Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Consequences Matter

CONSEQUENTIALISM IN ITS PURE FORM, that is, as an ethical theory where consequences are absolutely defining of the good, is unreasonable. Yet to hold the opposite--that consequences are absolutely irrelevant--is also error. The requirements of practical reasonableness straddle both extremes of irrationality and provide for a limited relevance of consequences, of efficiency within reason, of utility within the constraints of moral absolutes.

When one makes moral choices, one operates under a certain incumbency that the choices be efficient. In other words, our choices ought efficiently to implement the coherent plan of life or the particular value or end one has chosen. "One must not waste one's opportunities by using inefficient methods." NLNR, 111. In this limited sense, utility, efficiency, consequences are reasonably regarded as important and part and parcel of the requirements of practical reasonableness.

One would be blind to suggest that reason cannot weigh and recognize the following:

There is a wide range of contexts in which it is possible and only reasonable to calculate, measure, compare, weigh, and assess the consequences of alternative decisions. Where a choice must be made it is reasonable to prefer human good to the good of animals. where a choice must be made it is reasonable to prefer basic human goods (such as life) to merely instrumental goods such as property). Where damage is inevitable, it is reasonable to prefer stunning to wounding, wounding to maiming, maiming to death: i.e. lesser rather than greater damage to one-and-the same basic good in one-and-the-same instantiation. Where one way of participating in a human good includes both all the aspects and effects of its alternative, and more, it is reasonable to prefer that way: a remedy that both relieves pain and heals is to be preferred to the one that merely relieves pain.

NLNR, 111.

However, the requirement of efficiency is only one of other requirements of practical reasonableness. That is why it cannot be absolutized over the others. Just like all the other basic human values must be held of equal account, so also all the requirements of practical reasonableness must be held of equal account. It is for this reason that "[a]s a general strategy of moral reasoning, utilitarianism or consequentialism is irrational."* "[E]very attempt to make it [consequences] the exclusive or supreme or even the central principle of practical thinking is irrational and hence immoral." NLNR, 118.

Solon Before Croesus by Gerrit van Honthorst (1590 - 1656)

Unfortunately, most modern systems of ethics are infected by consequentialistic thought, and it follows from the fact that these theories absolutize consequences as the means for determining the good that these ethical systems are irrational. The "fundamental problem" with modern consequentialistic ethics, "is that the methodological injunction to maximize good(s) is irrational." NLNR, 113. Not only is such a program unworkable from a practical perspective (which itself ought to give one pause in adopting it), but it is fundamentally senseless, senseless, as Finnis puts it, as trying to "sum together the size of this page, the number six, and the mass of this book." NLNR, 113. The consequentialist puts himself in a situation where he is trying to measure and weigh things that cannot be measured and properly weighed and sum things that cannot be summed. In adopting consequentialism, we walk into a realm of morality as equally senseless as the realm of reality into which Alice falls into in Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland.

How so?

The calculative logic demanded by consequentialism requires either (i) a single dominant temporal end or goal for man the efficiency toward which may be measured,** or, if there is no such single, dominant temporal end, (ii) a common factor of measurement of differing goals (e.g., satisfaction of desire, minimization of pain, maximization of pleasure). "But neither of these conditions obtains." NLNR, 113.

If we adopt a single temporal end for all men, if good is to be univocally understood, it is as foolish a suggestion as trying to fit men to the same Proscrustean bed. And what shall that end be? "Only an inhumane fanatic thinks that man is made to flourish in only one way or for only one purpose." NLNR, 113. When it comes to temporal ends, are we all really obliged to wear the same Mao suit? On the other hand, if any end will do, then good becomes something equivocal. Calling good "satisfaction of desire," for example, subjectivizes the notion of good to the point of irrelevancy. For example, if "satisfaction of desire" is selected as the end of man, we have no plausible means of dividing out and distinguishing the pleasure of the Marquis de Sade in his bedroom from the pleasure of St. Jerome in his study. Are these ends really alike? It is unreasonable to suggest that the pursuit of knowledge is equivalent to the pursuit of lust. In the absence of a single temporal end for all men, and in the absence of a workable solution without out a single temporal end for all men other than some subjective end, it would seem that consequentialism must look toward some sort of common measure.

