Promoting Virtue

 

We’re talking a lot about virtue, morals, libertarians, and social conservatives lately and this is really distracting me from my contemplation of Irish whiskey.

I reject the assertion that we can only promote virtue through big government. Well, then, how else could we do it? Don’t we have to use reason and persuade people through logic?

No. Here’s why.

 

LOGIC AND INTERESTS

Suppose there was a choice between two options, A or B. If we chose A, you would benefit. If we chose B, I would benefit. How would we resolve this situation?

But wait. Before we answer, let’s suppose the decision-maker was a robot, using nothing but logic to guide it. Would a logical robot choose A or B? You might be tempted (probably not, but you might) to say that the robot would try to equalize the choice between A and B, or maybe randomize the choice between A or B to keep things fair. But in reality the robot doesn’t give a damn about you, or me, or both of us together. Logic doesn’t care who wins. The robot doesn’t care; it doesn’t even care about itself. Who gets the benefit is utterly irrelevant to pure logic.

Robots (and logic) don’t care about interests … but humans do.

The concept of morality depends on the concept of interests. The essence of morality is respecting others’ interests. Love your neighbor as yourself, the Golden Rule, Categorical Imperative … all start with the notion of your interests and others’ interests. The most common moral formulas all urge you to equalize interests, treating others’ interests as mostly equivalent to your own, and equalizing them wherever possible.

But what justifies equalizing them? As we saw with the robot, it isn’t logic. Logic doesn’t care about interests. Logic doesn’t demand equality. That’s something that we add into the formula later. A robot would only try to equalize the choices if its programmer added on a parameter that said, “… and oh yeah, try to even it out…” It isn’t logic that adds that, but us.

 

MORAL THEORY

Most people who try to create a “moral theory” try to base it somehow in reason, and ultimately in logic. But logic is of no help to the theory of morals. (It helps to the practical application of moral theory, but not to the creation of the theory itself.)

If you asked, using only strict logic, why I should care about others’ interests, logic couldn’t explain why. Of course, if you asked why I should care about my own interests, logic couldn’t answer that either. When people try to base their moral theory in reason, it’s because they have already assumed that interests must be equalized. But reason doesn’t explain why that assumption is there in the first place.

If anything, the demand to respect the interests of others, i.e., morality, is an axiom. It’s a given, if it’s anything. You either accept that others’ interests have weight or you don’t. Once you start from the axiom that others’ interests deserve consideration, that’s when reason and logic come in, to work out the implications. The bulk of moral theory is how you can practically respect everyone’s interests in your day-to-day decisions.

CHRISTIAN MORALITY

Christian ethical theory adds a further dimension: need. When we’re dealing with riches and surpluses, Christian theory doesn’t much care what you do. Split the riches equally, or not, who cares? But, when it comes to cases where people are in need, Christian ethical theory insists that if you aren’t in need but others are, the interests of the needy supersede your own. That’s what we Catholics mean by the “preferential option for the poor.” (Yeah, I know that liberation theologians turned that principle into an ugly political cudgel, but that’s not what it originally meant.)

PROMOTING VIRTUE

When social conservatives say that we want to promote morality and virtue (which, I’d argue, is a concept derived from morality – a virtue maximizes an interest, for oneself and/or for others), it isn’t that we’re trying to impose it on others. It also isn’t that we’re trying to rationally persuade others. After all, if morality is a pre-rational axiom, rationality won’t help anyway. So how do we promote it?

We show it. We point at the difference in experience when you accept it and when you don’t.

There’s a positive way and a defensive way to show morality, both of which we need. On the positive side, we urge people to respect each other’s interests by living virtuous and moral lives, and then showing such lives as being better and more productive. On the defensive side, we show the effects of living immorally, and why damaging anyone’s interest harms everyone. And most immediately, we want to argue against laws that encourage people to act against virtue.

