Paul Rusell on Bernard Williams' legacy.

Prof. Paul Russell, in the TLS, writes that Bernard Williams was 'sceptical about “moral theory”, understood as an effort to provide secure philosophical foundations for the morality system.'

This seems rather strange. Surely, if a 'morality system' has a representation as a deontic logic, then its philosophical foundations are as secure as any mathematical system? Of course, these philosophical foundations would be utterly shite but, still, why be skeptical about shite? The better course is to acknowledge its reality and take care not to step in it.

Prof. Russel explains that Williams was a prominent man- a member of the great and good- and that in the pre-Trump era his type of shitheadedness represented an ongoing public nuisance.

Thus, Russel writes-

 Although many of Williams’s critics take it to be a failing of his philosophy that he offers no substitute for the various “theories” that he rejects, he is clear that it is possible to make sense of human ethical life without relying on “moral theory” of any kind or any of the illusions and distortions it encourages.

A contract can have a 'morals clause'. This means there is already a judicial, protocol bound, method that can be extended to cover an entire 'morality system'. There is no reason to believe that some deontic logic isn't equivalent to that of a 'Judge Hercules' who has a univalent method of harmonious construction for all present, past and future questions of morality.

Courts weigh up obligations of different types all the time. So do we all. Why should philosophy make heavy weather off something which well paid lawyers and learned judges have been getting on with since time immemorial? No doubt, the thing is messy and complex but so are one's problems with the plumbing after one's relatives come to visit. Why involve philosophers? What possible contribution could they make- other than clogging up the toilets even worse than your obese cousins?

Prof. Russel clarifies William's contribution-

What, then, is “the morality system”? Its most fundamental feature, as Williams describes it, is a special notion of “obligation” that aims to generate a sharp boundary between “moral” and “non-moral” considerations, giving the former overriding weight that uniquely serve as “practical necessities” for all rational agents. This sense of obligation is intimately related to concepts of voluntariness and blame. It is a core feature of the morality system that agents who voluntarily violate its demands are subject to blame and retribution. With these concepts in place, we are invited to see ourselves as members of a community of rational, free agents governed by demands that apply equally to all – what Williams memorably describes as “the notional republic”. The moral community, so ordered, generates a kind of “harmony” whereby our human needs and interests neatly dovetail together with the claims of morality itself. One especially significant feature of this “peculiar institution” is that it transcends luck and aims to ensure that human existence can be “ultimately just”. In this sense, there is a “purity” to morality that expresses a strong degree of optimism about the human predicament. Although Williams does not deny that morality, so understood, has been in some respects a constructive or positive influence (for example, in promoting the ends of justice), it is, nevertheless, fundamentally untruthful about our ethical predicament and situation. We would, Williams maintains, be “better off without it”.

If there is an 'ultimately just' solution to the Transportation problem for a given Society then there can be a 'morality system' which, if subscribed to, would yield the same outcome as a frictionless Command or Market economy with perfect information. The same notion can be expressed in terms of the folk theorem of repeated games.

The fact that these outcomes aren't effectively computable doesn't matter very much, provided we can easily spot 'topological holes' or agenda control or concurrency problems as they arise. It is sufficient that we know the general direction of the focal solution to the underlying coordination problem. Furthermore, by adopting a regret minimizing methodology trade-offs can be made in the name of Uncertainty. There is no need to get hung up on notions of 'purity' because, if we evolved under conditions of Knightian uncertainty, the thing has no survival value- ergo, it can't exist.

While “morality” is not “an invention of philosophers”, it is intimately bound up with philosophy and its particular way of “theorizing”.

This is nonsense. Morality has nothing to do with philosophy. Nor does anything else. Philosophy is worthless shite. Why?

Prof. Russell explains-

The aim of “theory” is to provide us with a general test for the “correctness” of our ethical beliefs and principles (or to show that this cannot be done).

Wonderful! We have 'ethical beliefs and principles' in the same way that we have sexual preferences. Some Prof. who says our ethical beliefs are incorrect is no different from a paedophile who claims we secretly want to suck his cock. This type of shite is gaslighting- nothing more.

The paradigmatic representative of the morality system in this respect is Kant

who forbade masturbation but was cool with slavery

, although utilitarianism is, at least, a “marginal member”.

though Utilitarianism militates for giving hobos blowjobs not writing worthless shite.

