PART I
Title: Anti-Morality, Truth And Peace: Beyond Kant And Others — A New Theory.
(Replacing Moral Philosophy, And Morality Or Ethics, With
An Epistemic, Science-Based Theory.)
Key Words: Moral, Philosophy, Ethics, Epistemology, Science.
Author: Kym Farrand, 2004.
(Philosophy Department, Flinders University, South Australia)
PART I: EPISTEMIC PROBLEMS WITH MORAL THEORIES: NO THEORY CAN BE KNOWN TO BE TRUE OR CLOSE TO TRUTH.
PART I, CHAPTER 1: GENERAL EPISTEMIC PROBLEMS WITH NON-KANTIAN
THEORIES — A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION.
PART I, CHAPTER 1, Section 1: Knowledge, The Moral Regress And Problematic Circularity.
The Introduction implied that skepticism or nihilism[5] is appropriate regarding moral theories and, hence, moral values and concepts. This chapter supports that suggestion by arguing that all moral theories involve an epistemically problematic regress, or an attempt to stop the regress via an epistemically problematic circular assertion. This needs more explanation. Firstly here, ‘X is epistemically problematic’ means X has a problem concerning knowledge:-
E.g., X could be the statement, ‘It is true that the sun goes round Earth’. An epistemic problem here is that X claims to be knowledge, but X is not knowledge. We cannot know X is true or close to truth.
If Y is epistemically justifiable, only then is Y knowledge or so close to truth that it would be epistemically unreasonable to doubt it. E.g., Y could be ‘Earth goes round the sun’. There is so much evidence for this that anyone knowing the evidence would be unreasonable to doubt it. If some statement, S, is not knowledge, it is epistemically justifiable to be skeptical or nihilistic about S. (Skepticism is justified if there is insufficient[6] or no evidence to either confirm or disconfirm S. Nihilism is justified if there is sufficient evidence to prove S wrong.)
By ‘knowledge’ I mean ‘justified, true belief’, namely belief which is true and justified by sufficient evidence. It is not enough to just believe. Centuries ago, when most believed the sun orbits the Earth, this did not make it true that the sun orbits the Earth. And if a belief is true or close to truth, this is not enough to make the belief knowledge. A prehistoric cave-dweller may have believed that humans would invent a way to fly, but because planes and similar had not been invented in prehistoric times, that person did not know that. This is because that person had no evidence. It is (sufficient) evidence which justifies a true belief for us, making it knowledge. Similarly, consider someone today (2004) who believes there are billions of planets on which there is life, in each galaxy. It may be true. Let’s suppose it is. But we do not yet know it is true, because we do not have any evidence (justification) that it is true. We might find evidence of life on some nearby planet(s). But, if we do, this is not evidence that there is now life on billions of other distant planets. We cannot yet observe any such evidence. We lack the resources to investigate.
The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is widely accepted among scientists and philosophers, but as a somewhat loose or slightly vague (though useful and meaningful) definition. There is some controversy. E.g., there is some uncertainty concerning how much evidence is sufficient. (E.g., in previous centuries most believed that standing on Earth and seeing the sun (apparently) moving round oneself from East to West was sufficient evidence that it is true that the sun orbits Earth.)
The type of knowledge this book is primarily concerned with is ‘practicable’ or ‘sufficiently practicable’ knowledge[7]. This is discussed further in later chapters, after a suitable context has been developed. The present chapter is only a preliminary discussion, and this book is primarily intended for undergraduate students of morality. So, for now, as with defining ‘knowledge’ as ‘true, justified belief’, I’ll “paint with broad strokes” instead of in detail. What then, broadly speaking, is ‘practicable knowledge’?:-
We can reliably or predictably practice many things. To the degree we can accurately do this, to that degree we have ‘sufficiently practicable knowledge’. Here we are to that degree close enough to truth for our practical purposes. E.g., we can have sufficient knowledge to fairly reliably do such very difficult things as control diabetes and land spacecrafts on the moon. When we can predict a moon-landing on the basis of a scientific theory, and the predictions are reliably confirmed, the theory is, for the practical purpose of a moon landing, epistemically justified or unproblematic[8]. Here too, the definition I’m using of ‘knowledge’ or ‘epistemically justified’ is somewhat loose or approximate, in that it can include the notion ‘close to the truth’. Here, we can plausibly said to have (sufficient practicable) knowledge if a spacecraft lands ‘sufficiently’ close to the point predicted by the theory used — namely sufficiently close so there is no impracticability regarding what the scientists aim to achieve, e.g., to collect certain types of moon rocks. So a theory might not be exactly confirmed in that the spacecraft lands, say, 30 metres from where the theory predicts. But this error of far less than 1 percent over the distance from Earth to the moon means that for practical purposes the theory used is sufficiently close to the truth. Here we have sufficiently justified (evidenced), sufficiently true belief, i.e., sufficiently practicable knowledge. The evidence justifying the physics theory used to direct the spacecrafts includes the fact that the spacecrafts reliably land sufficiently close to where the theory predicts. So the theory is knowledge.
That is temporarily enough discussion of what I mean by ‘(practicable) knowledge’, ‘epistemically justifiable’ and related notions. The next paragraph begins an application of such notions to moral theories. Again, the above discussion of those notions is a simplification. They are explained further in various contexts below.
The first application of that discussion of knowledge is the following discussion of an epistemically problematic moral regress:-
When someone states that something, e.g., not murdering, is valued by their moral theory, we can ask, “How do you know?”. (Or, equivalently, “What evidence do you have for this?”) If they try to justify their statement, we can ask the same of their alleged justification — and so on, never reaching a fundamental premise which is epistemically unproblematic or knowledge. That is, ‘regress’ means something like ‘moving backwards or down’. Here we move from a moral argument’s conclusion, e.g., ‘Don’t murder’, down to its foundation, the fundamental premise of the argument or theory. Consider the following regress:-
Suppose Frank states, “Jones was wrong to murder Harrison”. You say to Frank, “How do you know?” The next step in the regress is Frank’s answer: “Because no-one ought to murder”. You ask, “How do you know?”. Frank answers, “Because murder takes away a person’s right to life”. Here Frank can try to stop the regress by making a fundamental claim. Suppose he claims there is a fundamental right to life. That is, he has regressed to what he believes is the foundation for all his other, previously-mentioned claims concerning murder. This is his basic reason for not murdering. Yet here too you ask, “How do you know persons have a right to life?”. Frank might say, “We are born with such rights”. This is just a way of re-stating, ‘Persons have a right to life’. So this and any other repetition takes him no further. You can enquire “How do you know?”. Here, or at some other equivalent point in the regress, Frank will simply say something like: “We just do have that right. I just know (or believe) we do.” Here, if you keep asking, “How do you know?”, and Frank answers, you keep getting that same answer, or something equivalent. (Equivalently, you could ask, “If you know this, you must have evidence for it, because knowledge is a belief for which you have sufficient evidence. So please tell me the evidence.”)
In sum, Frank tries to end the regress by merely asserting, without evidence, that there is some firm ground or premise on which to base his moral theory. In that there is no epistemically justifiable way to stop a moral regress, a moral regress is, from an epistemic viewpoint, an infinite regress, i.e., an unstoppable regress. It is only epistemically justifiably stoppable by evidence sufficient to show that the argument or theory is fundamentally based only on knowledge. But with morality, any attempt at an epistemically justifiable stopping point fails. As I’ll argue shortly, the regress descends into an epistemic vacuum.
Various claims other than ‘A right to life’ could be asserted as a reason for not murdering. E.g., ‘Murder takes away the victim’s freedom; we are all fundamentally naturally free, and this ultimate good ought to be preserved.’; and ‘Murder normally makes other people unhappy, including the victim’s relatives and friends; and we should always only do what normally makes most people happiest’. But any such moral claim or argument, namely statements involving a term such as ‘ought’ or ‘should’, is ultimately only an assertion, a belief without evidence. What evidence, what epistemic justification, is there for the claim that we should always only do what normally makes most people happiest? There can be evidence for part of some such argument, but not for the whole argument or its moral foundation and conclusion. E.g., there is ample evidence that, e.g., if solitary psychopaths murder much-loved persons, this on-average makes more people unhappy than it makes happy. But this is a factual issue, a quite different issue from the moral issue of whether we ought[9] to always only do what makes most people happiest[10]. And so on, for all other moral claims concerning murder, and for all moral claims concerning everything else, e.g., sex.
Regarding science, a parallel situation would be, e.g., to assert that some herb will cure disease D, without ever seeking evidence regarding whether the herb can cure D. Or it could be like people widely believing that the herb will cure D, but only because those people would feel happier if the herb cured D. What would make us happy regarding some scientific issue has nothing to do with whether any assertion concerning the issue is true. Such assertions would not be called knowledge. And so on, for all other possible parallels here. In sum, in science’s sphere it is irrational or epistemically questionable to simply assert that a belief is true unless there is sufficient evidence (justification) for the belief.
But why compare science with morality? A moral theorist could say this is inappropriate because the so-called moral sphere is separate from science’s sphere, and that each sphere has its own way to justify theories. However, in the so-called moral sphere, any of countless mutually-conflicting moral theories is (allegedly) justified according to itself[11]. Points mentioned in the Introduction are relevant here:-
To believe something is to believe it is true or close to the truth. What else could ‘believe’ mean? (E.g., to believe S is false is to disbelieve S.) So a justified belief is a belief which has been justified as true or close to the truth – as opposed, e.g., to being (allegedly) justified by some moral standard. That is, a justified belief is knowledge, namely a justified true (or close to true) belief. Thence, if someone believes a moral theory, they believe that the theory is true or close to the truth. If the theory is also justified, then the theory is known to be true or close to truth. That is, ‘justified’ really means ‘epistemically justified’, i.e., known to be true or close to the truth.
