Individualist Morality FAQ
Francois Tremblay Permalink
18 comments
Q: What is morality ?
A: Morality is the study of the nature of individual values and their fulfillment ("value expression"), using the facts of natural law. More simply : actions have consequences which can be anticipated and measured, and that's how we know what to do or not to do.
Q: But isn't morality subjective ?
A: The very fact that you decided to ask that question proves that it isn't. Obviously your choice of asking the question shows that you valued knowing the answer, and that you thought asking it was better than not asking it.
The more general answer is that no, facts of reality are not subjective. The fact that not eating will eventually lead to starvation is a fact. That's why you eat. The same is true for any other action you perform. They are based on what you think is best to express your values. You might be wrong, of course, and you probably are, given that you're so stupid you have to ask if morality is subjective.
Q: Hey ! I didn't ask for no guff !
A: That's not a question, and you're an imaginary asker anyway. So I really don't care.
Q: Yea, okay, whatever. So what does individualism have to do with morality ?
A: Only individuals can act, not groups or societies. Only individuals can think and reason and make value-judgments. So we always have to start from the premise of individual value expression. The facts of morality have nothing to do with religion, politics, group consensus, tradition, what your friends say, or what your teacher said in public school. They are about finding out for yourself how you can act in accordance with reality and live a happy, fulfilled life.
Q: Wait, wait. Isn't morality just a way for us to live together without killing each other ?
A: You are one sad sucker, aren't you. You've bought into the collectivist propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Q: Hey ! There you go again ! What propaganda have I bought into anyway ?
A: The propaganda that human beings are inherently degraded and that they need to be indoctrinated into "getting along". Most people "get along" just fine without following collectivist principles, simply because they observe the facts of living in society as they grow up. They know that if they try to get along with others, others will try to get along with them. All the values they need to fulfill as individuals - visibility, communication, friendship, love - require cooperation.
Another problem of "getting along" is that we will always be confronted with people having wildly different value systems. Religion and government demand that we "get along" by being forced to fight tooth and nail for the power of imposing our value system against that of others. That is not cooperation or morality.
Finally, the scenarios where we need morality the MOST are scenarios where we are alone, such as the "stranded on a desert island" scenario. In this kind of scenario, our actions determine life or death. One of the advantages of living in society is that we don't need to work as hard to survive and flourish as we would alone. So in fact we need morality LESS when we live in society. So the collectivist belief is actually completely backwards.
Q: What about the idea that morality comes from evolution ?
A: Your instincts are part of your nature, and so you always have to take them into account. You can't be happy by systematically repressing your instincts. But you can't equate evolution with morality any more than you can say a car is a wheel or a brake pad. It might feel instinctually good to, say, kill someone who's cheating with your wife, but that'll only land you in jail for the rest of your life.
Q: What about altruism ?
A: There's no such thing as altruism. It is an empty term, like "god" or "superatural". Every single individual acts in his perceived self-interest. The difference is that some people are rational and some people are not.
Q: Isn't helping others altruistic ?
A: That's a ridiculous idea. How can helping others not be beneficial to the individual ? It is better for me to live in a flourishing society, and helping others makes me feel good, so helping others is an expression of my values.
Q: So you believe in "might makes right" ?
A: Not so. It is the collectivists who believe in "might makes right" (for example, that God is moral in slaughtering almost all life on Earth, simply because he can do so). I do not believe that "might makes right", indeed that "might" tends to make people "wrong". I think we should deal with each other as individuals, not as tools of power.
Q: You're so cynical. Can't you just believe in something greater than yourself ? Are you so vain ?
A: No, I'm not vain. I'm an individual, just like every other individual on Earth. I just happen to understand that fact and do not desire to lose myself in collectivist fantasies. I am not a part of a country, race, language, culture, religion (or lack thereof) or class, I am simply a person called Francois Tremblay. That is the fact of the matter. There are plenty of things "greater than myself" (such as, say, gravity), but that fact has no moral or political import.
Q: Is X moral ?
A: Only specific actions or values can be moral or immoral. You have to look at what values you're causing if you do it. This changes depending on context - "killing" a bacteria in your guts is different than "killing" someone because he made you mad. In both cases, "killing" effects very different values. In one case you can save your life, in the other you can go to jail forever.
