Abstract
The ultimate test of any ethics must be a practical one. This chapter looks at some of the difficulties that can arise in the effort to adopt the nonmoralistic ethics of desirism. The author draws the analogy of experiencing a dizzy spell while sitting in a chair; you can know very well that you are stock still, but you will feel you are whirling about all the same. Just so, it can be difficult to give up morality even if one is convinced of the benefits of desirism. Difficulties can arise even in the effort to demonstrate that it is desirism, and not some form of morality instead, that is what we are living when we think we are living as desirists.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This being the position of Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. And yet permissibility is itself an objectivist notion, just like rightness and wrongness (i.e., impermissibility). God not only commands but also issues licenses.
- 2.
Many existentialist thinkers, however, embrace subjective meaning as I do, Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus being a well-known case in point; and anyway life’s meaninglessness wouldn’t matter to a thoroughgoing existentialist, as Nagel (1971) pointed out at the end of his essay.
- 3.
Munkittrick (2012).
- 4.
My personal struggle to realize this is related in Marks (2013c), particularly pp. 98–101 (“The Burden of Desire”) and Chapter 7. But of course Pascal noted it first: “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas.”
- 5.
And no one else does either, so far as is apparent. And if someone were in control of our desires, then their autonomy would be similarly constrained or else utterly mysterious.
- 6.
This is my attempt to parse Immanuel Kant.
- 7.
As a matter of fact I have noticed, to my pleasant surprise, even politicians increasingly using this formulation. But this just goes to show what I expressed in “Morality Is More” in Chap. 2, that “political correctness” is not enough to bring about a real revolution in meta-ethical attitude. For it seems pretty clear to me that “our values” is being used by at least some of these politicians as a code word for “the true and correct values.”
- 8.
“Ego” may be further implicated by our egoism, that is, not just by our egotism to be Number One but also by our desire for our own welfare.
- 9.
That is, as a rule. But I would never rule out that some desires, even rational desires, can be implacable. A moralist would add: And ought to be! But of course an anti-Nazi moralist would hold that only anti-Nazi desires ought to be implacable, whereas a Nazi moralist would hold that only Nazi desires ought to be implacable. And furthermore God is on our side…whoever we happen to be.
- 10.
I take this “ought” to be nonmoral, as if to say, “If you want to speak sensibly, you ought not assume reason is anything other than passion’s slave.”
- 11.
Harking back to “Explanations and Reasons” in Chap. 3.
- 12.
Cf. Smith (1994).
- 13.
Compare this supportive passage from Prinz (2015):
Moral sense theorists might reply that this diversity is illusory. They might say, for example, that people would stop condemning victimless crimes on reflection. That claim is amenable to empirical testing, and so far the tests provide little support. (p. 22)
- 14.
I am, of course, not, qua desirist, advocating compromise on all issues (not to mention cases where the other party is not interested in compromise). Agreeing to allow ISIS to wipe out all Yazidis in return for their freeing all Christians is not an option (for me, at least in my present uninvolved circumstances contemplating the issue in the abstract).
- 15.
Of course that is an idealistic statement, and expresses, as always, my preferences as much as relevant facts. Many of my college student(-athlete)s used to laugh at my conception of sportsmanship. Winning is what gets you prestige, money, a career, they would inform me, in sports as anywhere else.
- 16.
Wright et al. (2014) offers a very similar interpretation of supportive empirical research.
- 17.
- 18.
Not so simple. Read on.
- 19.
So even if there were a real pill or the prospect of one, a prepill investigation such as the present one would be in order to determine whether to take it.
- 20.
But, as noted earlier, a recent study (Bear and Rand [2016]) claims to show something in this very vein:
Although many have suggested that it takes cold, deliberative reasoning to get people to engage in this kind of prosocial behavior, our evolutionary model finds precisely the opposite. It is not reflective thought that allows people to forego their selfish impulses, but rather reflective thought that undermines the impulse to cooperate.
- 21.
Prinz (2011) argues quite ingeniously, and on the basis of empirical research, that anger and guilt are to be preferred to empathy in the ethical life due to their respective effects.
- 22.
I can’t help but think of the man in the Monty Python routine about the cheese shop, who courteously told his victim, “I’m terribly sorry but I’m going to have to shoot you.”
- 23.
And in fact members of all faiths worldwide. In this regard see for example, the work of Mary Evelyn Tucker. Furthermore, the environmental movement has probably always been religious at base; for example, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac has been viewed in this way. I myself have suggested that the concern about preserving species is probably not coincidentally resonant of the Garden of Eden’s view of species origins, since a truly scientific attitude would accept species change as the norm (including of course the extinction of our own). More on this in “Stop the World” in the sequel.
- 24.
I understood “anyone” to include nonhuman animals, although Immanuel Kant himself did not. See Marks (2009), Appendix 3.
- 25.
There are complications here (of course). For example, it is possible to use someone in the Kantian sense even if you are doing it for the welfare of others and not oneself…perhaps even the welfare of the person being used (although then it might be argued that it is not a case of “mere” use). And not only that: According to Kant it is possible to merely use oneself. He probably would have considered prostitution to be an example of that (although, again, if this is for one’s own purposes, such as to stay alive, it might be interpreted as not a case of mere use). But although surely theoretically crucial, these fine points need not enter into the question I am exploring now.
