Utilitarianism I

Readings

Texts

Notes

Cases

Body Dysmorphic Disorder (from last time)
Adolescent Breast Augmentation (from last time)
Smokin Ride

Synopsis

We did not, unfortunately, manage to get to utilitarianism. We spent all of today examining Natural Law Theory, our second theory deriving from moral theology and the official theory of the Catholic Church. What this means is that we are officially exactly one day behind schedule, which, given how much territory we are covering, is not that bad.

Recall that according to the Catholic Church, actions like masturbation, the use of contraception, homosexual sex, and abortion are morally illicit--morally impermissible--because they violate or contravene the relevant proper purpose of sex which is, by the Catholic Church's lights, procreation.

A good question is why something like sex must have a proper (singular) purpose. It seems plausible to hold that sex has many purposes, only some of which are directly relevant to procreation.

The upshot is that Natural Law Theory passes the Standard of Clarity only if we have an interpretation available like the Catholic Church's to tell us just what to count as relevant proper purposes. However, any interpretation which professes to establish all relevant proper purposes must be arbitrary since it is impossible to adequately define "proper purpose" in such a way that we can distinguish proper purposes from purposes generally. That is, we cannot provide necessary and sufficient conditions on being a proper purpose, so we conclude that Natural Law Theory fails the Standard of Clarity.

Further, and disastrously, Natural Law Theory fails the Standard of Coherence simply because it is not externally coherent: according to our best science, the Teleological World View is false. Or, as I sometimes like to put it, the Teleological World View is a Peculiar World View, since it has us ascribing non-existent properties to objects in the world: most notably, the property of having a proper purpose or function does not exist for natural objects. The transition in science from teleological to mechanistic--that is to say, Aristotle to Newton--was momentous, to say the least.

We continued today by considering a few of the many Reflective Equilibrium arguments against Natural Law Theory. Such arguments tend to focus on sex, since that is the clearest example we have of the Catholic Church's notion of 'proper purpose' leading to moral prohibitions on, for example, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, oral sex, or really anything that might in any way interfere with or obstruct the proper procreative purpose of sexual activity. It was thus a relief when Pope Francis himself said, paraphrasing, that Catholics should stop worrying so much about sex and maybe focus instead on poverty.

Further Reflective Equilibrium arguments emerge when we consider the Principle of Totality, which rules out any modification to any organs absent health reasons. Thus cosmetic surgery is broadly, though not entirely, ruled out, as are tattoos, piercings, and other common practices devoted to 'mere' adornment.

The Principle of Double Effect, on the other hand, has murky justification in Natural Law Theory and, perhaps, fewer such problematic implications as the Principle of Totality.

In any case, the weight of argument drives us to reject Natural Law Theory as a possibly true theory.

Having concluded our discussion of Moral Theology, however, we seem to be in something of a bind:

Either Moral Relativism is true or Moral Theology is true.
Moral Relativism is not true.
Therefore, Moral Theology is true.

Yet our Standards of Evaluation (Clarity, Coherence, and Reflective Equilibrium) were almost as unsparing with respect to Moral Theology. That is, the Standards dismiss Cultural Ethical Relativism and Subjectivism as possibly true moral normative theories, but if morality is not relative it must be absolute in some sense of the word. The usual place to find ethical absolutes is in religion, yet the Standards also reject Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory.

At this point it is tempting to throw one's hands up and protest that we simply have no idea whether any good reason can ever be given for the moral rightness or wrongness of an action. If we cannot have recourse to supernatural sources for moral norms, how shall we find them in the natural world? Didn't Hume, after all, teach us that we can't?

One response is to argue that the first premise of the above argument is a false dilemma, which simply means that we have to find some further alternative to both Moral Relativism and Moral Theology. Exploring possible responses will complete our discussion of moral normative theory.

Some clarification of our discussion of Moral Theology is perhaps in order. In this and our previous discussions we considered decisive arguments that the two most prominent ethical theories--Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory--derived from a religious conception of morality fail to meet the Standards of Evaluation. That is, the reasons we have for moral reasons reject both Moral Relativism and its supposedly sole alternative, Moral Theology.

It would be easy, I suppose, for someone to take offense and conclude that the course is anti-religious--an affront, that is to say, to anyone with sincerely held religious beliefs. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are showing is that, contrary to the almost universally held view, morality is in fact independent of religion. Moral truths are not determined by religion or faith, or so our arguments conclude. But this should not be taken to imply that religion is somehow defunct or nonsense. Though religious folks might find this result off-putting, all the course argues is that it is possible--indeed, necessary--to investigate moral matters without religious doctrine. Yet that is surely no reason to scorn religions, which may well possess wisdom apart from moral insight.

To be sure, the fact that the two major moral theological theories cannot pass the minimal bar set by the Standards of Evaluation by any margin better than their moral relativism counterparts is undoubtedly going to trouble those with strong religious convictions who also believe that only those with strong religious convictions can also be good people. It is important, however, to recognize that the proposition that only those with strong religious convictions can be good is simply a restatement of Moral Theology--that in some way religious doctrine determines morality. Yet it is precisely the claim that religious doctrine determines morality which fails to meet the minimal Standards of Evaluation any theory must meet if it is to be worth further consideration.

The upshot is that the demise of Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory suffices equally well as justification to reject the oft-held view that only those with strong religious convictions can be good. Presumably people can be good or bad irrespective of their particular religious convictions and regardless of whether they have any such convictions in the first place. Notice that we arrive at this conclusion without needing to draw on the historical or sociological evidence which, unsurprisingly, has never favored the view that only the religious can be good. The question, then, becomes dramatically more important: What is it to be a good person, if being a good person has nothing to do with ones religious convictions?

To help answer this question, we must now turn to the task of finding theories of morality that neither presume moral truths are relative, nor that their objective truth is grounded in theology. That is, we need to find non-relative, objective moral theories which do not invoke, either directly or indirectly, the supernatural. We begin there next time.