Beyond Reason?

Philosopher Alan Duncan has suggested to me that I must push desirism further than I do in Reason and Ethics and that if I do so I will be able to resolve a practical problem that has bedeviled the theory. In that book I thought I had already “gone off the deep end,” as I put it therein, by embracing an expanded amoralism that encompassed not only ethics but all knowledge claims whatever. Yet the whole desirist program remained hobbled by a remnant moralism, which I acknowledged even in my own case: an inability to shake off decades of innate or ingrained moralism even though I had now seen through it all as nothing but feelings and intuitions instilled in me by evolution and experience (upbringing, schooling, etc.) and indicating objective values (and even facts) only illusorily.

            I therefore characterized myself, and ultimately anyone who strove to become an amoralist, as a “divided amoralist.” Part of me understood that all of my values are completely contingent and subjective. Thus for example, I value things like honesty and compassion and rationality, but someone else might not or might even disvalue them; and there might be nothing of an objective nature that gave either of us a leg up on the other. (In some cases there could be an objective difference, such as one of us basing our values on some false beliefs or some invalid inference. My point is that this is not always the case.) This is what it means for there to be no God; hence my referring to amoralism as hard atheism, since it extends beyond the denial of supernatural agency to the denial of objective value.

            But another part of me continues to react to people and events as if my values were objective. So for example, I continue to harbor moral contempt for people who appear to me to be selfish or stupid: anti-vaxxers during the pandemic being a prime example. And my efforts over the last decade to become an amoralist have proved powerless to vanquish this kind of response. Hence I concluded that the condition of being a divided amoralist is probably incorrigible.

            But Duncan, as I understand him, thinks I am giving up much too soon, and the reason is that I have been content to take my “contingent and subjective” values as simple givens. Instead he wants me to investigate their source. I have assumed I knew the source in a general way – again, nature and nurture: Maybe moralism was selected for in our prehistoric past, so that we are hard-wired to be moralist, and over and above that we have been indoctrinated by society, our parents, our education, etc., to do the right thing. I saw nothing in this to investigate much further, however, since it seemed to me not to matter at all “where” my, or anyone else’s, particular values came from, since everyone needs to have some values or other (else we would have no motivation to do anything whatever) and all that really matters for amoralism is that (1) the values one has survive rational scrutiny and (2) one repudiate any presumption that these values can be justified objectively.

            But, I take the thrust of Duncan’a critique to be, apparently I have been conflating the source of moralism as such with the source of the particular values I (still) hold. It is one thing to understand that objective value as such is an illusion foisted on us by evolution and experience; it is quite a different thing to understand the source of one’s particular values, however objectively or subjectively held. Thus, if “We hold these truths,” which “truths” do “we” hold? and why? Not to pursue the question is to introduce an ersatz justification into one’s purported subjectivity after all; for in effect I have been presuming that acknowledging the subjectivity of my (or one’s) values made them immune to further criticism.

            But I don’t think I can fully agree with that critique. For is it not the very essence of desirism that one’s values be subjected to rational analysis and critique? So just because someone happens to value something does not make it kosher on the desirist scheme; it must also have survived rational/empirical examination, and be forever liable to such examination. Only then would it receive the desirist seal of approval. Desirism is precisely the recommendation to act on the basis of rational desire. A desire would not be rational in this sense if it had been taken at face value or its analysis and investigation been slapdash.

            And perhaps that is all Duncan is saying. For Duncan does, I think, style himself a desirist. So his critique of Reason and Ethics may simply be that it fails to provide thorough examples of desirist analysis of values. The examples I give tend to endorse prevailing norms, as if the goal of an ethical theory were to vindicate the status quo of our moral and other everyday intuitions, albeit now in a subjectivist light. It is patent that I do not want a desirist analysis to result in all of us becoming ax murderers.

            But Duncan’s view, I take it, is that the “prevailing values” I assume are (1) quite local and (2) quite suspect in their provenance and (3) possibly quite baneful in their effects. Again, this has been my critique of morality (and, in Reason and Ethics, our entire worldview) as such. But Duncan thinks I stopped the analysis prematurely by not recognizing that the same could be the case with the particular (moral or otherwise) values (and worldview) one happens to hold. That does indeed make perfect sense to me. Again, it seems to be in line with the very meaning of desirism as concerned with rational desires. So Duncan is simply urging that I become a genuine desirist.

But now I sense a disturbing implication. Suppose, then, that I discovered upon further analysis that the very rationalism I not only (continue to) value even after renouncing its objective significance but also make implicit in desirism itself (conceived as living in accordance with rational desire) turned out to be rooted historically in a thoroughgoing racism and imperialism (and classism and sexism and speciesism …) of white (human propertied male …) supremacy; in other words, that the supposedly “innocent” story of my valuing it because of its general utility for human affairs and of my having spent my whole life in an intellectual milieux that pays it universal homage, is in fact a fabrication and product of indoctrination into an exploitative elite. What then? What is the result of my having now swallowed the red pill of thoroughgoing desirism?

            On the one hand I begin to see how this could indeed help mitigate the desirist’s divided self. If the values that have persisted despite my conversion to amorality begin to dissipate one by one as a result of more sustained analysis, there would be less and less for my remnant moralism to objectify. Hence it too would dissipate. But on the other hand (or by the same token), wouldn’t desirism itself be at risk of dissolution? For what is left of desirism if the rational attitude that is its essence should itself be found wanting under more intense scrutiny? The snake would be swallowing its own tail. The baby will have been thrown out with the bath water.

            In fact I do address this question in Reason and Ethics. I there propose as the (practical) solution (and hence also the answer to ethics’ question: How shall one live?) that simple utility (or “pragmatism”) does in fact warrant continuing to value reason even as an amoralist. A (very distant) analogy might be: continuing to love your mother even after you discover that she didn’t want to “have” you and was highly neglectful of you when you were growing up and was a generally nasty person who hurt many others besides. It could still be important for, say, your mental health to treasure her.

            Admittedly this “save” amounts to assigning desirism the same sort of (pragmatically) justificatory function as a Darwinian might assign theism and indeed morality and other myths. But this too is wholly in line with my own critique of morality as simply having outlived its usefulness, and indeed become counterproductive of what we would desire if we reflected long and well enough.[1] Nothing in human experience is real, no belief true; the only question is how useful a belief or other mental attitude (or the total set of them) is for our considered desires. I still find rationality and other attitudes I value, such as compassion, to be more useful for making the world more to my (and I think “our”) considered liking if widely adopted than dispensing with them.[2] But that is an empirical hypothesis, and I could be mistaken. Or even if correct instrumentally, the world I would prefer could itself be the product of … an inadequate analysis.


[1] Perhaps even a victim of its own success, the way overpopulation may result from a successful strategy of survival.

[2] Duncan writes: “Having seen where this leads, more and more, I am preferring the opposite. The trouble with rationalisation is that [it] operates on the dominant logic, one which I (and even you, as an animal-use abolitionist!) abhor. Rationalising puts you on the back foot; instead of making people feel the same way you do, they are making you think the same way they do. A poor strategy for one who wants change” (personal communication). 

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