Moral Imagination

The moral imagination is the thing that assigns value to our values. If confronted with a complex moral situation which theory would be best to help us make sense of a confusing situation? How are priorities set and decisions made when there seems to be no clear moral path to take (or perhaps far too many to take); how do we choose? I am currently going through many of these questions and to be honest have been floundering for quite some time. I know I want to go graduate school, unfortunately deadlines are coming up at the end of the month and I am unsatisfied with the strength of what I'm sending in. However, I'm also unsatisfied with my school performance. The more I give to one the more I seem to carve out of the other. Yet, these are two very linked "worlds", especially because I would like to one day go into academia for a living. How can I ask a professor to write me a letter of recommendation when I know I am underperforming in their class? How can I in good conscious convince a grad school that I am professor material when I cannot make it as a student? Should I sacrifice the time I work on class assignments for more time to work on my statement of purpose? What classes must be sacrificed in order to complete the work of another? It doesn't end at school either. How can I tell my friends, who have helped me remain sane for four years, that though this is the last year we have together I don't have time to help with their problems? How do I tell the girl who likes me that though I like her as well I don't have time to be a good boyfriend because my future asks for my present? The categorization and prioritizing of all these problems, costs and benefits, are weighed by the moral imagination. How we assign worth to the constant barrage of opportunities that present themselves, especially when these opportunities are neither entirely good nor entirely bad.
Pardales lists some of the ways our brains assign moral laws and constructs in order to deal with the dizzying number of nuances in most real world situations. The prototype works as a sort of moral induction. Based on previous situations in which a moral category was deployed (such as the idea of "fairness" when one is being cheated) we form exemplars that work to inform us on how to use these moral ideas. In other words every instance of a moral dilemma calls for a category, usually a bit of "stretching" is involved in applying it or perhaps an elucidation which leaves us with a changed, perhaps evolved, category to deploy again when we're done.
Sometimes metaphor guides our thinking. How are we to define and use a term like "justice"? One way is through experiences in which we are informed of what justice is compared to metaphorically. For example going to a court room and seeing the word "justice" deployed in a way to sentence a criminal we may begin to see justice as a redress of a grievance, either personal or against the state. If we reflect on the metaphors we use when talking about a situation we can be informed by the underlying connections within our language to gain a better understanding of how we process morally ambiguous situations. When we talk about justice how do we link this idea to other ideas, perhaps justice is closely tied in our mind with judgment, normalization, and punishment or perhaps we see it as equality and compensation in order to restore a "balance".
The third strategy discused by Pardales is the idea of narrative. I found this to be particularly relevent to my study of history. By creating a story, or perhaps a better word would be fable, we can examine the institutions that putatively "created" us-- things like upbringing, family situation, economic status-- and assign them a narrative quality. The quality of narrative allows you to asses your life like you would the plot of a movie. We can guess the kind of decisions we should make based on where we place ourselves in our narrative and how we construct and value the "actors" in our life. Thinking of things as "events" in your life is probably the most common way of using the narrative source of knowledge. We assign value to these events in order to learn from them, to take them as cues on where our story might go or as warnings and portents for a path that could lead to an unsatisfactory ending.
Lastly moral perception is somewhat a kin to empathy. It's the recognition of callousness or kindness in ourselves, or in other words a constant awareness of our ethical situation that serves to inform our actions. The ability to recognize the moral aspects of a situation is moral perception.
How to cultivate this moral imagination then becomes the best way to ensure a correct moral choice through the proper valuation of principles. I've thought about it a lot today and this article has been extremely important to me. Unfortunately I have to read for another class so I probably won't be able to finish the other two before I go to bed, but I will try. I've tried to take a step back and assess my situation. Why should I go to graduate school unprepared? Why should I sacrifice a semester that could be spent studying in a healthy way (an act I enjoy enough to pursue it as a career) for one that is spent spitting out half finished and unsatisfactory work in classes I should be savoring. These classes could teach me how to better deal with my situation (and they have somewhat thanks to the kindness and advice of professors I respect who are willing to talk to me after class) yet I cannot give them the attention they deserve because the situation that they could enlighten me on precludes me from full engagement with them. In a time of moral (and general) uncertainty why should I destroy both my prospects for entering the best graduate school I can attend, ruin one of the last opportunities I have to get the most out of the end of my undergraduate career, and give up my social life in the process? The article made me realize it is a losing equation to live my life this way. For that reason I've decided (after I talk with my advisor some more about it on Friday) that I'm going to work a year before I attend graduate school and assemble the best portfolio I can in the mean time. This will hopefully free up time to give these classes what they deserve of me and what I believe I can deliver. I feel awful about wasting so much time and putting myself through so much misery pursuing a course I might postpone, but I find this decision to be liberatory. I've come to realize that I took the wrong approach in this class when expecting of it something akin to analytic philosophy, but I've also come to appreciate that in the breakdown of analytic thinking (my Deviance and Philosophy of Science classes have both done most of the breaking down) I needed moral thinking. Before what seemed like nonsense to me is the only thing that is beginning to make sense. The question of "what to do" looms extremely large in this crossroads in my life and it was the lack of an ethical approach and an ethically uncultivated state that prevented me from seeing the forest through the trees. I thought I was being mature about making these sacrifices (is this what being an adult is about? I frequently wondered) but I've realized I was actually immature for treating people and things I cared about as in competition in order to rush something that I perhaps was not ready for but felt was expected of me. I realize this is getting long and a bit rambling but it has come as a bit of a revelation for me. I feel so so much better, and I think it is the kind of good feeling that comes from having taken an ethical (in ways I never would have defined it) approach. It is a very healthy feeling happiness.