Among the features of ethical theory to which Williams specifically objects are its propensity to reduction and denial of diversity, along with its efforts to compress various ethical considerations and concepts into “one pattern”. All theorizing of this kind conceals the messy and problematic features of ethical life.

D'uh! I like corn chips and abhor peanut butter. Your saying I don't really like corn chips and want to have sex with the peanut butter jar isn't theorizing. It is stupidity.

It also diminishes the resources available to us for critical, ethical reflection.

Right! It's a waste of everybody's time.

In general, Williams is “deeply sceptical” about “philosophical ethics” conceived in these terms. Although we can certainly think about ethics in a critical and reflective way, according to Williams, “philosophy can do little to determine how we should do so”.

Why not just say the subject is worthless? Williams was a big shot. Why didn't he use his influence to get this shite out of the Academy- or at least prevent tax-payer money funding 'Research' into it?

The fundamental reason why moral theories fail, on this view, is that they do not provide an adequate conception of moral agents as individual and distinct persons who have a life of their own to lead. (It is no coincidence that Williams made significant contributions to problems of personal identity, as this issue is of central concern for him.) For Williams, each person should be understood as a situated and embodied being with a wide range of particular attachments and projects. It is these attachments and projects that provide life with whatever meaning and significance it has for the agent. Without them we have no reason to want our lives to continue – and, failing this, the very condition of our thinking about morality would simply evaporate.

Williams was wrong.  Coordination and concurrency problems exist. Everybody benefits if we have a 'representative agent' theory- e.g. the 'reasonable person' test in Jurisprudence- to provide focal solutions for these problems. Mechanism design faces 'open problems' of a STEM type in this context. Such 'open problems' are 'philosophical'. Ethical conduct consists in doing some first order good and only then speculating, on the basis of a causal structural model, how more could be achieved by the application of 'philosophical' heuristics.

In contrast with this, “moral theory” insists that we begin our investigations from some God-like, impartial and impersonal perspective – such as that described by Henry Sidgwick as “the point of view of the universe”. This starting point for thinking about ethics is further encouraged when moral theory models itself after science, with an aspiration to secure some form of knowledge and truth about ethics. We are also encouraged to find value and obligation as somehow embedded in “the fabric of the world”, as seen from the same “absolute conception” that is available to science. When we follow any model of this general kind, Williams maintains, morality simply collapses under its own philosophical weight.

Oddly, the reverse is the case provided there has been genuine progress in STEM subjects. Evolutionary theory does help us to affirm that masturbation and homosexuality and so forth aren't terrible sins. Philosophy can get lipo from this type of scientific progress. It doesn't have to collapse under its own weight. Of course, it should quit the Academy- where it will just pile on the pounds once again- and get a proper job as a lap dancer. Timon of Phlius, it will be remembered, started off as a dancer. I'm not saying Amartya Sen should have given Manmohan Singh a lap dance, but he could at least have done one or two Bollywood bhangra items with his old chum.

Perhaps the most disturbing and destructive aspect of “morality” and the forms of “theory” on which it depends is that it transforms the demands of ethics from an important part of human life into the whole of human life – leaving little or nothing for whatever else we may find valuable and worthwhile.

A stupid guy who tells you that you don't really like corn chips and that you want a peanut butter enema is acting in a disturbing and destructive way- because you tend to get disturbed and to break a chair over his head- but stupid people of this type don't matter very much. They end up writing blogs like this one. So long as they are kept out of the Academy no great waste of resources arises.

Where “morality” comes to dominate, it tends to consume all of human life.

Fortunately, 'morality' has never dominated anything.  Money and Violence can dominate things in the short to medium term. Long term, only productivity and preferences matter.

No doubt, there is a niche market for stupid pedagogy which will always

 ... need a very different starting place for our reflections about ethics and its proper place.
A better place to start, Williams suggests, is with Socrates’ question: how should we live?

Why? Socrates fucked up big time. We no more need to start with the question 'how should we live?' than we need to bother with 'how should we breathe?' or 'how should we fart?'.

In order to answer this question we must draw on a set of motivations and interests that are richer and more diverse than those provided by moral theory.

A moral theory can have an infinitely rich and diverse set of motivations and interests. Why must we do something which is impossible? What is the point?

