Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 8

OBJECTIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

HAVING now outlined the eudfemonistic account of morality, we may note certain objections that are commonly raised to it, and certain is understandings that constantly recur.

Do men always act for pleasure or to avoid pain?

Many of the earlier theorists, not content with showing that the good consists ultimately in a quality of conscious states, a.s.serted that all of men's actions are actually DIRECTED TOWARD the attainment of agreeable states of experience or avoidance of disagreeable states.

There is no act but is aimed for pleasure of some sort or away from pain; men differ, then, only in their wisdom in selecting the more important pleasures and their skill in attaining what they aim for.

This a.s.sertion, easily refuted, has seemed to some opponents of the eudemonistic account of morality so bound up with it as to involve its downfall.

The cla.s.sic statement of this erroneous psychology, which has been the source of much satisfaction to anti-eudemonistic philosophers, is to be found in the fourth chapter of Mill's Utilitarianism. "There is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so. Human nature is so const.i.tuted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means to happiness" A careful reading of Mill shows that he did not mean these statements without qualification. But since they, and similar sweeping a.s.sertions, [Footnote: Cf. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 44: "The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive of Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Caprae or A Kempis in his cell or of Nelson in the c.o.c.kpit of the Victory."] have been a stumbling-block to many, we must pause to note their inaccuracy, while insisting that they are no part of a sound utilitarian, or eudemonistic, theory. Far from the desire for happiness being the universal motive, it is one of the less common springs of conduct. Habit, inertia, instinct, ideals drive us this way and that; we do a thousand things daily without any thought of happiness, because our minds are so made that they naturally run off into such action. We desire concrete THINGS, without reference to their bearing on our happiness. We even go directly and consciously counter to our happiness at times, deliberately sacrifice it, perhaps for some foolish fancy. The idealist in politics expects to get no pleasure out of what his a.s.sociates deem his pigheadedness; but he has seen a vision and he keeps true to it. Regulus did not go back to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid the greater pain of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen pain and the allurement of possible pleasure. When a man endures privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ambition which will bring him no good. The pursuit of pleasure is a sophisticated impulse which appears in marked degree only in a few self-conscious and idle individuals. William James gave the deathblow to this pleasure-seeking psychology. "Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli.

With the manifestations of instinct and emotional expression, for example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure of smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown? Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blus.h.i.+ng? Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which they yield? In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system framed to respond in just that way. The IMPULSIVE QUALITY of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go." [Footnote: W. James, Psychology, vol. II, p. 550.] It is not true, then, that love of pleasure and fear of pain are the universal motives. It is not true that we inevitably act along the line of least hedonic resistance, that pain necessarily veers us off and pleasure irresistibly attracts. By force of will, by "suggestion" or training, we can go directly counter to the pull of pleasure. It is true that we should not have the instincts and habits and impulses that we do were they not in general useful for our existence or happiness. But the evolutionary process has been clumsy; we are not properly adjusted; we become the victims of ideas fixes; ideas and activities obsess us quite without relation to their hedonic value. So pleasure and pain are not usually the impelling force or conscious motive behind conduct. What they are is-the touchstone, the criterion, the justification.

We do not act in ways that bring the greatest happiness, but we ought to. We do not consciously seek happiness, and we ought not to. We ought to continue to care for THINGS and for IDEALS; but the things and ideals we care and work for ought to be such that through them man's welfare is advanced.

Are pleasures and pains incommensurable?

An objection commonly raised is that pleasures and pains of various sorts are incommensurable; that therefore no calculation of relative advantage is possible; and that the eudaemonistie criterion for action is thereby made impracticable and useless.

(1) To this we may reply that the estimation of the relative worth of different kinds of experience is, indeed, often very difficult.

But on any theory the decision as to the right is equally complicated and puzzling. The fact that the criterion is difficult to use is no evidence that it is not the right criterion. Which set of consequences will be of most intrinsic worth, it is sometimes impossible to know.

But one set is, nevertheless, of more intrinsic worth, and the act that secures them is the best act, even though we do not recognize it as such. There will continue to be, many differences of judgment as to which of alternative possible experiences is the more desirable.

But that uncertainty does not alter the fundamental fact that some experiences ARE intrinsically more desirable than others and more deserving of pursuit.

