Possibly the biggest philosophical question on my mind is this: why should we do anything at all? Or, why should we do one thing and not another? What is it to have a reason for action, a reason to do anything? It’s difficult to have a coherent ethics without answering this question in some respect; but in some ways it’s even more difficult to answer the question itself.
There are, I think, two basic classes of answer to this question, which analytic philosophers classify as internalism and externalism with respect to ethical motivation. On an internalist view, to have a reason to do something is to have a motivation, perhaps even a desire, to do it. If you don’t at some level want to do something, or at least feel or believe that you should do it, then you shouldn’t do it. On an externalist view, by contrast, reasons are independent of us. There are things we just should do, period, whether or not we have any desire or other motivation to do them.
Each position faces wrenching difficulties. The externalist view is always subject to the laughing, scathing criticism of a Nietzsche. If you can’t tell me why I would want to do something, then bollocks to your “should.” I’ll do what I want instead. External reasons don’t feel like real reasons; Bernard Williams, indeed, has argued that they only really become reasons for action if we acquire motivations to do them. Yet the internalist view seems to collapse into relativism and conservatism. If our existing motivations are the only source of reasons for action, then how can those motivations ever be criticized? On what grounds can you tell Pol Pot he’s doing the wrong thing by killing his citizenry? You run, effectively, into the problems with classical relativism, which show up in a variety of ways, such as the political problems of postmodernism, or the problems of contradiction for spiritual growth.
Some way of reconciling internalism and externalism, without the problems of each, seems necessary. But what way?
What makes the question of ethical internalism and externalism still more intriguing is that it seems to parallel a very similar theoretical question about truth. Could there be a truth we can’t know? Say, a kind of knowledge only achievable by gods and not humans? If so, on what grounds can we say that something really is a truth, if we can’t know it? If not, do we not collapse back into the problems of relativism, where everything is subjective, since knowledge is reducible to our own minds?
Ahh, so many interesting questions! Where to begin? I think a good ‘Buddhist’ response to the internalism/externalism issue is to start with some universal propositions: all beings fear punishment and pain (yes, there are exceptions, but they only serve to clarify the rule), losing what we like and getting what we don’t want are unpleasant, due to impermanence these are guaranteed to happen regularly in life – and so on. You can argue against these things or for this nuance or not, but the vast majority of people will agree they are ‘truths’ in the conventional sense.
Next you need to bridge the is/ought gap: you too want happiness and freedom from suffering – make an example of yourself and treat others likewise, you ought to minimize suffering for yourself and others; eliminating it if possible. You ought to develop equanimity to face life’s vicissitudes. Etc.
Perhaps this is a form of ‘naturalism’ (a la Wright)? Start with facts of the world -even if we have a limited knowledge of them- and create a moral theory based on them.
Tyrants like Pol Pot again serve to strengthen our moral intuitions: not only did he bring about the demise of so many innocent people, but also himself. Of course his own moral capacities were likely such that we could not ‘tell’ him much at all. People with such deep moral failings need to be avoided or incarcerated, IMHO.
There is no truth, I think, that we cannot know. A better question might be, “what, if any, are the moral grounds for knowing certain truths?” This points to the divide between intellectually ‘knowing’ the above truths and knowing them in one’s body and actions.
The thing is that the internal/external gap can still surface to some extent in such accounts. For Buddhists with an encompassing karma theory, things were easier: the laws of karma mean that virtue and happiness always end up in the same place. But on a Wrightian account that deemphasizes the supernatural, the connection becomes merely probabilistic rather than deterministic. In many cases virtue will indeed make us happy, and for most of us that may well be good enough. But is it true in all cases? Pol Pot brought his régime down in the end; but did that necessarily have to happen? In Spain, the fascists beat the republicans quite handily.
I feel duty-bound to make an important correction:
External reasons don’t feel like real reasons; Bernard Williams, indeed, has argued that they only really become reasons for action if we acquire motivations to do them.
One word is missing here: “can”. If we Can acquire motivations to do them, given our existing motivations and given that we think things through logically.
