Q&A: The Obligation of Morality and the Feeling of Hunger
The Obligation of Morality and the Feeling of Hunger
Question
I didn’t understand what the Rabbi gains (in the trilogy) from the whole intricate move that tries to escape the naturalistic fallacy by saying that the validity of morality stems from contemplating the idea of morality. After all, even after I contemplate and see that murder gives me butterflies in my stomach, or a feeling of disgust, or inflammation in the pathways of conscience, and so on—still, this is deriving a norm from a fact! How is that different from a feeling of hunger, which as far as I know does not obligate me to eat? At most, one could advise a person who would experience those same negative reactions to murder to reconsider the act (so as not to harm his sensitive conscience, if he cares about it).
Only if we accept the assumption that the very idea of the good is a fact (a new kind of fact) will we get the implications of that contemplation, and that too the Rabbi wrote in his book—but that is begging the question!
Answer
Not true. You present this as an ordinary fact (stomachaches or inflammations), but this is a fact of a different kind: an ethical fact. From an ethical fact one can derive a norm. The naturalistic fallacy deals with facts in the ordinary sense. Indeed, the idea of the good is a fact. That is not begging the question, but rather an assumption from which the conclusion can reasonably be derived—and only from it. Although, in the essential sense, every logical argument of course begs the question. In that sense, what I am claiming is an insight by virtue of moral validity. My claim is that the view that moral norms have validity is based on our relating to the idea of the good as a fact. Now you can call that begging the question, but that doesn’t change anything. I did not come to persuade someone who does not have that perception, only someone who does. See the fourth conversation in the first book.
Discussion on Answer
But what convinces you that there is a different factual validity to the stomachaches of conscience than to the stomachaches of hunger? Why do you assume there is some new idea here? What about Occam’s razor??? What is wrong with explaining it as a stomachache of hunger that does not obligate? Because it feels more elevated to you? When a hedgehog fiercely defends her offspring, is she performing a noble act that draws on pure ideas of the good?
What convinces me is the understanding that it is not that. It is like asking what convinces you that the building you see is a different one and not your building. I simply see that it is not that. Or why your stomachaches are not identical to pains in the leg? Because you understand that they are not. The hedgehog, like a human parent who protects his offspring, is not doing anything noble. It is an instinctive action.
The validity that moral norms have stems from the fact that a person wants to impose what he thinks is good on everyone.
It is, all in all, a desire for control. Not everyone has that. (For those who do not have this desire, it is not clear whether that is because they do not have a strong and clear idea of the good, or because they do not have a desire for control.)
And still, that does not mean the desire is invalid. But there is nothing in it that is not human, animal instinct.
And the question still remains: whose “good” would be best to impose on the world?
And the answer is, of course, connected to the definition of “best.”
And the number of answers is the number of sects and opinions.