When I want to promote morality, therefore, I’m not trying to create rules to impose power. All I’m asking you to do is to treat others’ interests, wherever possible, as equal to your own. I’m not going to force you. And when it comes to law, I want to point out where current laws and current society invidiously encourage you to deny others’ interests, and sometimes force you to deny your own interests, and subliminally push you to serve the interests of some selfish bastard (usually a politician). When I get involved in the law, it’s not to impose morality but to display how laws violate your interests.

The rest is detail.

Published in General
Tags:

Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 67 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. user_189393 Inactive
    user_189393
    @BarkhaHerman

    Bravo!

    I would add that morality is safe with or without Big Government help (and big Religion help for that matter) – because it’s human nature, as shown by Dr. Paul Zak in his experiments.

    • #1
  2. EThompson Member
    EThompson
    @

    Interesting post, but I would have expounded a bit more on self-interest; truly the most powerful influence of all upon personal behavior. The government has done quite a thorough job of punishing aberrant professional behavior, but continues to subsidize illegitimacy and placate the grievance culture.

    Make these two socially destructive impulses unprofitable ones and one would most definitely witness some startling changes in moral attitude.

    • #2
  3. user_331141 Member
    user_331141
    @JamieLockett

    I sympathize, and sometimes agree, with your end goals in promoting morality and virtue. What is the purpose of morality and virtue promotion in a political movement if it is best left to other institutions?

    • #3
  4. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    Barkha, that would be one aspect of human moral behavior, but isn’t much good without some good parenting, a moral code and the like.  All societies are sympathetic to people they regard as part of their own group or tribe.  It takes teaching and training, usually at home, to reach beyond this.  And of course, bad examples and bad treatment can do a lot of harm.

    ET–self-interest has its place, but KC makes a very good point that Christianity teaches people to love others as they love themselves.  Maybe we don’t always live up to this, but the effort is very important in fostering the goods that any society needs in order to function–care for the young, sick, elderly, etc.  A great deal of this goes on in my church and it blesses the server and the served.

    KC, very nice essay.  I would add that we do also need the basics found in the constitution.  The founders recognized the importance of marriage.  That’s a big one.  We also need religious freedom and freedom of conscience.  But example and teaching, not to mention big families (!) are our usual mode of cultural transmission.

    • #4
  5. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    We’re not big fans of agencies and the like, but I think most of us support local statutes and so forth that reflect the sort of community the local population prefers.

    • #5
  6. user_189393 Inactive
    user_189393
    @BarkhaHerman

    Merina Smith:

    We’re not big fans of agencies and the like, but I think most of us support local statutes and so forth that reflect the sort of community the local population prefers.

     Merina – so long as I have the option to opt out of your “community with statutes” – I am a-OK.

    • #6
  7. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    That’s the point of local community standards, Barkha.  People choose where they want to live.  It wouldn’t surprise me if you wanted to live in my community, however, because in fact I have chosen to live in such communities all my life–places with low crime, good schools and citizens who care about the community and contribute to it.

    • #7
  8. user_331141 Member
    user_331141
    @JamieLockett

    Merina Smith: We’re not big fans of agencies and the like, but I think most of us support local statutes and so forth that reflect the sort of community the local population prefers.

     Just because its local that doesn’t mean its good law or smart policy. Miscegenation laws enacted on the local level would still be wrong. Prostitution bans at the local level would still be bad policy from a health and welfare standpoint. 

    • #8
  9. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    It’s curious and culturally revealing that while there is no logical reason to consider the interests of others … if a psychologist can show that you don’t have any concern for the interests of others, he can label you a sociopath and have you committed.

    Logic isn’t everything.

    • #9
  10. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    KC–been thinking about this.  I agree that there is no formal logic to considering the needs of others, but the Golden Rule has a kind of logic that we all understand will benefit us if everybody so behaves, doesn’t it?  So most people operate on it to some degree, except, as you point out, psychopaths.  They are the people who are missing something empathy-wise, and who recognize that they can benefit by behaving with uniform selfishness while other people operate on the Golden Rule to varying degrees.  

