Introduction to a new essay – working title (Moral Agency and Human Values)

Hey guys, this is an introduction to a new essay i’m working on, please tell me what you think!

All my life I have been susceptible to the doubt which I think grips most people from the moment they come to have any real understanding of the elemental dichotomy, between good and the ungood, that we see as ordering human life. To have some concept of good, or goodness – be it through religion, humanist ethics, societal laws or institutional rules, or familial reproach etc. is a fundamental experience in the life of most of us and it brings with it a variety of questions for those who attempt to truly understand it. I think that most people have at one point in their life then struggled with coming to terms with their idea of what makes a good life, or what to be good is. For some this will be answered by a party line or by a religious doctrine, or by innumerable other external dictates which once selected are furnished strict adherence by the individual, defended until death commonly on the intellectual and at times in the extreme cases even the physical level. Under the prevailing view of the physical scientific human self, goodness can be nothing more than a human construct except where we believe those foolish enough to suggest that natural selection and survival can provide us with some kind of ethical ontological principle for ordering human conduct. I won’t argue with that here but I make it clear that while I do think evolution is not ontologically insignificant, it does not need to be relevant to discussions in ethics.

Scurrying around this gaping chasm we return to the idea of goodness as a construct. When treated in this fashion we are faced with a particular question, whether it is valid to attempt to preserve the concept itself after acknowledging its artificial nature or whether we are best served by abandoning the terminology of goodness and with it the nosology of evil. Many thinkers have given us reason to question how valuable such distinctions are to human life, in one sense we see a clear history of the use of such distinctions to (in our modern conception) unjustly stigmatise and persecute various ethno-social groups and classes. Consulting Foucault or others about say, the plight of the homosexual in history, or for me on home turf – the plight of the horned Jew, and we can quite clearly see how such a discourse has negatively influenced people and the way societies and individuals have responded to each other. Yet I feel as though, and maybe this is too much a Bentham Consequential argument for many to stomach, that the idea of a better way of living, a good way of living in all its utter romance has probably also furnished our world with its greatest human achievements on almost any metric of valuation that the vast majority of people would subscribe to (which is apparently an effective argument because… democracy?).

This is an empirical bet. I make that very clear, I think, I bet, I gamble that the idea that there is a better way of living to strive towards is ultimately something that is beneficial to the human race. Accepting these odds, leads us to the next question: how do we approach this task – what does living a ‘good life’ mean? I see this as a fundamental question of philosophy much as Plato did in his Republic. This essay is for me a cursory examination of my approach to this vast subject. In what follows I want to outline my theory of Existentialism (which no doubt will bear resemblance to other theories and which I will likely rename when I am better informed by an appropriate person) and outline some reasons I have for thinking that this represents the most valid and desirable approach to ethical questions in the contemporary setting. Having done this I will discuss my theory of human agency and ethical decision making, advancing the proposition that if human beings can act with any real morally relevant agency then they can only do so in virtue of the values they hold, providing an attempt at the necessary account of exactly what I think values are. From here I will move to less firm ground, combining my existential realisations with this theory of ethical action to suggest that in order to justify our ability to act we are under a self-assumed obligation to act in accordance with the best values available to us. Finally I will consider some ways in which we may be able to reflect upon our own value sets and argue that in order to “live a good life” we will need to attempt to consider other’s values’, where they come from and how they are defined – and attempt to adopt or reject values where appropriate on this basis. I will suggest art as the primary vehicle by which this can be done – though I intend to write more extensively on this in the future.

The Instrumental Value of Organ Harvesting

In this essay I address the question of whether it is permissible to remove organs from the cadavers of people who have not explicitly consented to becoming donors in order to increase the supply of available organs. I will argue that such a practice is ethically permissible on the grounds of what I have termed the Instrumental Value Argument (IVA). I will begin by establishing the normative principles of my argument before outlining the IVA and validating its premises. To do this I will firstly explore the ability of the deceased to suffer moral harms and the basis of protection-rights for cadavers against non-consensual interference, concluding that any moral harms suffered by or rights accrued too the deceased are contingent upon the their former existence. Secondly I will explore some of the costs and benefits of implementing a system of enforced cadaveric organ harvesting and compare competing rights of effected individuals. Finally I will conclude that at least on a consequentialist basis, it is permissible to remove cadaveric organs without explicit consent in instances where structures are emplaced to mitigate associated harms of the practice and propose a model for how this might come about.

