by Jim Fetzer, The Unz Review:
Suppose a consortium of powerful interests wanted to r eplace a president with someone whose policies they preferred–and blame it on a patsy. What’s wrong with that? Or suppose the leaders of foreign nation orchestrated a terrorist act as a rationale for US forces to take out their enemies—at the expense of 3,000 Americans. What’s wrong with that? Or suppose a US administration decided to fake a mass elementary school shooting to promote its agenda to undermine the 2nd Amendment. What’s wrong with that?
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While there’s obviously room for debate about the facts–where I personally have invested decades of collaborative research with the best experts to get them right–assuming we do have them right, these are egregious examples of the raw exercise of power exemplifying the (corrupt) principle, “Might makes right!” In other words, if you are powerful enough to impose your will upon others–no matter what the cost in liberty, property, or lives might be–you are entitled–morally entitled–to conduct those acts. Which raises the question, “If acts like these are (morally) wrong, what makes them (morally) wrong?”
We tend to take for granted the difference between right and wrong, where some acts–such as murder, robbery, kidnapping, and rape–are clearly wrong, while others–such as truthfulness, honesty, kindness, and candor–are right. But we seldom stop to ask ourselves what it is about actions of the one kind that make them wrong or about actions of the second kind that make them right. Having offered courses in ethics and society, I have considered whether or not there is an objective foundation for drawing these distinctions.
There turn out to be at least eight different theories of the difference between right and wrong. Four of them are relatively familiar and (even) traditional, to wit: subjectivism; family values; religious-based ethics; and cultural relativism. The other four are less family to the public but, more importantly tend to be the focus of philosophical discussion: ethical egoism; limited utilitarianism; classic utilitarianism; and deontological moral theory. The question thus becomes, How can we arbitrate between them in an objective (even scientific) manner?
Those familiar with this publication may be aware of my previous investigation of (what are widely known as) “conspiracy theories”, where the CIA invented the term “conspiracy theorist” as a form of denigration. The agency does not like it when (let us call them) citizen-scholars conduct their own research inquiries into politically significant crimes because–more often than not–they lead back to the government itself. The same standards applied to scientific theories can be applied to conspiracy theories–often with devastating results.
Criteria of Evaluation
My thoughts thus extended to the prospect that theories about morality–which are, after all, theories–might be evaluated by criteria that parallel those used to evaluate scientific theories, including even theories about conspiracies. And, indeed, the classic criteria of adequacy (CA) initially advanced by the American philosopher of science, Carl G. Hempel, for whom I wrote my undergraduate thesis at Princeton in 1962, turn out to be as applicable to conspiracy theories as much as they are to standard scientific:
- (CA-1) the clarity and precision of the language in which alternative theories are expressed;
- (CA-2) their scope of application for the purpose of explanation and prediction;
- (CA-3) their respective degrees of empirical support on the available evidence; or,
- (CA-4) the economy, elegance or simplicity with which they satisfy (CA-1) – (CA-3)?
Their applicability to theories of morality, however, is not as straightforward as their applicability to conspiracy theories, especially because of what ought to qualify as “empirical support” in the case of theories of morality. My solution is to adopt traditional cultural practices as appropriate for cases that historically have been regarded as morally wrong, such as murder, robbery, kidnapping, and rape, on the one hand, and alternatively as morally right, such as truthfulness, honesty, kindness, and candor, on the other, which provide “empirical data”.
Since they constituted (what we might call) clear cases of moral behavior in contrast to immoral, a defensible theory of morality ought to produce outcomes in their determinations of which acts are right and which are wrong consistent with past human practices and are otherwise unacceptable. Similarly, insofar as considerations of economy, elegance or simplicity do not appear to apply, they can be further evaluated by the extent to which they clarify and illuminate other acts that are more controversial and complex, an issue to which I shall return.
Given these preliminary considerations, It appears to be appropriate (for the comparison of theories of morality) to adopt the following as counterparts to (CA-1) through (CA-4). Since the clarity and precision of language does not arise in this context. I have replaced it with the desideratum that a defensible moral theory must not reduce to the principle that “Might makes right!”, where those who are able to impose their will upon others are right for doing so. The revised version of these conditions of adequacy thus become:
- (CA-1*) they must not reduce to the principle, “Might makes right”!, which is the source of the problem;
- (CA-2*} their scope of application for the purpose of explaining and predicting the moral character of acts;
- (CA-3*) their proper classification of acts generally acknowledged as right and wrong; and, additionally,
- (CA-4*) the extent to which they shed light upon and clarify more complex and controversial cases.
Examples of those “more complex and controversial cases” might include that of legalizing marijuana, the restriction of abortion, and changing a child’s sex by means of chemical or surgical procedures, which has become a highly popular practice among one political party in power in the United States today (but less so with the party out of power). Other cases, of course, could likewise be used as an additional basis for arbitrating between them.
