Ethics and the Autonomy of Philosophy

Breaking Ties with Traditional Christian Praxis and Theory

Walker

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781498227810
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In Ethics and the Autonomy of Philosophy, Bernard Walker sets out with two objectives. First, Walker argues that ethics is autonomous as a discipline. Oftentimes ethics books, from a Christian perspective, lean toward grounding ethics in theology or in biblical proof texting. Walker departs from this tradition. Ethics grounded in theology entails a limited scope for those doing ethics in that the Christian God must be assumed for both Christian and non-Christian when at the table of ethical dialogue. For the non-Christian, this loads the dice and shuts down ethical consensus and dialogue, if not ethical truth. With that said, this book does not depart from Christian ethical views on such issues as the sanctity of life, antiracism, the death penalty, the objectivity of ethics, and the importance of integrating faith into ethics; however, Walker does so from a common denominator of philosophy rather than theology.Second, Walker ventures into the streets and engages the man/woman on the streets approach to ethics and ethical decision-making. He points out the shortcomings of the ubiquitous views of the man/woman on the streets, viz., cultural relativism, skepticism, and the attitude that ethics is merely a matter of personal choice.

1

A Deconstruction of Pop Ethics: A Discussion of the Ethical Views of the Man on the Streets (MOTS)

In this chapter we will not per se do ethics or solve ethical issues and dilemmas. Rather we will look into the very nature of what ethics is. After all, how can we do ethics if we don’t know exactly what it is we are doing? This chapter is a demolition chapter. Before we talk about what ethics is about, we will look at what it is not about. This requires a deconstruction of popular conceptions of what ethics is about in terms of what these views say we can and cannot know about ethics and what they claim is the basis of what makes actions right or wrong. So let us dive in.

The Three Levels of Ethics

When the question is raised as to what ethics is about, there are at least three major answers that can be given. In a broad sense, if we want to know the nature of ethics in terms of how ethics differs from other disciplines or if we want to know the meaning of the concepts used in ethics, then we are looking at and concerned with the foundation of ethics. In essence we are stepping outside of ethics and looking into it. Doing so places us at a level where we are not doing ethics but coming to terms with what ethics is about. Talk of “aboutness” in philosophy is a meta-issue (meta- is the Greek preposition for about). In short, before we can do ethics, we need to know what it is we are involved in or what ethics is about and we call this metaethics. Metaethics will be the focus of this current chapter. If, on the other hand, we want to do ethics, we need some algorithm or methodology for discovering what is ethical (e.g., ethically right or wrong actions). This takes us a step above the foundation of ethics to the level or normative ethics. Normative ethics is named such because our focus here is on what moral agents ought to do and ought not to do. In either case, talk of “ought” is equivalent to or means normative. In its strongest sense, ought requires or entails we have a duty to do or refrain from some action. Finally, once we have a methodology to work from, we are now in a position to discover what we ought to do or ought not to do and, given our understanding of the nature of ethics from metaethics, we know the sense of ought that applies to ethics and not to chemistry or sports. We can, thus, decide what is ethically right or wrong to do on any given topics that we apply ethics to. When we apply ethics to a given subject matter, we are doing what is called applied ethics. For example, when we apply ethics to medicine, we are doing bioethics or health care ethics; when we apply ethics to the business world and to business practices, we are doing business ethics. The number of topics is indefinite.

The MOTS on Ethics

As already mentioned, the focus of this chapter is a look at metaethics by negation. It is not difficult to find views on ethical and social issues that have little or no logical backing and support. These same views are often incoherent as well. Watch any talk show and copious examples of faulty, fallacious reasoning will greet you. Why? Because such shows discuss very emotional topics. The average person is often clear in their thinking when the subject matter is mathematics, physics or science in general; however, when there is room for a person’s emotions, values, and preferences to enter the discussion, faulty thinking runs rampant. If emotions, values, and preferences are not the culprit, then faulty thinking has its origin in a passive commitment to societal consensus, i.e., everybody believes X so X must be true. In either case, I refer to these approaches to ethics as the views on the streets or the views of the “man on the streets” (or as an acronym, MOTS). Often a person committed to the “MOTS” talks about ethics in one of four ways. All four views share the common view that justification is not essential to the correctness of an ethical judgment. Thus they are opposed to the correctness of ethical judgments being evidence based or a matter of logical coherence and consistency.

