A 25 year-old Sudanese man is dying of malaria. He knows that he is dying, and he knows that no-one --not his family, not the local "hospital", not the local "government"--has the resources to save him. He may fight the deadly disease off, or he may not, but one thing is sure: his own health is of immanent, intrinsic importance to him.
As part of my ongoing campaign against objectivism about value, I offer the following salvo: objectivism about value is a luxury, an indulgence that only members of a privileged class could ever begin to take seriously. This means that, at the very least, we need an argument from the objectivist to show us why their affluent, hyper-reflective perspective has priority in such matters.
Writing in the undeniably affluent and luxurious west, intellectuals have offered these kinds of reflections about the value of human life or human activity:
We should be concerned, very concerned, when popular, influential philosophical theories can only be taken seriously by affluent people. We need not be full-fledged Marxists to recognize that there is a problem, here: our 25 year-old malaria sufferer could not possibly be persuaded that the size of the earth--or the results of a psychologist's questionnaire, or the fitness-enchancing attribute of a distant evolutionary ancestor--has any bearing whatsoever on his judgment that his life is valuable and worth preserving.
No doubt, someone with an objectivist temperament will leap to offer an explanation of the man's evaluative mental state, indeed, the evolutionary-psychological account of it is so easy to construct that it borders on the banal. Yet, again, we must ask what this explanatory account could possibly mean to the Sudanese man, even if he is fully capable of understanding it?
The thing with an affluent life is that it is mostly free from the kinds of difficult experiences that tend to convince us of the intrinsic importance of certain lived experiences. When one's most pressing desire is for a tall americano, one is sufficiently free to distance oneself from one's desires in the way that the objectivist analyses require. The ubiquity of various human goods masks their immanent importance, allowing the affluent person to entertain hypotheses about value that seem positively comical to a person caught up in a more difficult life.
An impoverished life tends to throw the intrinsic importance and the deep fragility of human goods into sharp relief. An impoverished person simply does not have the option of reflecting on the relation between the size of the earth and their own values. Their own feelings, their own subjective instincts and intuitions, will appear to have singular authority in this matter.
I do not know of any argument that could possibly show that they are mistaken to feel this way. Certainly, no such argument is forthcoming from the people I've listed above, people who think that it is illuminating to strip away all subjectivity from value in order to study it "scientifically". In place of an argument, we have a kind of ideological blind-spot which allows a privileged class of thinkers to churn out profitable and fashionable nonsense.
As part of my ongoing campaign against objectivism about value, I offer the following salvo: objectivism about value is a luxury, an indulgence that only members of a privileged class could ever begin to take seriously. This means that, at the very least, we need an argument from the objectivist to show us why their affluent, hyper-reflective perspective has priority in such matters.
Writing in the undeniably affluent and luxurious west, intellectuals have offered these kinds of reflections about the value of human life or human activity:
- From a very distant vantage point, the earth looks like a tiny speck, and this makes all of our activity, all of our straining and striving, look completely unimportant. (Carl Sagan)
- Empirical studies show that while people may think their lives are valuable, they are in fact mistaken about this. (David Benatar)
- We value the things we value because evolution has "programmed" us to do so. (E.O. Wilson, also suggested at various times by Dawkins, Pinker and Dan Dennett)
We should be concerned, very concerned, when popular, influential philosophical theories can only be taken seriously by affluent people. We need not be full-fledged Marxists to recognize that there is a problem, here: our 25 year-old malaria sufferer could not possibly be persuaded that the size of the earth--or the results of a psychologist's questionnaire, or the fitness-enchancing attribute of a distant evolutionary ancestor--has any bearing whatsoever on his judgment that his life is valuable and worth preserving.
No doubt, someone with an objectivist temperament will leap to offer an explanation of the man's evaluative mental state, indeed, the evolutionary-psychological account of it is so easy to construct that it borders on the banal. Yet, again, we must ask what this explanatory account could possibly mean to the Sudanese man, even if he is fully capable of understanding it?
The thing with an affluent life is that it is mostly free from the kinds of difficult experiences that tend to convince us of the intrinsic importance of certain lived experiences. When one's most pressing desire is for a tall americano, one is sufficiently free to distance oneself from one's desires in the way that the objectivist analyses require. The ubiquity of various human goods masks their immanent importance, allowing the affluent person to entertain hypotheses about value that seem positively comical to a person caught up in a more difficult life.
An impoverished life tends to throw the intrinsic importance and the deep fragility of human goods into sharp relief. An impoverished person simply does not have the option of reflecting on the relation between the size of the earth and their own values. Their own feelings, their own subjective instincts and intuitions, will appear to have singular authority in this matter.
