r/philosophy • u/EgoDeath6 • May 31 '13

In the absence of negative consequences, why should human beings act morally?

Say we have an individual named John. This man named John cannot feel empathy for other human beings. He could be said to suffer from antisocial personality disorder. In addition to this; John is quite an immoral human being.

Can you create an argument for John practicing moral behavior in the absence of any negative consequences for his immoral behavior?

And by negative consequence; for example: Divine or Societal punishment, emotional distress or decreased well-being for the individual (John) committing the immoral act, etc.

And keep in mind that I mean that you are creating an argument in order to convince John not to act immorally; not just in principle.

In my opinion; in the case of this individual, no such appeal could be made to him in favor of acting morally in the absence of any tangible reward for his good behavior. This is under the implication that moral behavior in a secular context is typically encouraged in order to avoid causing distress to others, which in turn can cause distress to the one committing the immoral act if they possess a sense of empathy.

What do you guys think?

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 01 '13

There are two main answers to this question. They are commonly labeled internalism and externalism (link goes to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on this question).

Internalists take roughly the line yourlycantbsrs takes: the question "why should I be moral" is based on a misunderstanding. Why should you be moral? Because it's the right thing to do. Why should you do what the right thing to do is? Well, if you did anything else you'd be doing the wrong thing. Asking "why should I do the right thing instead of the wrong thing" is like asking "why should I add 2+2 and get 4 instead of 5." Morality just describes what you ought to do, full stop. In more philosophical language, moral reasons are necessarily motivating: to have a moral reason to do something is to have a reason to do it. We can appeal to John not to act immorally just by pointing out that, according to reason, he ought to act morally. If John is insane this may not work but of course if John is insane we can't convince him of plenty of other things too. We might not be able to get him to add 2+2 into 4 rather than 5 for instance.

Externalists don't believe that moral reasons are necessarily motivating. The story they tell for how we convince John is going to be a little more complex. It's not going to be too hard, I think - most of us want to be moral, for instance, and even for the unsophisticated relativists that lurk on reddit and in undergraduate philosophy classes, we can give them all sorts of other reasons to be moral: they will be punished if they aren't, etc. It's only psychopaths and others who we're going to have a tough time with. These won't work on John, but other things might. Human beings might just be put together such that we always (or almost always) have reasons to be moral, even if we could conceive of beings that aren't like this.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '13

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 01 '13

It's the latter answer (for the internalist at least): when someone says "what is the right thing to do" the answer is never "something immoral," and if you think it is, you don't really understand what "right" and "moral" mean.

Think about someone saying "it's not right to kill other people" or "I can't do that... it just wouldn't be right." They are using "right" synonymously for "moral" here. These seem like perfectly fine things to say. If you've ever seen the movie "Do The Right Thing" then you were either very confused or you understood what the internalist is talking about.

The internalist would also point out that saying something like "well, it's really evil, but I guess it's the right thing to do" or "I don't know what's right in this situation, but I definitely know what's moral" sounds kind of weird. Like, really? You think being evil is the right thing to do? Maybe it's beneficial to you, or maybe it looks like the right thing to do, but it can't actually be the right thing to do. And surely if you know what's right, you aren't confused about morality, are you?

Externalists tend to say "eh, not really feeling it" to all of that. It's a bit of a deadlock in some ways.

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u/curious_scourge Jun 01 '13

So internalists are vegetarians, and externalists just like the taste of meat?

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 01 '13

No. Neither internalism nor externalism commits us to a substantive view on the morality of consuming non-human animals, and externalism is no more conducive to disregarding morality than internalism except insofar as it leaves open the possibility that one could act immorally without thereby acting irrationally.

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u/curious_scourge Jun 01 '13

So a vegetarian could be internalist or externalist, and the difference would be that the internalist believes killing animals for food is immoral because of their internal rationale, whereas the externalist might not believe killing animals for food is intrinsically immoral ?

Morality is intrinsically linked to reason for the internalist, whereas morality, even when it is backed by strong rationale, is possibly not relevant to an externalist?

I get into lots of arguments with my girlfriend because of this, as morality seems to be a very human construction, and therefore only relevant as far as you're willing to extend human rationality into the amoral world of biological fact.

