There is no correct moral theory.
All morality is politics. People do not act on the basis of morality. Everybody
does everything they do for the most meaningful reason at the time. If an act
may be judged as moral, so much the better. But, if an act cannot be judged as
moral, and if it is meaningful enough to a person to do it, and if it seems
like a good idea at the time, then it will be done. Morality is just political
correctness masquerading as the right thing to do – at the time. However, the
social psychology of the individual will always weigh the political correctness
of an act against the meaningfulness of the act, and proceed accordingly. Yet, the
point is none of us do what we do because we want to be moral authorities. We do
what we do because it is the most meaningful thing to do at the time,
regardless of anyone else’s self-appointed moral vanity.
Perhaps the most referenced moral theory today is that
derived from Utilitarian consequentialism.
This is a set of philosophical theories all based on the idea that moral action
is that which represents the greatest good (Shafer-Landau, 2010). For example,
we like to think that we have laws in place because following them maximizes
the well-being of everyone in society – that is the function of law and order
in society.
Consider this classic moral dilemma: is the act of letting
someone die as immoral as the act of purposely killing someone (Rachels, 2001)?
A Utilitarian consequentialist argument might state that it is just as immoral
to let someone die, as it is to kill someone. It might not seem as bad as
pulling the trigger, but if you do not give blood, and someone who needs that
blood dies, then it might arguably be traced back to you, so this is a death
for which you are morally responsible. If you want your actions to be as
positive as possible, and if you want to maximize the well-being of all, then
you cannot go around letting people die.
Of course, another Utilitarian consequentialist might argue
that having every person be neurotically responsible for all life that hypothetically
crosses their path will not lead to maximizing well-being in society. In this
post, I will deliver an argument for the decimation of all Utilitarian consequentialist
theories of morality, and state my own case for why it is as reasonable to
assume that there really is no such thing as morality, there is only the
ever-changing politics of the moment. Therefore, in any society at any time,
whatever is politically correct, is what is moral, but only for the time being.
What
is Utilitarian Consequentialism?
Based on the simple idea that what is moral is what
represents the greatest good for the greatest number of people, the philosophy of
Utilitarian consequentialism now comprises dozens of versions of this basic
moral theory. The standard measure of ethical action for Utilitarian
consequentialism, since the days of early Utilitarian theorists such as Jeremy
Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, is the greatest good for the
greatest number of people. One example of a variation would be the Utilitarian
consequentialist theory that includes animals as well as humans. This moral
theory must take into account every part of suffering and every part of
happiness in the top of the food chain in considering if an action leads to the
greatest good for the greatest number of individuals. A person who subscribes
to this theory of morality might become a vegan.
There
is an aspect of plain common sense that pervades Utilitarian consequentialism.
There is something elementary and foundational about the Utilitarian consequentialist
view of moral outcomes as favoring the most people. It is almost as if the
ancient code of an eye for eye, had
been suddenly extended to say that whichever action results in the least number
of eyes being gouged out, is the better and more moral action that ought to be
performed.
For example, in simplest terms, we
have a law against running a stop sign. We think this is a moral law because
knowing people have to stop at a stop sign serves the greatest good and
maximizes well-being among most
people most of the time. One more example, consider the Donner party, a group
of settlers who lost their way to California, got snowed-in high up in the
mountains, and only a few survived the winter by acts of cannibalism. Moral or
immoral? Arguably, a Utilitarian consequentialist might say this was moral
because in that situation cannibalism benefited the greatest number of people
possible to survive.
In terms of law, this pragmatic sense of an act having an
obvious outcome, the merits of which would be reflected in the amount of good
it allowed for the greatest number of people, is the kind of logic that might
be expected from elementary codes of law for elementary forms of civilization.
A society might not exist if most of the people in it were wiped out very often,
so whatever allows most people to live is better than what allows most people
to die. It is also reasonable that this kind of logic would rear its head again
in the elementary and formative days of the modern nation-state. In the 19th
century, when Utilitarianism was being expounded, there was a new enthusiasm
for declaring the new philosophical basis for codes of law that would allow the
liberal, enlightened society to exist. The modern nation-state would be
comprised of modern individuals inspired by living in republican,
constitutional states, in which all people have human rights. This would work,
and it would be morally more sophisticated and sustainable for people and
society to exist, survive and thrive, without monarchical or dictatorial forces
of government to constrain them to some totalitarian morality.