I do not know of any argument that could possibly show that they are mistaken to feel this way. Certainly, no such argument is forthcoming from the people I've listed above, people who think that it is illuminating to strip away all subjectivity from value in order to study it "scientifically". In place of an argument, we have a kind of ideological blind-spot which allows a privileged class of thinkers to churn out profitable and fashionable nonsense.
12 comments:
I should begin this comment by saying that I am a 24-year old from the wealthy West. However, I do not think that (completely) refutes what I am about to say.
I am wondering if people in the most primitive, undeveloped, non-Western places can still find themselves as insignificant as the objectivist my think they are simply by looking around them -- I suppose this assumes they have the leisure to look around a reflect.
What I mean is that when I realize that I am dwarfed (in size) by massive geological formations or dwarfed (in history) by the foliage that covers these formations, I begin to see how miniscule and unimportant I am. I do not need to be educated in the Western tradition to realize this. And I do not need to be a member of the Starbucks-worshipping upper middle class to think these thoughts.
In fact, I would imagine that these thoughts might be more common to people who live in undeveloped areas of the world, especially if their lineage has existed in the same geographical location for a long time.
I am perfectly comfortable with you tearing this counterexample apart, because I am not expressing some deep-seated conviction. I am merely enlivening your post with some dialogue. So without further ado, tell me why I am wrong in my thinking. :)
Rereading my comment, I think I might have done better to ask you to defend the following statement: "An impoverished person simply does not have the option of reflecting on the relation between the size of the earth and their own values."
Nick B: I have my doubts about this notion in itself. Leave the questions of privilege behind. From what do you conclude that being a relatively small physical being, or living for a relatively short period of time, makes you "miniscule" and "unimportant." I have never understood this viewpoint. Take, for example, the way Nick expresses Carl Sagan's view: "From a very distant vantage point, the earth looks like a tiny speck, and this makes all of our activity, all of our straining and striving, look completely unimportant." That might be true if there were a seeing eye at that vantage point, and it was itself so large and influential as to affect our world. But as it is, human beings are the only creatures that we know of that can make logical observations or truly affect the universe.
Expressed in other terms, a human being is not the size of the mountain. People have, however, moved, shaped, mined, built paths through and blown up mountains, as acts of will. How does seeing the mountain make you less significant?
I am dealing more in size than in time, but I feel the same basic argument applies: regardless of how old the universe may be, no outside force can observe that fact. Time is an observation that only humans can truly measure. The universe does not know how old it is.
Puppyclaws, thanks for your comment, but Nick does raise an important clarifying question.
First off, Nick: I did not mean to suggest in any way that being from a certain socio-economic group "refutes" or undermines anything you believe whatsoever. That is a pervasive error in certain radical feminist/postmodernist writers, who argue that something called "privilege" automatically undermines what a person says, no matter how well-thought out.
My point is different: I am suggesting (in an admittedly speculative manner) that while a Sagan-style reflection is possible for a chronically impoverished person, the reflection itself will almost certainly seem absurd, pointless and irrelevant to that person.
I think you are suggesting that a poor person can still experience "awe" in the face of nature's towering marvels. That seems perfectly right. However, I imagine that this will not characteristically lead such a person to think that their life is insignificant in Sagan's sense. Rather, such "religious" experiences seem to lead people to honour and even worship the natural forces of which they are in awe.
That's my first response, not sure it's totally adequate, though.
Puppyclaws: Glad you joined in too.
I will try and express my counterexample more clearly. I will start with the feeling of smallness.
I grant that feeling small is not the same thing as feeling insignificant, but I would be unsurprised if feeling small lead to other feelings (feelings about which the feeler would entertain some thoughts). And I think it is quite possible that these subsequent feelings (and/or thoughts) could involve content which amounts to "being relatively less important" or "less significant" than the things which inspired the feelings (and thoughts): natural wonders, the concept of history. This assumes that thoughts and feelings do not operate in a vacuum, but are influenced by any number of things (including other thoughts and feelings) -- I think this assumption is in good company, no? This is how, then I presume that feeling small could lead to feeling insignificant. Allow a brief illustration:
"I feel small," a person might think. "Everything around me seems to have been here long before me. That probably means that it will be here long after me. That makes me feel like a mere guest in this place. I wonder how this place cam to be. The more I think about the world I inhabit, the more I entertain the possibility that there is so much more than me and the sensations I have during my brief life."
From here I grant that the person could induce a number of things (e.g. the "worship" of natural forces and wonders), but I do not think that we have ruled out the possibility that a person could induce a Sagan-like proposition.