Normative Basis

In this essay I assume a consequentialist normative base where a thing is morally good if it promotes the best outcome.[1] I develop this perspective through a loose (but uncommitted) Pluralist Utilitarian approach to value, suggesting that in addition to the classical Utilitarian position of hedonism about the good – where happiness is the only thing with inherent moral worth – other factors such as justice and fulfilment may also contain separate inherent or intrinsic value.  I have chosen a less stringent and broader interpretational normative base in an attempt to broaden the relevance of my argument to cover a variety of value theories by assuming that most value theories created by human beings will be supported either directly or in derived terms by maximising overall life expectancy and quality of life and wellbeing.

The Instrumental Value Argument:

From a consequentialist perspective the strongest argument supporting the forcible requisitioning of cadaveric organs from people who have not explicitly consented to be organ donors is the instrumental value argument. It runs as follows:

(P1) The dead have no state of ‘wellbeing’ and cannot suffer moral harm.

(P2) Therefore the moral value of the use of a body is determined on the instrumental basis of how the use of that body affects the living.

(P3) In most instances the instrumental value of utilising cadaveric organs for transplantation is greater than the instrumental value of not using a body for transplantation.

(P4) What is permissible is what brings the best outcome for overall wellbeing of the living.

(C) Therefore transplantation in the absence of explicit consent is permissible in most instances (where the instrumental value of organ transplantation is greater than organ preservation) and the system should change accordingly.

Given that the fourth premise represents my normative base, the discussion that follows is an attempt to validated the first three premises.

 (P1) Post-Mortem Moral Harm:

The Experience Requirement:

For a consequentialist moral harms are harms that leave the state of the world materially worse than it otherwise would be. Thus for someone to suffer a moral harm their wellbeing would have to be effected in a way that renders them materially worse off than they were before the harmful act was done. However for wellbeing to be harmed one must be able to have a state of being in the first place so that the harm and reduced wellbeing may be experienced. This metric for the suffering of harms is termed by Stephen Rosenbaum as the ‘Experience Requirement’ (ER) for harm. [2]

The ER states that:

P is only bad for X if X at some experiences P. 

Where P = harvesting of organs without consent, then P can only be bad if X experiences P.

(1) X is dead when P occurs.

(2) Therefore P is not something that X can experience.

(3) Therefore P is not harmed by X.

The only exception to this rule is that in some instances non-consensual cadaveric organ harvesting can harm a person during life not as a result of the act itself (as the person to whom the act is done is no longer alive to be harmed) but because of some tangible reduction in a person’s wellbeing prior to the act as a result of the knowledge that it will occur.

The Concealed Betrayal Counter-Example:

1. Wilkinson provides a main criticism of this argument. He suggests that wellbeing is itself contingent on the fulfilment of life goals and that it is how an act affects the achievement or fulfilment of those goals that most influences their wellbeing. When a person’s goals are not fulfilled they are harmed.[3] To illustrate this point he cites a counter example to the ER – “Concealed Betrayal”. Here a person’s life goal is to have friends and loved ones. In reality this person (let’s call them Kevin) is actually surrounded by people who hate and despise him but who pretend so convincingly to love and adore Kevin that he will never know otherwise. Wilkinson suggests that because what Kevin values is friendship, not the appearance of friendship he will have suffered harm by not receiving what he values.[4] This would be applicable to the problem of organ harvesting if someone’s life goals were violated without their explicit consent in the process.

The weaknesses of this argument are twofold.

Firstly Wilkinson implicitly attempts to reappropriate a consequentialist viewpoint by appealing to metaphysical principles of the true state of things in opposition to the consequential state of things. That is, he assumes that moral harms can occur by the mere fact of our experience being false. This is not countenanced by consequentialism on basic principles. The consequentially right thing to do in a given situation is that which will maximise the best outcome. If continuing to let someone live under the false apprehension that they are loved does not adversely affect material wellbeing of all parties then consequentially it is the right thing to do. Moreover it assumes that all people are entitled to fulfil their goals. If Kevin is quite simply not a very nice person, is it a morally untenable situation for him to feel loved and to have a better life because of it than he normally would if people’s true opinions of him were demonstrated?