    But I’ve also been thinking about political philosophies.  Most of them have a kind of internal logic as well.  This is why those of us in different camps so often talk past one another.  The logic of our beliefs is so clear to us, and we can explain it to other people, but they are operating on different premises.  The internal logic of their position takes them to different policies and different conclusions.  And we call each other stupid and blind and so on because the other person doesn’t accept our starting premises and consequently don’t accept the logic, so clear to us, of our position.

    • #10
  11. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Merina Smith:

    KC–been thinking about this. I agree that there is no formal logic to considering the needs of others, but the Golden Rule has a kind of logic that we all understand will benefit us if everybody so behaves, doesn’t it?

    Well, yes … if  … we accept the axiom that “others matter,” then everybody benefits. But the logical issue is that this begs the question; it assumes what it’s trying to prove.

    Suppose you say: Why should I care about Bob? And then I answer: Because if you don’t, it’ll hurt Bob. You’d probably then say to me, well yeah, but that doesn’t explain why I should care about him getting hurt in the first place. 

    I believe that caring about others is an axiom; it isn’t justified by reason or logic. You either care or you don’t. The overwhelming majority of human beings care about one another, to some degree. We’re emotionally attracted to caring about others; that seems “natural.” Human beings have that extra, emotional dimension that (literally, come to think of it) provides motivation. Without emotion and interests, we’d all be machines … and nothing would happen.

    • #11
  12. user_517406 Inactive
    user_517406
    @MerinaSmith

    OK–after a discussion with my husband, Mr. Logic, I see what you mean.

    • #12
  13. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    I thought that this was very well done. 
    Like.

    • #13
  14. kylez Member
    kylez
    @kylez

    Barkha Herman:

    Merina Smith:

    We’re not big fans of agencies and the like, but I think most of us support local statutes and so forth that reflect the sort of community the local population prefers.

    Merina – so long as I have the option to opt out of your “community with statutes” – I am a-OK.

     You opt out by living somewhere else.

    • #14
  15. liberal jim Inactive
    liberal jim
    @liberaljim

    I think that Christian teaching’s first priority is on loving and honoring God , not man’s relationship with his fellow man.  “Love the Lord you God with all your heart, ……… and your neighbor as yourself. ”  The first three of the Ten commandments deal with man’s relationship with God.   I find it interesting that liberal attempts to eliminate  God from the conversation have been successful  even on Ricochet.  A virtuous society absent God; – good luck.

    • #15
  16. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    KC Mulville: I reject the assertion that we can only promote virtue through big government.

     If big government is reality and if big government is here to stay (it is and it is), then why not use big government to promote virtue?

    • #16
  17. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Casey:

    KC Mulville: I reject the assertion that we can only promote virtue through big government.

    If big government is reality and if big government is here to stay (it is and it is), then why not use big government to promote virtue?

    Because legality and morality are two different things. Government, even big government, can only work with legality … that makes it ill-equipped to deal with morality.

    One clear difference is that virtue is focused on the perfection of man, striving for the highest fulfillment of some aspect. Law, by contrast, is the lowest common denominator. In the Good Samaritan story, three people encountered the victim. The law commanded none of them to help. But virtue commanded the Samaritan, and he helped. 

    If you reduce morality to legality, or virtue to mere law, you strip away its transcendence. Virtue compels man to get better, more compassionate, more loving, more excellent, more useful. It’s a way for man to get better than he is, to overcome his weaknesses and urge him to maximize his potential.  In contrast, Law merely tells him what he can get away with. 

    • #17
  18. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    KC Mulville:

    Casey:

    KC Mulville: I reject the assertion that we can only promote virtue through big government.

    If big government is reality and if big government is here to stay (it is and it is), then why not use big government to promote virtue?

    Because legality and morality are two different things. Government, even big government, can only work with legality … that makes it ill-equipped to deal with morality.

    Government cannot impose morality.  I cannot make one virtuous.  But it can promote virtue.  Or its opposite.

    For instance, assistance programs tend to reward counterproductive  behaviors and hence promote those behaviors.  Not everyone succumbs and many would exhibit those counterproductive behaviors even without the incentives.  But certainly big government is putting its thumb on the scale.

    Why not put the thumb on the other side?

