In an essay for Aeon, Paul Sagar discusses an ethical conundrum highlighted by Simon Blackburn-
Imagine I invite you over to dinner and, while carving the roast, I casually mention that this is the very knife that the assassin used to murder my wife and children. Would you still be comfortable eating the slice of beef I’ve just plopped on to your plate?
What you experience is 'cognitive dissonance'. It is usual, at a dinner party, for a person to say something which will increase our appetite, not kill it by putting a horrific image in our minds. Still, there may be a reason the host says this. I happen to be a Hindu for whom it is impious to eat beef. My host is reminding me that to the Divine eye, all percepts are delusive. No knife killed anybody. No creature kills. All is 'maya'. I am not actually eating the holy cow. God is the only efficient cause. He is the knife, the knifer, and the one who was knifed. Such is the sublime message of the Gita.
And it can work in the other direction, too. Imagine I have a room filled with 20 Fender guitars. I tell you that you can have any of them you like – but one of them was the very guitar that Jimi Hendrix used during his last performance! I bet I know which one you’ll pick, whether you want to keep it for yourself or quickly take it to auction.
Alternatively, that would be the one guitar you don't pick for fear of being thought mercenary.
Sometimes our feelings over these matters can run very high indeed, becoming full-blown moral sentiments. Imagine a sailor who, shipwrecked and clinging to a plank for three days, finally washes up on shore. Yet the first thing he does is burn the plank that saved his life. Does he not seem to do something wrong?
It may be that he is burning the plank to give thanks to God. But God is the thanker, the means of salvation, as well as the one who is thanked.
Or consider the case of a man whose son is killed by a motorcyclist, who is sent to jail but remains in possession of the motorbike. After being released, the motorcyclist begins riding the bike again. But the father, outraged, takes a sledgehammer to the vehicle. Prosecuted for criminal damage, the father is given only a negligible sentence by the judge. We all understand why – and we approve.
We may do because our Society, at an earlier time, had a notion of 'deodand'- a chattel that causes a death is forfeit to the Crown. It may be destroyed or used for some pious purpose. In America, I suppose there could be an 'in rem' action against the motorcycle. The Police Department acquires it and uses it for enforcing Road Regulations thus making them safer.
Indeed, for many centuries, English common law recognised the category of the ‘deodand’, or an object that was implicated in a human death, such as a cart, a boat, a stone or a tree. The deodand had to be forfeited to the authorities, and its value would then equal the compensation awarded by the courts to the victims’ families.
No. The issue of damages was separate. All chattels might be confiscated to make the wronged party whole.
But this practice was abolished in the 1840s,
it had fallen into desuetude long before that, but coroner's juries had revived it to punish railway companies. The problem was that such decisions could be overturned on appeal. Thus Parliament brought a separate Fatal Accidents Act as a remedy for the families of those killed in such accidents.
when railway companies lobbied hard to stop their expensive steam trains being used to set the value of awards in the growing number of train-fatality cases.
This is misleading. The problem was the judgment in Baker v Bolton re. 'loss of consortium'- i.e. damage received by the tortious death of a spouse or other relative.
Although this particular compensation mechanism is no longer legal practice, the basic idea of the deodand still makes sense to us.
I think, what makes sense to us is the atavistic notion that something associated with death is 'polluted' and should be destroyed or kept separate.
The assassin’s knife is still perfectly good as a knife. Why be so upset about my using it tonight?
We are upset that you bring up the matter at the dinner table. If your purpose is to remind us of a great mystical or theological truth, our cognitive dissonance is removed. However, there may still be some squeamish people amongst us. We sympathize with them if they ask to be excused from the dinner table.
Yet, when you think about it, this is rather strange. After all, it is simply a matter of luck that these particular objects have these particular histories.
We don't know that. What appears to be chance to us, may in fact involve causation. At one time, some people denied the 'germ theory' of disease. It was mere coincidence that I caught a cold after you sneezed on me. What really happened was that the balance of humors in my body got upset because Mercury is in conjunction with the Dog Star.