"A debtor who cannot pay me offers to compound for his debt by making over one of sundry things he possesses- a diamond ornament, a silver vase, a picture, a carriage. Other questions being set aside, I a.s.sert it to be my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable of these, but I cannot say which is the most valuable. Does the proposition that it is my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable, therefore, become doubtful? Must I not choose as well as I can, and if I choose wrongly, must I give up my ground of choice? Must I infer that in matters of business I may not act on the principle that, other things equal, the more profitable transaction is to be preferred, because, in many cases, I cannot say which is the more profitable and have often chosen the less profitable? Because I believe that of many dangerous courses I ought to take the least dangerous, do I make 'the fundamental a.s.sumption' that courses can be arranged according to a scale of dangerousness, and must I abandon my belief if I cannot so arrange them?" [Footnote: H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap. IX.]

(2) If it is practically impossible to calculate the relative worth of consequences in many cases, it is yet easy enough to do so in the great majority of moral situations. In most cases the preponderance of value is clear. That selfishness and self-indulgence are not worth while; that abstinence from pleasure-giving drugs and intoxicating liquors is worth the sacrifice; that truth and honesty, the law-abiding spirit, the spirit of service, friendliness and courtesy, sanitary measures, incorruptible courts, and a thousand other things are worth the effort and cost of acquiring them, is indisputable. It is only in some peculiarly balanced situations that we find practical difficulty in deciding. If morality were limited to the cases where we can be sure on which side the greater good or lesser evil lies, we should not be shorn of much of our present code.

(3) It would, of course, be impracticable to stop and calculate at the moment when action is needed. But such continual recalculation is unnecessary. Our ancestors, after many experiments, have found solutions for all the familiar types of situation; the results of their thought are crystallized for us in the ideals that press upon us from without and the voice of conscience that calls to us within. Forces beyond the individual human mind have taken care of these things and slowly steered man, with all his pa.s.sions and caprices, toward his own better welfare. It is only in moments when we long to understand and justify our ideals, or when some unusually baffling problem arises, that we need to calculate and weigh relative advantage and disadvantage. And that is what, in such situations, most people do.

Are some pleasures worthier than others?

Undiscriminating critics have often condemned the eudsemonistic criterion on the ground that any sort of pleasure is rated equally high on its scale so long as it is pleasure. "Pushpin as good as poetry!"

seems to some the height of sarcasm. Socrates says in the Philebus, "Do we not say that the intemperate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very temperance, and that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fancies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom? And may not he be justly deemed a fool who says that these pairs of pleasures are respectively alike?"

Why, however, do we rate the pleasures of temperance and wisdom above those of intemperance and folly? Simply because of their respective EFFECTS. INTRINSICALLY they may be equally desirable, or the latter may even be keener pleasures? that depends upon the individual circ.u.mstances; but there is no question about their relative EXTRINSIC value. There is always "the devil to pay" for intemperance and folly; while temperance and wisdom lead to health, love, honor, achievement, and many another good. As to push- pin-or let us say baseball-VERSUS poetry, it is only prejudice that makes us say we rate the latter higher. Outdoor games are not only productive of a keener delight to most people, they are extrinsically good as well, conducing to health, quickness of wit, self-control, and other goods. They ARE, in their time and place, as good as poetry. The reason for the greater reverence we feel, or feel we ought to feel, for poetry lies in the fact that it takes much more mental cultivation to acquire the taste for it; the love of poetry is a sort of patrician distinction. It is also true that poetry opens up to its lover a much wider range of enjoyments; it opens his eyes to the beauty and significance and pathos in the world; it is immensely educative, and inspiring to the spiritual life.

The love of broadening and inspiring things requires cultivation in most of us; so that we praise and honor such things and urge people toward them. Pushpin, or baseball, NEEDS no apotheosis. But if we ever develop into a race of anaemic bookworms, we shall have to glorify sport and learn to shrug our shoulders at the soft and easy enjoyments of poetry. Nothing is more obvious than the utilitarian nature of such habitual judgments and att.i.tudes.

