Moral knowledge and moral choice

Last week, I discussed a parallel I see between counterfactuals and moral argument that goes against using the empirical improvability of moral argument as proof for an extreme relativistic moral stance. I ended with the question, “What could be a basis for making non-arbitrary decisions in moral arguments?”

I wish I had a firm answer for this. Maybe someday I will. One valiant attempt to wrestle with this problem is by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, “After Virtue”. MacIntyre is concerned with this problem in a form similar to that identified by Jean Grimshaw in Chapter 8 of “Philosophy and Feminist Thinking” (see my 8/30 post) – the problem between morality as knowledge and morality as choice. Classical Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that the answer to the question “What is the right way for a person to live?” could be found by reason – they in essence believed that morality was a matter of knowledge about the world. Modern philosophers, however, have tended to emphasize the role of “choice” in moral behavior, and to question the degree to which reason can answer fundamental moral questions at all. (See nice, brief, discussion in Grimshaw.) Absolute relativism is an extreme form of morality as choice. MacIntyre comes down squarely in the “classical” camp of morality as knowledge.

MacIntyre is concerned with an analysis of the virtues, taken as acquired human qualities which tend to enable us to achieve the “good” in our lives. He defines the virtues through a three stage process. First, he places them in the context of what he calls a “practice”, a cooperative activity which has “goods” internal to the activity. For instance, the game of chess has internal “goods” defined in terms of strategy and skill and other attributes of good play, which are fully knowable, and can be experienced, only by people who have committed themselves in a certain way to the playing of the game. Chess may also bring a player external goods – for instance, winning at chess may bring social praise, prize money, etc. – but, whereas the external goods may perhaps be achieved by cheating in some way (violating the virtues inherent in the practice of chess), the internal goods cannot. So “the virtues” are tentatively defined as qualities which help sustain practices.

In the second phase of his account of the virtues, MacIntyre places them in what he calls “the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life”. He starts with an interesting and compelling argument for the centrality of narrative to our understanding of our lives. He argues that, rather than the life of a person being conceivable as a series of actions or events, which we may choose to assemble into a narrative as a sort of literary exercise (or concerning which we may deny the veracity or authenticity of constructing any such narratives), in fact we can understand the concepts of “action” and even “person” only as abstracted elements of some narrative. From this, he claims it follows that a single life has a sort of narrative unity, and that to ask “what is good for me?” is the same as asking what sorts of things will lead to developing or discovering that unity. This leads him to define the virtues as, in part, those qualities which will help us in our quest for the answer to that question, and in part those qualities (whether the same or a more inclusive list) which will help us realize them once identified.

Finally, MacIntyre argues that the narrative unity of a life is comprehendible only in the context of a tradition, which he defines flexibly as “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument in part precisely about the goods which constitute that tradition.” Note in particular that a tradition so defined is not an inflexible body of practices that must be conservatively defended against change from any source.

After the third stage in the analysis, then, the virtues stand defined as those acquired qualities which (1) sustain us in practices, (2) help us find the narrative unity in our own lives, and (3) sustain the vital tradition in which we live.

Well, I can’t do justice to a complex book, especially one which, after one full and one partial reading, I still only imperfectly understand. There is much that rings true (or at least partially, or potentially true...) Other parts fail to convince. The concept of a practice, and the partial definition of virtues therein seems useful. Also, I find myself agreeing with MacIntyre in so far as placing narrative at the center of our understanding of (at least) our own lives and our social world; however, it seems to me that every person, rather than being something abstracted from a single narrative, is something at the nexus of an interlocking web of narratives, not just subjectively (because I am aware of things that you are not), but essentially, in that any narrative, as an act of analysis, necessarily abstracts from reality, and any abstraction necessarily leaves some things out. Like the abstraction inherent in ostension, discussed in my 9/5 post, the abstraction inherent in narrative is by no means arbitrary. It is constrained by what is “really there” in experience, but also by our immediate goals in analysis. To understand certain things (why I play guitar) we abstract certain things from experience. To understand others (why my sister likes red) we abstract others. I may have a role in each narrative – but to include every possible fact in experience in which I might conceivably play a role would be an “account”, if you could call it that, far too incoherent to be called a narrative, or, probably, comprehended at all. (Would it stop short of the entirety of the universe?) It certainly would be a poor candidate for “the narrative unity of a life”. So how do we decide WHICH narrative the virtues are supposed to support the development of? (To use the sort of language with which Churchill might not have put up.)