Secondly, even if we agree with his proposition and include truth in our normative metric of things that have an inherent worth, Wilkinson’s friendship example is dis-analogous to the case of a person’s goals being violated after death in one key respect. The person no longer exists and all the goals and values they once had have ceased to exist with them. To suggest goals are extemporal and that we should respect them beyond the grave is not only nonsensical but practically stupid. On a very basic level if someone’s goal was to be venerated or even just loved is it our responsibility to learn as much about their lives to try to allow that goal to be facilitated? Could we even begin to ascertain the goals or wishes of the dead once they are in fact dead if they were not explicitly stated? The answer seems to be no, except in the case of a legal last will and testament where a person extends their legal person over their estate to order its final distribution. In this instance it is possible to uphold a person’s goals and we could argue that this creates better consequences because it simplified the division of estates and has the added benefit of comforting us with an element of control over how we leave this world and a knowledge that our explicit goals would be upheld when we too perish – likely increasing wellbeing. However even if Wilkinson’s argument is correct the value of upholding these rights is still contingent on the wellbeing of the living, and suggesting that we should follow the explicit wishes of a dead person does not render impermissible the practice of removing cadaveric organs in the absence of explicit consent, rather it would only be impermissible where someone explicitly refused to undergo the procedure while alive, something which would likely occur if the practice violated their goals and which could be effectively accommodated an opt-out system of donation where individuals are required to choose not to donate.

 (P2) Instrumental Value:

If the dead cannot suffer a reduced wellbeing then the moral permissibility of the use of a body must be determined by its instrumental value in how its use influences overall consequential wellbeing. The justification for this depends on what identity we view human remains as bearing. In general, the two strongest positions are:

(1) We are our bodies – our identity is literally defined by our bodies and any tampering with our bodies in the absence of our explicit consent is an assault against us, or

(2) We own our bodies – bodies are property and we should be able to determine how they are treated after life.

If (1) is true, then assuming that death is the end of our interest in and control over our bodies (which must be the case because like it or not the body will degrade and return to the environment) we cannot have a negative-right against interference because there are no longer any interests to protect and no harms can be suffered. Depending on where we draw the line on the end of personal rights over our bodies we could accept that an individual does have rights over their body while alive, and could therefore explicitly specify a manner in which they wished their body to be treated after death, rendering support for an opt-out system. Alternately, and more validly, we could suggest that if personhood has ceased then there is no reason to follow any instructions one way or another and we should use the morally inert organs in a manner that maximises beneficial outcomes.

If (2) is true then there is no reason that our bodies should not be treated like any other form of property we own.

Cecile Fabre argues as much through her analogy between organ harvesting and estate taxes. Fabre approaches the question of cadaveric organ harvesting from the complementary normative position of a rights-based theory of distributive justice to advocate for a system of distributive justice that attempts to increase the ability of the less fortunate to ‘flourish’ without substantially detracting from the ability of the more fortunate to flourish. The key difference between this point of view and my Pluralist Utilitarianism is that for Fabre, it is not merely morally correct for us to pursue actions that realised the greatest potential level of ‘flourishing’ and wellbeing but that the less fortunate have a positive right to excess resources that would enable them to flourish, adding further onus to the proposition that cadaveric organ harvesting is permissible if this normative base is accepted.[5]

Importantly Fabre provides two conditions to what can be redistributed for ‘minimal flourishing’ by the less fortunate, which also influence the consequential effects of redistribution.[6] If transferred or ‘redistributed’ neither the goods nature, nor the personhood of the transferring party can be altered. In both instances neither the nature of an organ nor an individual’s personhood can be violated by harvesting – an organ is still an organ whether harvested or not, and a cadaver is no longer a person. Thus from both a rights-based and pure consequential standpoint, there is nothing inherently impermissible about the transfer of organs. For Fabre this conclusion carries the implication that organs belong in the same category as any resource that is redistributed to increase the ability of individuals to “flourish” in society, which means that there “are good grounds to confer on the ‘medically poor a right to the organs of the ‘medically rich’”[7] much as there are ground to redistribute wealth in a similar fashion.

Thus whichever view of the relationship between identity and body is taken, there seems to be ample grounds for forced cadaveric transplantation in the absence of (or potentially even with) explicit refusal.

