PHILOSOPHY NOTES Part 4 Ethical Theory and the Limits of Philosophy

 

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Philosophy Notes  Part 4                

This is the fourth post in the Philosophy Notes series. Each post is a supplement to my philosophy study guides, a series of 8 books designed to help philosophy students read, understand, and think critically about the classics of philosophy.   

Ethical Theory and the Limits of Philosophy

Immanuel Kant

In Part 3, I used the debate about the existence of God to show what I mean by the limits of philosophy. Philosophers are restricted to conceptual analysis. Anselm, Descartes, Leibniz, and a few other philosophers understood that the only path to certainty in their quest to prove the existence of God is through an analysis of the concepts of God and Existence.

Proponents of analogical arguments from design for the existence of God cannot ignore conceptual analysis. After all, they must understand what they are looking for.  But once they have clarified the key concepts used in their question, e.g. “Does God exist?” they go outside the concepts and introduce empirical facts in an attempt to solve what they take to be an inductive question.  They are not restricted by certainty.  Their path is not certainty but probability (hopefully strong probability) for their conclusions.

John Stuart Mill

But enough of natural religion. In Part 1 of Philosophy Notes, I quoted a textbook definition of philosophy:  ‘Philosophy is the critical reflection on the justification of basic human beliefs and analysis of basic concepts in terms of which such beliefs are expressed.’ One of the most vexing basic human beliefs that philosophers have attempted to justify over the past two thousand years is the belief that there is an objective set of moral rules for evaluating human behavior, no matter the time, place, or culture of the humans being evaluated, whether they lived in the 8^th century B.C.E. or the 21^st century C.E.; whether they are members of a Brazilian indigenous Indian tribe or British aristocracy; whether they are Chinese, French or Pakistani. 

The justifications for universal moral rules are called ethical theories. There are two sets of ethical theories that head the long debate about right and wrong.  The first group of theories is consequentialist. The only thing that matters in evaluating an act as right and wrong are the consequences of the act. The consequences are either good or bad, depending on how these evaluative words are defined. The motives of the actor (e.g. jealousy) and the name of the act (e.g. a lie, a broken promise) are irrelevant to a determination of right or wrong.  

According to a version of the consequentialist theory called utilitarianism, a good consequence is identical with pleasure or happiness and a bad consequence is identical with pain or unhappiness. Thus, if I lie to you, my lie is justified if the total amount of pleasure is more than the total amount of pain.  The lie, in and of itself, apart from its consequences, is neither right nor wrong.  

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” (Utilitarianism).

The second set of major ethical theories are referred to as deontological. A version of deontologism is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. This theory is a direct contradiction to utilitarianism and all other consequentialist ethical theories. The theory says that our moral obligations are absolute.  The imperative not to lie tells us categorically (unconditionally) that we must always tell the truth regardless of the consequences.  Here is one statement of Kant’s imperative:

 “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means.”  (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals)

Thus, even if the consequences of telling a lie are good, to tell a lie is to treat the person to whom you tell the lie merely as a means to an end.  In effect, you are using that person to do something which that person has not consented to do.

Ethical theories are philosophical, not scientific. Scientific theories are tested by successful prediction of future events. Successful prediction is what justifies a scientific theory.  For example, discoveries about the construction and transmission of the deadly coronavirus made it possible to predict that the spread of COVID-19 disease in unvaccinated communities will be significantly greater than the spread in vaccinated communities.

Philosophical theories are not created to make predictions.  They are put forward to evaluate and guide human behavior.  If philosophy is conceptual analysis, then what justifies a philosophical belief is to be found only in an analysis of the concepts that comprise the belief.  This applies to beliefs about what is and what is not morally right or obligatory as much as it applies to any other philosophical belief.