If, in view of the lack of a single temporal end, we adopt some common measurement factor, we find ourselves having lost any sort of reasonable compass. Any such measure--the "greatest net good," or the "best consequences," or the "lesser evil," or the "smallest net harm," or the "greater balance of good over bad"--is fraught with problems. An ethic that builds itself on pleasure--and that would allow for pleasure's increase as reasonable even if it calls for arbitrary acts and a rejection of a comprehensive plan of life--is an ethic that is "only worthy of swine." (Mill) The substitution of minimization of pain for the maximization of pleasure or any other adaptation is equally unavailing as a standard. To measure "pleasure" and "pain" is already an impossible task, and making these measures more sophisticated or nuanced only exacerbates the calculative problem.

The most apparent problem is that there is no balance between good (however it be defined, pleasure or anything else) and evil (which would be the negative of the good). In other words, can it be said that one measure of good overcomes one measure of evil? If so, then why does evil have equal voting rights with the good? If not, what is the ratio between good and evil, and why?

There are also problems in measuring between pleasures (or between pains). If to clamber out of the "swine" factor requires distinguishing between high pleasures and low pleasures, whose values are going to make this decision? And what factor is to be used to distinguish the degrees of pleasure of the drunk with his Mogen David wine and the pleasure of the dilettante with his Domaine Romanée-Conti?

Even more problematic, how do we measure the pleasures that differ in kind, and not only in degree? How, for example, do we compare the desire for an orgasm with the desire for God? How do we compare the desire for eating caviar with the desire for progeny?

Then there is the problem of whether the vantage point ought to be individual or aggregate. Is the moral question one where I measure what is best for me, or is it rather that someone else measures what is best for all?*** Is the all to include only those that are alive when the calculus is performed? Or is it to include those that come after us?

And if we decide to select an aggregate vantage point our problems still are not over. Is our final measure the maximum amount of good (or the minimal amount of evil) regardless of distribution (overall utility)? If so, then so long as the total amount of good is maximized (or evil minimized), we can justify the enslavement of a proportion of all so long as the misery associated with the enslaved is exceeded by the pleasure of those who benefit from the enslavement. If we try to fix the problems associated with distribution (maximum average utility, or maximum amounts of good for those worst off, or, most ominously, maximum equal amounts of good for everyone), the consequentialist runs into a conundrum: "[T]here is no consequentialist reason for preferring any particular one of the eligible specifications. The ambition to maximize goods logically cannot be a sufficient principle of practical reasoning."****

Moreover, whether minimization of some factor or maximization of another factor is selected, the calculus to be performed is--short of some sort of divine intellect--impossible to cipher for even the smallest individual act. The alternative options to any particular choice are potentially innumerable. How is one to measure each of these and weigh them against each other? Where are we to begin? And where are we to end? "A genuine consequentialist assessment of alternative possiblities could never end, and could begin anywhere. So it should never begin anywhere." NLNR, 117.

Who, for example, can predict what the consequences are, under any measure of good, for using artificial contraception which prevents a certain child from having been born? What would that child (or that child's child or that child's child's child) have contributed to the happiness or pleasure of the mother when a mother (or a grandmother, or a great grandmother) or to the world at large is impossible to say. We are sort of like Croesus before Solon: we cannot know whether one is happy until one is dead, and one cannot know whether what one has done is right until all consequences of a choice have rippled through the course of history until the end of time, which will happen long after the actor confronted with the choice has made his decision.

Thus, it appears that in both practice and theory, consequentialism as a moral theory is found wanting. "In short, no determinate meaning can be found for the term 'good' that would allow any commensurating and calculus of good to be made in order to settle those basic questions of practical reason which we call 'moral' questions." NLNR, 115. The basic human goods--life, knowledge, play, aesthetic pleasure, friendship, religion, and practical reasonableness--are objectively incommensurable, and so any ethical theory must operate with this obvious impediment. Consequentialism's continuing efforts to measure and weigh what is unmeasurable and unweighable are in vain. The theory is fundamentally senseless.