For most of the ethical MOTS views, ethics is a matter of what some specified group or person says and nothing more. Finally they are opposed to judging the actions of others or other societies or cultures. Let us take a look at each view and determine what is problematic with each one. Some of the terms used to describe the four views are not formally stipulated by anyone other than myself (the author of this book), but the concepts behind the words are embraced by society at large.

Deificationism

A person who is a deificationist says, “We all make mistakes. Who am I or you to judge anyone; only God and saints can judge and decide morality.” According to this MOTS view, only saintly people like the Pope, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dali Lama, Mother Teresa or some other saintly person can discern what is morally right or wrong. Supposedly, the logic seems to be, only saintly people have a clear and distinct insight into moral issues. Ultimately, or course, deificationists hold that only God should be in the business of judging but these saints have a privileged, secondary role in judging also. Thus the rest of humanity should avoid making ethical judgments and leave this task to the saintly experts or God. This MOTS view of ethics deifies ethics. It makes ethics a divine discipline and places it in the hands of idealized persons who have a divine, saintly character.

Sometimes when a deificationist is asked whether his actions are right or wrong, he responds by saying, “That is between me and God.” Some years ago, a previously unknown nurse named Darva Conger became famous on a reality show when she was selected as the bride of millionaire Rick Rockwell. After her popularity she was asked to pose for Playboy. Despite an earlier claim she made that she is against pornography and that she considers herself a Christian, she agreed to pose nude for a large sum of money. In a network interview she was asked how she managed to reconcile her “Christianity” with her Playboy photographs. She played the role of a deificationist quite well. She responded by saying that there is a big difference between posing nude and posing pornographically and that the only person that should judge her is God. Obviously this is a red herring fallacy.1 Darva did not actually answer the question presented to her, for the question was not whether God would condone or condemn her choice, but whether her choice was wrong. A similar response was given by a young woman who is identified as the greatest woman in porn. In an interview with the cable channel, VH1, she stated that despite her copious pornographic films, she is quite religious. Those who judge her know that they are wrong, she says, for only God can judge. Again, God has and will judge every action a person commits. But this is an issue about the punishment or reward for actions we do, not with whether God deems our actions as right or wrong. In other words, the issue of an action being wrong or right is a separate issue from an action being punished or rewarded.

What are further problems with deificationism? First, deificationism entails skepticism for all but the saintly and thus requires the average person to abandon her attempt to be moral or to hold others ethically accountable. To assert that an imperfect character disqualifies a person from discerning an ethical wrong or right action is absurd. Imagine a person stumbling upon a man raping a woman. Would it make sense for that person to say about the rapist’s action, “Who am I to judge him? I am not perfect so who am I to judge this man’s sexual action”? Surely not. To suggest otherwise is puzzling to common sensibilities. Are humans so imperfect as to be unable to also judge child abuse as ethically wrong? If the deificationist had his way, without the guidance of the “saints” no human behavior could be discerned as ethically right or wrong.

If there is any value to drawing attention to the imperfect nature of a person’s character it is in the context of the person’s character being inconsistent with what the person deems ethically right or wrong. What the deification should say is that a person is hypocritical in her judgments when guilty of the same action that her judgments condemn. This point is wonderfully illustrated in the New Testament by Jesus Christ. In the book of Matthew, Jesus says:

Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? (Matt 7: 1-3, 4, NASB)

Here Jesus does not forbid judging simpliciter nor does he deny that a person’s judgment is correct; rather he admonishes the person judging to be free of the same error depicted in the judgment. Otherwise the person is guilty of hypocrisy.

A second problem with deificationism is its claim that a virtuous character is required to discern whether an action is morally right or wrong. This claim could not be farther from the truth. When the deificationist notes that most people in the world make mistakes and are not perfect, they make a correct but tangential claim. We should take note here that the deificationist’s move to point out the depravity of human nature is a red herring. Sure no one is perfect. We all make mistakes and have our shortcomings; however, our fallible nature does not stop us from knowing what is right and wrong. When the deificationist points out that she is imperfect like most people in the world, she has already discerned a standard of moral perfection that she does not meet. Thus her claim is self-defeating. To put the point another way, a person like Hitler, a drug dealer and a pimp can discern what actions are right and wrong even when they are guilty of the very action they may condemn. They may not be ideal members of society, but their incorrigible nature does not make them incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Autonomism

A person who is an autonomist says, “I decide for myself what is right and wrong. Who are you to judge me? This is a free country...I am entitled to liberty and freedom of choice...be tolerant. Morality is personal. Everyone should mind his own business. I do what I feel like doing. I am a grown man. You can’t tell me what to do.” Like the deificationist, the autonomist denies that people should be in the business of judging another person’s actions. The difference between the two is that autonomists do believe that they can judge their own actions to be right or wrong. They simply deny that anyone else can judge their actions.