Utilitarian consequentialism is a functional argument that supposes positive
consequences for many people is better than what is good for only a few. Moral
action is that action which maximizes well-being. A singular weakness is that
there is no way to measure the amount of goodness or well-being that becomes
the subject of the argument. Thus, in the final analysis, the determination of
goodness becomes a subjective judgment call.
Settling
the Issue: How to Decimate Utilitarian Consequentialism
Talking about the greatest good, and maximizing well-being,
all sounds good, but who defines good? The singular problem with all
Utilitarian consequentialist arguments, is that they are wholly based on
arbitrary, subjective judgment calls, which offer no warrant, mandate, or claim
to the moral high ground whatsoever, by producing anything so solid as a
geometric proof of their validity. In other words, the history of Utilitarian
consequentialism is replete with an endless stream of arguments, each exploring
its own particular twist to the moral theory, yet there is no way to evaluate
them. Put another way, no politician ever calls up a Utilitarian consequentialist
philosopher for advice on policy-making. Today, all Utilitarian
consequentialist philosophers are of absolutely no consequence to anyone but
each other.
Obviously, Utilitarian consequentialism would like to cast
itself in the mode of a rule-bound, formal system, that could produce proper theorems
of morality at will, and for every situation. However, the region of
rule-bound, mathematical logic, that reveals unavoidable theorems that attest
to their correctness merely by their existence, is in no way the realm of Utilitarian
consequentialist morality. There is no natural science, nor formal study, of
morality. Morals and ethics exist exclusively on the idealistic plane of the
human mind in an informal world where what is logical is what feels right at the
time. Thus, the best a Utilitarian consequentialist can do is offer their
opinionated guidelines for what feels right at the time that someone is about
to engage action.
Once it has been established that Utilitarian consequentialism
has no claim to formal theorems and arguments with the logical soundness of
geometric proofs, then the Pandora’s box of moral theory has been opened. From
this vantage point, all consequentialist arguments are slippery slope
arguments, and consequentialism itself rests on the pinnacle of a slippery
slope. Beyond the code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments, there is no more
solid ground for the moralist to attain, and the presumption of achieving the
moral high ground is reduced to nothing more than a fantasy of politics.
All
Morality is Politics
In every society, at any given moment, there is an ambiance
of beliefs and ideologies that is supported by the forces that have the most
political power. This power to enforce actions based on the prevailing
political beliefs that override all others is something that is situational, and
it has been chronicled as changing continuously throughout history. In a sense,
history is the ever-changing story of how the persuasive political rhetorics of
a given time and place comprise the prevailing moral theory. This sensibility
about the prevailing political ideology of morality is what we currently refer
to as political correctness.
The normative order of every political regime gives birth to
this moral creature that stands like a bulldog at the gates of every society.
It represents what is right, true, and good – for the time being. It always has
existed in every society, always will, and it continuously shapeshifts and
morphs into new versions of itself, every time it is unveiled in the latest
place and time in which people are being governed as a moral society. Every
society considers itself a moral society, with its own prevailing ideological
creature of political correctness standing guard at the gates. The bulldog of
political correctness represents the prevailing correct moral theory, which
people always claim to have just uncovered and perfected.
Thus,
Utilitarian consequentialism is entirely subjective and has no universal logic
that will serve people in every situation. One person’s definition of good is
not the absolute value of every definition of good. Every single argument is
based on the intersubjective meanings of words that are assumed by the
philosopher for the time being. So, it represents a way to twist any prevailing
politically correct ideology into an assumption of the consequentialist good
that will proliferate as a consequence of obeying the situational dictates of that
morality. In other words, like an attorney arguing for their client, a Utilitarian
consequentialist can make anything sound morally good.