The motivations and interests available to us must be those of a person situated in a particular historical and social location, an individual with a particular identity.

Such a person is wholly inaccessible to us- even if it is our own self just one micro-second ago.

It is only from this perspective that we can make proper sense of the force and weight of ethical considerations and the extent to which they can or cannot be integrated with other concerns we may have – keeping in mind that not all (important) claims and interests in human life are ethical claims and interests. In taking this approach, however, we must not expect that nothing will change – or that there will be no costs involved in abandoning “morality”.

Of course! We have just tied our hands and blindfolded ourselves. This may reduce the amount of mischief we can do, but there is a cost in terms of being able to do the job we are paid to do.

The alternative to trying to make sense of ethics from “the point of view of the universe” or some analogue of that is to consider ethics from a human point of view – which is, as Williams wryly notes, “not an absurd thing for human beings to do”.

But, experience shows, it is a waste of time.

To a considerable extent, Williams’s critique of “moral theory” is based on the moral psychology provided by David Hume.

Coz Hume had access to cutting edge medical technology and thus his 'moral psychology' is empirically state of the art.

This includes, among its most important elements, an emphasis on the role of desire and emotion in moral life. According to Williams, it is our ethical dispositions themselves – as constituted by the matrix of our attitudes and sentiments – that serve as “the ultimate supports of ethical value”.

Wow! Our ethical dispositions underlie our ethical values. What a great discovery! It is like saying 'our preferences underlie our likes and dislikes'. But is it true? No. Our ethical values may change without our dispositions changing. That is why one may wish to have a different disposition.

Many Humeans regard this as enough to sustain our existing ethical commitments and practices and assume that nothing much needs to change when this is made transparent to us.

Many Humeans? How many of these stupid fuckwits are there? Who is paying their salaries? Do we really need so many?

Williams finds this response too complacent. For him this Humean response underestimates the importance of ethical and cultural diversity and overestimates the uniformity of the general sentiments of mankind.

So, why not just say 'Philosophy is a shite subject. It features 'many Humeans' at a time when one Humean would be one too many coz Science has moved on dude.'

Although our shared human nature may well demand a commitment to some form of ethical and social life, it radically underdetermines what the options are.

Utter gibberish. Phusis is wholly unconnected with Nomos. We don't need to have commitments to breathe or fart or fraternize.

On the other hand, the set of commitments ascribable to an agent is the dual of the set of options even in games against nature. There is no 'radical under-determinacy' here. If there is no option, there is no point having a commitment.

Faced with ethical diversity and the modes of “confrontation” that accompany it, we are liable to lose the moral knowledge that comes with belonging to a society where our normative and descriptive concepts are so fused together that they structure our sense of reality itself.

Nonsense! Such 'moral knowledge' is vector not scalar. Nobody thinks the duty of a waiter is the same as that of a guest. 'Normative' and 'descriptive' concepts don't exist. No concept does. There is nothing in them which can be fused together save conceptually. But, conceptually, they can also be sodomised by the neighbour's cat while being confused together by catted sodomy so as to become more deeply interfused.

To this extent the growth of reflective consciousness is not entirely positive and involves what some might experience as a kind of “Fall”.

This isn't growth, it is silliness. Reflective consciousness has to pay for itself in terms of increased productivity because cognition is costly of calories. Experiencing a kind of 'Fall' isn't productive unless one is stuck in a repugnancy market for shite pedagogy.

What is lost in these circumstances is belief in some objective grounding for our values.

Why? Does saying values are grounded in dispositions not sound smart any more? But when was it ever smart? So what if some stupid belief is lost? These guys weren't producing anything worthwhile in the first place.

We are, moreover, forced to abandon the hope that we can make “ultimate sense” of the way in which ethical life, in its various forms, neatly and reliably integrates with human needs and interests of a broader kind.

So what? We are all forced to abandon hope, sooner or later, that we'll wake up tomorrow. Compared to the fact that we will all die, the fact that we won't make 'ultimate sense' of some stupid shite only pedagogues pretend to care about is pretty small beer.

In light of reflections of this kind, the world must be viewed as a less accommodating place for those who seek an answer as to how they should live.

On the contrary, we have made the world too accommodating to worthless pedagogues who seek answers to meaningless questions.