(P3) Value, Transplantation and Exceptions:

Having established that it can be permissible to conduct cadaveric organ harvesting in the absence of explicit consent I will now attempt to argue that it is permissible in more cases than not to conduct this practice by firstly assessing the impacts on different groups and proposing a model which will maximise the benefits and minimise the harms of such a system.

It is undeniable that recipients of cadaveric organs have their wellbeing significantly benefited as a result of transplantation. Their life expectancy increases dramatically while other ‘wellbeing costs’ associated with deteriorating health, regular medical treatment such as the administration of dialysis are removed. In addition to the large benefits to recipients increased levels of donation also benefit society more broadly by reducing demand for medical institutions and resources for continuous and extensive treatment for organ failure and through the various benefits to the loved ones of recipients accrued by the increased longevity and wellbeing of the recipient themselves.

How organ harvesting affects potential donors entirely depends on who potential donors are, something that can only be determined by establishing when if ever it is legitimate for an individual to be exempt from donation. To answer this question I will compare the costs and benefits of donation in instances where a person is entirely unwilling to donate their organs and where a person has merely failed to consent to donation.

The Unwilling:

Unwilling donors experience detrimental effects as a result of organ harvesting either as a result of having their wishes violated (the experience requirement for harms from my earlier discussion rules this out) or from the way the knowledge that their organs will be harvested influences their wellbeing.

Fabre identifies two types of potentially unwilling donors. Conscientious and non-conscientious objectors.

Non-Conscientious:

Non-Conscientious objectors reject donation as a result of unsubstantiated sentiments or emotions including discomfort or disgust at the idea of cadaveric transplantation. [8] This latter position potentially invokes John Stuart Mill’s initial conception that the only way to determine a things utility under a Utilitarian ethic is if people actually desire it.[9] This would suggest that knee jerk reactions of disgust to cadaveric organ harvesting are a legitimate ethical reason to avoid the practice.

I fundamentally disagree with the legitimacy of these objections on two grounds.

Firstly I cite the counter-example of autopsies. No matter how abhorrent the practice is to a person or their family, in our society it is taken for granted that in circumstances of suspicious death autopsies must be performed. This is because the need for justice to be served, or to catch killers and protect citizens universally outweighs any disgust or concern for disrespect to personhood. It is my contention that we should view cadaveric organ harvesting on the same terms.

Secondly I also suggest that even if we take Mill’s view of determining what is morally right to be true it does not discount the ethical permissibility of harvesting organs without explicit consent, it merely suggests that there needs to be a change in attitudes for this to occur, something that could be achieved through education and policies which attempt to alter the beliefs and emotional responses of individuals in relation to harvesting.

Conscientious:

Fabre defines conscientious objectors as individuals who can show that their life would be “rendered less minimally flourishing if one’s body or that of one’s relatives were not left intact”.[10] This would seem to suggest that if a deeply held religious/moral belief is contravened by organ harvesting then the reduction in wellbeing this creates is enough to warrant an exemption. On normative grounds I reject this low burden for exemption. From a consequentialist perspective, if Fabre’s metric is used and a needless innocent death occurs because of a ‘strong’ religious conviction then other needless deaths of innocents could also be permitted where they satisfy a deep religious or moral conviction, thereby potentially justifying the ‘religious’ practice of human sacrifice.

Instead I propose that a true conscientious objector could only be justified if the harms done to a person or family by the contravention of their beliefs amounted to death or worse (the likely consequence of their refusal), something that would be incredibly difficult to demonstrate.

That is not to say that I propose we enforce a near universal system of cadaveric organ harvesting, such a system would be Orwellian in nature and no democratic government would receive support for such a proposition at this time. However it is a system of cadaveric organ harvesting which is more rationally cohesive with consequentialism and which could be moved towards in the future as organ harvesting becomes a more regular practice.

Proposal:

For now, despite the above arguments I suggest that an opt-out system is both the most practically feasible and beneficial currently available. It would allow both conscientious and non-conscientious objectors to exempt themselves from donation and would avoid any radical changes that might cause elements of mass fear or mistrust of government such as might be caused by a universal harvesting system. It also allows for individuals who really would be effected to such an extent that their wellbeing would be reduced in a manner equivalent to death to avoid transplantation without having to address the problem of determining when such an extent is reached – presuming that individuals would use free will to opt-out of the system to protect their own interests. It also increases likely donation rates than in an opt-in system by using the remains of individuals who do not feel strongly enough to explicitly consent to or reject donation for the best consequential ends. Finally this policy if complimented by education and other policy initiative could contribute to a society that is more accepting of cadaveric transplantations, decreasing opt-out rates and making an even more consequentially beneficial policy approach more viable in the long term based.