A Simple Test to Determine Analytic Truth

There is a simple test to determine if this or any belief is analytically true.  It is called the closed question test.  It applies to questions about the relationship of concepts.  For example,  if it is analytically true that a bachelor is an unmarried male, then if someone were to ask “I know that John is a bachelor, but is he unmarried?” the answer is to be found in the question.  The first part of the sentence “John is a bachelor” answers the second part.  It makes no sense to ask the question in the first place unless the questioner is a young child or does not understand English.  The question is both closed and senseless.

If the question is open, the answer is not to be found in the question.  For example, if it is asked, “I know that John is a bachelor, but does John want to get married?” the first part of the sentence does not answer the second part.  Moreover, the question is not senseless.  The questioner can go outside the concept of ‘bachelor’ to determine what John wants or does not want.  But if someone proposes that wanting to get married is a defining part of the word ‘bachelor,’ then their definition is analytically false.  We know that it is false because one can sensibly ask the second part of the question (“does John want to get married?”). 

In general, when we have an analytically true belief, the question we construct from the belief is both senseless and closed.   When we have an analytically false belief, the question we construct from the belief is both sensible and open.

Let us apply this test to the two ethical theories described above, beginning with the utilitarian theory:  

The utilitarian principle states the belief (qua principle) that an act is morally right if and only if it produces at least as much good (happiness) as bad (misery). If it produces more misery than happiness, then the act is morally wrong.

The test question for the utilitarian is: “Is the act that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number the right thing to do?”

The question appears to be both sensible and open. If a defender of the utilitarian principle objects to this, there are several examples to which they can appeal.  For example, suppose the lives of two young children can be saved by killing one elderly person. Suppose it can also be shown that this would produce more happiness than letting the children die (the combined happiness of the two children over the many years to come is greater than the happiness of one elderly person who probably has only a few more years to live).  And yet despite this fact, it is reasonable to object that killing the elderly person without their consent is morally worse than saving the lives of the two children.

Because the test question is both sensible and open,  Mill’s utilitarian principle is analytically false.

We turn now to the test question for Kant’s categorical imperative: “Is an act that treats humanity as a means, whether in my own person or in the person of another, morally right?” 

Once again, as with the utilitarian principle, we find that the test question is both sensible and open.  The example that comes to mind is one that was familiar to Kant and his critics. Suppose that I am hiding a frightened person in my house because a deranged man who wants to kill him is going door to door hoping to find him.  He knocks on my door.  I open the door and he asks whether the person they seek is inside.  I reply by telling the lie “He is not in my house.”  The would-be killer leaves and I have saved the life of my frightened guest. 

This example proves that it is sensible to ask the question “Is it ever morally right to treat another person as a means to an end?”  And it is an open question, the answer to which can only be found by going outside the concepts contained in the question. 

Because the test question is both sensible and open, Kant’s Categorical Imperative, like Mill’s utility principle, is analytically false.

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PHILOSOPHY NOTES Part 2 The Limits of Philosophy

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Philosophy Notes                 

This is the second post in a series that I call Philosophy Notes. Each post is a supplement to my philosophy study guides, designed to help beginning philosophy students read, understand, and think critically about the classic books of philosophy.   

The Limits of Philosophy: Descartes and Hume on the Existence of God

In the first episode (“What is Philosophy?”) we ended by asking whether the philosophical method of concept analysis can be used to prove the existence of God. Have past attempts to prove that God exists stayed within or gone beyond the limits of what philosophy can prove or disprove?

In chapter V of Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Rene Descartes states what is now called the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.  The argument is called ontological because it derives the existence of God not from experience or matters of fact but from the concept of God. Here is the argument in Descartes’ words:

 1. The clear and distinct idea of God in my consciousness is the idea of a being whose nature is supreme perfection.

2. I know with clearness and distinctness that an actual and eternal existence pertains to the nature of a supremely perfect being.

3. Therefore, God actually and eternally exists.

The popular version of the argument is much shorter:

1. God is an all-perfect being.

2. Existence is a perfection.

3. Therefore, God exists.

The ontological argument did not begin with Descartes. The first version was stated by Anselm and later repeated by Duns Scotus.  In Descartes’ time, it was accepted as valid by Leibniz.