Q: I'm an idiot and I still want absolute rules for life.
A: Tough luck boy. Even in religion there is no such thing. If you really need some simple rules, here are some good ones :
* Be rational, use your fucking head. Staying ignorant and gullible makes you a sap.
* Don't let anyone guilt you into serving their values (and that includes your parents, your church and your government).
* Don't hurt people unless you're defending yourself.
* Be nice to people who deserve it.
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18 Comments:
"How can helping others not be beneficial to the individual?"
Exactly. In biology, acts of altruism among animals are in direct proportion to the percentage of DNA shared. So at a genetic level, helping others helps yourself.
Altruism does in fact exist. Eg, people give to charity. There is no self-interested justification for doing this. Some people, more than others, have a desire to help others.
See also http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2006/05/misconceptions-regarding-desires-and.html
Also, olly, Francois states that one can have a self-interest in a flourishing society, because a society where more people are prosperous and happy is a better place for anyone (including one's self) to live. So, beyond just the titillation of giving, you're helping yourself by helping others.
olly: You are, on the one hand, saying that, no, morality is not subjective (which implies that morality is objective), and on the other hand saying that there aren't any absolutes (which implies subjectivity).
Zach: "Objective" is not synonymous with "absolute." When we talk about "objective morality," we mean moral choices that are based on the facts of reality, not on some person's arbitrary whim (e.g., Christianity).
Altruism does not exist. It is a religious and statist fiction meant to impart a burden of guilt on the individual.
There seem to be at least two reasons to believe that altruism exists.
1. Personal Experience: If I have done things that benefit others, and not myself, I'm likely to believe that altruism exists.
2. Observation: One can see instances of people sacrificing their lives for the benefit of others, in which self-benefit appears impossible. Also, one can believe others who say they haven't benefited from their acts for others, as there seems no reason to disbelieve them other than an a priori conviction that altruism is impossible.
There seems to be a blurring of motivation and likely consequences going on in the anti-altruism argument. If we accept the definition that altruism is "unselfish concern for the welfare of others," it seems irrelevant whether the beneficial act happens to entail positive consequences for the actor; the question seems to be whether those consequences are the actor's motivating force.
Further, even if beneficial acts make society a better place for everyone (including oneself), and even if they are done for that express reason, it's not clear why that should render the beneficial acts "selfish," as "selfish" usually is understood to mean primarily benefiting oneself, as opposed to benefiting the larger group or a wholly different person. Most people, I daresay, would find it odd to say "His sacrifice was actually quite selfish; he did it for the sake of his countrymen."
“Finally, the scenarios where we need morality the MOST are scenarios where we are alone, such as the "stranded on a desert island" scenario. In this kind of scenario, our actions determine life or death. One of the advantages of living in society is that we don't need to work as hard to survive and flourish as we would alone. So in fact we need morality LESS when we live in society.”
Morality is judging whether or not our actions where good against others. So, morality in and itself depends on how you interact with others, not how efficiently you survive in wasteland.
As the two above posters point out, such a discussion of morality leaves out any intersubjecive element to the construction of the individual.
"So we always have to start from the premise of individual value expression. The facts of morality have nothing to do with religion, politics, group consensus, tradition, what your friends say, or what your teacher said in public school. They are about finding out for yourself how you can act in accordance with reality and live a happy, fulfilled life."
I suggest you brush up on Fichte and Hegel. By their thinking, the individual self is founded on a relationship of mutual recognition with the Other. Since your "self" is a product of these relations, they of course have a bearing on issues of ethics.
"The facts of morality have nothing to do with religion, politics, group consensus, tradition, what your friends say, or what your teacher said in public school."
Oh, by the way, what are the "facts of morality" and where do they come from? Are they natural laws then?
Joe Otten knows not what he says.
If I pass a bum asking for chang, and I give him nothing, it is because dont value him and I dont WANT to give him anything.
But if I pass a bum asking for change, and I do give him some, it is because I believe that giving the bum the change will give me more happiness than keeping the change in my pocket.
The only reason I willingly do anything is because I WANT to. The only reason I WANT to is because it makes me happy. And in this case, the happiness I gain from donating money to the poor would be greater than the happiness I have from keeping the money to myself.
