious tautology.

I discussed the Naturalistic Fallacy n a previous post, The Naturalistic Fallacy.

The Open Question Argument is, itself, a fallacy known as the Masked Man Fallacy. The police say that the Mayor's brother is the masked man who has been robbing people for the past several months. The question, "Jim is the Mayor's brother, but is he the masked man?" is an open question, but it does not disprove the claim that the Mayor's brother is the masked man.

The second of Moore's argument concerns a distinction between what is desired and what is desirable. There is a distinction to be made between the claim, "X is desired" and "X should be desired."

However, desire utilitarianism recognizes this distinction. Desire utilitarianism concerns compromoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires. That is to say, there is a disctinction between what is desired and should be desired - what would be desired if the agent had those desires that people generally have reason to promote.

Long and short: I cannot see that your identification of "virtue" with "action that tends to promote other desires" as a direct relationship, or as overcoming GE Moore's challenge to utilitarians to avoid the naturalistic fallacy.

I am not certain what you mean in identifying "virtue" with "action that tend to promote other desires".

I do not equate virtue with actions of any type. I equate virtues with desires that people generally have reason to promote, not with actions of any type.

Also, I reject all act utilitarian theories. The right act, in this case, is not the act that maximizes utility. It is the act that a person with good desires would perform. Good desires, in turn, are desires that tend to fulfill other desires. However, it is quite possible for a right action to bring about bad consequences in a specific instance.

My, and others, points were simply that your criticism is trivial and that you are, in effect, making a one-person argument.

The whole point of this series is to address the issue of atheists entering debates into theists on the possibility of morality without God. If I am right and evolutionary ethics has nothing to offer on that subject (because it says nothing about what is truly right or truly wrong), then atheists need to look elsewhere to answer that question.

The ultimate issue that began this series has to do with atheists debating the possibility of morality without God. It is relevant to note that it would be fruitless to try to find an answer in the realm of evolutionary ethics.

Answering the Theist's Moral Question

A member of the studio audience left the natural follow-up question to my last post.

In that post, I objected that evolutionary ethicists have no answer to the question that theists are asking when they ask about the possibility of morality without God. Evolutionary ethicists claim to be able to give an evolutionary account of a "moral sense", but this is nonsense unless one can give an independent account of morality against which any "sense" can be calibrated.

We can phrase the question coming from theists in the form of, "What is this true goodness and true badness against which our 'moral sense' can be calibrated, and where does it come from, if it does not come from God?"

I argue that, once we understand true goodness and true badness, it shows that the very idea of an evolved 'moral sense' makes no sense. This thing that the evolutionary ethicist is trying to explain is just as much a fiction as God itself. Consequently, it doesn't need any explanation.

So, how do I answer the question?

If you give me any population with malleable desires (desires that are molded through experiences rather than genetically hardwired), then I can give you true goodness and true badness.

It does not matter if that population evolved or was designed. It does not matter if it is a population of robots or a population of animals. It simply has to be a population whose desires are malleable - whose desires can be altered by making changes in the environment in which the members of that population live.

Value has to do with reasons for action.

Let's look at the prescription/description divide. Prescription, by its very definition, has to do with reasons for action. It has to do with saying, "You should do this," and "You should not do that," then looking for the "reasons for action that exist" for doing this or not doing that.

Desires are reasons for action. Once you have a population of entities that have desires, you can start to make statements about what agents should and should not do. The reasons for action that you then look at in justifying such a statement are desires.

This gives us means-ends rationality. This is not yet morality. This is the type of "should" that says, "If you rape a child you should then kill her, because it is harder to be convicted of murder than it is to be convicted of child abuse." This is not morality . . . at least not yet.

Now, we add to this that desires are malleable. These creatures with desires can now alter what other creatures desire by altering the environment. Specifically, we have the ability to alter what other people desire through the use of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment.

Because we have this power to alter desires, we have this capacity to ask and answer the question, "What should we cause each other to want?" We can look at a desire, see that it tends to thwart other desires, and bring the tools of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to bear to inhibit that desire.

We flag desires that we have reason to promote with the term "virtue" and we call the actions that those desires motivate their agents into performing "right actions". We respond to them with praise and reward, and we respond to their absence with condemnation and punishment.

We flag desires that we have reason to inhibit with the term "evil" (or "vice" in the ancient Greek sense of the term) and we call the actions that those desires motivate agents to do "wrong". We respond to them with condemnation and punishment and we respond to their absence with praise and reward.

Now, we have a system against which we can calibrate any type of "moral sense" to determine if that sense is picking out "true good" or "true evil". We look for desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and we look for desires that tend to thwart other desires.

Evolutionary ethicists have certainly shown that evolution can favor desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and disfavor desires that tend to thwart other desires.

However, evolution, at times, can also favor desires that tend to thwart other desires. Evolution, after all, has given us predators and parasites. It has given us lions that kill their step children when they take over a pride, a human disposition towards violence against members of other tribes, genetic dispositions towards rape and racism (for favoring those who 'look like us' over those who 'look different').