But it was not received well by some contemporaries of Descartes and it was later criticized and rejected by the great philosophers Immanuel Kant and David Hume.

Kant’s counter argument is that existence is not an attribute or property like omniscience or omnipotence. If existence is not a property, then we cannot prove the existence of someone or something by analyzing the concept of that one or thing.  For example, I cannot logically derive the existence of 100 dollars from the concept One Hundred Dollars. One hundred real (existing) dollars is the same amount as in the concept. Adding existence to the concept of one hundred dollars does not change the amount in the way that adding one dollar changes the amount and (therefore) changes the concept itself (to One hundred and one dollars).

 By analogy, I cannot logically derive the existence of human beings from the concept Human. An analysis of this concepts will not be sufficient to prove that that human beings actually exist. If 100 dollars and humans exist at all, this can only be confirmed by observation and experience, not by concept analysis.

If existence is not an attribute or property of an object, event or person, then being “supremely perfect” cannot imply that a supremely perfect being exists, any more than does being “supremely imperfect” imply that a supremely imperfect being does not exist. Non-existence like existence is not a property.

David Hume has a slightly different approach to the ontological argument.  In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume writes that “there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by any arguments a priori.” (55). Statements about what does or does not exist are statements about matters of fact not statements about logical relationships between ideas (concepts).

As matters of fact, statements about the existence of God are no different than statements about the existence of the gods of ancient Greece, for example, the existence of Zeus.  Such statements cannot be “demonstrated,” as was attempted in the ontological argument presented by Descartes.   They can only be proved by observation and experience. 

Hume explains in the same quote that to demonstrate that a proposition is true is to prove it by an argument a priori. I can demonstrate (prove) that triangles have three sides because the sentence “Triangles have three sides” relates one concept (triangularity) to another concept (three-sided shape).  The relation is one of necessity. To deny that a triangle has three sides is to state a contradiction.

Matter of fact statements are not about relations of ideas (concepts). If I say that 20^th century houses have indoor plumbing, I am not stating that the idea of a 20^th century house is necessarily related to the idea of indoor plumbing. Instead, I am reporting a fact about 20^th century houses that can be proved or disproved by experience and observation.  It is a contradiction to say that some triangles have four sides. It is not  a contradiction to say that some houses do not have indoor plumbing. 

Returning to the ontological argument for the existence of God, if there can be no demonstration of a matter of fact, then any inquiries about  the existence of a thing or event is an inquiry about  a matter of fact not about a relationships of ideas (concepts).  Consider, for example, the concepts Piano and Existence. When we say, “pianos exist,” we are not saying that pianos are things that necessarily exist, that is, we are not saying that existence is tied to the concept of Piano in the same way that three-sidedness is tied to the concept of Triangle.  The  same  thing can be said about “God exists.”  Despite Descartes’ dubious claim that existence is a perfection, the existence of anything, be it God or a piano, can only be proved by observation and experience.

If proof of the existence of God depends on observation and experience, then the proof is empirical not analytic. Observation and experience coupled with experiment provide evidence that supports conclusions that are probable not certain. Such proofs are called “inductive” and they belong in the province of science not philosophy.

This did not stop some philosophers from using inductive arguments to prove the existence of God or life after death.  In the next episode of “What is philosophy?” we will look at David Hume’s critical examination of the most popular inductive argument: The Design Argument for the Existence of God.  We will also show how Hume’s criticism of the Design Argument reveals a fatal flaw of any attempt to prove by inductive argument that there is an afterlife.

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Learn more about Descartes’ ontological argument in Laurence Houlgate’s Understanding Rene Descartes: The Smart Student’ Guide to Meditations on First Philosophy, at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MDJTW2K

Learn more about David Hume’s critique of the ontological and design arguments in Laurence Houlgate’s Understanding David Hume: The Smart Student’s Guide to Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Essays on Miracles, Immortality, and Suicide at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RN9HQHS