Relatedly, because ‘believe’ means ‘believe true’, to believe X inherently means to think that one knows X. (Truth alone is that which we can know. E.g., we cannot know that 1+2 is 7; here we can only know that 1+2 is 3.) And the concept ‘know’ is an epistemic issue. So every moral and other belief is inherently an epistemic issue. That is, every belief’s justifiability inherently and only means its epistemic justifiability. The question, ‘Can this belief, e.g., a moral theory, be justified?’, means ‘Can it be epistemically justified?’.
These concepts are inextricably interrelated, or equivalent. E.g., to believe that a moral theory is justified is to believe it is true that it is justified, that one knows it is justified and hence true. Here the unavoidable issue of epistemic justifiability arises again.
In sum, to coherently investigate the believability of a moral theory can only mean to investigate whether it is epistemically justified. (With this, all believers in a moral theory do at least implicitly believe their theory is epistemically justifiable. This book tries to develop a practical theory which actually is epistemically justifiable, partly by thoroughly and explicitly investigating what ‘epistemically justified’ means. Even if that argument claiming an equivalence between ‘justified’ and ‘epistemically justified’ is not sound, the book can be seen as investigating whether we can have an epistemically justifiable practical theory.)
Now the notion, ‘X is epistemically justified’, is clearly applicable in science’s sphere. So, if a moral theory is to be justified, namely epistemically justified, that scientifically applicable notion must also apply in fundamentally the same way, or an equivalent way, in the so-called moral sphere. Otherwise there would be incoherence or a contradiction, within knowledge as a whole. Yet points above suggest that the notion ‘X is epistemically justified’ cannot be applied to moral theories.
This suggests that moral theories can never coherently be said to be justified. The rest of Part I will argue further that they can never be justified, i.e., in any meaningful, coherent or epistemic sense. They can only be problematically believed to be justified.
Next here, consider the fact that there are mutually-contradictory moral theories, each claiming to be justified. A coherent definition of ‘justified’ includes the notion that if one theory is justified, then theories (or parts of them) conflicting with it are not justified — because of the same evidence. The same evidence confirms that theory and disconfirms any theory conflicting with it — as with modern evidence concerning ‘Earth goes round the sun’ versus ‘The sun goes round Earth’. A theory cannot be justified by evidence or a claim which contradicts the evidence or a claim (allegedly) justifying a conflicting theory. What if mutually-contradictory scientific theories were all justified, or knowledge, in the way that believers in mutually-contradictory moral theories believe their theories are justified? If so, we would know both that the sun orbits Earth, and that Earth orbits the sun. In other words, the alleged ways to justify moral theories are not epistemically justifiable. Those ways are merely beliefs.
Summing up recent points:- They suggest there is an at least indirect epistemic reason to compare attempts at justification in morality with justification in science, and that morality fails here. (But much more needs to be said. It will be later shown that there are other epistemically justifiable reasons for comparing them, and that morality definitely fails.)
An epistemically unquestionable basis or foundation for a moral theory can never be arrived at. A moral theory rests on what its believers only imagine to be firm ground. It rests on nothing substantial at all, or an epistemic vacuum. In other words, they rest on nonsense — as in a extension of Jeremy Bentham’s argument that (alleged) fundamental moral rights are “nonsense on stilts”. That is, moral theories are nonsense parading pretentiously as knowledge or truth. E.g., it is widely believed that there is a right to life, a right to liberty, and so on. Such foundational beliefs are as if they were pulled out of the air — or out of a vacuum, which is of course impossible, because there is nothing in a vacuum. Knowledge is supported by evidence. Moral notions cannot even be epistemically justifiably supported by metaphorical stilts, because such stilts must rest on the firm ground of evidence, not on a vacuum.
With this, arguments above suggest that what believers in a moral theory see as justification of their theory is problematically circular. And if a problematically circular argument can verify one moral theory, then another such circular argument can verify an opposing moral theory. What is problematic circularity?:-
Frank’s fundamental assertion, his (and any) attempt to stop a moral regress, involves problematic circularity. The circularity is due to Frank ultimately only saying that you ought not to murder because you ought not to murder. He claims that we ought not to murder because murder is wrong. But something one believes is morally wrong is something one believes people ought not to do, and vice versa. So all Frank is saying is that murder is wrong because murder is wrong. This is equivalent to saying that most healthy leaves look green because they have something in them which causes them to look green; i.e., they are (caused to look) green because they are (caused to look) green. Or, rain is falling because water is falling from clouds in drops; i.e., rain is falling because rain is falling. This is meaningless in that it is only repetition. It explains and justifies nothing.
The form of that argument is circular, i.e., it states that C is D because C is D, or that X is X because X is X. The meaninglessness here regarding justifying a moral claim means that here there is an epistemic vacuum. Using the same circular form, we can validly say, e.g., that red is 4 because red is 4, leaves are normally blue because leaves are normally blue, the moon is marshmallow because the moon is marshmallow, and so on. If such a circular argument can justify murder being wrong, it can justify anything, including the opposite: ‘Murder is right because murder is right’.
Another way of showing that such circular arguments are epistemically problematic is to show they involve ‘begging the question’. If Frank begs the question, the argument he uses to allegedly prove X assumes that X is already proven. It uses a statement as the alleged evidence for the statement. X is believed to be the evidence for X, for itself. A non-analytic statement[12], such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Murder is right’, is epistemically justified only if there is sufficient evidence for it outside of the statement, e.g., in publicly observable reality. That is, empirical evidence, or an argument soundly based on such evidence, can justify the premise or foundation of an argument. E.g., the evidence for why healthy leaves tend to be green relates to the well-evidenced fact that evolution tends to select those chemicals which are most useful regarding survival-necessary events in plant physiology, namely, here, photosynthesis and related events. We can observe that it is (close to) the truth that the most useful chemicals here look green[13]. We cannot do anything like this for any moral statement, e.g., ‘Murder is wrong’, ‘Murder is right’ or ‘There is a right to life’.
In sum, a problematic regress is unavoidable regarding moral theory because any attempt to stop a regress here fails due to the attempt involving mere assertions, without evidence, and the assertions involve a circularity which is problematic because it involves begging the question. There is an epistemic vacuum here.
Another way of describing morality’s problems here is:-
An act, X, can be believed to be justified because it comes under some theory, T, which advocates some value or concept, V. E.g., Joseph can believe that the act ‘Freely express your opinion whenever you like’ is justified because he believes in a moral theory which values (his) freedom above all else. But, instead of that particular X, and that value, (i.e., freedom,) innumerable other, mutually conflicting acts and values or concepts can be substituted for X and V. Every possible moral theory can thereby be covered. Joseph believes his X is justified. But this only means he at least implicitly thinks X is justified relative to V.
A different X, e.g., ‘Say only what will not hurt someone’, can be believed justified because it comes under V1, ‘Never hurt a person’. And ‘Say only what is true’ can be believed justified because it comes under V2, ‘Always be honest’. The latter two Xs (and hence Vs) can conflict with Joseph’s ‘total free speech’ X (and V). (Joseph’s false opinion concerning Sally, e.g., ‘Sally is a child molester’, can hurt Sally. A true statement, coming under V2, e.g., ‘Larry, everyone who knows you dislikes you; they only politely pretend to like you’, can hurt. Under V1, free expression of such honest statements would be believed unjustified.)
A central point here is that any act can appear justified, relative to some evaluative standard — and that the epistemic problem here is whether that standard can be epistemically justified. Sharing can appear justified via the standard, ‘fairness’. But can fairness be epistemically justified[14]? Being (apparently or believed) justifiable relative to some value or standard has nothing to do with whether the standard itself really is epistemically justified. If epistemic justifiability in the so-called moral sphere was achievable relative to some moral standard, we would still be left with the following epistemic problem: which standard, among fairness, selfishness (and hence a type of unfairness), unselfishness, freedom, authority/obedience, honesty, dishonesty, equality, inequality, and so on, is the one we can all know is the true standard? If we cannot know, and it seems we cannot know, then if an act among mutually-conflicting acts is justifiable via or relative to some standard, any act at all is justifiable..
If this was the case in science, the situation would be ridiculous. It would be impossible. It would, e.g., be epistemically justified and practicable knowledge that a stone you let go of a metre above the ground will move towards the ground, towards the sky, go sideways or remain suspended in mid-air. In maths, e.g., ‘1+2’ could truly be 7 or 43, etc, or a dog’s bark, a pancake, and so on. Clearly, epistemic justifiability cannot involve mutually-contradictory things being true or close to the truth.
In the so-called moral sphere, if mutually-conflicting acts or theories are all somehow justifiable, we might as well toss a coin to choose among them. We could not know that just one act or theory among them is justified. We could not know that we should do this rather than that act. (And, often, if we committed one act we believed is as justified as the contrary act, this would rule out the contrary or alternatives to that act. E.g., if Jean murders Jim, this rules out not murdering him.)
So, the epistemic situation regarding morality is as impossible as justification relative to simply any standard would be in science. As Part II will argue further, science has just one ultimate or most general standard, a standard which rules out the justifiability of conflicting theories, via the standard involving observation[15]. E.g., we can observe what happens to stones we let go of. Theories in science are only justifiable relative to that single, ultimate epistemic standard, i.e., relative to sufficient evidence.