Conclusion:

In this essay I have sought to prove that from a Pluralist Utilitarian perspective that it is morally permissible to harvest cadaveric organs from those who have not explicitly consented to the procedure. I attempted to do this by presenting the Instrumental Value Argument and by examining its premises. Finally I proposed an opt-out system that in practical terms provides both the most feasible and the most morally permissible outcome alongside pro-donation public awareness and education programs that would help to create a more prevalent desire within society to increase donation rates.

Bibliography

Fabre, Cecil ‘Justice and the Coercive Taking of Cadaveric Organs’ (2004) British Journal of Political Science 34, Cambridge University Press, UK pps. 69 – 86.

Mill, John Stuart ‘Utilitarianism’(1863) Project Gutenberg eBook (2004). Accessed via <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11224/11224-h/11224-h.htm#CHAPTER_I>  04/10/13.

Rosenbaum, Stephen ‘How to Be Dead and Not Care: A Defense of Epicurus’ (April 1986) American Philosophical Quarterly 23, no. 2, North American Philosophical Publications, USA pps. 119 – 134.

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter ‘Consequentialism’ (Winter 2012) Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Accessed via <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#WhaGooHedVsPluCon> 01/10/13.

Wilkinson, T ‘Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs’ (2011) Oxford University Press Inc. NY.

[1]Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter ‘Consequentialism’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Winter 2012.

[2] Rosenbaum, S ‘How to Be Dead and Not Care: A Defense of Epicurus’  (April 1986) American Philosophical Quarterly 23, no. 2.

[3] Wilkinson, T ‘Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs’  (2011), Oxford University Press, pp. 31.

[4] Ibid pp. 33.

[5] Fabre, C ‘Justice and the Coercive Taking of Cadaveric Organs’ (2004), British Journal of Political Science, 34 p. 71.

[6] Ibid p. 72.

[7] Ibid p. 76.

[8] Fabre, C ‘Justice and the Coercive Taking of Cadaveric Organs’ (2004), British Journal of Political Science, 34 p. 82.

[9] Mill, J S, Utilitarianism (1863).

[10] Fabre, C ‘Justice and the Coercive Taking of Cadaveric Organs’ (2004), British Journal of Political Science 34 p.83.

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Moral Blame and Excuse in Ethically Deficient Societies

In this essay I consider the question of moral responsibility in unjust cultures. I will suggest that there are some situations in which a person may be excused for unjust acts if those acts are accepted in their society and are the product of cultural influences on the basis of my Incapacity Argument For Moral Excuse (IA), a modified version of what Michele Moody-Adams has termed the “inability thesis about cultural impediments”.[1] I will begin by outlining the normative principles of my argument before presenting the IA and validating its premises. As such I firstly explore the relationship between culture and agency with reference to Moody-Adams concluding that culture can significantly degrade an individual’s capacity for decision-making. Secondly I consider the relationship between moral responsibility, blame and excuse and argue that incapacity to identify correct moral knowledge gives grounds for excuse. Finally I suggest potential methods for distinguishing between genuine and affected moral ignorance.

Normative Premise of Minimal Personal Agency

Personal agency refers to the concept that we possess a capacity for free will as a result of our own preferences and beliefs. In this essay I assume a loose compatibilist approach to the question of free will and personal agency. Compatibilists suggest free will is compatible with determinism – the idea that events and actions are the unavoidable product of antecedent events and conditions and the laws the universe.[2] My loose compatibilist approach accepts both the capacity for autonomous free action by individuals as a result of their own internal volitions* but also the potential for causal effects to diminish the autonomy of individuals in initiating these volitions. However, I also suggest that under certain incompatibilist views (which generally hold that determinism is incompatible with free will), my argument may remain sound and valid – so long as the view in question allows for the minimal potential of autonomy necessary to create and justify moral blame for (at least some of) an agents choices.

Finally I reject strict determinism on grounds that it renders discussion of moral blame obsolete. However, I will proceed under the assumption that external influences, namely culture can, at least in the abstract, seriously degrade agency.

