The Parable of Romulus, Remus, and Numitor
QUESTION THIRTEEN (quoting me) “Whether something is successful or not is indifferent to whether it is moral or immoral.”
That is where we disagree. You and I (it seems) share most basic concepts of moral and immoral behavior, but I think those concepts evolved either literally through natural selection on ape behavior or through the interaction of agents in economic games. The moral standard that you and I uphold (or aspire to, at least in my case) is just one of the notable winners so far.
Obviously not. All you are doing here is substituting a positive law (whether something is moral) for a procedural efficiency (whether something is useful toward achieving an unnamed goal). This is called the naturalist fallacy: the attempt to deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. It cannot be done.
To use an obvious example, if you point out to me a fact that something is efficient, such as, for example, that the most efficient way to colonize South America is by establishing large slave plantations manned by slaves captured in Africa, you have not given me enough information to conclude that something is right or wrong.
Note that any counter-example (such as it is not efficient to ship slaves to Northern Canada to man the fisheries there, or engage in seal and otter trapping) will defeat an attempt to draw a general rule about the efficiency of slavery in the abstract much less the morality of it.
Note that any discussion of efficiency is dependent on the specific of the goal sought, or rather, on all the goals sought.
Suppose you have either a time machine or an infallible foresight, and you can foretell that if Romulus founds the Roman Empire, it will last thousands of years, introduce massive slavery and misery, introduce Christianity, inspire Virgil to pen his greatest work, and maintain law and order over Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as far as Persia.
You can also foretell that if you assassinate Romulus, Remus will found a Republic which will have gentler laws, less slavery, never fall to an Imperial system of government, and will last twice as long but only cover half the land area.
And again, if you assassinate both of them, the Republic will be founded instead by Numitor of Alba Longa, and be quite small, not even conquering the whole Italian peninsula, and will be obliterated by the Carthaginians, but will during its flowering produce such prodigies of good laws, good poets, and brilliant philosophers that the civilization will reach a level of enlightenment and comfort greater than the Renaissance in our world knew. In this third Numitorian timeline, there is no large slave-worked plantations of the later imperial period, no gladiatorial games, no slaves fornicating or executed on stage for the amusement of theatergoers, and the horrid execution of crucifixion is never practiced on anyone – except in this world there will be no renaissance, and world civilization be arrested at the Iron Age level forever.
Now in this hypothetical, there is no way to compare the three futures without reference to a goal. All three are ‘successful’ in one sense of the word or another, according to different definitions of success.
Whether it is better to abort the timeline where the Roman Republic is replaced by Caesar with an Empire, but Christianity never flourishes, versus a timeline where there is a flowering of Republicanism that lasts twice as long but only covers half the terrain, versus a timeline where all the horrors of Imperialism are aborted, but no Industrial revolution ever takes place, is judgment call about costs and tradeoffs where reasonable people can differ.
You are substituting discussions about individual good and bad, which is something everyone who is not a sociopath understands, with discussion about windy abstractions, collective action, and mass movements in history over ages of time, which is something no one understands or can understand.
If your theory of the origin of moral knowledge were correct, you and I would not and could not share any concepts of moral behavior, basic or otherwise. I am a Christian, indeed a Catholic, and therefore I know your soul will endure forever, either in bliss too joyful for words or even song, or in torment too painful and degrading to imagine. I know the universe to be governed by a sovereign whose paternal authority grants him the right to rule, and his wisdom makes him the best candidate to rule, and his power makes it impossible as a practical matter for anyone else to rule. He has made certain obvious demands on my and your behavior, and also demands less obvious, which are in some cases in our short-term best interest, and in some cases are suicidal.
Now, keep that in mind. The long term for me is eternity, for you and I shall last longer than republics and empires and worlds and stars and galaxies, and the heat death of the universe will be merely the opening notes of the first stanza of the symphony of creation.
On the other hand, while you may have some momentary concern about the wellbeing of remote descendants of yours nine generation from now, as a practical matter you hardly have reason to sacrifice any present happiness for the good of greatgrandchildren you might not live to see. Your depth perception is at most a few decades.
If indeed you are concerned about other long term matters, such a the preservation of the ecology or the preservation of the European Union, you cannot reduce to a dollar value or anything measurable how much pain and suffering you and your generation should bear now to receive some alleged benefit to some generation remote in time.
If it cost every household in Europe ten pounds sterling, let us say, to preserve the North American Spotted Owl for a thousand years in its habitat in the United States, that is quite different from if it cost every household in Europe the death of its firstborn child to preserve the North American Spotted Owl for twenty years.
These are imponderables, and so when you weigh present cost versus longterm benefit, you will reach different conclusions based on how long in the future your concerns rest, but you will never reach the conclusions that someone who believes in eternity reaches.
For you, the European Union or the race of Spotted Owls must seem more important than your own life, because they are likely to last longer than your life. For me, kings and republics and empire and animal life is less important than a single human soul, because there is no ratio of comparison between eternal and temporary things.
So you and I share nothing in common in terms of goals or values, so we cannot share any notion of efficiency or success in the short or the long term.
And yet the mystery remains. You and I do share basic moral values. How can that be?
We can share basic moral values if only if we share a conscience which is reasonably well formed enough to give us both the same basic information about right and wrong.
Obviously this information cannot come from the world of the senses, since right and wrong are not sensible properties and cannot be deduced from them. So it must from the spirit world, or, if you like, from the Platonic Realm of ideas, or the abstractions of an Aristotelian metaphysics.
Moral knowledge cannot arise from a game theory system of rewards for whichever institutions or apelike behaviors are successful in passing along their ideas to the next generation because success cannot be defined.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