A common defence of a morality here is to claim that there is one true standard by which a morality (or act or value) is justifiably assessed, and it is ‘Goodness’, or ‘Right’[16]. This involves asking, ‘Is the X advocated by this moral theory truly good (or right)?’. Points above imply that this defence has implicitly the same basic problems as the moral arguments discussed above:-
Push the defender here down a regress and all we end up with is a vacuous, problematically circular argument such as ‘X is good because X is good’, ‘X is good because ‘good’ means ‘doing X’, and if one does X this means one is good’, i.e., ‘Good is good’, or ‘We should do X because X is right, and we should do what is right because that which is right is what we should do’, i.e., ‘We should do what we should do’, i.e., ‘Right is right’. In sum, ‘good’ or ‘right’ is at least implicitly merely asserted to be X, and, circularly, vice versa. This again allows X to be contradictory things, e.g., ‘Never abort foetuses’ and ‘Abort foetuses if the mother wishes’. The alleged standard, the abstract term ‘goodness’, or ‘right’, when given specific, practicable definition, ends up being just another relative moral standard among many. With this, as with Frank and the regress above, the defender can ultimately only assert something like ‘X simply is good’, along with an epistemically vacuous answer if you ask, ‘How do you know X is good?’.
(Emotion-based defences of a moral theory, such as ‘X is right because I (or we all normally) feel it is right’, are discussed later, partly via Kant’s criticisms of such theories and defences. Such defences are argued to have the same basic problems discussed in the present chapter. Points in this chapter can be adapted to apply to them.)
Concluding this chapter:-
A moral theory which is (allegedly) justified relative to some standard is a moral theory which is (allegedly) justified via a problematic circular argument. Yet this is all moral theories can do. Hence they are all epistemically problematic. With this, the form of this circular argument, if it could justify, would justify mutually-contradictory acts or theories.
Some circular arguments are not epistemically problematic. This is because any sound argument, i.e., an epistemically justifiable argument, namely with a valid form and true premise(s), contains its conclusion in its premise(s). E.g., consider the sound argument: ‘All plants, to survive, need to photosynthesise. P1 is a plant. Therefore, if you want P1 to survive, ensure it gets sufficient light (and water etc).’ This is circular because P1 in the conclusion also belongs within the notion ‘plants (i.e., P1, P2, etc)’ in the premise. The argument could be restated as ‘P1 and all other plants need light because P1 and all other plants need light’. However, this circularity is not epistemically problematic because there is sufficient evidence outside the statement, ‘All plants need light (if they are to survive)’, for the statement. The evidence is in publicly observable reality. Every observed plant denied light for a certain period has not survived[17]. So that statement is justifiable — relative to the observation and related sound arguments involved in science, i.e., relative to the standard, ‘Sufficient evidence’.
Suppose that an argument, a theory, which is not a moral theory, can solve the problems moral theories have — and be epistemically justifiably applicable in the so-called moral sphere. Suppose this theory is based at least indirectly on the fundamental or most general standard of science. This would surely be a sound practical reason to compare morality with science. This book argues there is such a theory — and that there is a sound argument, and hence necessarily circular argument, but not epistemically problematic argument, which epistemically justifies that standard and the theory based on it.
In sum:- Moral arguments are all unsound: they do not have premises which are true or close to truth. They are not epistemically justifiable. Moral theories are too problematic. Science is epistemically justifiable, and may be able to help here, at least indirectly.
However, much more needs to be said here. This chapter is only making preliminary points. As the book develops, I’ll argue further that there is no evidence for the fundamental premise or basis of any moral theory.
PART I, CHAPTER 1, Section 2: Philosophical And Related Psychological And Social Issues.
The above suggests that, to believe a moral theory is to believe something for which there is no evidence. That is, there is nothing we can know here (except the meta-knowledge that there is nothing we can know here). I’ve argued that this is a major philosophical problem. It is also a major psychological problem and can lead to major problems for societies. (I’m writing this book as a philosopher, psychologist and sociologist.):-
Morality was defined above broadly enough to include all political, legal, economic and similar concepts. So this chapter so far suggests that the foundations of every past and present society’s (political, legal, economic etc) institutions are imaginary. It suggests they are nonsense on stilts, or unsound, and epistemically unjustifiable. This applies to any individual’s socially-acquired moral reasons for actions. This can include such things as someone’s reasons for not murdering, and includes the reasons for a legal system’s prohibition of murder. (Later I’ll argue that murder is unjustifiable, and that a certain type of society is justifiable, though because of reasons (evidence) other than any moral reasons.)
Many societies, regarding some issues, consider people who believe something for which there is no evidence as insane. They are said to be delusional or hallucinating. E.g., a person who believes they see a duck on a chair, when no-one else can, would be considered insane in at least most societies. Yet if most in such a society believe in some moral theory, they tend not to be considered delusional or insane. Because nearly everyone believes some moral theory, it’s usually not seen as psychologically or epistemically problematic. Within a society this is universally so regarding the society’s view of a person who believes the main theory believed in that society. (Something similar applies regarding religious belief.)
The delusion regarding morality is plausibly more severe than insanity regarding something like an imagined duck on a chair. There is at least a possibility that it is true that a duck could be on a chair, because there are real ducks, which can sit on real chairs. But it is not even possible for a morality to be true or known to be true. So the delusion regarding morality is like a delusory belief that chairs can grown wings, become part duck, and fly away. We could see a duck on a chair, but not a flying duck-chair. Seeing morality as based on a firm foundation is a widely-accepted major delusion. Here, the familiar is the strange. That is, the statistically normal is epistemically strange: the commonly-believed is objectively unbelievable.
In sum, again, skepticism or nihilism regarding morality seems appropriate.
This is a major philosophical problem because we must at least implicitly use some action-guiding theory each time we intentionally act. Underlying each intended act or practice, X, there is an at least implicit theory[18]. (This claims either (i) that it is justified to do X rather than Y, so X is a duty; or (ii) that it is justified that X is as permissible as Y, so it’s not unjustified to do X rather than Y. It is impossible to intentionally do something without a reason, because there is at least implicitly the reason that you think you are duty-bound or permitted to do it. And if this is not your fundamental reason, there is an at least implicit fundamental reason or justification for that reason — discoverable via a regress.) A reason for an act is a theory. A philosophical problem here is: if we can only base our intended practices on some moral theory, and all moral theories are unjustifiable, what do we do, and why?
The epistemic appropriateness of moral skepticism or nihilism can also be a major social-psychological problem. This is because widespread moral doubt or nihilism involves people seeing no justifiable reason for anything they or others do. They see only a moral vacuum. This can mean hopelessness, with life seeming pointless. People can despair. It can also mean some thinking there is no reason not to do any act they feel like, e.g., rape. Such views and associated feelings mean that many persons cannot feel at peace, and that society is not at peace.
This book is partly an attempt to deal with those related major problems. (Here, in relation to the previous paragraph’s last sentence, is one reason why the word ‘peace’ is part of the book’s title.) I’ll call the central issue here ‘the moral vacuum problem’. The book is also partly an attempt to persuade all who believe in some moral theory to rationally examine that belief, and to thereby stop believing. That is, I’ll argue that all need to see there is a moral vacuum, and that this is a problem — the solution to which lies outside of moral theory.
To not see there is a moral vacuum will be argued to be another major problem. This I’ll call ‘the problem of moral belief’. This is believing in some moral theory, which means believing without evidence. It means one believes one knows some moral theory to be true or objective, though no-one can have such knowledge.
Another social-psychological problem of moral belief is that countless persons, due to believing in some moral theory, have hated, imprisoned, tortured or killed other persons. When there is war between societies, at least one moral belief tends to be crucially involved. Nazism’s belief that (alleged) Aryans were superior and had the moral duty or right to enslave or kill others is but one example here. Such beliefs are, epistemically speaking, false, i.e., irrational. Psychologically speaking, such beliefs are among the most dangerous sociopathic types of moral and hence delusory beliefs.
If all such beliefs can be shown to lack evidence, this is partly what is needed to solve that problem — ending the potential for such conflicts or war[19]. (This is another reason why the book’s title includes the word ‘peace’.)
Another epistemically-related social-psychological and philosophical problem with moral beliefs is that they tend to be gullibly just taken for granted, via their social source (e.g., parents or a religion) being trusted unquestioningly. In other words, the problem is that there tends to be no individual epistemic autonomy here. That is, each unquestioning believer (1) tends to simply allow some other person(s) to instil the belief in the believer; and (2) does not check for themselves, as a free rational agent, whether there are other, independent, epistemically justifiable reasons for believing. (With this, un-autonomous millions have been willing to obey others’ commands to kill or die for their unquestioned and hence imaginarily firm beliefs.) With that lack of autonomy goes a partial lack of personal responsibility[20] for what one believes and, thence, intentionally does.
In conclusion here:- Human psychology and society involve an epistemically problematic tendency — namely to not reflect critically and sufficiently deeply in certain areas. The so-called moral sphere, in that it involves the question, ‘How should one live?’, is the most important area here. According to many moral beliefs, trust among persons is a worthwhile, justifiable thing. But for persons to blindly trust or be influenced to trust any social (e.g., peer-group) source of a moral belief is epistemically unjustifiable. Epistemic autonomy is epistemically justifiable, because it means seeking independent evidence for beliefs. Never questioning moral beliefs or their sources can lead to conflict among persons and societies, and great suffering. Informed moral disbelief, or a rationally critical anti-moral theory, is an aspect of the epistemic autonomy needed to solve such problems. And epistemic autonomy regarding morality is not very difficult, because one merely needs to conduct an honest enquiry into the social source’s claims, asking whether there is evidence for them. Pushing the source down a regress is useful here. It would soon become clear there is no evidence. Similarly regarding enquiring into any moral beliefs oneself has. (Similarly concerning religion.)
