December 5, 2021

Moral Error as Estrangement from the Good Part Two - Towards a Theory of Error

In the first part I briefly sketched my position as an epistemically optimistic direct realism. As such, it is characterized by three claims: 1) All of reality can, in principle, be the object of knowledge; 2) Whenever we think and judge correctly, we are in direct contact with the piece of reality that is the object of thought and judgment; 3) Knowledge is the rule; error the exception.

As I said, it is the exception that needs explanation. If, in general, we succeed in apprehending what is good, how does it happen that, sometimes, we do not? My tentative answer which I am going to explore here, is that moral error expresses a kind of estrangement from the Good.

In general, and on an abstract level, we know what is good and bad. We know that it is wrong to betray someone’s trust. We know that it is wrong to keep others from living the life they consider worth living. We know that it is wrong to inflict suffering for no good reason. Difficulties arise when we are called to apply those very general principles to the concrete situations we encounter in life, because life is messy and muddled. It is hard to see which specific actions are conducive to which specific goods and which of those specific good is the one to bring about in a given situation.

When, in pondering such specific situations, we fail to arrive at a true judgment about the Good, something must have gotten in the way. Something must have redirected our reasoning so that is has strayed from the path, so to speak.1 The situation I have in mind is that of a person whom I hope to be the ordinary person: someone who has a relatively stable and consistent set of moral convictions that are overall correct. In general, this person is disposed to act on these convictions but (again, I hope this is a description that invites identification) sometimes they might be challenged in this disposition and occasionally they might fail to live up to the demands of their moral outlook. In short, it is the kind of person I sketched in the example I keep using for lack of a better one but also because, in all modesty, I think it is a good example: the person who does not hesitate to promise assistance to a friend who will be moving to another place but might hesitate to fulfill their promise if the incentive is strong enough.

What goes on in the mind of this person? I think it is not far-fetched to describe the process along these lines: they wake up in the morning, excited that they will finally be able to watch the new season of their favorite show. They have been looking forward to this day for weeks. But then they remember their promise. They regret the promise that they made and which will prevent them from doing what they have been looking forward to for weeks. So they start thinking: What if I just stay at home? - But I can’t do this, I made a promise. - I can just say, I can’t make it and come up with an excuse. - But they‘re a friend! - There will be enough other people to help, it doesn’t really matter if I don’t show up…

We can imagine this internal dialogue proceeding for some time. What matters is that this person, being an ordinary person with stable moral convictions that, overall, are correct, is aware of the fact that they would be acting wrong if they were to act against their promise. So, they find rationalizations for their wrong-doing. And it is precisely this internal tension and the attempt to overcome it through rationalizing one’s wrongdoing that suggests to interpret those kinds of situations as estrangement from the good.

Estrangement or alienation is usually understood as the non-identity of subject and object which, if all goes right, should be identical. Note how this echoes the epistemology of direct realism to which I expressed my commitment in the first part. I am taking the idea of direct contact with reality very seriously, just as Aristotle does when he says that knowledge actualized is identical to its object2, or Helen Wodehouse when she says that when we think truly, ‘our thinking is truth.’3 So, the subject and object in question are thinking and the object of thought. This means that in true moral thinking, the person’s thinking is identical with the Good. Since the person wants to be a good person, their actual person is identical with the person they want to be. Even more so, given the fact that the person is the kind of person who regularly succeeds in apprehending the Good.

In the deviant case, then, something gets in the way that opens up a gap between the Good and the apprehension of the Good. In the case we imagined, it is a desire for entertainment that is given priority over the morally called for action. Crucially, the person in questions knows that they are acting wrong, and they are finding rationalizations for it. The fact that they are trying to pass off their decision as good, or at least not bad, betrays their estrangement. Because, if they were not aware of the gap between the good action and the action they actually perform, they would not try to close it.

So, from what is an agent estranged who misses the Good in the way our imagined person does? They are estranged from the Good, as the premise of this text says, but what does this mean? I think, ultimately it is estrangement from oneself. Again, an important aspect of the example is that the person in question knows what is the moral thing to do. Since knowledge actualized is identical to its object, their knowledge is the Good. Knowledge is the result of the exercise of rational capacities that characterize the human life-form. In making use of our rational capacities, we actualize ourselves. In the domain of the practical, the result of this self-actualization is (knowledge of) the Good. When we fail to live up to moral standards, we fail to live up ourselves. The gap that is opened up is the gap between who we are in general and who we are in this concrete situation. And this is why, in being estranged from the Good, we are estranged from ourselves.