In other words, Utilitarian consequentialists simply argue
backwards from prevailing political views to create the appearance of
discovering a moral theory of action. Utilitarian consequentialists could never
acknowledge what is being argued in this paper because (a) they have to assume
that the assumptions of goodness they invoke are indisputably good forever and
for all time, (b) they cannot reveal that their attempt to create a moral
theory is based on a current political ideology, and (c) they could not ever admit
the momentary, political basis of their claim to universal goodness because the
true force of the prevailing ideology of political correctness is that people
know they have to pretend as though it is not there and it cannot be
questioned. In other words, to be aligned with political power people have to
give the image of having spontaneously become aligned with these moral insights
about what is right, true, and good, forever and ever, or they put their lives
at risk.
Consequently, they have to perform an act of spontaneous
philosophical realization in order to expound the latest and greatest moral
theory for everyone to follow. They fashion moral theories that have the
imprimatur of philosophical logic in order to create a façade of realism,
sophistication, intellectualism, and enlightenment for the polite society
currently living at the mercy of the contemporary bulldog of political
correctness. This is what all politically correct people are doing in their
moments of publicly professed morality.
Thus,
Utilitarian consequentialism is a fake, intersubjective attempt to construe
values, words, and deeds in a collusion that aligns newly expounded moral
theory with the prevailing criteria of political correctness. The simple
argument in favor of this notion is that in every society one can examine the
moral theories that arise as symptoms of the situational politics of the time.
If Utilitarian consequentialism is so great and worthy a moral theory, then why
is it utterly incapable of revealing morality and legislation, policy and
criteria, for all of us to do the right thing? Utilitarian consequentialism has
done nothing for the state of human morality in the last two centuries. Instead
it has simply witnessed all of humanity living in a world of social chaos in
which the only semblance of morality we have is that which is represented by
the politically correct flavor of the month, or year, or administration, or
decade, or age – whatever it is, morality is an outgrowth of politics. In other
words, human subjective opinion about morality matters not in the end. Every
society works the same way, and creates its own morality as an afterthought to
political power. This is because the goodness of Utilitarian consequentialism
is something that is defined by whoever is in power.
It
is possible to argue that political mandates for morality are eventually contested,
and therefore they are not all-powerful. However, they are only challenged by
another ideology that complements it somehow and offers the next perceivable
alternative to the prevailing politically correct moral theory. And whenever
this discourse results in one politically correct ideology replacing another,
then the props may have changed, but the plot stays the same, and this is the
only sure thing in the universe of human morality. Thus, the old saying: you become what you hate.
Live
and Let Die
Consider
the arguments for deciding whether it is morally correct to kill or to let die.
They are each based on their own assumptions of goodness. By those arguments,
killing is only immoral if it is not moral – because we know there are
hypothetical cases in which murder is the morally correct thing to do. And as
far as the letting die component of
life is concerned, every second a person inhabits the Earth, that person is
letting something die. Therefore, it is impossible for someone not to be
letting most of what is living to die, all the time, merely by being alive. It
is the natural state of humans and all life, to live and let die.
Conclusion
Therefore,
Utilitarian consequentialism as a theory of morality is little more than a
sophisticated illusion. It is the intersubjective interplay of people playing
philosophical games to give the appearance of being aligned with what is
politically correct at the time – for the purposes of appearing to be good
moral citizens – all done for the purposes of saving their own necks. Once
having realised the charade of Utilitarian consequentialism, one has
transcended the politically correct quagmire of polite society. One is thus
left to figure out one’s own moral theory for one’s own circumstances knowing
that no matter what conclusions one will arrive at, they will never be
acceptable to Utilitarian consequentialism or to the politically correct. Yet
this is the only and final result for a person who chooses to disavow the
intersubjective illusion of Utilitarian consequentialist morality masquerading
as political correctness. Since my new individual moral theory will not be
based on illusions and delusions of political society, it can be no less moral
than a moral theory premised on a situational, political illusion.
References
Shafer-Landau, R.
(2010). The fundamentals of ethics. Oxford UP.
Rachels, James.
(2001). “Killing and letting die.” In [Eds.] Lawrence Becker and Charlotte
Becker, The Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd edition, 2, pp. 947-50, New York: Routledge.
~The End~