The Finnisian proposal does not require commensurating the incommensurable. Adopting a plan of life in light of the multiple human values or goods is not measuring the immeasurable:

[O]ne can adopt a set of commitments that will bring the basic values into a relation with each other sufficient to enable one to choose projects and, in some cases, to undertake a cost-benefit analysis (or preference-maximizing or other like analysis) with some prospect of a determinate 'best solution'. But the adoption of a set of commitments, by and individual or a society, is nothing like carrying out a calculus of commensurable goods, though it should be controlled by all the rational requirements . . . and so is far from being blind, arbitrary, directionless, or indiscriminate.

NLNR, 115.

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*The issue of consequentialism has been treated at some depth replying in particular on the work of Professor Oderberg. See Consequentialism and Natural Law.
**I say "temporal" because if God is said to be the single, well-defined end of man, it is not sufficient to answer the moral question in regard to the temporal unless the glory of God or the end of friendship with God can only be manifested in one way. But since the glory or love of God may be expressed in countless ways, through "inexhaustibly man life-plans," it follows that God as man's last end is not an adequate common goal sufficient to build a consequentialist ethic. Besides, there is no consequentialist ethicist that would hold God to be man's final end. If there were, then the he would also recognize the relative nature of consequential thought and would recognize the existence of moral absolutes.
***"Jeremy Bentham oscillated and equivocated for sixty years about whether his utilitarianism was to maximize his own happiness or the happiness of 'everbody'." NLNR, 116. Maybe his mummified head is still oscillating and equivocating about it.
****Which is to say that it is necessary, but not sufficient. The other elements of practical reasonableness need to be part of the application of practical reasonableness. Efficiency (utility) is only one necessary but not sufficient prong of a multi-pronged approach, each of which other prongs are necessary but not sufficient alone or in partial aggregation. All prongs must act together to yield practical reasonableness in its fullness which, in its fullness, is both necessary and sufficient.

Contra Consequentialismum: Relativism's Unrelative

RELATIVISM IS THE MOST COMMON FORM of moral skepticism about us. Personal relativism insists that there is no such thing as moral truths that extend beyond what is true for the individual. Since morality is a matter of individual opinion, of sentiment, then morality is subjective, about feeling, at best. Relativism also comes in other forms. For example, it can extend beyond personal relativism to cultural or social relativism, providing that morality is a cultural or social norm, and not necessarily a personal norm. But in whatever form it may be found, individualistic or socialistic, fundamentally all forms of relativism share "the central dogma that moral propositions, instead of having objective truth--truth for all people in all places at all times--are true relative to one standard but not another." Oderberg, MT, 16. In other words, relativists are relative or standardless about all things but one, the relativism of relativism. Relativism is, for them, the only thing unrelative. The relativist believes in no absolute dogma but one: all morality is relative. It would seem that relativism is inconsistent with itself ab initio, from its foundation.

And so it it is.

The foundational inconsistency of the relativists ethic shows up in the conundrums they are easily forced into. For example: If all morality is relative, subjective, personal, it follows that that morality ought not to be imposed upon anyone else. In other words, there is no warrant for me to force my views upon you, and you to force your views upon me. Tolerance, therefore, is the mandatum novum, the new commandment for the relativist. But isn't this prime virtue of relativism, tolerance, then, following relativism's own assumption that all is relative, subjective, a matter of opinion? What, then, of the man whose personal belief is that tolerance is wrong, that he has the right to impose his belief system on whomever he sees fit, by physical or legal coercion, even torture and violence if necessary? (Folks like this aren't too hard to find: look at the ranks of Al Qaida or the advocates of homosexual marriage. These folks insist we should see things their way and use rather forceful means to insist.) Must the relativist be tolerant of the intolerant? To be consistent with his principles, the relativist must be tolerant of the intolerant. This is then a collapse into a moral nihilism, as it will allow for anything. Am I to be tolerant of a pedophile who believes that pedophilia is the only proper expression of human sexuality, and that he has the right to indoctrinate children to his manner of thinking? Most relativists will not extend their dogma so far.