    • #18
  19. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    KC Mulville: If you asked, using only strict logic, why I should care about others’ interests, logic couldn’t explain why. Of course, if you asked why I should care about my own interests, logic couldn’t answer that either. When people try to base their moral theory in reason, it’s because they have already assumed that interests must be equalized. But reason doesn’t explain why that assumption is there in the first place.

    There is a logic to the things we care about. When we observe the world with our senses, we assume the information is telling us about real things, because otherwise, nihilism. The same is true about the things we care about. We are safe to assume our sense of caring is a real thing because we observe it, verified by how widely the same experience is observed. So, we’ve logically verified our intuition about caring for others is a real thing.

    • #19
  20. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Casey:

    Government cannot impose morality. I cannot make one virtuous. But it can promote virtue. Or its opposite.

    […]

    Why not put the thumb on the other side?

    To be blunt, I want government to be the referee … and only the referee. I don’t want the referee to stop the game so he can tell the players how he thinks the game should be played. That’s not his job, and he needs to keep his mouth shut. After all, decisions about how to play the game belong to coaches and players. They can’t do their job if the referee interferes. 

    I think libertarians are correct that whenever government puts its thumb anywhere, it creates unintended consequences. 

    I hold that society depends on other authorities (not government) to promote virtue. No surprise, I argue that promoting virtue is the job of religion and education. These are social institutions that work entirely outside government, shouldn’t be controlled or managed by government, and need to be protected from the government’s appetite for power. Get rid of the idea that government should control every social institution … it shouldn’t control religion, and it shouldn’t control education, either.

    • #20
  21. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Casey:

    KC Mulville:

    Casey:

    KC Mulville: I reject the assertion that we can only promote virtue through big government.

    If big government is reality and if big government is here to stay (it is and it is), then why not use big government to promote virtue?

    Because legality and morality are two different things. Government, even big government, can only work with legality … that makes it ill-equipped to deal with morality.

    Government cannot impose morality. I cannot make one virtuous. But it can promote virtue. Or its opposite.

    …..

     
    It can also offer protection from the vicious. And when there is not substantial agreement about what is virtuous, what is vicious, and what is neutral then it’s important that the political process which sorts out these disputes be participatory and localized as much as possible.

    • #21
  22. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Mike H:

    We are safe to assume our sense of caring is a real thing because we observe it, verified by how widely the same experience is observed. So, we’ve logically verified our intuition about caring for others is a real thing.

    No, that isn’t a logical verification, it’s an empirical verification. It’s an observation that something is true, and exists – but it’s not a proof that it should exist. It doesn’t justify it. 

    To clarify, I strongly believe that human beings do indeed care for each other, and it’s in the nature of human beings to care for each other, and I’m all in favor of caring for one another. I argue that once you agree that we should respect the interests of others, great! we’re off to the races, and we can work out the practical details of morality from there. All we’re saying here, though, is that if someone says, “Is there a logical reason why we must treat others’ interests as equal to our own?” the honest answer is no. It’s an axiom. You either accept it or you don’t. 

    • #22
  23. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    KC Mulville: I think libertarians are correct that whenever government puts its thumb anywhere, it creates unintended consequences. 

     I agree with this.  But most people don’t agree with this.

    Most people currently want big government in some form.  To convince them otherwise is to convince them that they need to take more responsibility for themselves and for others.

    But the big government we have is currently promoting the idea that people take less responsibility for themselves and others.

    If this is a bad thing, and I think we agree that it is, then it seems there are two ways to combat it.

      1)  Eliminate big government and with it the misguided incentives.  Or…
      2)  Fix the incentives to promote the behaviors/virtues/ideas that may lead to the elimination of big government.

    The second seems more possible than the first.

    • #23
  24. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    KC Mulville:

    No, that isn’t a logical verification, it’s an empirical verification. It’s an observation that something is true, and exists – but it’s not a proof that it should exist. It doesn’t justify it.