PART I, CHAPTER 1, Section 3: The Need For An Epistemically Unquestionable, Authoritative, Objective Solution.
I’ve said we need a solution to the above-mentioned problems — something positive, a theory to replace the moral vacuum left by moral disbelief. This assumes that we need a theory here at all. This assumption was investigated in the previous section, mainly in a footnote. But, some further points:-
Some see moral theory as so questionable that they conclude we can never have a coherent, justifiable theory to live by. Some argue that all moral theories are nonsense, and that we do not need nonsense — so we should just forget searching for a justifiable theory and simply get on with life.
But ‘simply getting on with life’ involves the moral theory claiming that a justifiable moral theory is: ‘Forget searching for a(nother) theory and simply get on with life’. This, specifically, further involves believing a moral theory which claims it is justified to get on with a specific type of life. This often means believing the highly questionable moral theory that oneself should unquestionably conform to whatever moral theory is dominant in the society one just happens to be in. So, those born in capitalist societies tend to simply go along with the capitalist system. And so on.
So, effectively, or in practice, those who claim to disbelieve moral theories accept and hence believe some moral theory. (The exception is those who replace moral theories with an epistemically justifiable practical theory, as discussed in Part II.)
All moral believers, and all such moral alleged disbelievers, make choices. As Nietzsche said, every chosen or intended practice involves some theory, involving an evaluative perspective. In other words, as discussed above, any theory or intended practice is relative to some standard. Even moral skeptics and nihilists make choices which they at least assume they ought to be permitted to put into practice. This ‘ought’ assumption is their standard, and involves a moral theory (unless it is an epistemically justifiable practical theory). Their choices or theory include(s) their choices to live, to eat etc, and to attack moral theories (other than the theory involved in that assumption).
In sum, even if we believe we have rejected all moral theories, we must either practice some theory applicable to the how-should-one-live sphere, or be unconscious or dead so that we cannot intentionally act.
But which theory should we have? Again, as Socrates suggests, this is a most serious question, for it concerns how (and whether) one should live.
If we think that whatever theory we apply will be nonsense, this is too problematic. Here we’d have the skeptical or nihilist meta-theory claiming that any prescriptive theory is as good as any other. This implies that it does not matter which theory we practice. Here the meta-theory implies that any act, X, is as acceptable as any alternative to X. Murder and suicide would be as acceptable as not murdering and not suiciding. Raping and then eating our children would be as good as not doing so. And so on.
If all action-guiding theories are merely unjustifiable beliefs, or nonsense, how do we decide what to do? We could toss a coin to decide by chance, or suicide due to despair. Yet any such basis for decisions is based on a moral theory, namely one stating it is justifiably right or permissible to use chance to decide, or to suicide, and so on.
Or, you might decide to do whatever seems most prudent regarding avoiding painful consequences for yourself. But this is also acting on a moral theory. It says you ought to do what avoids pain for you. And so on, for any choice made here. It is epistemically unquestionable that we must have some theory.
If we autonomously look deeply, openly, honestly and carefully at the theory we practise, we will check whether the theory can be justified — as opposed to just taking the theory for granted, trustingly. As we must have a theory, an open honesty, involving a search for truth or epistemic justifiability, demands we attempt to justify whatever theory we have. And, if this cannot be done, it demands we search for a theory we can justify.
‘Justification’ implies authority. If a general scientific theory is sufficiently justified, it gains the status of a law: the theory is authoritative. When someone seeks a moral theory they can justify, they seek a theory with authority. Only an authoritative action-guiding theory can give us the knowledge that its prescriptions alone are justified, in that alternative theories lack authority[21]. That is, they lack justification. We need to know, and feel, that what we do is justified. If we think all theories are nonsense, lacking authority or justification, we think there’s no point in doing one thing rather than another. With this, we would not be at peace regarding what we do. We would lack the psychological peace achievable by thinking we have acted justifiably, i.e., with justified authority.
If we could prove that some omniscient god(s)[22] exist, many people believe that this would provide such an authority. Yet, as Bentham suggests, even if we can know that some god(s) exist(s), there is the further problem of how to know which moral theory comes from the god(s). Christians, for example, differ greatly regarding what they think the god they believe in says they ought to do. Similarly for Muslims, Jews, Hindus and so on. However, there seems to be no evidence for the claim that only one coherent god or set of gods exists. There are only various claims, e.g., amounting to the problematic claim that, of the innumerable competing alleged gods or sets of gods, X is the only one, and X exists because X exists. And for any one alleged god there are only claims, conflicting claims, regarding the moral prescriptions allegedly commanded by the alleged god. Having faith that some alleged god(s) exist(s) is no help. Different people have deep faith regarding different, mutually-contradictory alleged gods. Various comments above concerning belief apply to faith. Faith in X means to think that X is the case — with absolutely no evidence. This is a type of belief as such in X, as opposed to knowledge. (Moral belief (faith) is much the same as religious belief (faith) here.)
And, as some ancient Greek philosophers realised, there is the further problem that, if a god exists and commands us to follow a certain moral theory, is the theory true only because the god commands it, or does the god command it because it is independently true? If the former, then the theory as such is arbitrary in that any of many mutually-contradictory theories could have been chosen by the god to be the truth. (Here, ‘Do murder’ would be as good or as likely a choice as ‘Don’t murder’. And so on.)
And by what standard would the theory or truth here be chosen? Would the god toss a coin, to choose via chance? By what standard would that method of choosing via chance be justifiable? If a different, non-chance, moral standard (e.g., a right-to-life standard) was used, then how would the god choose this and justify doing so? Because that standard was the true one? Or ...? And so on. Here too there is a type of insoluble regress, involving issues incomprehensible to us. For us, it’s an epistemic vacuum.
Such issues, choices etc seem hardly satisfactory from a human, epistemically autonomous viewpoint — if such a viewpoint could exist in a universe where a god alone decides what will be (or appear?) true, i.e., epistemically justified, to us. We could not never independently or autonomously know what is the truth here. With this, the authority for the theory would be a problematic or arbitrary authority. This book is investigating the possibility of what would be, for us, an epistemically justifiable theory applicable to the how-should-one-live sphere. So far it seems that a religious authority would not solve the problems discovered by that investigation.
Suppose the god prescribes the theory because the theory is true independently for us, i.e., independently of whether the god exists or prescribes it. Here the god is not the authority which justifies the theory. The theory would be epistemically justified, by evidence sufficient for us and the god to know the theory is true. This independent evidence would provide authority for the theory. The god would be irrelevant here. We could independently or autonomously discover the authority for ourselves. But, despite humanity’s best efforts over millennia, we don’t seem to have discovered an epistemically justifiable moral (or religious) theory.
For such reasons, many reject the possibility of and/or need for a supernatural authority, seeing the idea of such an authority as nonsense, lacking evidence. (With this I agree.)
Instead, some seek a natural authority. Major contenders here are human nature and natural selection, or an interrelation of them. Yet, as with alleged supernatural beings, there are many competing, confusing possibilities here. Here we meet the ‘is-ought’ problem (implied previously, and discussed further, later.) This is the problem that, whatever is the case, this does not in-itself imply what ought to be the case: there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. For moral theories, this is another insoluble epistemic problem. One aspect of this insolubility is that there can be differing plausible[23] views concerning what is the case. So, if an ‘is’ does imply an ‘ought, then differing plausible views about what is the case can imply contradictory ‘oughts’. So here we cannot know which ‘ought’ to put into practice. This is very clear regarding typical views on what is the case regarding human nature. E.g., both competitiveness and co-operativeness have been plausibly claimed as primary aspects of human nature, due to their selective advantages. Some persons believe that the ‘is’, natural competitiveness, implies that they ought to practise this ‘is’. E.g., Nazis argued that natural selection involves survival of the fittest races, and that the fittest are those most successful in competing against (alleged) other races for resources, including power. Thence, the Nazis argued, war would be the best way to allow the fittest to survive and become morally justifiably dominant. Others see the most co-operative humans as those most likely to be naturally selected. E.g., plausibly, co-operation tends to be more efficient than non-co-operation, and if families and tribe members co-operate in getting food etc needed to care for their children, their genes are more likely to be passed on than if the individuals here don’t co-operate or do compete selfishly and aggressively among themselves. Some believe this plausible ‘is’ implies that we ought to co-operate world-wide, and hence avoid war. In sum, even if an ‘is’ can imply only one ought, there can be conflicting plausible views regarding what ‘is’ — so we cannot know what we ought to do.
There are other aspects of human nature which have been claimed to be central, or primary. The overall view seems to be that human nature somewhat involves a mix of opposing tendencies, e.g., competitiveness and co-operativeness, selfishness and unselfishness, and a desire for peace and a desire to be brutal, and that in differing environments different tendencies can be the most survival-helpful. But, if this or some other mixture is the overall natural ‘is’, specifically how ought we to act on it? A ‘mixture of opposing tendencies, in relation to what is survival-helpful in changeable environments’ is a very ambiguous, vague notion. The ‘is’ situation here seems too confusing to provide any single, unquestionable authority for a moral theory. (The issue of ‘Why is survival an ‘ought’, or justifiable?’ arises here too. It is discussed soon.)
