This is a continuation from a previous blog post on the future of moral philosoph (see here).
In his PhD thesis, the psychologist Jushua Greene wrote:
Utilitarianism is not true, nor is it an adequate systematization of anyone’s values. No one is a utilitarian at heart. But at the same time, everyone is a utilitarian in part. As realists, relying on our moral intuitions as guides to moral truth, we have every reason to reject utilitarianism. But as people who know the truth about morality in search of practical moral guidelines that people with different moral outlooks can share, utilitarianism is, I think, our best hope.
Utilitarianism is unattractive to many because it involves trade-offs and compromises. The real ethical truths could not possibly be so cruel. But there are no moral facts. There is only the harsh real world of millions of beings, many more if we include animals, who all have their own subjective values, which will inevitably come into conflict with one another.
To deal with these situations, there is no better tool than utilitarianism, for it makes those trade-offs explicit and transparent, whereas other ethical theories offer little more than the dictatorship of allegedly objective values, with a propaganda minister who declares any criticism or mention of trade-offs immoral.
And, of course, yes. Yes, of course…
The answers offered by a utilitarian approach to social problems will be unsatisfying in the same way that planning a holiday among a group of friends with very different visions of the ideal holiday will be. One wants to go skiing. One wants to be at the beach. One wants to rest a lot. Another wants to party. Imagine if one of these friends came up with an objective theory of holidaying, defending the one true way by which different holidays could be assessed, one that just so happens to coincide with their own preferred destination.
That is how moral discourse looks to the moral nihilist.
I hate to break it to you, but scaling these problems up to millions of individuals makes them even harder. None of the objections to utilitarianism as the one true and final theory of ethics carries much weight against utilitarianism as an inevitable pragmatic tool. Nothing else can do better. Any deviation reduces the amount of (subjective) value in the world.
J. L. Mackie, the father of moral error theory, advocated a kind of moral revisionism that cleansed ethics of its problematic parts and left it with a kind of pragmatic remainder that came pretty close to utilitarianism. In his own words:
No doubt my approach could be called, in a very broad sense, a rule utilitarian one
And Bentham and Mill, the founders of utilitarianism, might have seen the need to combine moral nihilism with utilitarianism as well. They were ultimately social reformers, engaged in law and governance, as much as they were part-time philosophers. The 18th and 19th century was no time to advocate for moral nihilism to promote social coordination and welfare. A utilitarian, after all, might well lie about their views on meta-ethics if they believe that this would make more people into utilitarians.
Reflections from my recent pilgrimage to the father of utilitarianism
Bentham once wrote in his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:
When thus interpreted [in light of the principle of utility], the words ought, and right and wrong, and others of that stamp, have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.
He does not believe that these moral terms are even intelligible, unless they are translated in terms of utility. I read this as an endorsement of moral nihilism, with an appeal to rewrite our moral terms, by casting all previous thinking, so harmful to human and animal flourishing, into the flames.
Moral nihilism, in the end, is the liberation of values. The only real values there are: subjective ones. Even a traditional objectivist utilitarian could instrumentally endorse moral nihilism, for it would free us from the many harms that moral zealotry causes today. But I ultimately endorse utilitarianism as the best pragmatic tool for all of us, including other animals, to realise our values in a world where they will inevitably clash with one another. That this would be an amoral society is no objection. For we would all be better off if we cast off the yoke of tyranny that is morality.
Ethics and Morality Essential Reads
But now it seems that there is no work left to be done for moral philosophers. Meta-ethics is abolished once we adopt moral nihilism and normative ethics is fully replaced to the empirical study of how we can optimally resolve our conflicts. If so, that would be wonderful. A sign of a mature field that has actually made progress in offering us guidance for how to act.
Of course, this is the very reason so many moral philosophers despise nihilism and utilitarianism. Not because these views are false. But because they rightly believe that this would mean that their job here is done and that they’ve wasted much of their lifetime defending theories that aren’t even close to truth.
And so they desperatedly cling to their alternatives, much like the vast majority of religious leaders are never seriously going to question their religious beliefs — incentivized to keep believing in a myth.
But just as philosophers of science aren’t obsolete in modern science, moral philosophers are given a new role to play — that is, as philosophers of ‘moral’ science. A role that is admittedly quite different from much of what goes on in the offices of moral philosophers.