Our response to this situation may well be one of disenchantment.

Which fool was enchanted by such fatuity in the first place?

What does not follow from all this, Williams argues, is any form of nihilism.

Right! Coz the fact there is no ultimate answer to 'what is the ultimate question' does not mean nothing is ultimate nor that existence is illusory.

On the contrary, even without any “objective foundations of ethical life” we still have basic desires and interests to structure and direct our reflections about how to live.

But these are 'objective foundations'.

The stance we take here is not one that rests on either knowledge or arbitrary decision, but is rather a matter of what Williams calls (reflective) confidence.

Fuck me! Confidence is a knowledge based decision. Robinson Crusoe displays it in games against nature just as much as Warren Buffet displays it when making investment decisions.

Confidence, he suggests, is essentially a social phenomenon and it is fostered and supported by means of certain forms of social institutions and relevant forms of upbringing.

Confidence exists without any fostering or supporting. Conversely, Society can foster and support a guy as much as it likes without the fellow developing any confidence whatsoever.

Most importantly, however, it is best secured by means of public discussion guided by rational argument (which does not itself demand or require objective foundations).

Public discussion is useless. Protocol bound alethic discourses are the opposite of public. We can sit around in the pub discussing how to cure our friend's cancer. This discussion is worthless. By contrast, the senior oncologists dictat as adhered to by the attending Doctors and nurses may actually cure the bloke.

Rational argument is not necessary. Expert cognition may use non-linear or wholly apophatic methods. There is nothing wrong in plugging into a 'black box' provided there is empirical evidence that this is the best alternative.

While there is “no route back from reflectiveness” – and this has its costs – we have no reason to collapse into nihilistic despair.

I disagree. You guys should collapse into nihilistic despair because your subject is shite.

Williams is, of course, well aware that this response will do little to reassure those who seek to satisfy the aspirations of the morality system. As such, the position that he takes leaves plenty of room for pessimism. Retaining ethical confidence is not, he points out, a matter of optimism but comes closer to what Nietzsche described as “the pessimism of strength”.

In other words, talking high falutin' shite about morality is an adolescent type of hooliganism- or just the most boring sort of sociopathy.

What Williams emphasizes most, particularly in his later work Shame and Necessity (1993), is the loss of our belief in “harmony”. What makes his later work different, however, is that Williams takes what he describes as a “historicist turn” in order to elaborate on these important points. In Shame and Necessity his discussion focuses primarily on the ideas of the ancient Greeks, particularly Homer and the tragedians.

Coz if pedagogues of a particular Academic lineage have consistently fucked up for over two thousand years, the proper way to proceed is to go back and do the same thing all over again.

Unlike the illusory understandings of the concepts of freedom and moral responsibility encouraged by the morality system, Williams explains, the Greeks acknowledged the extent to which human life – including ethical life – is shaped by luck and contingency. While we cannot return to their world, there is, in this respect, much that we can learn from them.

Bad luck does not shape 'ethical life', it shapes the insurance industry. Everybody, everywhere understands the benefit of risk pooling. Even the stupid pedagogues who write this shite take out insurance. Economic, not ethical, life is what deals with risk- i.e. 'luck and contingency'. In this field, 'moral hazard' arises. But this does not involve morality. Only incentives and mechanisms matter.

Williams ends his study on a related (dark) note, concerning the lack of “harmony” in the world. The question we encounter when we consider the works of the ancient Greeks, he suggests, “is whether or not a given writer or philosophy believes that, beyond some things that human beings have themselves shaped, there is anything at all that is intrinsically shaped to human interests, in particular to human beings’ ethical interests”.

We can encounter this question anywhere but it is a silly question because the fact that our species evolved means this Universe is anthropic but needn't have been.

Greek tragedy has no room for a world that supposes that, if we understood it correctly, we could learn how to be in harmony with it.

Nonsense! If we don't arrogantly or unthinkingly overstep the mark- i.e. if we avoid hubris and hamartia- then our lives would be harmonious, not blighted by tragedy.

With the collapse of the illusions that “morality” fosters, we are now well positioned to recognize that our ethical situation is much closer to that which is portrayed in the works of the Greek tragedians.

