Q&A: Rational Egoism – There Is No Rational Reason to Obey the Laws of Morality
Rational Egoism – There Is No Rational Reason to Obey the Laws of Morality
Question
I watched and read a bit of what Rabbi Michael Abraham has written, and I wasn’t convinced that a person needs to obey the laws of morality. It seems that the Rabbi accepts this as an axiom, even if he doesn’t define it that way. I didn’t see a clear intellectual argument.
My claim is this: if we take a person without a conscience who can perform an immoral act without consequences (such as stealing), there is no way to persuade him by means of rational arguments to refrain from this act. So what is it? We have a conscience. That is not intellect. We have a mechanism in our genes that causes us pain (“pangs of conscience”) in situations where we behave in an “unfair” way. This mechanism apparently gave us some kind of evolutionary advantage.
When people say that something is “morally forbidden,” they mean “it is unfair.” That is, if there were an objective judge who wanted everyone’s good equally, he would determine that this action is forbidden. But that does not mean that such a judge exists or that one must obey him.
I do not think that if an action is “unfair” (or “immoral”), then I am obligated to avoid doing it. There is no rational argument for why a person should obey the laws of morality.
This has been my view for over 5 years, and I live according to this outlook.
I would be happy to hear an argument proving that a person should obey the laws of morality, and/or obey an entity that tells me what to do but will not punish me if I do otherwise.
Answer
This is a misunderstanding. There is nothing in the world that I can persuade someone to do. Every argument is based on premises, and premises can always be rejected. Commitment to morality or to the divine command is a first principle. A primary intuition. Someone who does not accept intuitions—there is no argument in the world that can persuade him of anything on earth. And even if in principle he does accept intuitions but does not find these particular intuitions within himself, there is no logical way to persuade him (though there are rhetorical ways). This is not the place for that.
Discussion on Answer
Obviously you do have premises, and it has to do with the question of what counts as a proof, what level of certainty is required, whether it specifically has to be a logical proof, and so on and so on.
Very nice. I hope you’ve already bought a ticket to Stockholm, for the Nobel Prize for presenting an argument without premises.
Come on now, what I meant was that I have no premises that can be rejected.
I’m not using axioms.
If someone sees a way to reject my claim, I’d be glad to hear it!
Michi uses a first principle (an axiom), because there is no way to prove his claim. Because it is a false claim.
I refuse to use axioms, and therefore my conclusion is that there is no purpose in life.
Premise:
1. There is no proof that one must act for one purpose or another in life.
Conclusion: do whatever you want.
King David, if you do not have such an intuition, there is no way to persuade you. Michi does have it, and he builds his argument on it.
You can find in the writings of Michi and David Enoch why they think morality is objective and why most people probably do have this intuition.
King David,
your main premise is that you need a logical proof in order to be committed to something. Who says that’s true? Maybe it seems to me that intuition is stronger, and that is what is required in order to be committed to something.
More generally, have you ever thought about what a proof even is? What is it based on? Have you thought about the problem of induction and causality? First you need to deal with epistemological questions, and only then deal with what one should actually do.
King David’s argument is not constructed correctly.
The correct form is this:
1. There is no (logical) proof that one must act, etc.
2. If there is no logical proof, then there is no other way to be committed.
Conclusion: do whatever you want.
The second premise can very much be argued over. And that is exactly what Michi is doing.
Rabbi Michi, I am claiming exactly what your son Yossi claims (from an article of yours):
“It can be said that evolution is what created within us Kant’s categorical imperative. As my son Yossi likes to say, it convinced us of this nonsense (that one should act without consequentialist considerations, to do acts that are useless) because this has survival value for the gene (the collective, or the group). Therefore he himself (=Yossi) is happy that the public is stupid and acts according to this foolish Kantian principle, since he too would not want his actions to become a general law, but he himself of course does not act that way (after all, no one loses from it, so why should he go vote or refrain from evading taxes).”
Link: https://mikyab.net/posts/6291/
And to all those here in the comments who claim that logic (proofs, reason) is not the only thing that obligates—fine, do you have a way to prove that I am obligated to do something even if it is not logical? And yes, I am aware that the very fact that I am asking for proof means that I continue to go only with logic. But why should I go with something that is not logical?
As for intuition—the fact that a person has a certain feeling, a slight pull toward something in particular, does not mean that he is obligated to act that way.
I do not see the point of discussing the nature of logic and why one should specifically follow reason, because it makes no practical difference: let us say one does not need to follow reason, then what…? What is your argument? How can you even present an argument if reason and logic are no longer in the picture?
I agree with everything except the sentence, “Every argument is based on premises, and premises can always be rejected.” My argument is not based on premises, and it goes like this:
There is no way to prove that the purpose of life is this or that. There is no logical proof that one must obey the laws of morality, obey the Creator, and so on. Therefore, a rational person will do whatever he feels like.
That is, there is no purpose in life. A person can do whatever he wants. There is no reason to do otherwise.