The assassin could well have used her own knife, or picked a different knife from the drawer.
What is disturbing is the host's mention of murder as we sit down to eat.
But she picked this knife – and so this knife is now the one that disturbs us.
The knife does not disturb us. What disturbs us is what our host said.
Hendrix (let us suppose) could have picked any of the available Fenders in the shop that day, he just happened to favour that one – and so now that one is special.
It has a special 'aura' as Walter Benjamin might say. Hendrix was a great guitar player. Buying his guitar may psychologically prime you to become better at playing the guitar.
The examples of Adams, Spacey and Weinstein (people whose bad behavior causes us to value their artistic contribution less) fit the pattern, too.
That pattern has to do with cognitive dissonance not ethics. We want to be well thought of, and thus want to choose only things which aren't 'tainted' in the opinion of our peers. We may wish to show us as ethically superior if we make a point of rejecting such prejudices. Thus an Israeli conductor may make a point of affirming his love for Wagner's music. The notion here is that his devotion to musical excellence is greater than his fear that his Mummy will slap him silly.
How come we extend our discomfort backwards, to cover artistic products associated with them from a time when they themselves were not (let us suppose) morally compromised? Weinstein is only one producer among many in Hollywood. Why is his financing of a film once upon a time – when it could easily have been someone else – enough to make us dislike that film today?
I suppose we don't want to think that the fearless heroine had to suck off that greasy turd. It spoils our enjoyment of the film. On the other hand, the notion that Spacey was incessantly groping the tough-as-nails hero warms the cockles of our heart.
This is genuinely puzzling.
Not really. We don't like thinking that the cute, virginal, girl-next-door, heroine had to choke on Weinstein's jizz. If it was Spacey doing the choking- or better yet Morgan Freeman- we'd be well pleased.
After all, the job of a knife is simply to cut things. The knife that the assassin used is still perfectly good as a knife. So why be so upset about my using it tonight? Likewise, The Usual Suspects (1995) did not suddenly become a worse film – indeed, it didn’t change at all – the moment the accusations against Spacey were made public. So why not re-watch that old DVD when you get home? The Hendrix guitar is (let us suppose) no better as a guitar than any other that Fender produced that year; they all sound roughly the same when played well. So why is Hendrix’s guitar special? It seems rather mysterious.
Till someone says 'cognitive dissonance' and the smart peeps in the room nod wisely. If you work in Marketing or Image Consultancy, you have read plenty on the subject and, what's more, used it to earn a tidy sum for yourself.
Why does bare luck make such a difference to how we feel?
It is wholly irrelevant. 'Moral luck' is nonsense cooked up by stupid pedagogues of a wholly useless subject.
Are we simply irrational when it comes to such matters?
Cognitive dissonance arises from a simple enough 'heuristic' but it can be sublated easily enough.
Perhaps not – and perhaps because asking about whether it is rational for us to have these luck-dependent aversions and attractions is not the right way to think about what is going on.
There is a primitive 'pathogen avoidance' heuristic baked into our brains. Sometimes it is worth overcoming. On my honeymoon night, I briefly overcame my fear of 'kooties'. This enabled me to make cooing noises at a very nice baby some nine months later. This also meant that wifey left me alone thereafter.
The best discussion of why we react in these varying – and perplexing – ways comes from the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. Nowadays much more likely to be known (somewhat misleadingly) as the ‘father of economics’, Smith was employed as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow for around 12 years, and hence spent much of his time teaching and writing on such matters. Indeed, his first book – The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) – puts forward not just the earliest sustained discussion of the issue of what philosophers now call ‘moral luck’, but one of its most compelling evaluations.
The Scots were willing to pay a little money for a book about why it is nice to be nice without once mentioning the real reason- viz. God will fuck you up if you are naughty.