One of the Platonic ill.u.s.trations, often brought up, is that of the happy oyster. [Footnote: Philebus, 22. "Is such a life eligible?" asks Socrates. Later (40), he agrees that "a man must be admitted to have real pleasure who is pleased with anything or anyhow," but asks if it is not true that some pleasures are "false." Protarchus. .h.i.ts the nail on the head by replying, "No one would call pleasures bad because they are 'false,' but BY RASON OF SOME OTHER GREAT EVIL TO WHICH THEY ARE LIABLE," i.e, because of their after-effects.] Who would wish, however miserable, to exchange places with it! Are there not other things to be considered besides happiness? "It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." And why? In the first place, we suspect that the oyster's, or even the fool's, range of happiness is very limited. We should hesitate to forego such joys as we do have, even if sorrow attends them, at so great a sacrifice. In the second place, each of us has a deep-rooted love of his own personal memories and expectations; and except in cases of unusual depression of spirits few of us would wish to lose our ident.i.ty and become some other person or thing even if we knew that other being to be happier. In the third place, a man knows HE could NOT be happier as an oyster; an oyster's joys (whatever they may be) would not satisfy him; he has other needs and desires. He must find happiness, if at all, in the satisfaction of his human cravings. The oyster's life, however satisfactory to the oyster, would leave him restless and bored. If you are a Socrates, you realize similarly that you could not FIND satisfaction in the fool's life. You know that although you have sorrows the fool wots not of, you also have a whole range of joys beyond his ken; and those joys are particularly precious to you. In the fourth place, the very words "oyster" and "fool" beg the question. "Fool" means by very definition a sort of person one would NOT choose to be; and the very visualization of an oyster is repellent. Were one to offer as the alternative a happy lion or eagle; or a happy, free- hearted savage such as Chateaubriand and Rousseau painted, one suspects that not a few suffering men and women would jump at the chance.

It is not really important to decide, however, what any one would choose. Our choices are biased and often foolish. The actual question is, Is the happiness of a fool, or of an oyster (if happiness it has) as worthy, as objectively desirable, as that of a wise man? And here again we have to say, not EXTRINSICALLY so desirable. The wise man is he who finds his happiness in activities that conduce to his ultimate welfare and that of others. The happiness of fool or oyster is transitory, blind, and fraught with unseen dangers; it is of no value to the community in which they live. But INTRINSICALLY, just qua happiness, it is-if it is-as good. What makes one form of happiness more worthy than another is simply, in the first place, its greater keenness or extent or freedom from pain, and in the second place its potentialities of future happiness or pain for self and others. When Mill wrote, therefore, in his cla.s.sic treatise, that "some KINDS of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others," he showed a-for him unusual-failure to a.n.a.lyze. Some kinds of PLEASURES are more desirable, for the reasons summarized above. But PLEASURE, in the abstract, pleasantness, agreeableness, intrinsic worth, whatever you choose to call it, is itself a quality; there can be more or less of it in a concrete experience, that is all. To speak of KINDS of pleasure is to mean KINDS OF EXPERIENCE which have the common attribute of pleasantness. In themselves all kinds of experience that are equally pleasant are equally worthy; there is no meaning to that adjective as applied to intrinsic immediate good. "Worthy" and "unworthy" apply to experience only when we begin to consider their consequences.

Is morality merely subjective and relative?

Different people find happiness in different ways; if morality is simply the means to happiness, is it not relative to their varying desires; is it not a purely subjective matter and without a fixed objective nature?

We must discriminate. Morality is not relative to our inclinations and desires, because those often do not rightly represent our own true welfare, still less the general welfare. Happiness is desirable whether our impulses are adjusted so as to aim for it or not. Nor is morality relative to our opinions; an act may be wrong though the whole world proclaim it right. It is a matter not of opinion but of fact whether an act is going to bring the greatest attainable welfare or not. However biased and shortsighted we may. be, the consequences of acts will be what they will be. In a very real sense, then, morality is objective; it is valid whether we recognize its validity and want it or not. It represents our needs more truly than our own wills, and thus has a greater authority, just as the rules of dietetics are not a matter of appet.i.te or whim, but have a rational authority over our caprices.

Morality is not, like imagination, something we can shape at will; it is imposed upon us from without, like sensation. Its development is predetermined by the structure of human nature and its environment; we do not invent it, we accept it. [Footnote: Cf. Cudworth (ca. 1688), Treatise, chap, n, sec. 3: "It is so far from being true that all moral good and evil, just and unjust, are mere arbitrary and fact.i.tious things, that are created wholly by will, that (if we would speak properly) we must needs say that nothing is morally good or evil, just or unjust, by mere will without nature, because everything is what it is by nature, and not by will." A good recent discussion bearing upon the question of the relativity of morality will be found in Santayana's Winds of Doctrine, pp. 138-154.] But although imposed upon our restive impulses, it is not imposed by any alien and arbitrary will. It is imposed by the same cosmos that set our consciousness into relation with a given kind of body in a given world. Submission to it is simply submission to the laws of our own natures. Lasting happiness can be found only in certain ways; we must make the best of it, but it is for our own good that we obey. Morality is relative to our organic needs and particular environment. It is a function of human nature, varying with its variations. A different race of beings on another planet might have to have a very radically different code. Ours is a distinctively human code, bearing the earmarks of our humanity and stamped with the particular nature of our earth-life.