If the relativist, however, decides to be intolerant of the intolerant, then the relativist has violated his own principle. Against his central tenet, he has adopted an objective, absolute, exceptionless truth which requires him to adopt an objective moral law: intolerance is exceptionlessly, absolutely evil. On what basis do they found this? The relativist remains mum to the question. There is no basis, given the relativist's assumptions, to justify the dogmatic assumption of this one, exceptional principle. As W. V. Quine, the American analytic philosopher and himself a philosophical relativist, has conceded in the context of cultural relativism: "He [the cultural relativist] cannot proclaim cultural relativism without rising above it, and he cannot rise above it without giving it up." Oderberg, MT, 20 (quoting W. V. Quine, "On Empirically Equivalent Systems in the Word," Erkenntnis 9 (1975), 328-28).

Two other ethical theories reject the objective nature of the ethical realm. For these two schools of thought, the "world of ought" does not exist, and so they are foundationally skeptical like the relativist. The first such theory is expressivism or emotivism. This theory of morality also hales from Hume, who in his Treatise on Human Nature (III.I.II) concluded: "Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judged of." This thought was taken and ran with under the name emotivism by the likes of Ogden and Richards, A. J. Ayer, and C. L. Stevenson. The central core of these school of thought is that moral precepts are not really moral precepts at all, and certainly not descriptive of a fact of the moral realm, but rather expressions of deeply felt feelings of repugnance or attraction. So the statement, "Child abuse is wrong," is really nothing other than an expression of "Down with child abuse!" Affirmatively, the statement, "Promises ought to be kept," is really nothing but "Up with promise-keeping!" Oderberg, MT, 23. Moral statements are really nothing more than sophisticated "grunts and groans" of emotional satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Morality is nothing other than discussion about boos and discussion about hurrahs, and so it may also be regarded as the "Boo-Hurrah" moral theory.

Prescriptivism, another moral theory that denies the factual reality of the moral realm, promotes moral statements from "grunts and groans" to mere prescriptions, that is, to imperatives or commands. A prescriptivist would therefore take the statement "Child abuse is wrong" to mean "Do not be a child abuser," and the statement, "Promises ought to be kept," as "Do keep your promises." In other words, moral oughts are really nothing other than efforts than one person trying to command another person, but have no real objective foundation.

The problem with such theories as emotivism and prescriptivism is that they run afoul of how men think, and how they use moral statements, and so are not satisfactory theories of the moral life of man.* We naturally use moral statements as the basis for reasoning. If moral statements were, in fact merely statements of emotion or statements of command disguised in other form, we would not be able to use them this way.

Both expressivism and prescriptivism equate the assertion of a moral proposition with something other than the statement of a fact: in one case an expression of emotion, in the other a command. However, one can do more with moral propositions than assert them: one can use them in the context of other more complex propositions, so the moral proposition that is a component of the more complex one is not asserted at all.

Oderberg, MT, 24. In other words, we use moral statements in a manner that is inconsistent with them being expressions of emotion or statements of command. We use them as statements of moral fact.

So, for example, from the moral statement "Prostitution is wrong," I can also say, "If Prostitution is wrong, then so is living off the earnings of prostitution." Using a form of syllogistic reason,** I can then reason that since Prostitution is wrong it necessarily follows that it is wrong to live of its earnings. Such reasoning cannot take place if the statement "Prostitution is wrong" is an expression or emotion or of command because it queers the syllogism.*** The term "Prostitution is wrong" must mean the same thing in the statement "Prostitution is wrong" as it does in the second statement "If Prostitution is wrong, then . . . ." or we have a fallacy.

Under the expressivist view, the first statement ("Prostitution is wrong") is nothing other than the statement "Down with Prostitution!" So the syllogism becomes: "Down with Prostitution!" If "Down with prostitution!" then "Down with living off its earnings!" Therefore, "Down with living of the earnings of prostitution!" In the prescriptivist view, the first statement ("Prostitution is wrong") is equivalent to "Do not be a prostitute." So the syllogism becomes "Do not be a prostitute." If "Do not be a prostitute," then "Do not live of its earnings." Therefore, "Do not live off the earnings of prostitution."