So, I may have no current desire to exercise, but I do desire health, and if I reflected on the fact that exercise is the best way to be healthy, I could acquire the motivation to exercise. This means that right now I have a reason to exercise, even though right now I have no such motivation.
So says Williams, anyway.
This is extremely important because it provides enormous new avenues to criticize someone who doesn’t seem to be doing the right thing. If we can show Pol Pot (and I think we can) that given some of his motivations, he should not be killing his citizens, then we’ve still got a robust ethics on the table.
It’s just not one that’s guaranteed to be universal (as the externalist desires it to be)
Thanks, Nick, for the important clarification; you’re quite right, about Williams and about the truth of the matter. And indeed, the lack of a guarantee of universalism is possibly the most troubling point in an internalist view.
Well we are not pitched into a world that is without resources, others have reflected deeply on these questions. This is the realm of sabda pramana, the discourse of the reliable witness. We have amongst other thing the gift of the Socratic dialogue or the discrimination between the real and the unreal inviting us to proceed from Ontology to Ethics. ‘Become what you are’ says Kierkegaard. There are practices for that ranging from thick manuals on skilfull means to one-pointed focus on the question ‘Who Am I’. Indeed it is a path along a razor’s edge and as anyone who has shaved with a straight razor (cutthroat) will tell you. 30 degrees is a good angle. Proceed with caution and due irony. That profound pessimist Schopenhauer never allowed a barber to shave his neck.
If there wasn’t personal empirical confirmation to be had then all this palaver would have ceased long ago as not being adaptive. Before the obvious rebuttal may I state that here the personal and subjective is the objective.
You’re quite right, Michael – many have indeed reflected on this question before us. In some ways I think you’ve anticipated my followup post on Wednesday, which will trace this question through the early history of Western philosophy. Stay tuned!
Amod:
To address more precisely what your OP asks – Why should we do anything – I would say that we already are doing something. Whether we are aware of it or not and be sure our nearest and dearest are, we have a pattern of behaviour, an MO. The unexamined life is a poorly adapted one because very often our assumptions are what block our progress. To follow our pridelections is the rationale behind the felicific calculus of commonplace utilitarianism but if ethics involves injunction or enjoinment then utilitarianism cannot be an ethical system. You cannot enjoin preference in relation to specific behaviour e.g. prefer to be a Good Samaritan, prefer to give alms etc. It might be said that preference following as a general rule has the paradoxical effect of being a ‘system’ without predictability. This is not a good basis for rational interaction.
Why should we prefer to interact rationally? Because it is in our collective interest to do so.
Rational choice, reliably rewarded becomes preference in the long run.
I’m rarely convinced by “collective interest” as a justification for good behaviour. The idea lends itself so easily to economists’ free-rider problem: the greatest payoff goes to the crafty one who can get others to contribute to the collective interest, without doing so himself. Phrased in those terms the idea may be specific to the (now effectively universal) modern market economy, but in a broader sense it is not a recent phenomenon. Plato uses the example of Gyges’s ring of invisibility: someone who has such a ring could go against the collective interest with impunity, yet continue to reap its benefits because he would not be caught.
Amod, I am watching this space for yr next installment, but I agree with Michael: We are already “doing something.” I am inclined to think that what we need is not to be told why to do X or Y, whether internally or externally; but to reflect upon, to notice, the reasons we already have. I wouldn’t want to sign on to a purely empirical ethics that simply asked about our justification de jour, but I do think that the our freedom increases proportionately as we pay heed to what we actually do, to what we might call our karma.
Going back to this now, as your comment goes in a slightly different direction from the “next installment.” I think you’re right that it’s important to notice our existing reasons – but if that’s all we do, we’re still basically on the internalist side, and its problems, insofar as they are genuine problems, still apply to us. Suppose a dictator comes along much smarter than Pol Pot – similarly brutal, but with a more well ingrained survival instinct. If such a person refuses to be convinced, and goes to his grave convinced of his own rightness, the internalist view has a hard time saying that such a person was actually wrong.
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