History makes it an undeniable fact that holocausts and other forms of genocide, slavery, rape, theft, wanton violence, irresponsible conduct from drunk driving to intellectual recklessness, are all within the realm of our genetic potential. We know this, because we are surrounded by it.

To say that evolution provides an answer to our moral problems is nonsense.

Most importantly, morality turns out to be concerned with malleable desires - desires that can be molded through environmental factors such as praise and condemnation. To the degree that evolution gives us fixed desires to engage in kin selection or "reciprocal altruism", this is fine. But fixed desires are outside the realm of morality.

It makes absolutely no sense to issue praise and condemnation, to offer reward and punishment, for the presence or absence of fixed desires. The person genetically required to give his life for his child deserves no more praise than the person who accidentally falls off of a building and happens to land on his child's assailant.

It only makes sense to apply moral concepts - to use the tools of praise and condemnation - where they can have an effect. Where they have an effect is not with desires that are determined by our genes, but with desires that can be influenced by environmental factors.

Certainly, the existence of malleable desires and the different ways in which environmental factors mold those desires, require (at least in part) an explanation grounded in evolution. However, the concept of "the existence of environmentally influenced malleable desires" bears no relation to the concept of a "moral sense".

This answer also ties in with another of the objections that I raised against evolutionary ethics. I wrote that the theist is not concerned with evils that we have no capacity to perform (because evolution has fixed our desires in such a way that they are impossible for us). The theist is concerned with the evils that surround us every day. It is nonsense for the evolutionary ethicists to say, "We do not need to worry about those because we have evolved dispositions not to treat each other so harshly." If an evolutionary ethicist said such a thing, he would be wrong.

How can we reduce the amount of evil that we quite obviously have the capacity to perform?

Well, we do so by promoting desires that tend to fulfill other desires, and inhibiting desires that tend to thwart other desires, by bringing the social forces of praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to bear against them.

We do not need a God to do this. We do not need a God to have a reason to do this. All we need are desires and the ability to influence the desires of others. From this, we get a list of desires that we have reason to promote (desires that tend to fulfill the desires of others), and desires that we have reason to inhibit (desires that tend to thwart the desires of others).

What Evolutionary Ethics Cannot Do

In a series of posts on evolutionary ethics, one of the responses that I have received is the claim that evolutionary ethicists never claimed to be able to do what I argued it cannot do.

If this is true . . . if the accusations are false . . . this does not affect my main point in the least. I am still correct in what I say evolutionary ethics cannot do.

However, that thing that evolutionary ethics cannot do is answer the theist's concerns about the possibility of morality without God. It cannot provide us with an account of really is right and wrong. It cannot account for morality itself.

It can, perhaps, explain a "sense" of right and wrong. However, without an independent account of what right and wrong is in fact it can never say anything about how to calibrate that sense. It cannot tell us when our sense misfires and tells us that something is right when it is actually wrong, or tells us that something is wrong when it is actually right.

A fallible sense that cannot be calibrated is pretty much a waste of energy.

If this sense can be calibrated, then what is it calibrated to? What is "right" and what is "wrong" such that we can tell when this sense misfires?

Now, the fact is, since we are speaking in evolutionary terms, this sense, even if it existed, would never be calibrated to true right and true wrong. It would be calibrated to genetic survival.

If true right happens to be harmful to genetic replication, then it is not the creature whose sense is calibrated to true right that will survive. It is, in fact, the creature whose sense is calibrated away from true right - a creature that is blinded to true right - that will have genetic fitness.

Unless, of course, we make the claim that "true right" corresponds directly to genetic fitness.

On this account, we take everything else we know about evolution and we add the following. Genetic fitness also happens to be infused with an entity that we can call "true right". And, as it turns out, humans evolved a faculty to perceive "true right". In doing so, humans have increased their genetic fitness, and that is one of the reasons we are still around today.

However, we can take Occam's Razor and cut out this entity of "true right" and lose nothing from the theory of evolution. The mother who suckles her child does not do so because suckling her young has this quality of "true right" that she has the capacity to sense. She suckles her young because she wants to suckle her young.

The person who risks his life to save his neighbor does not do so because this act of self-sacrifice is infused with a quality of "true right" that the agent seeks and responds to. The agent sacrifices himself for another because he wants to.

Now, what happens when we cut this essence of "true right" out of our ontology?

This leads to one of two results.

Option 1: We are back to square 1. We have a "sense" of right and wrong, but we still do not have an idea of what "true right" and "true wrong" is. Therefore, we still lack any way to determine whether this sense is correctly calibrated. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that this sense has been hijacked to sense genetic fitness instead of "true right".

Option 2: We do not have a "sense" of right and wrong to calibrate.

In the context of this discussion, it does not matter which option we choose. We still have nothing to say to the theist about the possibility of "true right" and "true wrong" without the existence of God.

Perhaps it is a mistake to say that evolutionary ethicists claim to be able to give us a God-free account of "true right" and "true wrong". However, even if this was a mistake, my original point stands. When atheists debate theists on matters of ethics, the vast majority of them cannot even begin to give a sensible account of "true right" and "true wrong."

They cannot answer the question that the theists are asking.