Garbage! Our ethical situation simply does not feature oracles and Gods and guys marrying their own Mums coz while MILFs exist, Mums I'd Like to Marry is an empty set.

Do these conclusions leave us trapped in a world stripped of all optimism and without hope?

Sure- if you are teaching a worthless subject.

Williams makes very clear in his closing remarks in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy that this is not his view, and much of his later philosophical work is devoted to elaborating on this point.

Coz he was earning good money teaching that worthless subject.

One vital source of hope still available to us is that of truth. In Truth and Truthfulness (2002) Williams employs a genealogical method to account for the value of truth by way of an account of the twin virtues of truthfulness: accuracy and sincerity.

There are no such virtues. Accuracy is not truthful, it is speculative or experimental. Sincerity is intentional, not alethic.

The immediate target of these reflections and observations are those “deniers”, like Richard Rorty, who question whether there can be such a thing as “objective truth” and what value it might have.

What is the point of targeting Rorty? What great discovery did he make? There is a 'buck stopped' objective truth for any protocol bound, juristic, discourse which can 'pay its way'- i.e. which raises productivity by more than what it costs.

Another source of hope available to us is to be found in politics. In his posthumous collection In the Beginning was the Deed (2008), which includes a number of his later papers, Williams seeks to show that, whatever the failures of the Enlightenment, there is no reason to abandon our respect or hopes for freedom and social justice.

Why seek to show something tautological. There is no reason to abandon something which has nothing to do with reason. I hope to levitate and respect those able to do so. I have no reason to believe anyone can levitate. But that does not mean I have a reason not to hope to levitate or to respect those who can.

What these values and ideals do not need, however, are political philosophies that are simply extensions of moral theory applied to the realm of politics.

Nonsense! Values and ideals do need extra stuff- like political philosophies which are extensions of moral theories derived from those values and ideals- so as to flourish. The realm of politics would be bare indeed if this were not the case. The thing would simply be a market place- like the Stock Exchange.

In place of projects of this kind Williams suggests that we embrace a form of “political realism” as a way of thinking about and justifying our institutions and practices.

Realists will embrace 'political realism' precisely because they think both Williams and the shite he is critiquing represent an absurd and wholly unreal academic availability cascade or pedagogic shibboleth.

An approach of this kind would place proper emphasis on the relevance of historical circumstances, the need for a credible understanding of human psychology, and, in particular, it would take “the first question” of politics to be about securing conditions of safety, trust and cooperation.

But an approach of this kind is still useless. The 'first question' of politics is wholly context dependent. Most of the time it would be about safeguarding what obtains and building upon it, but- at least some of the time- it will be about reducing safety, trust and cooperation, more particularly with respect to the operations of crooks or tyrants.

Suffice it to say that Williams’s discussion of all these matters is even more pertinent in the present state of the world than it was when first written.

More pertinent to whom? Only to stupid pedagogues ploughing a sterile furrow.

One particular danger when considering Williams’s thought is to approach his work on a piecemeal basis (practical reason/ moral luck/ utilitarianism/ etc). Viewed in that way, it comes across as haphazard and lacking direction. The truth, however, is the opposite: the individual contributions that Williams made all relate to his wider and more ambitious programme. Taken as a whole, Williams’s philosophical contribution is greater than the sum of its parts – a point that deserves some emphasis.

But that sum still amounts to a pile of shite.

What, then, are we to say about Williams’s legacy? Perhaps the most powerful source of dissatisfaction with Williams’s philosophy is that he does not provide “good news” of any kind. Delivering good news, however, is not something that Williams is interested in, since it involves sacrificing philosophy’s commitment to the value of truth. Williams remains confident, nevertheless, that we can lead worthwhile lives and that there are values and pursuits that matter and that can and should be protected and preserved.

This isn't news- good, bad or indifferent. We already know that we can breathe and fart and lead worthwhile lives and so forth. We don't need some shithead to tell us this.

Beyond this, as Williams points out himself, an author’s legacy depends in large measure on what his or her readers make of the work. Like so much else in life, an author’s legacy is subject to luck.

But only if the author is part of a repugnancy market in pseudo profundity. A guy who writes well or who makes some useful discovery leaves a legacy not at all subject to luck. Williams was an important man in his day- probably because of some personal quality of his- but that day is done. His legacy is stupid shitheads writing illiterate shite.