But the statements: "If 'Down with prostitution!' then 'Down with living off its earnings!'" and "If 'Do not be a prostitute' then 'Do not live off the earnings of prostitution'" are meaningless. So: (i) either they are wrong about moral statements being mere statements of emotion or statements of command (in which case they are wrong), or (ii) they are right about moral statements being nothing other than statements of emotion or statements of command, in which case any moral reasoning is made meaningless an nonsensical (because you can't take a command or expression of emotion and make and "if . . . then . . . " statement out of it) (which means they are wrong), or (iii) they use terms equivocally (to avoid the problems associated with "if . . . then . . . statements) and are guilty of the fallacy of equivocation (in which case they are wrong). Quartum non datur. No matter what, the result is "expressivism and prescriptivism are false." Oderberg, 25.

The fact is that, in reasoning about things in the realm of action, we use moral statements as if they were statements of fact related to a moral realm. We do not use moral statements as if they were in reality mere statements of command or expressions of emotions likes and dislikes. The emotivist and the prescriptivist simply do not describe what really happens among men. They fail to explain reality, and, in Oderberg's view "'ditch' reality." Oderberg, 26.

The fact is, man uses moral statements in a manner, not as expressions of command or feeling, but as statements of fact, as indicative statements. They are stated as if they are "being asserted as true or false," they are expressed in a manner where they can be "agreed or disagreed with," they are used "as premises in arguments."

[A moral statement] has the same indicative or fact-stating form as 'Grass is green.' As such, it can serve as a free-standing premise in an argument, such as the first premise [in a syllogism], as well as being embedded within a compound proposition, such as the 'if . . . then . . . ' proposition which [may be] the second premise of . . . [an] argument. . . . It is these arguments that we perfectly well understand, and which we assess for validity . . . , but which, if prescriptivism or expressivism were true, would turn out to be incomprehensible at worst, or implausibly have to be deemed invalid at best.

Oderberg, 25-26. But the prescriptivist and emotivist or expressivist do more than screw with, or misinterpret, moral reasoning, that is moral syllogistic reasoning. They also denude moral statements, restrict them, really dehumanize them. Man is fundamentally moral, and to wrest his moral utterances from a factual moral realm, in which he lives and moves and has his being, and put them into the realm of mere emotion or command, is to dehumanize him. "Moral propositions are not always asserted: they are embedded in unasserted contexts like 'if . . then . . . ' statements, but they are also assumed, wondered about, entertained, and the like. In all such contexts, treating them as commands or expressions produces nonsense." Oderberg, MT, 26-27.

Oderberg is clear. It is not that command or emotion have no role in moral reasoning or moral reality. Moral propositions--which are propositions of moral fact--can be used, and frequently are found, in commands. They can be formulated into law. Violation of moral propositions can also elicit disgust, disdain, anger, sorrow. But the real world of morality is not in command and not in emotion, the real world behind command and emotion is what the emotivist and the prescriptivist miss.

Expressivism and prescriptivism err by reversing the true order of explanation: it is the truth and falsehood of moral statements that justify the having of certain emotional responses and the issuing of commands.

Oderberg, MT, 27. The moral reality justifies the command and the emotion. And not vice versa. It is not the command and the emotion that justify the moral reality. The moral reality exists irrespective of command (command can err: laws can be unjust or vicious). The moral reality exists irrespective of emotion ("If it feels good, do it!" is a moral abomination).
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*Oderberg attributes this argument to Peter Geach, who derived it from the German philosopher Gottlob Frege. Oderberg cites to two of Geach's papers: "Ascriptivism," Philosophical Review 69 (1960), pp. 221-5, reprinted in Peter Geach, Logic Matters (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 250-54, and "Assertion," Philosophical Review 74 (1965), pp. 449-65.
**modus ponens: If A, then B; A; therefore, B.
***It results in the fallacy called the "fallacy of equivocation." In other words it ascribes the same meaning to an expression in two propositions that in fact mean two different things.