Smith’s discussion didn’t just cover objects or people, and the taint that can be associated with them because of their good or bad histories. It also covered the irregularity of our responses to outcomes that are heavily affected by luck.
Scot's law was more sensible than English law in many respects.
Imagine the following case: I carelessly throw a brick off the top of a building, but fortunately it doesn’t hit anybody, and shatters harmlessly on the pavement below. You’re likely to think that I’m a bad and irresponsible person, and deserve to be admonished accordingly. But you’ll probably also think that the matter should end there.
Because God only wanted the careless person to be taught a lesson through admonition. God's plan did not require the incarceration or financial ruin of the dude in question. The Scots believed in God. They had sound common sense. For prudential reasons, one may as well have a theory of moral sentiments which doesn't mention God so that those whom God has denied the gift of faith, learn to be nice instead of naughty.
Now vary the scenario: imagine that the brick does hit somebody, and kills them. The likelihood is that you will now think that I deserve much more in the way of blame, and indeed of punishment. (Prison seems a perhaps not unreasonable response.)
God wants the negligent dude to be very severely punished. Perhaps he will turn to Christ while in jail. A brand may have been snatched from the burning by the working of God's mysterious economy- or Providence's invisible hand.
Let us suppose that my motivations – eg, sheer indifference to the safety of others – and my actions – chucking a brick without looking – are identical in both cases. Why, Smith asked, do we feel that the latter is so much worse than the former?
God. But if we can't say 'God', then we have to espouse some more or less stupid theory of moral sentiments as opposed to theology of synderesis.
It was, after all, simply a matter of luck
or Providence
that somebody walked along at that precise moment, got hit by the brick, and died. (It works in the other direction, too: we would surely feel it too harsh to send a person to prison simply because the brick might have hit a passerby, when in fact it didn’t.)
In the latter case, a jury might find the action was not negligent. This is the problem with the law. If it is seen as too harsh, you don't get convictions. If it is too lenient, some obsolete punishment, like deodand, may be invoked.
Yet this kind of scenario led to a puzzle. Smith thought it undeniable that we assess the morality of actions not by their actual consequences, but by the intentions of the agent who brings them about.
We deem people to have certain intentions whether or not they had them. This is convenient and useful.
To see that this is indeed true, consider the following example. Imagine that you see me rescue a cat from a tree. When I get to the ground, the cat wriggles free and scurries away. Assuming that my intention was to save the cat, you’ll likely think that I did a good thing.
Assuming that people assume what you say they assume. But why stop there? Why not assume you are a clever person and that what you teach isn't shit?
But what if you now find out that my intention was to barbeque the cat for dinner?
Which is what you would assume if you believe Donald Trump and see that the cat-rescuer is an immigrant.
In both cases, the consequences are the same – the cat is brought down from the tree, wriggles free, and runs away.
No. If you want to eat the cat, you break its neck the moment you get your hands on it. Cats can scratch, you know.
Yet your evaluation of the morality of the act will shift markedly once you learn of my culinary intentions.
It would shift even more if it is likely that you have to cook the cat to feed your starving children.
Try any example you like, and you’ll get the same result: it’s the underlying intention that determines whether or not we approve of an act, not the consequences of the act alone.
No. What we will always find is that the intention we deem to motivate the action and its 'fitness for purpose' are what we use to evaluate actions.
For Smith, it is a truism that we assign different moral weight to intentions, not to consequences, and one that nobody will deny, at least when it comes to philosophical theory.
We don't waste time assigning weights to things that don't concern us. It is a different matter that if we have to serve on a jury we have to make determinations of fact based on the Judge's determinations of law. He says 'the law deems such and such to be the intention when such and such act is performed by a sane person'. Decide the case on the basis of the deemed intention, not the one claimed by either party to the suit. Consider Regina v Shivpuri. Had there been a Jury trial, he would have been acquitted. The case was certified for the House of Lords which reversed the long-standing 'impossible attempt' defence. It seems judges had been foolish enough to listen to utilitarian philosophers. Also, Shivpuri- a mature student of Law at SOAS- was as stupid as shit. Everyone knows that when arrested you say 'no comment'. You don't sing like a fucking canary.