In real life though, I never give bums on the street any money. I would, in fact, take more pleasure from the bums dis-a-fucking-pearing than prospering of my hard earned cash.
Donating to a childrens hospital, thats a different story :)
Olly,
There is one, and only one, absolute. And it is that there are no others.
Um, I didnt really mean what I just said in the last comment, but I meant it for illustrative purposes regarding the problem of absolutes that you brought up. It is one possible solution to the absolutes question.
Aaron, Francois,
It is morally irrelevant what a donor feels, and it is absurd to argue along the lines that this part of the brain is not altruistic because it is being rewarded by some other part of the brain.
We can only judge whole persons, and any feelings motivating actions are part of the person, part of what makes them altrustic or sadistic, or randy or whatever.
We would not consider a criminal innocent if they feel bad about what they did. But that is more or less what you are doing with the altruist.
"It is morally irrelevant what a donor feels, and it is absurd to argue along the lines that this part of the brain is not altruistic because it is being rewarded by some other part of the brain."
I didn't say that. Your straw man is not very good.
Richard Chappell would
strongly disagree with your appraisal of egoism and offhand rejection of altruism:
It is in everyone’s interests to live in a more moral society. Real life conflicts often take the form of a ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, whereby each person can promote their own interests at a greater cost to others. It might be argued that following self-interest cannot be rational in such cases, because it is collectively self-defeating.[3] But egoism does not aspire to be a collectively rational theory. It merely makes claims about what it is rational for an individual to do. And egoism is not individually self-defeating: in Prisoner’s Dilemmas, each individual does better by following self-interest than not, assuming their decision does not affect that of the other parties. So the most we can conclude here is that the amoralist has reason to promote moral behaviour generally – and perhaps even agree to universal moral indoctrination, if need be. If such measures caused him to acquire a more moral character, this ‘cost’ would be more than offset by the benefits of having more moral neighbours. But it remains rational for him renege on his part of the bargain and avoid such indoctrination for himself if possible.
We might instead try to show that it is even individually rational to acquire a more moral character. Virtuous goals are more likely to be supported by the rest of society, and thus more likely to meet with success. One who feels pleasure in sympathetic response to others’ happiness will find more pleasure in a harmonious society than would more vicious or sadistic characters.[4] But cultivating a taste for others’ happiness does not guarantee that the amoralist will see others as ends in themselves. He might try to please them merely as a means to his own happiness. To encourage a deeper moral conversion, we should also point out that the more genuine forms of central human goods – such as love and friendship – rest on “a non-calculating reciprocity” which is not available to the systematic egoist.[5] Further, the amoralist must always hide his repugnant true character from others, thus thwarting the deep human need to share who one really is with a trusted confidant.[6] All forms of genuine social regard and validation are closed to one with such vicious character, which may in turn damage his self-respect.[7] It thus seems plausible that an intrinsic concern for at least some other people is an essential feature of the (prudentially) good life. But this is insufficient to establish the universal concern for others that is characteristic of the moral point of view.[8]
How would you respond to his point about otherly concern?
Francios,
Well it was Aaron who said that apparent altruism is in fact motivated by good feelings. So it is hardly my straw man.
And if you are not counting events inside the brain as making altruistic acts selfish, then you have a lot of altruistic acts to account for within your theory of the non-existence of altruism.
"You might be wrong, of course, and you probably are, given that you're so stupid you have to ask if morality is subjective."
So do you think that Stephen Jay Gould is stupid? Gould in an essay "Kropotkin was not a Crackpot",
"First, nature (no matter how cruel in human terms) provides no basis for our moral values. (Evolution might, at most, help to explain why we have moral feelings, but nature can never decide for us whether any particular action is right or wrong.) Second, Darwin’s “struggle for existence” is an abstract metaphor, not an explicit statement about bloody battle. Reproductive success, the criterion of natural selection, works in many modes: Victory in battle may be one pathway, but cooperation, symbiosis, and mutual aid may also secure success in other times and contexts."
"There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms – if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us – the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus."
http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm
BTW, some bloggers might recognize me, but I had to change the name to get registered.
I love this post.
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