I don’t know if I fully agree with Marquis’ assessment of abortion but I did find it the most interesting. What I found fascinating was the idea that killing is wrong because it deprives an individual of all future enjoyments or experiences. I’m not sure why but this seems like a fairly weak ethical justification, yet also completely correct. It says that the act of killing is not wrong in itself but rather for what it entails, namely death or more specifically the loss of a life lived in the future. Marquis says that this position avoids the sort of rights arguments usually construed as, “it is wrong to kill to kill another person because they are rational, they are biologically a human being, it brutalizes the murderer, ect”. The act of killing, according to Marquis, is not in itself unethical but rather that it brings the consequence of death. But many things bring death as a consequence. Would it be comprehensible to say someone was “murdered” by nature if they die from exposure? Surely exposure also brings death, and it is in the dying of another that an act is made unethical, why then can we not say that nature is unethical, or even more radically that life is unethical because it can be seen as the slow murdering of an individual until their eventual death? Everything you do, by virtue of taking up time, contributes to your eventual death. That does not mean that making soup or typing this blog is unethical, and it certainly does not mean that it is murderous.
Murder is fundamentally an act performed by a person with another person as its target, to say then that ethics in this situation do not concern how a person is defined to me seems disingenuous. If murder can only be performed by people and a murdered victim can only be defined first and foremost as a “murdered person”, "murdered animal" ect it seems absolutely necessary to nail down a definition of what being a person entails before we can rightly say that something has been murdered. This brings us back to the debate that Marquis lays out in the beginning: whether a person is defined through reason, biology, divine sanction or whatever. The debate over abortion (or murder or nearly any ethical question) necessarily entails how the objects in question, whether fetuses, people, animals, the handicapped, ect are defined. The question then becomes which of the myriad ways to define a person is correct?

Utilitarianism

Mill begins by saying that if we are looking for something like a scientific proof for any ethical system we misuse the term "proof", or at least deploy it in an improper setting when we try to apply it to ethics. I found this fascinating because I think I frequently am lost in ethics because it's mode of proving itself is foreign to me and I did not study the theories on their own terms. Because ethics seeks what is good, "whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof," (184). Ethics, then, is an intellectual pursuit, and not an ends, and, "the formula may be accepted or rejected, but it is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof."(184)

In part II, Mill defends utilitarianism from the historic critiques of similar systems like Epicureanism, and in so doing helps to positively shape what he conceives as the "rule of Happiness". Utilitarianism, he says, is not the Bacchanalian pursuit of pleasure that it is sometimes characterized as, nor is it the cold spreadsheet analysis of pure utility. Instead, utilitarianism seeks happiness by satisfying the noblest human wants for the most amount of people. We might momentarily stray into immediate or beastly pleasure but it is our sense of dignity, the thing that separates us from beasts and ignorant people, that must eventually be satisfied to achieve pleasure. The biggest question I have for Mill is one he brings up himself when he writes, "What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain[?]"(189). He says to answer this we must rely on the testimony of the experienced, but aren't there many choices that we make that don't manifest their full costs, or their full pleasures for that matter, until long after we have made them? When is someone experienced enough to be counted as reliable testimony for the costs and benefits of a decision? We can surely limit the scope of what will be affected by our moral decisions, Mill says on 196 that 999 out of 1000 of our decisions are ones that regard private utility and don't require considering the broad public interests of the decision, but I still think it is a problem that we can't more fully measure the pains and pleasures that will be unleashed by our decision. After all, if the backbone of utilitarianism is picking the option that maximizes pleasure and diminishes it's opposite we first must be able to get the facts of each option.

If we are take non-contradiction seriously than any moral statement should work like the "golden rule." If I say, "criminals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" it would be hypocritical of me to ask for a reduced sentence. I would in effect be saying, "this should be applied to everyone else but not me" and that is a contradiction. For certain things it would unreasonable for nearly everyone to be contradictory and therefore we could perhaps find a universal moral code for some things. For example, we might say, "is it ever right to kill yourself?" The person contemplating suicide would have to ask themselves whether it would be right for everyone in the world to kill themselves, if it wouldn't then they would contradicting themselves by saying, "it would be morally acceptable for me to kill myself."

