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.

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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