Nonetheless, in practice, we often find ourselves heavily swayed by consequences even when, on the face of it, those consequences shouldn’t matter. Take the brick-throwing example again. In both cases, my intention was bad, because in throwing the brick I showed callous disregard for the safety of others. In theory, then, I am equally culpable whatever the outcome, at least if intentions are supposed to be what counts. But, in practice, we feel far more strongly in the case where the brick does hit somebody. So consequences do matter after all – even though moral philosophers tend to think that it’s only intentions that should matter.
Sadly, Judges who listen to such moral imbeciles do stupid shit. Shivpuri was a journalist conducting a 'sting' operation designed to discredit the Government of India. (He was pals with Khalistani nutters). He told me he had the drugs tested in Bombay by a chemist who gave him a receipt showing the thing to be 'harmless vegetable matter'. Then he got arrested at Southall train station and incriminated himself in a verbose confession. Why? He was stupid.
For this reason, Smith thought that our moral sentiments in such cases were ‘irregular’.
If you attribute crazy 'moral sentiments' to hypothetical people, what you get is irregular shite. Face facts. Scots were sensible God-fearing Presbyterians whose legal system was tough but probably fairer than the product available south of the border.
Why do we respond so differently to consequences that have bad outcomes, when those outcomes are purely a matter of luck? Smith confessed that he did not know why we are psychologically rigged up this way.
Hume did. He said the aim of Justice is utility. So is the aim of Morality and Pedagogy. Don't try to shit higher than your arsehole. Manslaughter is something you have to spend money punishing. Negligence where there is no high duty of care- i.e. culpa levis in concreto- is not something you should spend a lot of time and money worrying about if no damage was sustained by a third party.
Here he hit what he took to be explanatory bedrock, and simply assigned this ‘irregularity’ to the workings of ‘nature’,
Economics. But God's mysterious economy is the 'invisible hand' which is the utilitarian Katechon which keeps the Eschaton- the Day of Wrath- at bay.
for which he could give no further explanation. (We, living after Charles Darwin, might want to posit an evolutionary story – but that was something Smith had no access to.)
Justice and morality are 'co-evolved' and not directly linked to the fitness landscape.
Nonetheless, Smith was confident that, although he could not explain why we are like this, on balance we should nonetheless be grateful that we are indeed rigged up this way.
Grateful to God. He might give us a nice mansion in Heaven.
The first reason Smith gave for why it is good that we are this way is that if, in practice, we really did go around judging everybody solely by their intentions, and not by the actual consequence of their actions, life would be unliveable. We would spend all our time prying into people’s secret motivations, fearing that others were prying into ours, and finding ourselves literally on trial for committing thought crimes. This, Smith thought, might be appropriate for God at the final judgment – but it would be hell on Earth if applied to mortal justice.
Because, as Hume said, Justice is a service industry whose aim is Utility. But so is prating on about 'Moral Science' or 'Ethics' or 'Yuman Rites' or other such 'nonsense on stilts'. Don't do it if you don't get paid to do it. If paid to do it, figure out a way to get paid more for doing something marginally less useless.
Second, it is quite useful that we generally tend to be bothered about actual consequences, rather than just underlying intentions. It’s all very well and good if you intended to get me a birthday present – but if you didn’t actually manage to do so, my gratitude is markedly lessened.
Mummy gave me kisses even if I didn't actually procure for her reading pleasure the Spiderman comic I was saving up for. Sadly, she interrupted my animated account of how Spidey would most definitely have kicked Dracula's ass by asking me whether I had talked to the Principal about getting back my job as a teechur. Also, she hinted that most people move out of their parent's house after they turn 50. Mummies can be very cruel, you know.