A confusing or mixed ‘is’, consisting of conflicting natural aspects, can imply different, conflicting oughts. This suggests yet another problem, another aspect of the is-ought issue, compounding the just-mentioned problems:-
Each of various mutually-contradictory ‘oughts’ can be believed by different persons to be implied by the very same ‘is’, even an agreed-on, unmixed and unconfusing ‘is’. E.g., different persons could agree that the following is the case: ‘Due to human nature being basically somewhat selfish, there is some competition for resources, and some groups (e.g., nations and classes) get many times more resources than do other groups’. Some persons here believe that this means that such competition and resulting inequality ought to continue. Other persons look at the same ‘is’ and decide that such competition and resulting inequality ought not to continue.
If there was no epistemic gap between an ‘is’ and a moral ‘ought’, we would know that any such ‘is’ implies only one ‘ought’. This would be parallel to us knowing that ‘1+2=3’ implies (via doubling,) that 2+4 is 6, or that if it is the case that all humans can die, then this implies that John, who is a human, can die. Regarding ‘2+4=?’, we know that only one answer, 6, is implied. Regarding the possibility of John dying, here we know that only one answer is implied. Different persons can believe in different answers, but they cannot know there are different, mutually-contradictory true answers. Similarly for oughts. In morality, where there can only be belief, the gap between any true ‘is’ and a believed ‘ought’ is at least implicitly believed by the believer to be bridged by the believer’s morality. This involves problematic circularity[24], so points above apply here.
In sum, the contenders for a natural authority considered so far are inadequate. However, moral theorists such as David Hume suggest there might be a different type of natural authority. This involves human sentiments felt nearly universally in certain situations by mature normal persons familiar with certain facts concerning the situations. Hume can be interpreted as suggesting that these sentimental reactions mean that a moral theory based on them is as close as a moral theory can get to an equivalent to objectivity in science, i.e., epistemic justifiability. This argument may be a way to bridge the is-ought gap[25], at least in a way as close to epistemic justifiability as is possible for a moral theory:-
Such a theory admits that human nature involves a mix of opposing emotions or sentiments, but also plausibly argues that some emotional reactions naturally normally predominate. E.g., regarding the issue of how to treat one’s children, suppose the facts include: the children seem likely to grow up to be useful members of society, and one’s society seems to have sufficient resources to feed the children and all its other members, long-term. In such situations, mature normal parents commonly have a sentiment motivating them to feed and otherwise care for their children, rather than, e.g., killing or eating them[26]. Here the normal parental reaction, e.g., to the sight of their hungry or crying child, would be to feel and hence believe that the child should be loved, pitied, comforted, helped and so on. Such sentiments would evolve as normal. E.g., consider persons with a gene motivating them to murder or not care for their children. The children would be unlikely to live long enough to pass on that gene. It would be naturally selected out of the normal gene pool. So, normally, parents care greatly for their children. That is, some prescriptions are naturally in us, hard-wired in our brains by evolution. Thence, normal mature humans naturally tend to think it morally right to care for their children, and morally wrong to murder them.
(However, in some cases this is outweighed, e.g., during a famine, by adults believing it to be of higher moral worth to only feed persons who are, say, between 8 and 50 years old and productive. This can mean more likelihood of passing on a group’s genes than if all were fed. Trying to feed all could mean no-one gets sufficient to survive and pass on genes. Again, here there is a mix of opposing effective motivations. (Effectively, caring parents can sometimes be motivated to commit infanticide.) But, plausibly, the mix evolved because different motivations are on average differentially useful regarding passing on genes in different situations.)
There are some moral beliefs which have remained more or less widely believed, judging by (often limited) historical/archeological evidence, but others have ceased to be widely believed, or change. The beliefs which seemed to have been widespread throughout history include the belief that one should care for and not murder one’s children (perhaps in all but extreme situations, such as famine). This is because the historically-lasting moral beliefs tend to be motivated by sentiments naturally selected because, on average, they motivate humans in ways enabling their genes to be passed on. These sentiments are necessary for a society to survive. So societies, if they have survived, must have had the moral beliefs thereby-motivated as their core, natural morality. Any society which suddenly changed from this core moral theory, e.g., to advocating always murdering children, would only last about one generation. Beyond those common core, survival-necessary beliefs, societies can diverge, namely regarding other moral beliefs. But there must be a core common across all societies — or the societies would not exist[27].
In sum, on average, in certain types of situation, there are some moral sentiments common among normal humans, across time and space. (So I’ll call the morality here ‘common morality’. Prescriptions outside that common core I’ll call ‘divergible’[28].)
The situations that prompt those common emotional reactions are, like any situation, an ‘is’. The common emotional reactions involve an ‘ought’. (E.g., it is the case that my baby is hungry; therefore I ought to feed her.) So, in a sense, these reactions fill what would otherwise be an is-ought gap. The near universality of such responses to such situations means that theorists like Hume can plausibly suggest that this is similar to objectivity in science. That is, it is similar to something needed for epistemic justification. For in science too, a common response to the same situation is evidence for objectivity, namely that the response relates to the truth. E.g., a common response when walking near a cliff is to believe that if one walks over the cliff edge, one will fall fast rather than float gently down or up or stay suspended in mid-air. It is commonly believed, at least implicitly, that gravity operates universally. Here every person , car, stone, and so on going over a cliff has been observed to fall. So there is vast, exceptionless evidence for the belief. So it is a true, justifiable belief — knowledge. In sum, the normal sensory perceptions used as evidence in science are similar to what could be called ‘normal emotion-based quasi-perceptions’ in the so-called moral sphere.
Yet this does not mean that the situation regarding morality, though similar, is epistemically (sufficiently) equivalent. It does not mean that common moral beliefs are knowledge, or close to truth. It only means that a moral notion is commonly believed, due to natural selection. It does not mean the is-ought gap is filled in an epistemically justifiable way:-
To fill the gap in an epistemically justifiable way, truth needs to be involved. Firstly, as Hume recognised, an emotion as such cannot be true. An emotion is like an itch or a hair: such things are neither true nor false. They are just there. It is true that they are there, but they themselves are not truths. Only statements, beliefs, can be true. A common emotional reaction, an ‘is’, prompts a common ‘ought’ belief, as in ‘My baby is hungry; therefore I feel sympathy and hence believe I ought to feed her’. Yet, as suggested in Part I, Chapter 1, Section 1, (and confirmed further soon,) an emotion is not evidence for the epistemic justifiability of any thereby-prompted belief. And the degree of commonness or popularity of a belief, as such, does not make it likely to that degree that the belief is true, i.e., epistemically justifiable. Only evidence can show whether a belief is true or close to truth. E.g., it was once commonly believed that the sun goes round the Earth. Later, most people came to know of evidence sufficient to show that this belief was false. Regarding morality, it was once commonly believed that slavery, extreme sexism and non-democratic governments were natural or acceptable. Now, to a major degree, those beliefs are widely believed to be wrong or unacceptable.
However, such beliefs are not part of the common, naturally-selected core discussed above. The main focus of the present discussion is whether the naturalness of this common core provides us with an epistemically authoritative basis for believing a moral theory. (This authoritativeness, along with the non-self-contradictoriness inherent in epistemic justification, implies that this theory would require us to universally act on the core’s prescriptions, not just normally or commonly or when we felt like it,.)
Just because a belief is naturally motivated, i.e., via evolution, this does not make it true. Motivation, or evolution, is one thing. Evidence is quite another. Consider the claim that widespread moral agreement is morality’s as-near-as-possible equivalent to objectivity in science. Widespread agreement in science’s sphere can be epistemically unjustifiable. E.g., we seem to have evolved to have various common illusions and associated delusions. Indeed they seem universal. We all see the moon as bigger when it is near Earth’s horizon than when the moon is above. We all see sticks (apparently) bend when we put part of them in water. Colour is arguably an illusion, widely believed to exist ‘out there’, e.g., really on the skin of a lemon (as opposed to colour being an experience commonly produced inside the normal brain, a naturally-selected experience, like those common emotional reactions). And so on.
In sum, what we have evolved to commonly or universally believe is not necessarily a reliable guide regarding whether the belief is true. We need independent and sufficient evidence. E.g., regarding sticks appearing to bend in water, we can make observations of that (illusory) observation, e.g., by running our hands up and down the stick, confirming that water does not bend it. We can partly submerge a thin glass rod which would break if bent as much as it appears to be bent, and observe it does not break. And so on. It is thereby epistemically justifiable that we can not derive an epistemically justifiable theory from common reactions (emotions or beliefs) just because they are common. (And, as will be discussed further later, there are glaring epistemic problems with various common emotional reactions. E.g., history suggests that many normal humans feel negatively towards persons of a race which superficially looks very different from theirs. This emotion has nothing to do with whether it is justifiable to believe that the other race ought to be discriminated against.)
So, widespread agreement in science’s sphere does not mean that, when there is widespread agreement regarding morality, the moral agreement is sufficiently equivalent to objectivity in science. Rather, moral agreement could be like agreeing that the moon does get bigger near the horizon, that water does bend sticks, and so on. That is, moral agreement could be a common belief that the false is true, that the epistemically unjustifiable is justified. Arguments above suggest that the only evidence regarding morality is that, here too, we have evolved to have delusions. And an emotional reaction prompting us to believe, e.g., that a suffering child is a morally bad situation, is, as Hume realised, objectively an illusion. It is analogous to our illusory perception that colour (as mentally experienced) is ‘out there’, e.g., on the skin of an lemon. Common sentiments might fill the is-ought gap as far as an emotionally-based, moral theory is concerned. But many points above show that this filling is not epistemically justifiable. And, if all moral theories are delusional, then any attempt at such a filling would be to attempt to fill something involving a delusion with an emotionally-based illusion.
