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In Which I
Defend David Brooks
One of the points I made during my
long series of
futile attacks on the entrenched malefactors of analytic philosophy
was that since ethics applies to everyone’s voluntary choices, it is part
of the nature of valid ethical knowledge (by contrast to, e.g., the theory
of fluid dynamics) that it should be disseminated into the community of
responsible adults. That is to say, if the theory of fluid dynamics is
only understood by specialists, fluids still behave in exactly the same
way; but if the principles of ethics are not widely understood, ethical
behavior changes (presumably for the worse). Furthermore, if ethics is
only understood by professional ethicists, this leads us into a nightmare
world where the vast majority of men and women are judged by shadowy,
distant experts on the basis of principles which are unknown the ones
being judged.
I even went on to say that ethics
by nature has a purpose, which is to help people make better ethical
choices and become better people – though I was informed that this view is
naïve, if not ridiculous.
I was speaking somewhat
hypothetically then, but just now I happened onto an actual example of
what I meant. Expert ethicist
Brian Leiter:
| Here is
David Brooks commenting on Dylan Klebold, one of the two high
school students who shot up the Columbine High School in Colorado in
1999, killing many classmates, before killing himself:
"My instinct is that Dylan
Klebold was a self-initiating moral agent who made his choices and
should be condemned for them. Neither his school nor his parents
determined his behavior."
So Brooks is a "libertarian"
incompatibilist about free will: he thinks free will is incompatible
with determinism, but believes we can be self-caused in some sense.
Has Brooks been reading my colleague Robert Kane? Or perhaps he is
more attracted to Timothy O'Connor's version of agent-causation
theories? Or maybe he's a retrograde Chisholmian?
Or maybe, just maybe, he
hasn't thought about the issue at all, couldn't make a coherent
argument on the subject if his life depended on it, but knows this
is what his stinking right-wing sanctimony requires? |
Brooks, for whom I have neither
admiration or respect, was making two commonsensical points here: first,
that Dylan Klebold was responsible for his own acts, and second, that no
one else was. His second point is the important one, and is presumably
meant to counter the idea that Klebold’s acts tell us that something is
wrong with America. I think that Brooks’s conclusion on the second point
was a bit hasty, but his first point seems to be a fairly reasonable
statement of an important principle behind our legal system.
Leiter quotes Nietzsche:
| "Wherever responsibilities
are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and
punish which is at work...: the doctrine of the will has been
invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because
one wants to impute guilt...Men were considered 'free' so that they
might be judged and punished…the metaphysics of free will is the
metaphysics of the hangman." |
Well, yes. The metaphysics of free
will is a metaphysics of responsibility, guilt, and innocence, and it
stands behind our legal system. You can call it the metaphysics of the
hangman, but you could just as well call it the metaphysics of contracts,
torts, and traffic tickets. Perhaps Brooks was here conflating legal
responsibility and moral responsibility in an unprofessional way, but most
people would agree with him that unless Klebold was insane, his acts were
both immoral and illegal, in approximately the same way.
The most objectionable thing to me is
Leiter’s insinuation that what Brooks said is ridiculous simply because
Brooks is unaware of the subtleties of ethical theory. This sneer of
Leiter's would apply to almost everyone in the world except for a few
thousand professional philosophers. More specifically, it would apply to
judges, prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, and jurors, all of whom
are required by law to adhere to a notion of responsibility which, while
not necessarily exactly the same as the one Brooks states, would be from
Leiter’s point of view equally incompetent and erroneous.
Leiter is a big defender of
contemporary professionalized philosophy and its culture of expert
specialization, and he has carefully explained that carping outsiders like
myself are incompetent malcontent losers. Here, in his criticism of
Brooks, we see him extending the scope of professional ethics into
everyday life. But at this point Leiter runs straight into another of my
criticisms of academic ethics.
Philosophical ethics is a field in
which nothing is ever decided. Someone who devotes a year of their life to
the study of academic ethics will end up with a broad overview of several
schools of metaethical argumentation (deontic, utilitarian, emotive, etc.)
but will have no way of choosing between them, and they will gain no real
insight into the contexts of ethical acts and no concrete knowledge of the
most important types of ethical questions encountered in real life.
Supposing that the judges, lawyers, and jurors I mentioned above were to
go to contemporary philosophy for help in doing their jobs, they would
almost certainly end up more confused than they had been when they
started, and they might well end up incapable of doing their jobs at all.
In the present state of the game, philosophical ethics may well do more
harm than good.
This is the first time that I have
ever defended Brooks, and I hope it's the last. I blame Brian, who is a
morally responsible human being and should have known better.
Philosophy and Decision
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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.
Original materials copyright John J
Emerson
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