Incapacity Argument:

Assuming that personal agency exists but that it can be diminished by causal deterministic factors including cultural influence, logically the existence and extent of personal responsibility for unjust acts will depend on the empirical question of whether or not someone has on some level chosen to commit the injustice.  As such I present the Incapacity Argument (IA) for excusing immoral acts:

P1) We have a general capacity for personal agency but it can be undermined by external forces.

P2) Moral blame for an act can only be apportioned insofar as a person is responsible for that act.   

P3) Responsibility only exists where agency has been exercised in a positive act or a negative failure to act.

1. C) Therefore a person may be excused for an unjust act where they do not possess a real capacity to make some form of an election to conduct the unjust act.

The following discussion is divided into three sections attempting to prove the validity of each consecutive premise, with a primary focus on the arguments presented by Moddy-Adams.

P1) Personal Agency and Culture

Assuming that we all possess a level of personal agency but that external influences (including culture) can diminish that cognitive capacity it is important to consider two interrelated questions. Firstly what is the actual relationship between culture and agency and how can one influence the other? Secondly to what extent can culture erode our capacity for personal agency? To answer each of these questions I will consider Moody-Adams theory of the culture-agency relationship, before considering if her inferences as a result of this relationship are valid counter-arguments to the IA. Ultimately I will suggest that culture can have potent influence on our conceptions of the world, but that only in rare cases does this influence us to the extent that we begin to lack an ability to exercise agency to an extent which can affect the moral responsibility we hold for our actions.

1. How Does Culture Influence Agency?

A culture is essentially a common way of understanding the world and making associations and value attributions held by a group of people, it is in Moody-Adams terms “the way of life of a given social group that will be shaped by more or less intricate patterns of normative expectations about emotion, thought, and action.”[3] It manifests itself in the various rules and conventions which alter and condition behaviour and since antiquity has been seen as the essential differentiating factor between humanity and other organisms.

It is, however, important to qualify that while culture can been seen to provide a holistic and comprehensive system of understanding the world and behaving in it, this scale and function should not obfuscate its components. Culture is a human construct, and like all human constructs it can “persist only because individual persons capable of responsible action persist. The social legacy that comprises the culture of any group endures only when human beings choose….. to protect and perpetuate that legacy.”[4] In this way while we are both influenced by culture through its conditioning function we are also active participants in formulating and altering it via our practice of, and changes to its conventions. For this reason “each individual possesses her own version of a given culture”[5] which is open to the reinterpretation and innovation necessary for the evolution and continuing relevance of that culture. Thus culture is both a product of and control on individual agency and actions.

2. Extent of the Culture-Agency Relationship?

The Culture Requires Agency Counter-Argument

Moody-Adam’s uses the dual function of culture as both product and controller of individual agency as the basis for her main criticism of the inability thesis. For her the suggestion that “any culture (can) impair” the capacities of individual judgment to such an extent that would undermine moral responsibility for their own actions is ludicrous because, were this the case, that culture “would be creating the conditions for its own demise.”[6] She justifies this claim by arguing that cultures require capable agents with sufficient faculties of discernment and judgment to re-evaluate their content. This is enabled by our ‘individual’ relationship with culture and is necessary because, to be preserved and remain relevant and accessible, cultures need to be able to adapt to a changing world. Thus a culture that diminishes agency diminishes its capacity for evolution causing it to fall into irrelevance.

This argument is flawed on two counts.

Firstly whilst the suggestion that cultural survival depends on a faculty of introspection is convincing, this does not account for the fact that not all cultures, individual and general, actually survive. Thus while some long-lived pervasive cultures will presumably possess this introspective faculty, shorter lived cultures that have either died out in a changing moral universe, or which by all accounts do not allow for a level the introspective features she has identified may escape Moody-Adams criticism of the inability thesis. This flaw becomes especially relevant to the much discussed example of chattel slavery in antiquity, invoked by various advocates of the inability thesis including Gideon Rosen.[7] Certainly when walking down the street in any major metropolis or cultural centre in the world, one would be hard pressed to find a member of the Hittite, or Ancient Greek/Athenian cultural groupings (the slaver-cultures in question) while contemporaneous and formerly pro-slavery cultures such as Judaism have lasted the test of time. This lack of survival may be an indication of the fact that a culture overly erode its members agency, precluding them from both significantly revaluating their moral views and from adapting to the changing world.