Ultimately, for the autonomist, whatever a person says is right is right for them. This is the most self-serving of any ethical view. Imagine waking up one morning as an autonomist. You are hungry so you venture via someone else’s car, without their permission, to a very expensive restaurant. According to how autonomists think, for you to take someone else’s car without their permission is not wrong if “you say so.” After eating the food at the fine restaurant, you decide not to pay for the food, because you say it is not wrong to eat and not pay. Next, you decide to go somewhere for entertainment. You steal a person’s wallet and pay for clothes from Sax Fifth Avenue with that person’s credit card. Stealing the wallet is not wrong because you say it is not wrong. You are still within your rights to hold this view even after viewing photos of the person’s family in the wallet. In the end, all of what you do is justified simply because you say you are right. After all, for autonomism, ethics is a personal issue. What is right or wrong is up to each individual to decide in light of the individual’s personal feelings or beliefs. Now waking up in the morning and committing your day to such a schedule sounds ridiculous, but this state of affairs is logically consistent and an extension of autonomism. The following are comments from a paper written by an autonomist on abortion. She argued:

I believe a woman has a right to have an abortion anytime she wants to because it is her choice. Who gives the government, society or God the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. Only the woman can make that call. I do not care what the circumstances are for the abortion. Even if what she aborts is a fully developed baby, a woman need not justify her action to anyone, even God.

Autonomism is a version of relativism. So relative to each person, a judgment is correct regardless of the circumstances and consequences that result from it. Accordingly, ethics is relative to each individual’s personal moral beliefs.

There are several problems that can be pointed out with autonomism. They all stem from autonomism’s claim that ethics is a personal issue. First, it leads to conflicting conclusions about what is morally right. If two autonomists met and one of them acted in a morally relevant way toward the other one, who would be morally right? For example, suppose one autonomist took the credit card of the other autonomist and stated that his action was morally right. Suppose the other autonomist, whose credit card was taken, thought that the act of taking his credit card was wrong. Both men could not be correct and surely neither is correct merely because each said he was correct. Their judgments are contradictory to each other.

Secondly, autonomism is in direct conflict with the nature of the normative nature of ethical judgments. Ethical judgments like all normative judgments, by definition, tell us what we ought to do. If someone wants to live a healthy life, she ought to limit the fat in her diet. If someone wants to live a self-serving life, she ought to be concerned about no one else unless others further her well-being. If someone wants to be a great basketball player, she ought to practice basketball. In all cases, normative judgments presuppose a standard. The standard tells us what we ought to do. By definition, autonomism does not presuppose a standard. For the autonomist, she does whatever she believes is right to do independent of any standard. Thus autonomism can never be an ethical position to hold since it does not require that a person ought to act a certain way.

Autonomism fails to make a subjective/objective distinction about judgments. When a person says, “The pepperoni pizza was great,” her statement expresses a taste, not a proposition. Tastes are neither true nor false. In this case, the statement is about the taste of pizza for the person who makes the statement. The fact is pizza is neither great nor bad. The terms “great” and “bad” refer to the taste of a particular person. Tastes vary from person to person and th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Deconstruction of Pop Ethics: A Discussion of the Ethical Views of the Man on the Streets (MOTS)
• Chapter 2: Ethics and Epistemic Myopia: Its Nature, Its Sources, and Its Cures
• Chapter 3: A Construction of Formal Ethics: Reflections on the Phrases Moral Facts, Good, Right, Bad, Wrong, Inappropriate, Rude, and Offensive; and Reflection on the Implications of the Word Ought
• Chapter 4: Reflections on the Varieties of Normative Ethics: Discerning What We Ought to Do and How We Ought to Be
• Chapter 5: Swimming through the Murky Waters of Ethics Mixed with Religion: A Discussion of the Ways Religion Does and Does Not Import an Influence on Ethics
• Chapter 6: Taking Sides on Some Polemic Social Issues in Applied Ethics: Affirmative Action, the Death Penalty, and Abortion
• Appendix
• Bibliography