Similarly for tradition. The definition of a tradition as an ongoing argument is one I like, which frees tradition, at least in principle, from being a cage. But if a tradition is an argument, then which side of the argument should the virtues support? Why do we speak of “tradition”, at all? Would it be better to use the plural, “traditions”?

So I am not sure that MacIntyre has removed the arbitrary from his account of the virtues, and placed them on the plane of the knowable, rather than as objects of choice. I’m not sure he hasn’t, either. Maybe the virtues can be defined exactly as those qualities that allow us to navigate the choice of narratives, and decide which of the available candidates is the most central or important for our lives. (Maybe there really is one, and only one, that is best, and not many different but equally good.) Maybe the virtues are exactly those qualities which keep the central argument of a tradition alive and vital, allow it to adapt to changing circumstances, and keep it from degrading into arbitrary authoritarianism, or dying out all together. Maybe it is possible to determine which virtues would facilitate these processes, without begging the question of what the outcome of the process ought to be. Maybe this is even exactly what MacIntyre meant.

At any rate, as I said, a valiant attempt, and a book well worth reading.

Another possible basis for making non-relativistic arguments for moral principles, which is not incompatible with MacIntyre’s (I think) is by appealing to arguments about the evolutionary basis of what we call moral behavior, as I discussed a few weeks ago. Of course, any such argument runs into Hume’s predicament of deriving “ought” from “is”. The fact that certain traits have evolved in us by natural selection does not necessarily mean that we “ought” to give expression to them, or culturally reinforce them. In fact, the idea that we “ought not” formed a large part of moral thinking, when evolved traits were understood exclusively under earlier, “tooth-and-claw” understandings of natural selection. However, if humans have evolved traits by natural selection which tend to produce behaviors which, if practiced, tend to promote the adaptive success and posterity of the human species (both in the past and in the future), then there is a strong argument that those behaviors constitute a part of what is “good for a man” (in MacIntyre’s non-P.C. language. I will continue to try to use “human” or “human being” or other non-gendered language in similar contexts.)

Any argument for morality by natural selection must depend on the idea that society – the social group – is the Number One weapon in homo sapiens arsenal of adaptive strategies. So moral behavior is that which enhances the well-being and stability of the group, and its ability to provide nurturance, support and safety to the men, women and children therein. This does not exclude egoistic as well as altruistic behavior – de Waal, in “Good Natured” points out that without sustaining our own lives, we cannot lend succor to anyone else. But it does call for a balancing act between self- and other-directed behavior, as too much of either can be destructive of the whole. De Waal offers convincing examples and arguments that the rudiments of this balance are clearly discernable in apes and monkeys, and possibly in other social species.

In fact, my “natural historical” conception of morality (8/30 post) is exactly that of a constant, and irreducibly contextual, balance between divergent and possibly even contradictory claims.

Maybe morality, like MacIntyre’s traditions, must be seen as an ongoing argument – an argument amongst ourselves, on matters of general principles, and an argument within ourselves, in every case of practical application. Maybe the best we can hope to do is to clarify what are and are not the proper terms of debate.

References: The books that I referred to in this post are Jean Grimshaw, “Philosophy and Feminist Thinking”, Alasdair MacIntyre, “After Virtue”, and Frans de Waal, “Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals”. (See also de Waal’s earlier “Chimpanzee Politics”.)