A concluding remark here:- Recent points imply that Humean and similar arguments cannot escape all the problems involved with the is-ought issue. If it ‘is’ the case that persons naturally normally have similar feelings or beliefs about something, this does not imply that it is epistemically justifiable that all ought to act on those feelings or beliefs. To believe there is no gap between the ‘is’ and an ‘ought’ here involves a moral belief and an epistemic mistake, and hence a delusion.
(As with the above-discussed problems of problematic circularity, delusions, an insoluble regress and so on, the is-ought problem for morality will often not be mentioned explicitly below, but it will be at least implicit that the moral notions discussed (and all others) have all those problems.)
The discussion so far has failed to find an authoritative natural basis for morality. I’ve argued that any moral belief is a delusion. Yet moral delusions are common for what seems to me to be an understandable, evolutionary reason. Could this reason be an authoritative natural basis for moral belief?. Firstly here, what is the probable reason?:-
All else equal, a society will hold together or survive better if its members unquestioningly believe that its core (and, perhaps less-importantly, its other) moral beliefs are true. So, because a society is needed in order to best enable individuals’ genes to be passed on, natural selection probably favoured individuals having brains which tend to gullibly unquestioningly believe the individual’s society’s morality, i.e., believe the morality is true, i.e., justifiable. It seems likely that a society where most believed that the society’s moral beliefs were merely beliefs, i.e., not able to be justified or proved true, would believe less in preserving that society than if most believed their society’s moral beliefs were true. Similarly, consider parents trying to raise children to believe in their society’s morality, and obey it and, with this, obey the parents. These would-be-authoritative parents would have an easier job if they gullibly firmly believed the morality and if children were naturally gullible, and could hence easily be influenced to believe the morality was true (authoritative), as opposed to the parents saying, “These beliefs we merely have faith in. We don’t know if they are true. There is no evidence that they are true. They are unjustifiable.”
This is the probable social-psychological-biological explanation for the commonness of the delusion, and related gullibility, that is morality. Apart from the fact that gullibility (foolability) is not likely to lead people to the truth or epistemically justifiable, an explanation is not a justification. A true explanation of an event is one thing, but justifying the event is quite another. To explain why a belief exists does not justify the belief[29]. Justification of a belief requires evidence:-
E.g., a scientist can explain why we see sticks apparently bend in water, or why we commonly see a ripe lemon as yellow. But that does not justify a belief that sticks really do bend in water, or that colour is really ‘out there’, in the lemon skin, as opposed to an experience people with normal colour vision have via their brains. Similarly, a true explanation for a fatal car crash could be that the driver had just lost her job, got angry, got drunk and so ran over a child. This true explanation does not justify running over the child: running over the child is not thereby necessarily something that ought to have happened.
An example similar (or equivalent) to the situation with morality:- Persons in some past societies seem to have believed something like, ‘There are gods who make our life as good as they can (or will do so if we worship, pray, sacrifice and so on)’. This is probably because there is an evolutionary advantage in believing that your society is looked over by powerful, caring beings, compared to the uncomforting belief that you are not protected or cared for by powerful parent-type super beings. All else equal, a society which feels confident and secure due to its religious beliefs probably has certain survival advantages over a society lacking such beliefs. So, the human brain seems to have evolved an emotionally-rewarding gullible tendency to be motivated to have faith in some parent-type super being(s) [30], and a god is the most super such being imaginable. If this explanation is true, then, like any true explanation, it does not mean the explained belief or alleged event (i.e., ‘The god Murg exists’,) is objectively justified or real(istic). If it did, then, e.g., all the millions of gods (and goblins, pixies, ogres etc) ever believed in must really exist or have existed. Yet they were or are said to do and be mutually-contradictory things, and to prescribe contradictory absolutely true moralities, which is impossible.
(Regarding this book’s theme of peace — societies’ and individuals’ mutually-contradictory religious and associated moral beliefs have often facilitated conflicts such as war. And, importantly, the common motivation to have faith in an allegedly wise, great, powerful authority can be directed to natural as well as alleged supernatural beings — and some such human beings have led their societies to war. Hitler is one of many such beings. A human can be gullibly attributed about as much charisma as an alleged god, or be seen as god-like or a god in some societies — making conflict with other societies likely.)
In conclusion here:- The probable explanation for why there is a common morality does not give us an epistemically authoritative justification for believing in that morality. Evolutionary or human-nature based explanations are not justifications. There is no plausible argument, no evidence, for why evolution or human nature should be the standard of justification in the so-called moral sphere.
Another possible authoritative basis for morality is the social contract. The notion, ‘social contract’, is related to the one just discussed, but with some differences which might make it truly authoritative. A central difference, discussed in the next chapter, concerns those social contract theories which focus on the human individual’s natural need for a society, rather than on all societies’ need for certain common believable rules:-
PART I, CHAPTER 2: BASIC PROBLEMS WITH SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES.
(The previous chapter explicitly concerned non-Kantian theories. Some social contract theories are non-Kantian, but Kant’s theory is also somewhat a social contract theory. Kant’s ‘Society of Ends’[31], the ideal society according to his theory, involves what can be called a social contract. (It involves, e.g., each person agreeing to only do what every other person in this ideal world-society could do.) And John Rawls’s theory is very much an explicit social contract theory. So this chapter’s discussion of social contract theories has implications for non-Kantian social contract theories, and for Kant and Rawls.)
Firstly, what is a social contract theory? These theories are at least implicitly and at least partly based on this moral concept: ‘Society ought to exist, and hence have its survival-needs met (because, e.g., the individual’s life will be best in a society)’. In general, social contract theories argue or assume that a society cannot survive without certain types of moral rules, e.g., ‘Don’t murder your society’s members’. So these theories assume that these rules constitute or include common morality. Such theories also tend to argue or assume that a society is better than a so-called ‘condition (or state) of nature’, namely where there is no society — and hence no social contract. Individuals are said to somehow (e.g., hypothetically or tacitly) prefer to have a mutually-accepted contract as the best way to escape the ‘condition of nature’. The contract binds all to those moral rules.
A society consists of individuals co-operating sufficiently to maintain the society, namely via commonly-accepted rules. A condition of nature would lack such co-operation. Apart from agreeing there would be that lack, different theorists have different views concerning what a condition of nature would be like. However, it would seem that without a social contract and hence society, it would be likely there’d be less of such things as effective caring for children and more of such things as murder due to competition. That is, in that there would be no agreement on rules needed for a society, there’d be no or insufficient common morality. Hobbes argued for an extreme view here, concluding famously that here life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”[32].
It is of course true that (1) if strangers were, e.g., put on an island and never agreed on (socially contracted to have) rules advocating such things as caring for children and not murdering, they could not have a society, and at least nearly all would soon die; and (2) if a society suddenly mostly stopped caring for its children, and suddenly its members increasingly murdered each other, then the society would come apart, shrink in size, and would tend not to pass on its members’ genes.
So here is what seems to some a natural justification for moral rules such as: ‘Care for your children’ and ‘Don’t murder (fellow citizens)’. With this, such moral rules can seem to have a natural authority in that there is a firm basis for the following:- Human nature, to exist and flourish, needs a society. It needs children to be cared for. It needs society to not be destroyed by mass murders. And so on.
In sum, common morality can seem to have a natural authority. But this alleged authority or attempt at justification is relative to the moral concept that humans and their societies ought to exist at all. Something like this is the fundamental concept here, on which social contract theories assume they are firmly based. This is where contract theories in general assume their moral regress justifiably stops. (Points here can be applied to evolution-based moral theories, which assume humans ought to survive and hence ought to do what is survival-helpful/necessary.)
Yet this concept and attempted stopping point have the same problems as other moral concepts, such as freedom, as discussed above. Relative to the standard, ‘Humanity’s existence is worthwhile’, the concept ‘Humans ought to exist’ can seem justified. But, as Chapter I showed, there is a problematic circularity here: ‘Humanity’s existence is worthwhile’ means the same as ‘Human’s ought to exist’. So this gets us nowhere regarding epistemic justifiability. This only says ‘X should be the case because X should be the case’.
And, relative to another standard, e.g., ‘Survival of the maximum number of species’, ‘Survival of the natural (non-human-affected) environment’, or ‘Elimination of the most aggressive, hate-filled, war-making, destructive species’, the survival of humans would seem unjustified. Humans seem to have greatly reduced the number of species, and disaffected the natural environment greatly, and humans certainly are the most aggressive, hate-filled, war-making, destructive species. And relative to concepts such as fairness, freedom, equality and kindness, many societies would be believed to be unjustifiable. E.g., thence, Nazi society should not have survived or even existed.
Further, as the previous chapter implies, there is an epistemic gap between the ‘is’, ‘Human nature, to exist and flourish, needs a society’, or similar, and the ‘ought’, ‘There ought to be society, to help the human individual to best survive and flourish’, or similar.
So, it is not clear that the foundation of social contract theories gives us an unquestionable authority for morality.
In sum, there are different types of social contract theory, but because they share certain basic moral assumptions, e.g., that humans and their societies ought to exist, all the theories ultimately have much the same general epistemic problems as other moral theories.
