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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