[iS MoRaLiTy ReAL?]

Let's bracket the question and just be moral

Is morality real?

There are other meta-ethical questions but that’s the Big Kahuna.

I’ve gone back and forth, but I’d say my current credence in morality being real and all that is around 20 percent. My sincerest apologies.

But I don’t really think much about this stuff anymore. Maybe I will again someday. I just sort of bracket metaethics and especially this peskiest of questions. Out of sight, out of mind.

In theory, I shouldn’t do this—right? I once asked a very snarky question at an event on ethical advice columns. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the NYT Magazine’s ethicist columnist was one of the participants. I’m pretty sure he’s a moral realist, but his nameless interlocutor was making some ambivalent noises on the issue, and my undergrad brain couldn’t resist asking a more polished version:

Bruh, how you gonna give moral advice if you don’t even believe in morality?

Surely, I was on to something with this question though. It feels a little disingenuous sell people stuff if you don’t (really) believe in it. We’d think someone who claims to interpret the Word of God but has low credence in God’s existence is a charlatan.

Sure, ethical advice, like religious teaching or yoga classes, can make you feel better and more fulfilled—even if it’s not Truth-tracking—but doesn’t ethics aspire to more?

Course it does. Ethicists don’t think of themselves in the self-help business. They didn’t get a PhD for that. They think of themselves in the Truth business.

But nowadays, I grumble and turn a blind eye to metaethics. When moral realism comes up, I play equivocator and subject-changer. Maybe it’s because I think further progress on this question is hopeless or not worth the sqeeeze. Or maybe I just don’t care.

Well, actually I do care. Not just because its kinda interesting, but because I do think its important. Yeah, I would like to know if a given moral theory (and the whole morality business) is Right and True. Sue me.

Otherwise, what are we doing here? Some think we are glorified artists and poets. That’s a level above swindlers and charlatans, but God help us if they’re right.

Eh

Still a part of me is like: Eh, so what if we can’t answer the question. And so what even if we conclude that morality is not real!

Old Parfit famously thought his life would have been a failure if there were no objective moral truths.

To that, I say: eh.

Sour Grapes?

Probably.

Let’s, not Ought

Despite the sour grapes, I still feel the force of the eh.

It’s not a normative/rational force, mind you. I’ve no such pretensions.

It’s just a bugging feeling—that, like maybe we don’t need to wait around for the universe, God, or The Forms to validate our moral intuitions. Like how about we just, I don’t know, be moral.

…

I know, I know: Begging the question, smuggling in morality, blah blah.

But let’s just take the most basic (and most plausible) ethical precept: that we should reduce suffering. I used to think, yeah well we got to ask whether suffering is intrinsically bad and whether morality is real and objective and so must consult the Oracle (The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics).

Now I think:

Eh, let’s reduce suffering.

Maybe you can get into this frame of mind. Maybe you can feel the pull of the let’s here. It’s not the normative, compulsory pull of ought. It’s the invitational pull of let’s.

That’s right. It’s not a requirement. It’s not a demand. It’s an invitation.

Compare: Let’s eat! Let’s play! Let’s fuck!

See, I’m programmed a certain way such that if someone were to say any of these things to me, whole circuits in the brain prepare the body to kick skyward and vocalize exuberant affirmation.

Morality is like this for me, just to a lesser degree. At least the ground floor of morality: someone says, hey let’s not put the cat in the oven, and I’m like: right on!

Since it’s just an invitation, it won’t convince the famed moral skeptic. BFD. We didn’t want that freak around anyway!

So, tell your friends: there’s a morality party going on and they’re invited. Be there or be square—no, you don’t HAVE to go but you’ll be totally square if you don’t. The party? It’s totally informal, totally chill, totally optional! But, it’s a fucking party! You’re just gonna stay home and watch Dexter, you psychopath?

The Dude Abides. Do You?

You’re not gonna sacrifice a pair of nice shoes to save a life?

You’re not gonna reduce suffering at low cost to yourself?

You’re not gonna come to my party?

Look into the eyes of the guys below and imagine they just asked you one of these things. Just you try to let them down.

No, they’re not threatening you—absolutely nothing bad will happen if you decline their invitation. They’re just prodding you to see what you already see, do what you already are inclined to do.

How can you turn them down? You can’t.

OK, some people can turn them down—Callicles, Nietzsche, Ted Bundy—but you can’t. And you know it. You want to go to that party.

The “nihilists” from this iconic film scream: We believe in nothing, Lebowski! But the Coen brothers have no time for that shit. The film ridicules them nine ways to Sunday, and you lap that up. Cuz you’re not a nihilist. Others are, but not you.

Why be moral? Why be a friend? Why go bowling?

The film’s answer is plain. As Walter famously says, Fuck it, man. let’s go bowling.

A similar path is open to you and your tortured, confused brain. When Nietzsche, Callicles, Mackie, and Harman come out swinging, just think: Fuck it, let’s be moral.

You can be Rorty, in other words.

Actually, I don’t really know what Rorty’s up to. At first sight, there’s common cause between the nonchalant but intentional “abiding” of the Dude and the poise of Rorty’s liberal ironist, but actually it doesn’t seem like there’s any irony in let’s reduce suffering.

Like: you there, you’re invited to the party—unironically!

Philosophical Malpractice?

I know, my license to practice is under threat. In going sub-rational and sub-normative, this move seems to be unphilosophical and so unjustified.

I once watched an interview where someone asked Peter Singer whether he regretted becoming so controversial lest it undermine the moral movements he stands for.

Well, I am a philosopher said Singer, and I go where reason takes me (something like this).

This seemingly innocuous comment betrays a close-mindedness about his own identity. Perhaps Singer is not philosopher—or ought not be one! (Indeed, looking at Singer’s long and incredible career, one has to wonder whether he’s become more of an activist rather than a philosopher. Not a criticism, by the way!)¹

But I don’t know. Here’s Kane B yelling into his phone about similar stuff:

Can we do philosophy without (deep) justification? Without (significant) confidence in its ability to track Truth, carve Nature at the Joints? Can we just talk and think without high-minded pretensions?

On the one hand, I really don’t know. On the other hand, eh.

1. This was like when he, in another interview, mused “Well, what are you gonna eat?” when asked about the possibility of plant consciousness. Failing to consider, of course, that plants being conscious might demand we not eat at all.