To say this is to admit that morality varies with different temperaments and different needs. What is best for one person is not necessarily best for another; what is right for an early stage of civilization is not always right for a later. The patriarchal family was a source of strength in primitive society; today it would be a needless tyranny. Life in a tropical isle frees man from the necessity of many virtues which a more rigorous climate entails. The poet needs to live in a different way from the coal-heaver. Just so far as our individual and racial needs vary-our real needs, not our supposed needs and pathological desires (and always bearing in mind the needs of others)-just so far is what is right for one different from what is right for another. This is no condemnation of eudsemonistic morality.

On the contrary, a clear recognition of this truth would happily relax the sometimes over-rigid conventions of society, its cut-and- dried- made-on-one-pattern code, and make it more elastic and suitable to individual needs.

However, we are not so different from one another as we are apt to think. The extenuation of sin on the plea that the "artistic temperament" demands this, or a "sensitive nature" needs that, is much overdone. Differences in temperament are superficial compared with the miles of underlying strata of plain human nature. "A man's a man for a' that," and must submit to the rules for human life. The man of "artistic temperament" does not know himself well enough. He feels superficial and transient cravings; he ignores his underlying needs, and the fundamental duties which, in common with all other men, he owes to his fellows.

The standard of morality is absolute and objective, then, for each individual, and approximately the same for all human beings. He is wise who seeks not to mould his life according to his longings, but who accepts the rules of the game and follows the paths blazed by the seers and doers before him. Only those individuals and those nations have achieved success that have been willing to learn and follow the ideals which life itself imposes, the eternal laws which religious men call the will of G.o.d.

For criticisms of the account of morality here defended: F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book II, chap. II. J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, book II, chaps, I, II. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, book in, chap. I, first half, book IV, chap. III. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XIV. J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 2d ed, chap.

vi. H. Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, book I, chap, III; book II, chaps, I, II. W. Fite, Introductory Study of Ethics, part I. G. E.

Moore, Ethics, chap. VII. In reb.u.t.tal of some of these arguments: J.

S. Mill, Utilitarianism, chaps, II and IV. H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps, IX, X. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. X.

CHAPTER XIII

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

AFTER this summary answer to the commoner objections to our account of morality, we should notice a few of the more persistently recurrent formulas that seem inconsistent with this explanation of its fundamental nature.

Is morality "categorical," beyond need of justification?

To Kant and his followers, as well as to many less philosophical minds, the justification of morality by its utility has seemed unworthy.

Morality is much more ultimate and imperious. The pursuit of happiness is not binding; morality is. The way to attain happiness is dubious and variable; the commandments of morality are clear-cut and certain.

Different people find happiness in different activities; the laws of morality are universal and changeless. Morality, therefore, is prior to the pursuit of happiness; its dictates are known by an independent faculty. There is in us all an una.n.a.lyzable and unavoidable "ought"; ours not to reason why; ours but to do-and die, if need be. Morality is not a means to employ IF we wish happiness; in that case its precepts would be but hypothetical, if you wish happiness, do so and so. No, its commands are categorical. The inescapable fact of "oughtness" is the bottom fact upon which our ethics must be built. To the truth in this manner of speech we must all respond. As we have seen, morality is not purely subjective and relative; it carries the authority not of opinion but of fact. The right, the best way, IS unconditionally best, whether we are wise enough to desire it or no. The greatest good IS the greatest good, however narrow or short- sighted our impulses.

Kant expresses eloquently the absolute and inescapable nature of duty in its perennial opposition to our transitory and nickering desires.

(1) But Kant is unfair in his picturesque contrast between the perplexities attending the pursuit of happiness and the certainty attachable to morality. As a matter of observation, moral codes have varied quite as much as man's different ways of finding happiness.

Cases of moral perplexity are as common as cases of uncertainty with regard to the road to happiness; there is no such universality and changelessness about morality as he a.s.sumes. If a certain code seems fixed and indubitable to us, it is in large degree because we have become accustomed to it and given it our allegiance; a wider acquaintance with other codes, contemporary or past, would shake our confidence. Some fundamental rules are unquestionable-rules against murder, rape, etc.; but just as unquestionable is the fact that these acts make against human happiness.

