edenism

“When we infer any particular cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other, and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities, but what are exactly sufficient to produce the effect.” — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XI

Hume's point here is theological; that it would be wrong, to, for instance, reason from the current world to the nature of divinity, and then from the nature of divinity to predict the future. What I will try to do here is to use this perspective to better understand the nature and limitations of normative ethical theories. To do so we must begin by working, not within philosophy, but in the examination of philosophy as an institution. We must ask, when a normative theory is proposed, what are the criteria by which it is evaluated? In this case we find that the answer does not differ so greatly from the answer to the equivalent question posed to the natural sciences; every ethical model is judged on the basis of its logical soundness, assumptions, explanatory power, and intuitive appeal. What is most interesting about this is that, like in the natural sciences, the explanatory power of a model (provided it is sound) is by far the most of these criteria. But how is explanatory power measured? To return to ethics, we see that any ethical model is judged on the basis of its ability to align with existing ethical opinion. That is the descriptive function of ethics: to explain why what is clearly wrong is, in fact, clearly wrong and why what is clearly right is, in fact, clearly right. However, ethics also has a prescriptive function. When one looks at the function of a normative theory such as, say, some hedonistic utilitarianism, they expect not only for it to align with commonly-held beliefs, but also for it to provide answers to ethical dilemmas. In fact, one of the most common criticisms of utilitarianist ethical models is their computational intractability. The issue that arises here is exactly the issue that Hume raised: if normative theories are judged on the basis of their ability to describe current ethical opinion, then what can be extrapolated from them is no more than current ethical opinion. In other words, their descriptive nature undermines their prescriptive nature. As an example of the absurdity of appealing to normative ethics to justify any behavior, imagine a man who has just emerged from tribulation and has decided he needs to find a new religion. He walks from church to church in his area for the whole day, and even considers moving if he has to. At the end of the day, he has been to dozens of churches and has an intimate understanding of their views, so he chooses the church that he agrees the most with. A few months later, he finds that the church's leaders have taken an ethical stance he disagrees with. The question is, should he accept this ethical stance on the basis of the church's moral authority? This would make sense except for the fact that it was selected by this man wholly because it was the church that aligned most consistently with his existing beliefs. If there was another church that was identical except for its stance on this one issue, he certainly would have chosen it instead. Therefore, this man would be acting very peculiarly if he were to accept the church's moral authority. In fact, it is a little unclear what his relationship with the church is at all, since the mere fact that he chose it to align with his beliefs means that when he listens to the church it is on the basis of his own authority. That is to say, he goes to church not for divine inspiration, but for his own. Similarly, any situation where a normative ethical theory provides an answer that is controversial is, rather than being a prescription, a flaw of the theory, by the very metric by which they are judged.

As an addendum to the discussion above, I should answer what is likely to be the curious reader's question: why pursue the creation of normative ethical theories at all? If they cannot prescribe, but can only explain our actions in terms of propositions, then what is the value? While it is certainly true that explaining complex things in simple terms (e.g. utilitarianism) is an intellectual and aesthetic achievement, this is certainly not the only motivation. The very pursuit of such theories belies a certain set of assumptions about the nature of things; namely, that the right set of propositions will not only explain what we already know but will be right more generally. While this mystical belief has proven itself many times in the natural sciences, its accuracy in philosophical questions (which tend to the human, semantic, and immeasurable) is very questionable. What is interesting is why this assumption is so fundamental to Western thought that it is indispensable: even in the face of millennia of lackluster results, it is still a widespread belief.