    To clarify, I strongly believe that human beings do indeed care for each other, and it’s in the nature of human beings to care for each other, and I’m all in favor of caring for one another. I argue that once you agree that we should respect the interests of others, great! we’re off to the races, and we can work out the practical details of morality from there. All we’re saying here, though, is that if someone says, “Is there a logical reason why we must treat others’ interests as equal to our own?” the honest answer is no. It’s an axiom. You either accept it or you don’t.

    It might be an axiom, but we find the axioms through experimental verification which we believe for logical reasons. The logical reason will be: we must treat other interests as equal to our own because we empirically verified this as an objective moral truth.

    • #24
  25. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Casey:

    Most people currently want big government in some form. To convince them otherwise is to convince them that they need to take more responsibility for themselves and for others.

    I agree with the rest of what you said, so don’t think I dismiss that.  

    But I honestly think the reason why most people want big government now is not because they don’t want to take responsibility. It’s because of a loss of faith in the private sector. They don’t want to take their chances in a market economy because they don’t think they have the ability to compete. They think the job market is replacing low skilled jobs with automation, or shipping those jobs overseas, and that manufacturing is dead. (It doesn’t matter how statistics rebut any or all of these claims … that’s what they believe.) They can’t afford a fortune to go to expensive colleges, and the non-college jobs pay squat … so why bother?

    And to a large extent, they may be right.

    I don’t think the welfare state is about government. The welfare state is about how people feel about the private sector.

    • #25
  26. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Mike H:

    It might be an axiom, but we find the axioms through experimental verification which we believe for logical reasons. The logical reason will be: we must treat other interests as equal to our own because we empirically verified this as an objective moral truth.

    I confess, I don’t follow this. Let me try this, and see how you respond.

    If I push a button, I get $100 but Harriet dies. No chance that anyone will take revenge or I’ll lose opportunity – there will be no ramifications against me. I don’t even know Harriet. Of course, you can urge, shame, haggle, and anything else … in other words, you can ask me to spare her … but can you give me a logical reason why I should care that Harriet dies?

    • #26
  27. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    KC Mulville: But I honestly think the reason why most people want big government now is not because they don’t want to take responsibility. It’s because of a loss of faith in the private sector. 

    I disagree.  I think that most people, in their very nature, value stability over all other goods.  To the point of preferring problematic stability over perfect freedom.  So it isn’t that they don’t want to take responsibility per se but that they are will to trade something away for the comfort of knowing the outcome.  The government then rewards and encourages that behavior.

    I believe that the push toward eliminating big government causes people to fear the instability that would arise and that fear then pushes them toward bigger government.

    The only solution I see is to unwind in exactly the opposite direction we’ve been winding.

    • #27
  28. user_86050 Inactive
    user_86050
    @KCMulville

    Casey:

    I disagree. I think that most people, in their very nature, value stability over all other goods. To the point of preferring problematic stability over perfect freedom. 

    Fair enough. I agree that this is also true. Chances are, there are a number of reasons why individuals would not embrace the private sector and seek “refuge” in the public. My experience is that it’s more of a calculation, but that’s only my experience and it’s from my limited perspective.

    • #28
  29. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    KC Mulville:

    Mike H:

    No, that isn’t a logical verification, it’s an empirical verification. It’s an observation that something is true, and exists – but it’s not a proof that it should exist.

    KC, you’re right that if we restrict “logic” to mean deductive reasoning then there’s no proof. But deductive reasoning actually accounts for very little of the reasoning we do in everyday life. Plausible reasoning (which, instead of saying categorically “if A then B”, says “if A then B is more likely”) is much more common, since most of the time we don’t have the necessary information to carry out deductive reasoning.

    Once we include plausible reasoning as a type of logical reasoning, we open the door to evidence, to empiricism – in short, to the real world. Quoting Maxwell,

    The actual science of logic is conversant at present only with things either certain, impossible, or entirely doubtful, none of which (fortunately) we have to reason on. Therefore the true logic for this world is the calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability which is, or ought to be, in a reasonable man’s mind.

    • #29
  30. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    KC Mulville:

    Casey:

     it’s from my limited perspective.

     Spend a few hours with that Irish Whiskey and you’ll know everything.

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.