This will seem somewhat unfair if the reason you didn’t get me a present is because you fell grievously ill. Your intention, after all, was good. It will seem much less unfair, however, if the reason is simply that your desire to sit around watching Netflix in your underpants was stronger than your desire to go to the shops. We tend to be both more grateful for good consequences and more resentful about bad ones, which is clearly socially useful. On account of the fact that you have to actually do the good thing to get the praise – and equally, you have to actually do the bad thing to get the punishment – people are more likely to follow through on their good, and not act upon their bad, intentions. This is a highly welcome feature of social existence, all things considered.
Imagine having to teach this shite to people who are in their twenties! What's next? Saying it is a highly welcome feature of social existence that not everybody eats only their own shit?
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly of all, Smith thought that there was a special effect of the ‘irregularity’ of our sentiments: it predisposed us to be careful around other people.
More particularly if they are carving up a joint using the knife that killed their wife and children.
One last example: imagine you are walking along a path above a cliff, and you accidentally dislodge a boulder, which crashes down and kills the rock-climber below. You didn’t mean to do this – it was an accident! But the fact that you did do it matters enormously.
Unless there were no witnesses. But God saw. He may fuck you up something rotten after you die.
You will be blamed by others, and will likely blame yourself too. (‘Why didn’t I look where I was going?!’) But the fact that we feel ourselves responsible even for the things that we didn’t mean to do is, Smith thinks, a very useful and desirable state of affairs, insofar as it encourages us to take care when we are acting in ways that could (inadvertently) harm others.
We are careful about how we do things which benefit us.
Precisely because you know you’ll rightly be held responsible for the death of people below you, even if you only accidentally knock a rock onto them, you’re more inclined to take care where you tread when you go for a clifftop stroll.
Because you don't want to fall off the fucking cliff.
As Smith put it, the ‘irregularity’ of our sentiments in this regard encourages us to respect the sanctity of other persons:
English people approved of Smith. They pictured Scotsmen as drunkards who were constantly sticking their dirks into each other.
The happiness of every innocent man is, in the same manner, rendered holy, consecrated, and hedged round against the approach of every other man; not to be wantonly trod upon, not even to be, in any respect, ignorantly and involuntarily violated,
please don't shove your dirk, or dick, up my kilt.
without requiring some expiation, some atonement in proportion to the greatness of such undesigned violation.
At least send me a bunch of flowers afterwards.
What has this got to do with the assassin’s knife, the guitar used by Hendrix, or the films that Spacey starred in? Like Smith, I cannot explain why our psychologies tend to transfer the guilt of an agent, or the history of what an object was used for, on to the past or future status of a thing itself.
The answer is cognitive dissonance.
They apparently just do. But following Smith, this seems to be a very desirable state of affairs, one that we should not want to do without.
Christianity enabled the English speaking people to rise and rise. It opposed Slavery which the Enlightenment thought was totes cool. Philosophy has turned to shit, but there isn't a Church in my neighbourhood where the Sunday Sermon isn't helpful to me.
I may be Hindu. I may chortle with glee when I think about how all the goody goody Christians will be reborn as worms because they didn't embrace Advaita. But what great harm do I do by acknowledging that it was Christianity which made this country rise in virtue, affluence and all the arts and sciences?
It is good that we feel aversion to artifacts (be they physical objects, films, records or whatever) associated with sex crimes, murders and other horrors
No. Good people may feel this aversion but can overcome it if it is useful to do so.
– even if this is a matter of sheer luck or coincidence – because this fosters in us not only an aversion to those sorts of crimes,
we are already averse to it. But it would be folly to say 'this beautiful Palace was built out of money from the Slave Trade. We must burn it down'.
but an affirmation of the sanctity of the individuals
is mere verbiage.
who are the victims of them. In turn, that makes most of us less likely to engage in evil acts ourselves.
