Reasons to Be Moral

I assert that you have an obligation to act in an epistemically responsible manner.

The principles that I associate with this include:

(1) Tell the truth. Do not assert something as true if you do not believe it yourself. If you do, then you are a liar.

(2) Avoid error. This means: strive to avoid asserting something false. This is different from asserting something that you believe to be false. Here, I am saying that you have an obligation to avoid asserting things that are, in fact, false. This is like the claim, "Avoid killing other people as you drive your car." It is an obligation to use caution, to keep a proper distance between you and other vehicles, watch for pedestrians and bicyclists, and do not drive while drunk. In the realm of epistemic responsibility, strive to make sure that the claims you make are true. You may want to believe the meme that somebody is sharing on facebook, but do not share it without first verifying that the claim it makes is true.

(3) Say exactly what you mean. A common rhetorical trick is to use language loosely - to exaggerate or downplay relevant facts. Have a good idea of what such terms as "treason", "theft", "racist", and "slavery" actually mean and either use those terms in a way that is consistent with the standard shared meaning of the term or explicitly state that you are stepping outside of the received meaning and using the term in a special way.

(4) Put your opponent's position on its best possible foundation before criticizing it. Do not create a straw man and then assert (falsely, violating either item (1) or (2) above) that this represents your opponent's views. That is dishonest and contributes nothing to the discussion. Instead, make you opponent sound as intelligent and as rational as you can, then criticize this "iron man" version of his claim.

In saying that you morally ought to do these things, am I saying that you "have a reason" to do these things?

Many writers in moral philosophy seem to think that it is at least odd to say that you ought to do something that you do not have a reason to do.

This is true if I were talking about practical reason. In fact, it is built into the very concept of a practical reason. If I were to tell you, "If you want to get take something for your headache, you should take some aspirin that I have in my cupboard," then I am certainly telling you that you have a reason to take the aspirin only insofar as you want to take something for that headache. This is true for all practical reasons. "If you want spaghetti for supper then you should stop by the store and pick up some spaghetti sauce," or "If you want to retire comfortably you had better start saving for retirement as early as you can and save as much as you can." Again, you have a reason to do these things only insofar as you want spaghetti for supper and you want to save for your retirement.

However, when I say that you morally ought to act in an epistemically responsible manner, am I saying something about what you "have a reason" to do?

Assume that you were to respond, "I have no reason to engage in an epistemically responsible manner. In fact, I can get more of the things that I want - fulfill more of my desires - by lying than by telling the truth, and by engaging in rhetoric than in intellectually honest debate."

The claim that you must have a reason to do what is right either implies that (1) you are mistaken, and you actually have a reason to engage in these actions that you are not aware of, or (2) I was mistaken and you do not actually have an obligation to be epistemically responsible. Either it is necessarily the case that lying will always cause you more harm than good in every case where lying is immoral, or you do not have an obligation to lie in those cases where you can actually get away with it.

These are the two options that associate "morally right action" with "that which you have a reason to do."

I deny this connection, of course. When I say that you have a moral obligation to act in an epistemically responsible manner, I do not look at what you have a reason to do. I am making a claim about what you should have a reason to do. You might not actually have a reason to tell the truth. However, if you do not have a reason to tell the truth, then that makes you a bad person worthy of our condemnation.

This is the thing that distinguishes a good person from an evil person. A good person has the reasons that he ought to have (and does not have the reasons he ought not to have). The evil person, in contrast, does not have reasons he should have or has reasons he should not have. This gap between the reasons the evil person has (and does not have) and should have (and should not have) are what makes her evil.

Praise and condemnation - and reward and punishment - are the tools we use to cause people to have the reasons they should have. Why do we praise the honest person and condemn the liar? Why do we reward the person who tells the truth even when it would otherwise profit her to lie, and punish the person who lies? It is because we want to create a culture in which people have an aversion to lying - in which people have a reason to tell the truth. The reason we want to give people a reason to tell the truth is because each of us will be better off in a community filled with those who are honest with us than with those who lie to us.

So, it is not that each of us has a reason to do that which is right, but each of us has a reason to use reward and punishment (including praise and condemnation) to create a society in which each of us has a reason to do what is right.

This takes me back to the statement I made earlier. Doing the right thing is not doing that which the agent has a reason to do. It is doing that which the agent should have a reason to do.