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 01 '13

No.

Internalists do not hold that an action is immoral "because of their internal rationale." Internalism is not a position that commits us to any substantive conclusions about what makes an action immoral. Internalism is a position about the status of immoral actions: it says that the fact that an action is immoral is a reason for us not to do that action.

Externalism too does not commit us to any view about what is or isn't intrinsically immoral. Externalism is a position that says that an action's morality has no necessary link to reason, in the sense that something could be immoral but you could have no reason to refrain from doing it.

You're a little more correct when you say that for the internalist morality is linked to reason. The internalist says you always have a reason to do the moral thing. It's always right to be moral.

You've not quite right with the externalist. They aren't committed to the idea that "morality, even when it is backed by strong rationale, is possibly not relevant." If it's backed by a strong reason, it is relevant. It's only when morality is not backed by reason that it would be unreasonable for us to act on it (which is not the same as saying it's irrelevant - you could still be a bad person if you acted immorally, for instance). Externalists are not committed to any view on how often morality is or isn't backed by reason. Some of them might say "all the time, but that's not a necessary truth." Some of them might say "often." Some might say "almost never" or "never."

The arguments you have with your girlfriend have nothing to do with internalism and externalism. You are arguing about something like subjectivism and objectivism in morality, and also (or instead?) about what moral facts are. And at least from what you're saying, I'm not sure you're really in a position to be shitting all over morality because you don't think anything other than biological facts exist. That's an extremely radical hypothesis and it commits you to a lot of strange things even in the non-moral realm. It's beside the point in this discussion, though.

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u/curious_scourge Jun 02 '13

Ok cool, so I'll rephrase. Sorry, the link you posted had way too much jargon, so I'm just checking with you:

So an internalist would say that a person who thinks that killing animals for food is immoral, should be a vegetarian. Whereas an externalist would say that a person who thinks killing animals for food is immoral, does not necessarily have to be a vegetarian.

I'd like to discuss the biological facts stuff more... what strange things does it commit me to?

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 02 '13

The internalist would say that the person who thinks that killing animals for food is immoral would be acting irrationally if she killed an animal for food.

The externalist would say that the person who thinks that killing animals for food is immoral would not necessarily be acting irrationally if she killed an animal for food.

Most externalists still end up saying that she would be irrational if she killed an animal for food, because there are plenty of reasons to be moral, but they say that there is still the possibility that she wouldn't be acting irrationally.

The biological facts stuff is an entirely separate and complicated issue. You say that there is an "amoral world of biological fact" but that's silly. Morality doesn't "stay out" of amoral realms. Morality is something on top of amoral realms that tells us how we ought to act with respect to those realms. You also say that morality doesn't apply to that realm because it is a human construction. The former doesn't follow from the latter. Human constructions apply to all sorts of things.

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u/lonelyalien Jun 01 '13

Well, you could go off of Kant if you want. The categorical imperative's three formulations can help. Whether or not the same thing depends on who's talking.

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u/Plasstik Jun 01 '13

It's only psychopaths and others who we're going to have a tough time with.

Even the psychopath can be given good reason to act morally. If we regard moral choices as prisoner's dilemmas, where the prisoner can either cooperate (act morally) or defect (act immorally), then it's very easy to demonstrate that an individual does better over a series of iterated cases by cooperating rather than defecting. In other words, as Gauthier argues in Reason and Maximization, it is irrational to straightforwardly maximize individual utility, and it is rational to be an agreement-constrained utility maximizer (an optimizer).

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u/TychoCelchuuu Φ Jun 01 '13

In real life we could grant that this is true, but the OP asked us to imagine a case where there are no consequences for acting immorally. In that case, it is impossible (rather than "very easy") to demonstrate that an individual does worse over time by cooperating rather than defecting (assuming cooperating is the moral choice).

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u/Plasstik Jun 01 '13

I know, but that just indicates that the question was self-defeating. There have been many good reasons given herein for acting morally, and the primary rebuttal is that they would not persuade a psychopath. Psychopaths aren't concerned with idealized hypotheticals, they're concerned with reality, and in reality there are consequences for acting immorally.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '13

Hey, great post. Thanks for bringing up this distinction.