Hume

Hume begins section 1 with a reiteration to what we read earlier in class. He says that ethics must apply to the sentiments and not to reason alone. However, he also says that reason can guide us and inform us regarding the facts a situation, and that these should be considered when making moral choices. It is not enough simply to say that because a certain is perceived as odious to you it is viceful (or vice versa regarding virtue), this opinion must be informed by expirience. What I found interesting is that in one sentence he says, "It is probable..that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, hich nature has made universal in the whole species" (75). This speaks to the distinction we made earlier in class over a Hume conception of "objective" versus a Greek or traditional view of "objective", the former relating to universality and the latter refering to some "out there" principle which can be discovered outside of us as opposed to observed within human nature.
The overriding theme for the rest of the reading is the idea of utility. Utility, for Hume, both helps define our idea of things like justice as well as sets the context for such a term to be meaningful. For Hume their is no overriding principle which guides ethical action in all situations, but rather morality depends largely on social circumstance. He gives the example of a shipwreck victim procurring as much goods as he can for survival at the expense of other victims. This would not be unethical for Hume since justice depends on at least the ability of social sustainability. He talks of how in a society free of want justice loses its meaning but in a society in which the basic needs for all absent justice loses its utility and must be disregarded.
At first I read this conception justice in a positive light. I think it would healthy policy (both in foreign and domestic policy) to assure that basic needs for all people are met- if not to be morally good than to at least ensure that justice, which surely serves people, functions in a healthy way. However, he says that as the relationship of the state enters into the question of morality it is sometimes necessary to suspend the rule of law when justice is no longer a utility to the public. He writes, "Men are necessarilly born in a famil-society, at least; and are trained up by their parents to some ruleofconduct and behavior. But this mustbeadmitted, tha, ifsuchastateofmutual war andviolence was ever real,thesuspension ofalllaws andjustice, from their absolute inutility, is a necessary and infallibalble consequence." The first thing I thought of when I read this was the USPATRIOT act. I had never thought about it but if justice is seen strictly in view of how beneficial it is to society does that mean that there are times when it can be suspended? Shouldn't it be argued that justice is always beneficial to society, even in times of total war, and has intrinsic value, or at least there would never be a situation in which the suspension of justice was more beneficial than its upkeep?

Natural Virtues and Vices

Hume identifies a distinction between natural and artifical virtues and vices but the two are more closely tied than their titles would suggest. Artificial virtues are virtues that are "made" by society in order to benefit it. An artificial virtue may be something like "political justice" or "politeness" which are agreed upon by everyone to be beneficial but which must appeal to a natural virtue in order to be legitimate. A natural virtue is something like sympathy which does not have to be reasoned (at least according to Hume) and is simply felt. For example a politician may make an overture for the artificial virtue of political justice but it is our natural virtue of sympathy that lends this plea weight.
Here sympathy does not seem to mean the same thing as compassion, which is a sort of limitless forgiveness for circumstance, but rather acts as a sort of universal law based on humanities similiar dispositions. Because we all have relatively universal feelings (pain, pleasure, ect) we can identify in someone qualities that we esteem (or despise) in ourselves or qualities that we wish we had (or are glad that we don't). Sympathy then, "is the source of the esteem, which we pay to all the artificial virtues." (369). Hume draws finer and finer distinctions throughout the chapter (ex: we are more likely to sympathsize with someone who is relatively closer or better known to us) but the same general principle runs throughout. The question I would pose here is how this accounts for people like sociopaths who perhaps take advantage of people's sympathy without feeling any of their own.
Also, I don't even know where to begin on this quote but it seems from the paragraph following it that it deals with proximity in regards to the level of sympathy felt (ex: more sympathetic to shipwrecked sailors if I can see them then if I simply read about them).
"In all kinds of comparison an object makes us always receive from another, to which it is compared, a sensation contrary to what arises from itself in its direct and immediate survey. The direct survey of another's pleasure naturally gives us pleasure, and therefore produces pain when compared with our own. His pain considered in itself, is painful to us, but augments the idea of our own happiness, and gives us pleasure." (emphasis mine).
Hume seems to be saying that through the natural virtue of sympathy we will feel happy when someone around us is happy but this pleasure raises our expectations and will produce more pain in us (and vice versa for someone expiriencing pain in proximity to us- we will eventually derive pleasure). This seems to say that someone emoting near us will produce both pleasure and pain. If this is the case how can we say something is moral in Hume's system? Something is moral, according to Hume, if it illicits a feeling of pleasure in us, but if nearly all things will illicit both pleasure and pain then is anything properly moral in a Humean sense?

I'm still a bit confused of what to make of Hume's claim that reason can say nothing regarding ethics. He writes that because reason is only concerned with whether something is true or false it cannot speak to passions, which instead direct our reason to justify our actions.
"Actions do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a contrarity to it...that as reason can never immediatley prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it, it cannot be the source of distinction betwixt moral good and evil."
This seems to be a rather restrictive view of "reason." Surely, reason is more than simply a tool to determine whether something is true or false. Good and evil may be linked to passions like pride and humility but these passions can still be analyzed from a reasonable point of view to determine if they are justified.