(2) Only a man with an Hebraic training and rigoristic temper could think of morality in this awestruck and unquestioning way. More Bohemian people feel no such "categorical ought" in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

And if a man feels no such "categorical imperative," how can you prove to him it is there? Kant's theory is at bottom mere a.s.sertion; if because of your training and temperament you respond to it, and if you are content not to a.n.a.lyze and explain the existence of this imperious pressure upon your will, you are tremendously impressed. Otherwise the whole elaborate Kantian system probably seems to you an unreal brain-spun structure.

Kant, though a man of extraordinary mental powers, had but a narrow range of experience to base his theories upon, and lived too early to catch the genetic viewpoint. Hence there is a certain pedantic naivete in his constructions. No man with any modern psychological or historical training ought to be content to leave this extraordinary "categorical imperative" unexplained. It is quite possible to trace its origin and understand its function; there is nothing unique or mysterious about it. Why should we bow down to a command shot at us out of the air, a command irrelevant to our actual interests?

Children have to do so, and the majority of the human race are still children, who may properly acquiesce in the rules of morality without clearly realizing why. But the reflective man should not be content to yield himself to the yoke unless he can see its necessity and value. The "ought," the knowledge of what is right, antedates the individual's experience of what is best, and so seems mysterious and a priori to him; but it does not antedate the racial experience; it is rather its fruit. The teleology of conscience is very simple, and its genesis and development purely natural.

(3) The "ought" seems more objective than "conscience," more impersonal. Just so does "beauty" seem more impersonal and objective than our pleasure in contemplating nature and art. It is a constant tendency of the mind to project its values out of itself; to create "universes of discourse" that seem more stable and real than its own fleeting states. All that exists psychologically is a sense of pleasure at looking at certain combinations of outer objects; but that pleasure is constantly evoked by that peculiar combination, both in our own mind and in others'. So we objectify that pleasure and call it the "beauty" of the object. Similarly, all that exists psychologically is a certain felt pressure, certain emotions and ideas and pushes whose teleology is not realized. But we objectify that constantly and pretty universally felt pressure and think of an impersonal, objective "ought."

All the arts are expressible in "oughts"; and if there is a more authoritative and categorical nature to moral laws than there is, for example, to the aesthetic laws that art-study reveals, it is because aesthetics deals with only one aspect of human good and ethics with its totality. Indeed, every impulse is, in its initial push, categorical, offering no reasons, simply pressing upon us with its requirements.

Hunger and thirst and s.e.x-desire do not say to us, "If you desire to be happy, eat, drink, and gratify your pa.s.sion"; they call to us with an imperious and immediate demand. The demand of the moral law is more insistent and more authoritative simply because it represents a far more widespread and lasting need.

(4) Kant's "categorical imperative" is purely formal and empty. We OUGHT, we OUGHT-but what? It leads, if to anything, to a mere emotional reinforcement of our preexisting moral conceptions, to that canonization of good will as the one and only good, which is Kant's own position, but which we have found inadequate and misleading.

When we come to new situations it has no clue to offer. How do we actually decide in such cases? By imagining the consequences of acts and seeing their relative productiveness of happiness and pain. Or else by finding some already decided case under which we can put the new instance. We are tempted to an act that promises profit, but something checks us. Ought we to do this? Gradually it comes over us that this would be stealing; and stealing we have already decided, or the race has decided for us, is wrong.

We have to decide things in terms of our welfare, or of those already stereotyped decisions which represent the half-conscious strivings of past generations for human welfare. There is no other way; the conception of an imperious impersonal "ought" bearing ruthlessly down upon us gives no help whatsoever.

A later and English expression of the feeling that morality needs no justification may be found in Bradley's ETHICAL STUDIES. [Footnote: Pages 56-57.] "To take virtue as a mere means to an ulterior end is in direct antagonism to the voice of moral consciousness. That consciousness, when unwarped by selfishness and not blinded by sophistry, is convinced that to ask for the Why is simple immorality; to do good for its own sake is virtue, to do it for some ulterior end or object...is never virtue...Virtue not only does seem to be, but is, an end in itself. Against the base mechanical which meets us on all sides, with its 'What is the use' of goodness, or beauty, or truth, there is but one fitting answer from the friends of science, or art, or religion and virtue, 'We do not know and we do not care.'"