Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [14]
In a complicated world, problems are tricky. There’s nothing wrong with moral doubt, that sense that we don’t know which of two or more competing views is the best one to hold. It means we are authentically trying to figure out what actually is right.
Black and white thinking, the sense that we have all the answers and there is nothing to be learned from anyone who disagrees with us, is the mark of intellectual immaturity. Those who disagree with us may hold insights that we need to integrate into our own view, or if that is not possible, at least acknowledge in maintaining a conflicting standpoint. The problem is not that we argue passionately—passion of this sort is essential—rather, what we need to do is figure out how to talk passionately about hard issues without talking past each other. We need to get to be a culture of Formidable Opponents.
The Source of Moral Doubt
So where does this moral doubt come from? If we deserve a tip of the hat for intellectual maturity instead of a wag of the finger for insufficient moral commitment, what explains the sense of internal tension we experience in the case of hard moral questions? If we are to hold moral doubt to be desirable, we need to understand what it is, where it comes from, and what is opposing it.
A big part involves what we mean by the term “morally right.” We have an intuitive sense, but when asked to explain it clearly, we often find it difficult. We know that helping an old lady across the street with her groceries is a morally good thing, and that running off and stealing the groceries on the other side of the street is a bad thing. But why? What makes an action morally good or morally bad?
Those who champion the sort of moral absolutism that shuns moral doubt have a legitimate fear. They’re worried that without a simple definition of ethical right and wrong, the whole moral project might dissolve. Unless we have a straightforward, unambiguous ethic, the concern is that all force is removed from ethical prescriptions.
But it turns out that whether an act is morally acceptable or not is a complex question. Actually, it’s a series of questions. When we think about ethics there are at least five relevant parts of the ethical situation we consider: who did it, what he did, the effect of having done it, the person to whom it was done, and how it affects those to whom we have special moral obligations. Each one of these is tied to a piece of what we mean by “morally right” and “morally wrong” and provides us with one aspect of the complete moral picture. Thinking from the gut is not necessarily problematic. Rather, the problem is that we turn out to be like cows who have several stomachs—our gut will often be its own formidable opponent.
The Who in Ethics
When we act, it shapes who we are. There are two parts to acting well. First you have to figure out what the right thing to do is and the second is actually doing it. We don’t always do what we know we should do. After all, there are doctors who smoke, policemen who steal, and sixth-grade English teachers who dangle their participles in public.
Doing what we know we should is a function of character and the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that our character is shaped by our actions. We are creatures of habit and when we act in a certain way, we make it more likely that we will act that way again the next