Concluding Chapters 1 and 2:-
For the general reasons discussed above, all moral theories fail the test of epistemic justifiability. They are also unjustifiable via any other, moral standard, because ‘justifiable’ means ‘epistemically justifiable’. (Other, specific reasons, concerning specific theories not discussed above, are mentioned below.)
We cannot act intentionally in the so-called moral sphere without a theory. At least implicitly, we practice a theory we believe is justified — via some epistemically unquestionable authority. Yet mere belief is too problematic. We need a theory we can know is epistemically justified. We need a theory as close to truth as possible. This theory would be objective, namely one which is justifiable by all rational persons, namely persons capable of what is, for humans, knowledge — as in scientific knowledge.
The justification needs to be one which all persons necessarily at least implicitly accept. So moral believers, moral skeptics and nihilists must accept it too, at least implicitly.
Thence, we can solve the problems of the moral vacuum and moral belief.
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Kant’s theory seems to me to be the most helpful theory here. This is because it is not a purely moral theory. It is a moral theory in that it has some moral concepts in its foundation. Yet it also has some epistemic notions included in its foundation. So, Kant’s theory has the potential to be altered and developed into an epistemically justifiable practical theory. (However, this alteration and development results in a theory very unlike Kant’s in major ways. What was a moral theory ceases to be a moral theory. Part II’s deletions from and additions to Kant’s theory renders it unrecognisable as Kant’s theory.)
PART I, CHAPTER 3: SOME ASPECTS OF KANT’S ATTEMPTED SOLUTION TO THOSE PROBLEMS.
Introduction.
Kant argues for the general point that the solution must involve an objective theory, namely, he says, one valid for all rational beings. Rationality is a central concept in Kant’s theory. There are somewhat different views concerning precisely what rationality is. However, the ways in which Kant specifically discusses the concept, ‘rationality’, in his work as a whole, imply that he can be plausibly interpreted to use the concept to mean ‘epistemic rationality’. This is the method we use to arrive at or get close to truth. (Kant suggests we can use rationality (i) to discover truths concerning the most effective means to achieve our possible ends; and (ii) to discover truths about what ends are justifiable[33].) Rationality is the cognitive method; knowledge (truth) is the cognitive content thereby discovered, provided that rationality can discover sufficient evidence. (Being rational involves using all the available evidence regarding the issue being investigated. Sometimes sufficient evidence is not available.)
In sum, Kant’s solution can be interpreted as an explicit attempt at an epistemically justifiable practical theory.
(Those comments are simplifications, but are adequate for present, introductory purposes. More on those matters later.)
Kant’s arguments for the necessity and justifiability of an objective practical theory involve demonstrating that all alternatives to it are irrational or incoherent. This means they are epistemically unjustifiable. Firstly then, a representative discussion of that negative demonstration. His arguments here, which I think tend to be correct, include useful additions to the above criticisms of moral theories. (I have often expressed or interpreted his arguments here, and added to them, in ways which fit with the rest of the book.):-
PART I, CHAPTER 3, Section 1: Representative Negative Aspects Of Kant’s Attempted Solution.
Kant pointed out that if all moral theories are non-objective, then any theory is as good as any other: no theory could epistemically justifiably state ‘Act X is objectively or truly the right thing to do’. This lack of justifiability would indirectly allow any act. It would give us no firm ground from which we could justifiably say, e.g., ‘No-one ought to torture children for fun’.
There are various types of non-objective moral theories, classifiable in various ways. Here I’ll classify them into ‘individually-subjective’ and ‘intersubjective’ theories. Kant’s attempted solution involves demolishing both types. The following criticisms of them are based directly or indirectly on Kant’s ideas:-
Individually-subjective theories argue something like the following:- There is no evidence proving that any moral theory is objective, i.e., valid for all persons. There is no publicly observable evidence here. There is only self-observable evidence that oneself, as an individual, has subjective feelings or beliefs about what ought to be done in the so-called moral sphere; and there is evidence that another individual can have different feelings or beliefs here. So individual subjectivity is all there is to morality. Therefore, oneself ought to be guided only by one’s own feelings or beliefs.
(Such a theory can also be called ‘individual moral relativism’: each individual’s morality is believed to be true, but true only for that individual, namely true relative only to that individual’s subjective feelings or beliefs (as opposed to there being objectivity, i.e., one theory, true for all individuals). This relativity to non-epistemic standards means such theories have the epistemic problems discussed above.)
An intersubjective morality is group-based rather than individual-based. It is a morality people widely agree on, at least in some group: many people’s subjective feelings are the same here, regarding certain issues. (The common morality discussed above, and the common and social-contract assumption that society ought to exist, are intersubjective moral beliefs. Hume’s moral theory involves intersubjectivity.)
Kant argued that if individual subjectivity or relativism was the practised morality, this would involve many contradictions within and among persons. An individual may feel like helping others one day, but feel unhelpful the next day. And different individuals will differ concerning, e.g, whether to sexually exploit children. If contradictory things are all justifiable relative to feelings or beliefs which differ among and within individuals, the situation would be confusing and absurd. It would be, Kant suggests, irrational. Kant implies that this morality would be epistemically unjustifiable. A morality close to the truth would not be so changeable, so self-contradictory. In no other area, e.g., science, are contradictions rational, i.e., epistemically justifiable. The truth in science involves non-contradiction or universal applicability regarding the issue in question. E.g., gravity does not contradictorily apply one day but not the next[34], or contradictorily make some persons who step off cliffs fall, while others rise, and others stay suspended in mid-air. This non-contradictoriness and associated universal applicability must apply regarding a true morality too, argues Kant. ‘Non-contradiction’ and ‘Universal applicability of laws (truths), as in science’ are his epistemic notions. They are notions inherently used by all rational beings, Kant says. (More on this later.)
Kant argues that we need a theory which all rational beings would agree with, namely for rational, epistemic reasons. Regarding intersubjectively accepted morality, Kant argues that even if all did by chance agree on one theory, the agreement is unlikely to last. This is because the agreement would not be via epistemic rationality, via evidence known to confirm the theory. The agreement here would be via chance, namely via all persons’ beliefs and/or feelings just happening to coincide. So agreement on the theory would be non-objective. But, eventually, at least some persons, because they are capable of rationality, i.e., because they sometimes seek objectivity, would reject the theory. Or, if this did not happen, the emotions that at least some of the chance agreement would have been based on would change within and/or among at least some individuals. Suppose all agree to be always helpful to strangers, because by chance all feel like it one day. Soon some would feel unhelpful sometimes. So we’d end up with a situation similar to that with individual subjectivity, involving contradictions.
Suppose there is total intersubjective agreement, e.g., that children ought not to be tortured for fun, and that this is due to universal genetic factors, i.e., not due to chance events like those just discussed. Here too, via other types of chance events, eventually some individuals will disagree — due to being born without the common gene here, via chance mutation, or due to accidental change in their brain. They may have a psychopathic gene or have the brain’s sympathy module destroyed, predisposing them to be torturers. Again we’d have the problems, involving contradictions, which all non-objective theories have.
A defender of intersubjective or common morality could say there is an intersubjective or common morality almost world-wide — so this minimises contradictions among persons here. That is, people normally agree here; and there is only a minority of psychopaths, long-term criminals and so on. This is true. Perhaps this natural agreement is as close to an objective morality that we can get: to ask anything more might be to ask the impossible or impracticable, and a morality must inherently be practicable.
However, that morality has an ingroup focus, not a world-wide or universal focus. That is, the common morality seems to exist to help pass on only the genes of a small group, not of strangers or all humanity. And this often means contradictions or conflict among groups. E.g., a common prescription is, ‘Don’t murder’, but the individual tends to believe that this applies only to members of that individual’s society or ingroup. It is also common to believe that murdering members of other societies is acceptable, or even morally noble[35], or not as bad as murdering one’s fellow citizens.
Humans evolved in small societies, so some such group is the strongest natural focus of an evolutionarily selected morality. As Hume pointed out, normal humans tend to feel most sympathy for those closest to them, namely for those they see most often and live with or near as family and friends. Humans subjectively tend to feel more like helping and caring for their close-circle rather than for strangers or distant foreigners, and rather than for humanity as a whole. Our evolutionarily close relatives, e.g., wolves and chimps, often live in similar ingroups, for similar evolutionary reasons. (This common ingroup (wolfpack) morality has much to do with why the world consists of significantly separate, rival nations, classes, religions, races and so on, rather than just one mutually-caring world society.)
That ingroup focus has evolutionary advantages in certain situations. E.g., group G1’s genes are more likely to be passed on if a group, G2, in real or potential competition with G1 regarding resources needed for passing on genes, is weakened or eliminated. E.g., suppose G1 and G2 are on an island where food becomes insufficient for both groups to survive; G1’s genes are more likely to be passed on, all else equal, if G1 kills G2. (Even moreso, perhaps, if G1 eats G2.) Such advantages help explain why the ingroup moral focus commonly exists. (But an explanation does not justify.)
Concluding recent points:-
Common, intersubjective morality tends to be groupist — involving caring for an ingroup most, which means that outgroups can suffer. So even common, intersubjective morality involves contradictions and great interpersonal conflict. The way a groupist person treats ingroup members is often the opposite of how the person treats outgroup members. Here a too-limited, epistemically problematic sense of the notion, ‘universally applicable’, applies, namely a sense allowing contradictions among and/or within the entities to which the notion applies. It is not the overall, non-contradictory sense, as in scientific theories being universally applicable. E.g., gravity affects (treats) all persons the same way. This means this morality is far from objectivity as in science. As with gravity applying universally, e.g., by not letting anyone float away from Earth, a morality as close to objectivity as possible would seem to need to apply in the same way to all persons, not favour some over others merely due to them being in a different group. With this, the reasons why different groups exist and differ as they do include persons being born a different colour or in a different place. Such factors are arbitrary rather than an objective or epistemically justifiable basis for ingroup favouritism. So here too this groupist morality is too far from objectivity — apart from the fact that there is no evidence for it being objective or close to the truth.
