More noodling

When I initially introduce the subject of morality to novices, I ask the simple question, how do we determine right from wrong. Predictably, few people ever respond that we learn the distinction from religious upbringing (from family and community) or any sort of scripture (the particular religion notwithstanding), despite the fact that this is everyone’s first basis for moral calculus. We are taught right from wrong by the people who raise us, and more often than not, this is informed by religion. The fact that my newbies don’t give this answer is not an indication of any sort of raging anarchistic atheism running through Sailorville, so much as, first, they are of an age to question everything, and second, they figure I must want some other answer than the obvious, or as often as not, third, they really don’t know because they’ve never thought about it before. In any case, that is the reality of moral thought. In essence, we learn right and wrong from our parents and our religion, both of which categorically tell us what to do, although plenty of people have been known to question their parents’ dubious wisdom, and most religions have their bean counters analyzing and arguing over the word of God which is not necessarily always clear in the reading. The argument against using morality arguments informed by upbringing/religion in debate is that these dicta, informed by authority, are intrinsically not to be questioned and therefore cannot be argued, and therefore don’t make for much of a debate. Simply put, if I say you can do something, and you respond that God says you can’t do that something, the authority of your source outweighs mine. Word of God always trumps word of Menick, and everyone else. Whether or not God does argue that particular item is beside the point; what I’m saying is that, if God is called upon as the source, then it is inarguable on face. So, we don’t do it.

(This explains the nature of a lot of debate resolutions, come to think of it. We don’t want to argue something that a lot of people might believe is intrinsically wrong, for instance abortion. In the CFL, this topic would be something of a non-starter, to put it mildly.)

If we remove God and parents from the morality equation—although in reality most of us never really do—we are left with the classic choice between evaluating morality deontologically, on the basis of the action itself, or consequentially, on the basis of the results of the action. Or at least, that’s what we’re left with in debate terms. In real life, if we try to judge if something is right or wrong, we use both measures, because while philosophy is all well and good as an academic guide to life, it is not an empirical science that can be proven without doubt. I mean, I can drop a brick from the top of my house, and the velocity of its fall will increase by 32.2 ft/second until it hits the ground. If the house is twice as tall, it’s still 32.2 ft/second. If it’s Wednesday night, it’s 32.2 ft/second. If it’s half a brick, it’s 32.2 ft/second. Any test I wish to apply to gravity will yield the same results in this particular laboratory; I’d have to throw my brick off the top of my building into a black hole to get any sort of different results, but even those results are predictable and repeatable mathematically. Philosophy cannot withstand such scientific scrutiny. Think of the trolley problem and all those things I can throw off the bridge to save those people on the track, or not. The only thing I can say for certain is that if I throw the guy next to me off the bridge he will fall at an accelerating velocity of 32.2 ft/second, but I cannot say if tossing him off the bridge is the right thing to do, even if it will save the lives of five Mother Teresas down the track a ways.

So as individuals, we make our moral decisions using the only basic moral calculus we can muster up other than authority, choosing along the continuums of deontology and consequentialism, with no great certainty that the answer we derive will be correct, and no way of testing it.

Let’s overlay the Foucault calculus on top of this. Yesterday I noodled about a model of the totality of human thought as a continuum, either linear/circular or bell curved. Keep in mind that this was about thought only, not action. That is, we can think a lot of things that we don’t do, and although there are dicta claiming otherwise (coveting is barred by Judeo-Christian commandment), there is no real moral consequence to thinking immoral thoughts. I mean, I can sit here thinking something really horrible, and aside from perhaps breaking a commandment or two, which would only be known if someone or some deity could read my thoughts, nothing will come of it. Gee, it would really be nice to cut off the head of that dog. To cut off the head of that child. To cut off the heads of all children. Et cetera. I can come up with some pretty heinous stuff, and that fact that I can, and the fact that plenty of other people can as well, like authors and filmmakers and the like, leads me to believe that while these thoughts, if they were actions, would be rare, as thoughts they might be, if not common, at least not unusual. I mean, to some extent they comprise our daily entertainments. We read books with all sorts of straightforward evil in them, for fun, and most of us don’t find this immoral. It’s normal, in other words.

An extension of this is that we might all be capable of, and indeed might entertain, what would be considered “insane” thoughts. We don’t have to be crazy to think crazy. Probably these thoughts are, if we accept a bell curve model, off to one side, but they are not beyond us. Acting on these thoughts is another thing altogether, and we might suggest that while everyone has crazy thoughts, it is only people who act on them who are actually crazy. Here’s where the bell curve makes sense to me. Most acts are committed by most people, but some acts are only committed by a small number of people.

It is the equating of normal with moral that becomes the problem in the Foucault analysis. Removing from that analysis the nature of the knowledgeable/powerful, or more to the point, simply assuming it, what can the Foucaultian moral analyst say about things? The core question becomes, is the normal moral, and thus the not normal immoral? The best application to understand this is the sexual one. There is a continuum of sexual activities. Do we all have all thoughts along the continuum? Do we think in some sort of bell curve? If our knowledgeable/powerful are heterosexual, and the leaning of this determining group of experts is straightforward male-female reproductive sex, do they find that point on the continuum that is said straightforward male-female sex and plant a flag and claim, that’s the dead center of normal? Presumably the Foucaultian analysis would say yes. If they are judging on a line/circle continuum, they simply plant that flag wherever that hetero-reproductive sex is, and normal/moral is clearly declared, and the further you move away from it, the less normal/moral you are. If it’s a bell curve, well, the power of the expertise of the analysts allows them to plant the flag wherever they want. Maybe they claim that the peak is somewhere else. Maybe they claim that the peak isn’t normal, just the happenstance of the peak. The point of the Foucaultian analysis is that either way, a certain empowered group is making that claim and enforcing it, regardless of its connection to any reality of normalcy/morality. Normal/moral is what the knowledgeable/powerful say it is. The vilification of the not normal as immoral, e.g. non-reproducing homosexuals, is one obvious result of this sort of thinking.

Getting back to my initial introduction of the study of right and wrong to novices, one thing they absolutely do tend to agree on, thoughtlessly, is that whatever the majority of people think is right is, in fact, right. In other words, we get to vote on what is right and what is wrong, and the most votes wins. I love when this comes up, because it’s so easy to deflate. Of course, maybe it’s true, and I’m just using sophistry. If there is no acceptable authoritative source of moral dicta, and it’s not possible to choose between deontological and consequential premises in the real world, maybe the best thing we have to go on when it comes to evaluating action is the best guess of the majority. Then again, per Foucault, we could instead go by the best guess of a powerful elite precisely because they possess the power.

No, I don’t have all the answers. I barely have any of the questions. That’s why I earn the big bucks.