Very true. The reason most people don't stab their spouse at the dinner table is because they are averse to owning a carving knife which was used to kill a wonderful and loving person.
Perhaps even more importantly, it makes us less likely to remain indifferent even when we are not ourselves directly affected by injustices perpetrated against others.
Sadly, those 'injustices' may be wholly imaginary. Why have I not been appointed Pope? Is it coz I iz bleck? We must burn down the Sistine Chapel because of this glaring injustice.
Instead, we come to see innocent people as sacred,
God is sacred. I may be innocent but I am not sacred at all. Also, I am very flatulent.
and to be protected from the predations and depredations of those who would harm them.
e.g. Wall Street bankers.
In this way, our moral world is more tightly knitted together.
It is nonsense save when it is undergirded by Revealed Religion rather than virtue signalling bullshit.
As Smith was at pains to point out, we are psychologically complex creatures, capable of sharing each other’s emotions, and forming intricate moral bonds accordingly.
most dogs are better than me in this respect. Also dogs can be quite witty in their way. Me, not so much.
Sometimes that process can get messed up, working itself out back to front – as, for example, when I reflexively take the side of Ryan Adams because I like his music and want to protect my future enjoyment of it. (Fortunately, this sort of back-to-front reaction can be corrected by reflection, at least by those willing to undertake it.) But, typically, the process works for the greater good. A world in which people did not recoil in horror at my use of the assassin’s knife to carve dinner, or in which watching The Usual Suspects was not considered a suspect choice in light of the allegations against Spacey – such a world would certainly be a worse place.
No. It would be a better place because crazy nutters demanding that this statute be toppled or that country be boycotted could be told, gently but firmly, that they are stupid cunts and should kindly fuck the fuck off. They may reply by saying 'but Chomsky is smart, Sen is smart, Nussbaum is smart, etc. etc.' Our rejoinder must be 'they weren't smart. They were shit. If you have a PhD in stupid shite, you are a stupid shithead. Fuck off.'
In all of this, there is an important lesson for moral philosophy. For some time now, ethical theory has been
shit. Meanwhile there has been a lot of progress in deontic logics which can be implemented by AIs and Expert Systems in a way which makes justice and dispute resolution much cheaper and more accessible.
dominated by two rival camps. Consequentialists, who think that morality is primarily about maximising some approved set of outcomes,
this is impossible because of 'Knightian Uncertainty'. We have to go for something like 'regret minimization.'
and deontologists, who think that morality is primarily about rules, duties and obligations.
Which are defeasible. The good news is that deontic logics can be given a mathematical representation and thus AIs can greatly reduce costs and bottlenecks such that better Aumann correlated equilibria are achieved.
These two opposed outlooks, with all their innumerable variations, have been duking it out for well over a century.
No. They have been sitting in opposite corners drooling incontinently.
But neither can make much sense of the importance of anything that has been written above.
Because that shite isn't important. It is merely an example of the 'intensional fallacy'. There are no underlying sets or graphs of functions. Moreover, (e.g. in Razborov Rudich) if we can't distinguish random from pseudo-random we can't say what is luck.
And yet, the cases of ‘moral luck’ that I have discussed are not minor side issues, or trivial diversions, but go to the heart of our everyday, as well as some of our deepest moral experiences.
No. It really doesn't matter very greatly that the final season of 'House of Cards' was shit because Spacey got the sack. Admittedly, it was annoying at the time, but no great harm was done.
Adam Smith saw this very well. We stand to learn a great deal from his emphasis not on calculating consequences or fulfilling obligations, but on human psychology and the moral sentiments that structure our ethical lives.
In other words, give up Philosophy. Try to major it Psychology or Economics. Sadly, you'll have to learn Math & Stats. But both are useful and your productivity and usefulness will rise. Like Prashant Kishore, who had a degree in Statistics, you may be able to change the politics of your currently in a very worthwhile manner.