Further, different societies or groups sharing that common morality, and because of it, tend to have conflicting divergible moralities, beyond the common groupist core. It is at least partly because of the ingroup nature of the common, core morality that a group favours its non-core, divergible morality over that of other groups. Thence, groupism can increase farther, meaning more contradictions. (Hence groupism can take forms such as extreme racism, class-war and militaristic nationalism, with corresponding highly diverging groupist moral theories — making peace unlikely.) So a claim that intersubjective, common morality is close to objectivity is perhaps even more implausible when considered in the context of a group or society’s main thereto-related whole morality.
Concluding remarks so far:- Kant’s criticisms of non-objective theories seem sound to me. Kant also makes criticisms, like some of those in Part I, Chapter 1, Section 3 concerning Hume’s intersubjective theory, criticisms applicable to all intersubjective theories. In sum, Kant shows that intersubjective theories are not epistemically justifiable. Kant’s arguments here, and others discussed previously, show that we need an objective, i.e., epistemically authoritative, theory. Otherwise, e.g., there will be contradictions and other (psychological, military etc) conflicts within and/or among persons. Permanent peace will be impossible.
Finally here, even if all did agree permanently on one all-encompassing moral theory, i.e., with no divergence, without epistemic evidence for the theory, i.e., intersubjectively, this is like virtually all agreeing centuries ago that the sun goes round Earth. Similarly, until Einstein, all people do seem to have at least implicitly agreed on the false belief that time and space are independent of each other. Again, agreement as such has nothing to do with whether the agreed-on belief is true. And, as suggested above, permanent total agreement is extremely unlikely regarding a moral belief. At least some persons will realise it is a delusion or problematic. Even if the agreed-on theory involved no groupism, and was truly universally applicable, (which is something like what one interpretation of Hume suggests is justified,) it would still have a non-epistemic foundation, and hence not be epistemically justifiable. (More on this soon.)
A further epistemic problem regarding theories which claim that the non-objective ought to guide our actions is that these theories assume they are objective. An individually-subjectivist theory assumes that it is true or objective, i.e., for all persons, that they ought to be guided morally by their differing individual subjective feelings or beliefs. (Here that too-limited sense of ‘universally applicable’ applies.) It is believed to be universally true, i.e., objective, that moral truth is relative to each individual’s subjective feelings or beliefs. Similarly, an intersubjective theory assumes it is true or objective that all our actions ought to conform, e.g., to the common morality believed by most persons.
So, such theories assume they are epistemically justifiable relative to a concept such as individual or common moral subjectivity. They believe it is objective that the subjective should guide us. An equivalent in science would be, e.g., for gravity to apply when an individual felt it would be good for gravity to apply, but not, e.g., if this individual accidentally let go of a much-loved crystal bowl which would break if gravity applied. Or, gravity would apply when an individual or group, for subjective reasons, believed it would; and not apply when they believed it would not. The truth regarding scientific laws would vary relative to persons’ feelings or beliefs. This is plainly absurd.
This, and other arguments above, suggest it is epistemically unjustifiable to assume that variable relative truths are the case concerning morality. And, in a sense, that assumption suggests that the subjective is objective in that it is (allegedly) objectively what ought to guide us. There seems to be a contradiction here: in a way, such theories assume they are both objective and non-objective. This is nonsense.
Regarding non-objective theories in general:- Where the basis of morality is non-objective, this means persons can contradict themselves. Here, from an overall perspective, namely a viewpoint involving considering what a person does or feels or believes at different times, a person states that whatever morality the person has is wrong. Non-objectivism allows, e.g., one’s emotions to change, making one feel and hence believe the opposite of what one did before. One can believe both X (e.g., ‘Be helpful’) and not-X (here, ‘Do not be helpful’). When one believes X, one also believes that not-X is wrong; and vice versa. The change, the vice versa, means a person has two or more conflicting non-objective theories. So, in a sense, persons believes that their non-objective theories are both right and wrong. Or, one cannot ever have the overall belief that one will do a single specific act which is right, because one’s subjectivity concerning that act can change. So, from that overall perspective, in a sense one always believes that one is wrong. And, as in objective fields such as science, it is only an overall perspective which leads one towards knowledge. An overall, rational perspective considers all the available evidence. A limited perspective does not, and hence misleads us. (E.g., when persons only looked at the sun (apparently) going from East to West round where they lived, they believed the Earth stayed still and the sun went round Earth.)
So, an overall viewpoint, investigating non-objective prescriptions among and within all believers over the long-term, will see that believers can be self-contradictory regarding their non-objective moral theories. Justified belief, in an objective theory, as in science, cannot involve self-contradiction. Here one will always believe the same thing, e.g., that gravity applies always and everywhere on Earth, in the same way for all persons..
In sum, one’s subjectivity can change, involving self-contradiction; this cannot happen with the objective.
In any area, if one is self-contradictory, one is irrational and at least implicitly states that oneself is wrong. E.g., in maths, if one believes or one’s theory allows one to believe that 1+2 is both 3 and not-3 (e.g., 7 or a dog), one is clearly irrational, i.e., wrong. The same applies regarding a moral theory allowing an individual to believe contradictory things are justified (e.g., due to mood changes). Similarly for intersubjective theories. (E.g., it is conceivable that the subjectively-based values common among normal humans could change over time[36].) Hence, in a real sense, if non-objectivism is right, it is wrong. (With this, non-objective or subjective theories even allow it to be true that they are untrue, namely if it is subjectively believed that they are untrue[37].) No epistemically astute or rational person could think such a theory is justifiable.
In sum, Kant’s and related arguments show that non-objective theories are too problematic. (I’m arguing that all moral theories are non-objective, and I’ve previously implied and will later further argue that this includes Kant’s.)
Kant also criticised moral theories which claim to be objective but which are not. Here, e.g., he made general criticisms of theories claiming explicitly that it is objective that an emotion ought to guide us. The basic emotion here, he argues, is (a desire for) happiness (or at least a reduction of unhappiness). Some argue this is the objective basis of human behaviour or morality because, they believe, it does universally directly or indirectly motivate us to do what we do, and/or because, they believe, it ought to. Kant believes happiness is basic among all that can influence us to disobey what he says is the objective morality. (Even if happiness is not the single basic moral emotion, Kant’s criticisms here can be applied to any other emotion involved — except, he plausibly argues, one unique emotion. This is the motivation to be rational. It is discussed later.)
His criticisms here are similar to those recently discussed. E.g., Kant points out that what makes one person happy one day might not the next. Today Frank may feel happy about helping Sally; tomorrow he might feel happier when not being helpful, because he feels he’d be happier being lazy. Today he may feel happy being honest and fair to a customer; tomorrow he may feel happy lying, so as to profit unfairly from a customer. And there are great differences regarding what normally makes one person happy compared to what normally makes some other person happy. Fred may normally love classical music; Julie may normally hate it. Someone may be happiest sexually when raping children; the thought of raping children may make another person unhappy. And so on.
Again, the situation involves contradictions and hence absurdities. Any such theory is epistemically too problematic.
A defender of common or intersubjective morality, or of a theory claiming that happiness objectively should always be our aim, could argue that happiness is linked to common or intersubjective morality, and is thereby justifiably the aim of the only morality as close to objectivity as possible. This defender could point out that the normal human brain has naturally evolved a tendency to experience happiness when the brain knows it has followed its naturally evolved common morality’s promptings. (E.g., normal parents feel happy when they see their babies smile; this naturally motivates normal parents to do things to make their child smile, e.g., feed it when hungry, instead of letting it starve or torture it.) Evolution has meant that brains which reward the motivations which are most likely to mean passing on of the gene(s) involved, will be naturally selected moreso than if no reward was given. And the reward the brain gives itself is happiness, via its pleasure centre. In sum, happiness (or at least a reduction of unhappiness) is a common associate of common morality. Hence happiness could be seen as the closest we can get to a universal moral aim or end. (Utilitarianism and one interpretation of Hume see happiness thus.)
Arguments above, in this chapter and previously, apply or can be adapted to apply to that defence. Thence, it too fails the epistemic test, the test for objectivity, for non-contradictoriness and so on.
Further, if it is objectively the case that a certain action ought to be done, then it is objectively irrelevant whether doing it will make us happy. With this, happiness is again shown to be epistemically irrelevant. Some parallel examples from science:- It is objectively the case that Earth goes round the sun, but it seemed to make many persons happy or happier to believe the opposite, along with believing that Earth was extremely unlike other astronomical bodies. This was believed because, e.g., that unobjective belief supported their belief that a god exists who cared most for humans and made humans special in the universe, i.e., central, and hence situated them on a special place, geographically central in the universe. But Earth is a tiny planet among billions, and not central or composed of special stuff. It is similar stuff to the moon and many other planets. What makes most people happy can contradict the truth, so happiness is not epistemically justifiable.
Similarly, suppose it is objective that Frank is going bankrupt, and has a certain disease, and can do nothing to stop this. If Frank is unhappy about this, and his business competitor is happy, their an