Abstract
This chapter reviews previous work by the author of the present book, Joel Marks, in defense of amorality. It is explained that amorality is intended in the double sense of moral nihilism, or the rejection of moral realism, and moral abolitionism, or the rejection of moral fictionalism. This book develops these ideas further, but now the emphasis is on constructing a positive alternative to morality, which the author calls desirism. The purpose of this chapter is to prepare the reader for the more detailed exposition to follow. In addition, the methodology of the rest of the book is characterized involving extended examples drawn from personal experience rather than only analytic arguments accompanied by rudimentary thought experiments.
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Notes
- 1.
To borrow William James’ term for the loss of religious belief.
- 2.
Adapted and with some deletions and additions for inclusion in this book.
- 3.
Cf. Silver (2006)’s critique of the New Theology.
- 4.
And hence the title of the memoir I have written about this period of my life – Bad Faith (Marks 2013c).
- 5.
My initial impulse was to call them schmorality as a way of calling attention to their artificiality.
- 6.
Feyerabend (1995) appears to have gone a step further and employed rationality as a “mode.” Thus he wrote:
Most critics [of his book Against Method] accused me of inconsistency: I am an anarchist, they said, but I still argue. I was astonished by this objection. A person addressing rationalists certainly can argue with them. It doesn’t mean he believes that arguments settle a matter, they do. So if the arguments are valid (in their terms), they must accept the result. It was almost as if rationalists regarded argument as a sacred ritual that loses its power when used by nonbelievers. (p. 145)
- 7.
Cf. Marks (2013b).
- 8.
By the way, I do not mean to suggest that nonfactory animal agriculture is benign. But factory farming is worse, and the dominant form of animal agriculture at present; so it is easier to make the case against it.
- 9.
Blackford (2016, p. 7) suggests that “evil” may have become tame enough to be acceptable in secular society. Yet the damage done by G. W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” talk makes me skeptical that it has lost its religious force.
- 10.
I believe I am quoting John Troyer.
- 11.
I credit Prinz (2007) with opening my eyes to this.
- 12.
I have also reproduced this essay in Marks (2013e) since it is a favorite.
- 13.
Batson (2016) provides some empirical backing for this claim in Ch. 7, “Moral Combat.”
- 14.
I do also offer an alternative account of guilt as supremely powerful and aversive and perhaps even pervasive, enough so to motivate millions of church-goers to seek and believe they have received absolution from their sinful nature, and most of us to shift the blame to another at every opportunity. (Cf. the story of the dropped camera in “Metaphysics and Justification” in Chap. 3.) But the bottom line is the same: We ourselves are not guilty.
- 15.
Cf. “Incantation” in Chap. 4.
- 16.
See for example Marks (2015b).
- 17.
Subsequently published in Schell (1982).
- 18.
Cf. Scheffler (2013).
- 19.
And as she put it so aptly in Wiener (2014): “Scientists say now we’re the asteroid.”
- 20.
This discussion resumes in “Explanations and Reasons” in Chap. 3.
- 21.
This surely came as a surprise to me when a former colleague first pointed out the obvious. Thank you, Ted Roupas.
- 22.
Nor of pushpin over poetry (TOTH to Jeremy Bentham, and pace John Stuart Mill).
- 23.
See “Mora a Mora” in Chap. 4 for more on this.
- 24.
Strictly speaking the polltaker would only be counting oral or written responses rather than actual beliefs, but he or she would be using equally indirect methods to determine years of schooling, for example, written records. This does not disqualify either schooling or beliefs as empirical phenomena.
- 25.
McBain (2013) suggests that I was guilty of overkill here in that these meta-ethics are not attempting to rescue this authority. He may be right about that. Nevertheless, as my introducing the notion of empirical morality is intended to show, retention of the language of morality is likely to haunt us with the ghost of this authority. In any case, McBain is surely correct that my “refutation” was too quick. So I am happy to report that Blackford (2016) has now done a thorough job of debunking the claims to objective authority of this array of morality candidates. However, he himself goes on to defend a “concessive” morality that does not pretend to objective authority. He makes an elegant case, but I do feel he relies a little too much and a little too sanguinely on the linguistic intuitions of that notoriously undefined “we” (e.g., on page 104) about whom experimental philosophers counsel being wary.
- 26.
Which is not to say that God would help matters either, this being the upshot of Socrates’ argument in Plato’s Euthyphro.
- 27.
Well, not purely. It’s notoriously unclear how concepts and consciousness and whatnot fit into the picture. But the point is, sufficiently to account for all moral phenomena.
- 28.
I hope this explanation goes some way toward assuaging my friendly critic, Johnston (2013), who writes of me that “he has jettisoned belief in one system of certainty and seeks to supplant it with another” (p. 314). My sense is that Johnston has conflated my anti-realist project with my eliminativist project.
- 29.
The other great fear has been that a regime of amoralism would sap us of necessary motivation for (heretofore morally) important projects. My emphasis on desire has been intended to counter precisely that, and indeed to tap into our most basic source of motivation.
- 30.
Kaplan (1998) paved the way for this in my professional experience.
- 31.
Maxim Fetissenko has helped me to appreciate the important role of rhetoric in ethics. Of course Aristotle was a precedent.
- 32.
See further discussion of this sort of method and style in “Metaphysics and Justification” in Chap. 3.
- 33.
To quote a favorite passage from Wittgenstein, “The work of the philosopher consists in marshalling reminders for a particular purpose” (Philosophical Investigations 127).
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Marks, J. (2016). The Story Thus Far. In: Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43799-6_1
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