Secondly it discounts the fact that while culture may be individually defined it also has communal features which generally correlate across individuals of specific cultural groupings. While individual members might differ on their criteria of which beliefs and behaviours define their greater cultural grouping, common histories, myths, traditions, education and the various components that comprise and influence socio-cultural life will accord across individuals to some extent. This is especially evident on a smaller scale in something akin to a tribal or village setting where all cultural members know and have interactions with one another. So while there may be greater variance between individual definitions of what it means to be culturally Australian today there would have been a greater correlation of cultural views between say members of a small isolated indigenous tribe prior to settlement. In such a setting general cultural doctrines and concepts have a higher saturation and influence on daily life. Thus it seems to be less controversial to suggest that cultural influences can have extensive effects on individual capacities for criticism of social practices in situations of higher cultural saturation. This is evidenced in our own society by the visible trend migrant populations of cultural assimilation where a migrant may have stronger connections to the culture and ideas of their homeland than their first or second generation offspring will.

Thus despite Moody-Adam’s sophisticated view of the individual-level relationship of agency and culture, and her argument that ‘culture-requires-agency’ there seem ample grounds to suggest this is not the case and that culture can significantly degrade an agents capacity for choice especially if that culture is highly saturated and lacks introspective qualities.

P2) Responsibility and Moral Blame:

Having rejected Moody-Adam’s claim that culture cannot ever influence agency so as to significantly diminish its function, the question remains as to whether or not ‘diminished’ agency provides an excuse for unjust action.

A moral excuse refers to a defence or justification for an immoral act. To be excused from moral blame a person may thus be factually but not morally responsible for an act. To be ‘morally responsible’ for an unjust action someone must be blameworthy for the immoral nature of that act. Thus while factual blame is contingent on empirical causation moral blame rests on the intention of an action. If a driver crushes a crazed addict who has fortuitously leapt onto a busy highway amidst a drug addled seizure without warning, despite attempting to drive in an incredibly safe and pedestrian-aware manner, then they are factually but not morally responsible. Responsibility and moral blame are thus contingent on the intentions that inform actions rather than the outcome of those actions.

It would seem to follow from this distinction that a perpetrator of an unjust act would be provided with an excuse if they were ignorant of the immoral nature of the action. Moody-Adams criticises this position, suggesting that an “agent’s ignorance of what she ought to do is, in general, no excuse for wrongdoing….. (because) ignorance of what one ought to do can generally be traced to some personal failure.”[8] This personal failure would necessitate the moral blame not furnished for the act. That is, Moody-Adams’ argument is not that a person may not be blameworthy for a morally ignorant act per se but that they are blameworthy for the ignorance that causes it. She bases this blame-for-ignorance concept on the assumption that most if not all examples furnished by proponents of the inability thesis fall under the category of “affected ignorance” caused by “choosing not to know what one can and should know”.[9]

I do not categorically reject Moody-Adams’ suggestion that many examples of moral ignorance provided by inability theorists could be examples of ‘affected ignorance’, the prevalence of one type of ignorance or the other is not discussed in this essay. I merely suggest that despite criticisms of the inability thesis there remain grounds for excuse for cases of genuine moral ignorance.  Moody-Adams does not explicitly rule out this possibility but merely assumes that this question is irrelevant because of her assumption that all people should have the cognitive abilities to identify moral wrongs regardless of their circumstances. Here I simply suggest she once again places an overconfidence in human judgment faculties and an under confidence in the potential extent of cultural influences over individual perception and behaviour. If all one has ever been exposed to is one perception of an act as either morally positive or at the very least morally neutral when the reverse is the case, be it slavery, commodification, or cheating, it seems unreasonable and highly unfair to blame that person for not being able to realise what no other member of their culture has.

Thus because moral blame is only excused where responsibility ceases to exist, moral ignorance by way of incapacity gives grounds for excuse.

P3) Circumstances for and Effect of Excuses. 

So far I have outlined my theoretical grounds for furnishing moral excuse to the genuinely morally ignorant where that ignorance is caused by culturally generated moral incapacity. I will now examine some examples where this practice might occur and how we might determine the difference between genuine inability and affected ignorance.