- 26.
Cf. my analogous analysis of desirist utilitarianism in “Desirist Adaptations” in Chap. 2.
- 27.
I continue the examination of the possible compromising of the evidence I have adduced in “One Person’s Ceiling” below.
- 28.
As must be apparent by now, everything I know about ethics I learned from animal ethics; cf. Marks (2013a).
- 29.
All of these examples, by the way, cast doubt on the standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, since it seems we can know things without believing them.
- 30.
And now embarrassingly or winningly put on display, as the case may be.
- 31.
Which I introduced for a different purpose in “Explanations and Reasons” in Chap. 3.
- 32.
And of course even then there is, namely, the cow.
- 33.
Of course “sadistic Nazis” is itself to some degree a caricature, but even if it weren’t, it too has lost its moral significance for me qua amoralist. My point here is that, even qua amoralist, I remain highly averse to the intentional infliction of pain and death on innocent and innocuous individuals (human or nonhuman) solely for the benefit of other individuals, but need no longer gussy up this aversion with the further and gratuitous imputation of sadistic enjoyment of the infliction by the inflictors.
- 34.
I provide detailed illustrations of the abuse of language in support of the abuse of animals in Marks (2015a).
- 35.
As “purely” as can ever be, that is; for all “empirical facts” depend on conceptual determinations as well. As I just illustrated, for instance, whether animal experimentation is humane depends on the definition of “humane.” That is one reason why my presence was called for at the workshop on animal experimentation, since philosophers are specially adept at analyzing concepts, no matter what the practical field of application.
- 36.
- 37.
See also the second half of Marks (2013e), from which the title of this section is derived.
- 38.
But I do as well collect countless (paper and digital) clippings of public and world events that could themselves serve as excellent illustrations of moralism and desirism at work…were I in any position to hunt down the full stories behind them as confirmation of what they appear to be. As my amoral moments show, doing this even in situations where I am a full participant is bedeviling enough, albeit, granted, sometimes not being a full participant would facilitate the greater reliability (this being the pitfall of my method).
- 39.
If I may wax Rousseauian.
- 40.
Well, not only, since our preferences are based on (partially caused by) beliefs which have some objective truth value (true or false). But the point is: Opposing preferences can be based on identical and rationally-held beliefs.
- 41.
Recall from “What Is the Value of Humanity?” in Chap. 1 that contradiction is no longer the hobgoblin it used to be for me when I was a moralist.
- 42.
Much of the content following is taken from my letter to the editor in issue no. 89 (2012), p. 40.
- 43.
God is more directly implicit in this remark by Gellman (2013) in his God Squad column: “There is reason to believe that living beings occupy different levels of moral significance. Eating a chicken may be morally wrong but it’s clearly not the same moral transgression as eating a person.” Baloney. There is no “reason to believe” such a thing other than the felt need to justify doing what you want despite the cruelty and killing it engenders. Just say you can’t control your appetite for chicken tissue; don’t insult the ravaged animal in the process.
References
Bear, Adam, and David G. Rand. 2016. Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (4): 936–941.
Gellman, Marc. 2013. Non-violence, while noble, does have moral limits. God Squad (column), Tribune Media Services, January 3.
Marks, Joel. 2009. Ought implies Kant: A reply to the consequentialist critique. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Marks, Joel. 2013a. Amoral animal rights. Ethos 26 (2): 156–167.
Marks, Joel. 2013c. Bad faith: A philosophical memoir. North Charleston: CreateSpace.
Marks, Joel. 2013d. Ethics without morals: A defense of amorality. New York: Routledge.
Marks, Joel. 2013e. It’s just a feeling: The philosophy of desirism. North Charleston: CreateSpace.
Marks, Joel. 2015a. A is for animal: The animal user’s lexicon. Between the Species 18: 2–26.
Munkittrick, Kyle. 2012. Why Mass Effect is the most important science fiction universe of our generation. Popbioethics (blog), February 17. http://www.popbioethics.com/2012/02/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation/.
Nagel, Thomas. 1971. The absurd. The Journal of Philosophy 68 (20): 716–727.
Prinz, Jesse J. 2011. Is empathy necessary for morality? In Empathy: Philosophical and psychological perspectives, eds. Amy Coplan, and Peter Goldie. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prinz, Jesse J. 2015. Naturalizing metaethics. In Open MIND 30(T), eds. T. Metzinger, and J. M. Windt. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570511.
Smith, Michael. 1994. The moral problem. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tallis, Raymond. 2012. A conversation with my neighbour. Philosophy Now (88): 48–49.
Wright, J.C., C.B. McWhite, and P.T. Grandjean. 2014. The cognitive mechanisms of intolerance: Do our meta-ethical commitments matter? In Oxford studies in experimental philosophy, eds. J. Knobe, T. Lombrozo, and S. Nichols, Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Marks, J. (2016). It’s Just a Feeling. In: Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43799-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43799-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-43798-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-43799-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)