Distinguishing Ignorance

Supposing that there is a possibility for both genuine and affected ignorance distinguishing the two is a complicated question hinging on empirical facts about the functioning of the human mind.

Previously, in my discussion of agency and culture I suggested the relevance of both the idiosyncrasies of a culture including its potential for self-criticism and its saturation as relevant factors in determining the extent of its influence on agency. To this Cheshire Calhoun adds a useful framework for identifying the likelihood of ignorance being either affected or genuine. She begins by drawing a distinction between normal and abnormal moral contexts. In normal moral contexts the moral status of acts are ‘transparent’ and easily identifiable. This is because “the sharing of moral knowledge allows us to assume that most rational, reflective people could come to correct judgments about which courses of action would be right”.[10] Under such circumstances it would be virtually impossible to be genuinely morally ignorant as the correct moral knowledge is readily available to any person with a minimally self-reflective mind. In abnormal moral contexts the reverse is true. Not only are individuals “misguided by public standards of morality and permissible action”[11] but in abnormal contexts true or legitimate moral knowledge can often be scorned and discredited by established moral authorities further confusing and obfuscating simple moral truths. Under these circumstances cases of genuine ignorance are more feasible, however the IA requires more than just a morally deficient society to warrant excuse, rather it requires that an individual be so influenced by that abnormal context that they are incapacitated with regards to correctly discerning moral truth.

A potential metric that would satisfy this ‘extra requirement’ on abnormal contexts is Gideon Rosen’s concept of epistemic duties. For Rosen individuals are required to fulfil various “standing obligations to inform ourselves about matters relevant to the moral permissibility of our conduct”.[12] These duties include to search for moral knowledge and to seek advice from good moral knowers. If an individual commits an unjust act out of ignorance but they satisfy their epistemic duties then they are viewed as incapable of doing any better. I do hold reservations about Rosen’s version of the epistemic framework, including the question of how one determines that one has epistemic duties in the first place and moreover how we can determine when someone has sufficiently satisfied them. Nevertheless the idea that someone could not be genuinely ignorant if they hold a faulty perception of the moral status of an act when they have both been heavily conditioned in an abnormal moral context and genuinely attempted to form a correct moral beliefs though concerted effort but simply failed to do so seems to me to be a reasonable conclusion. The other benefit of such a system is that while excusing an individual from blame it also suggests that once better moral knowledge has been broadcast to them they have a requirement to attempt to divine its merits, allowing for future change despite the initial ignorance. On that basis alone, this metric should be worthy for consideration.

Thus, I suggest, we can gain useful insights into the specific nature of an individual’s ignorance with reference to the saturation and idiosyncrasies of their culture, the status of their moral context, and the satisfaction or failure of epistemic duties.

Conclusion

This essay has sought to prove that individuals can be excused when they behave in unjust ways that are prevalent and socially accepted in their culture so long as that behaviour was the product of genuine moral ignorance.  To do this I presented the Incapacity Argument for Moral Excuse and examined its premises and some prominent counter-arguments. Finally I proposed some methods to discern between affected and genuine moral ignorance, with view to providing a framework for future debate.

Bibliography:

Calhoun C ‘Responsibility and Reproach’, Ethics, Vol. 99 (Jan 1989) The University of Chicago Press pps. 389 – 406.

Moody-Adams, M ‘Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance’, Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Jan 1994), The University of Chicago Press pps. 291 – 309.

Rosen G ‘Culpability & Ignorance’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society New Series, Vol. 103, (2003) The Aristotle Society pps. 61-84.

McKenna M “Compatibilism” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition) Accessed via <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/> 01/11/13.

 

[1] Moody-Adams, M ‘Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance’ (Jan 1994) pp. 293.

[2] McKenna M ‘Compatibilism’ The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition).

[3] Moody-Adams, M ‘Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance’ (Jan 1994) pp. 295.

[4] Ibid pps. 292-293.

[5] Ibid pp. 307.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Rosen G ‘Culpability & Ignorance’ (2003) pp. 65.

[8] Moody-Adams, M ‘Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance’ (Jan 1994) pp. 293.

[9] Ibid pp. 296.

[10] Calhoun C ‘Responsibility and Reproach’ (Jan 1989) pp. 395.

[11] Ibid pp. 394.

[12] Rosen G ‘Culpability & Ignorance’ (2003) pp. 63.

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