The person need not use Sagan's sciency language or refer to some Archimedean vantage point of the universe. My point is that all one needs is their own vantage point and some time to think about a "bigger picture" than one's own joy and suffering. (I grant that Sagan's picture is 'bigger' than the person's that I have hitherto proposed).
And note this: even if the person decides to "worship" the natural wonders, the person has taken a step towards Sagan's worldview. His worldview moves away from the "my suffering qua matters" toward "my suffering might matter, but there is so much more to this world than my suffering...things that are more impressive than me, things that predate me, things that will outlive me, things that are bigger than the things I create, things that I am not capable or making, things that teams of people like me are not capable or making, things that make me seem, by comparison, less significant." So, just because a person takes the religious road, does not mean that they are not on their way to a Sagan-like worldview. The religious vocabulary might be the best vocabulary a primitive, localized, chronically impoverished people has to express a Sagan-like worldview.
Nick: thanks for clarifying the bit about "privelage" and worldview.
I am still open to conceding to one or both of you, however, Puppyclaws's "I have never understood this point" is not identical to "this point is untrue or contains a logical error." And Nick's "awe...will not characteristically lead people to think that their life is insignificant in Sagan's sense" still leaves room for (allegedly uncharacteristic) moments like the one I mention. And if there is room for what I have said, then a person should not be pardoned for not holding a objectivist (albeit only quasi-objectivist) worldview simply because they are chronically impoverished.
That last point was to spice things up.
Nick,
You're right about all of this, of course, and I think I see what was wrong with my initial response. It is not that any cultural heritage or even poverty as such prevents any particular perspective on valuing. Nor is it that poverty as such rules out any particular system of values.
Rather, I think what I was trying to say is this: poverty is pretty much defined by an abundance of suffering and immanent danger. From the point of view of this kind of existence, metaethical objectivism seems absurd.
Metaethical objectivism is the view that our values receive their authority from some mind-independent or non-subjective source. DNA, empirical psychology and Sagan's "galactic" perspective are the sorts of sources that are characteristically cited.
What I am claiming is that a suffering person cannot possibly assent to the idea that their immanent values (the value they put
on their lives or the lives of close family members) could possibly be undermined or invalidated by such perspectives. Metaethical objectivism implies that if these values really are appropriate or good ones, they are so because some external, mind-independent perspective validates them. That is, to a suffering person, absurd.
THAT it is absurd to a suffering person does not prove that the position itself is false. However, we need an argument to show that their position is somehow faulty or distorted. I am not aware of any such argument.
In sum: I would not wish to focus on a person's economic or cultural status as such. Rather, my focus is on the suffering and difficulty encountered by such people, and the ways in which such experiences will tend to make objectivism seem absurd.
I think I am finally understanding your position. Thank you for being so patient with my attempts at understanding you. My final question is about what you mean by absurd.
Do you mean "incoherent", "non-sensical", "laughable", "personally objectionable"?
(I promise I am not trying to build a straw man. I am honestly curious. I find your position important enough to try and grasp fully.)
Another excellent clarificatory question! I am most interested in the fact that these more "objective" considerations will almost certainly appear irrelevant to the sufferer.
For example, suppose I asked you if you think the sun will rise tomorrow. You say that you believe that it will. I counter by saying: "Ah, but perhaps it will not, for twelve plus nine is twenty-one."
Your natural reaction will almost certainly be: what does the sum of 9 and 12 have to do with the probability of the sun rising tomorrow? The consideration in question is simply not relevant to any reasonable line of inquiry into this issue. This is the sort of irrelevance I'm claiming for metaethical objectivism: the kinds of considerations it cites as the sources of authority for our values are suspiciously irrelevant to persons in difficult or dire circumstances.
Thanks again for the clarification. It was thoroughly enjoyable to tease out the specifics. Thanks for putting up with my questioning and for posting something worth dialoguing about. I am sure I will be back for more someday.
Would you mind if I posted your main point to my own blog (giving credit and a link, of course)?
There is something to be said about how detached some perspectives are from the concrete experience of another's suffering and the abstractions ethicists employ withdrawn and removed from life as lived.
I am most interested in the fact that these more "objective" considerations will almost certainly appear irrelevant to the sufferer.
OK, but how do you get from the observation that some objectivist thinkers take misguided ethical positions to the conclusion that objectivism itself is the wrong approach? In fact, your own argument about the Sudanese man is actually an objective argument disguised as a subjective one. After all, you aren't the Sudanese man. Rather, when you look at and think about the world, you notice that he exists and his suffering is important.
I don't understand the point of devaluing certain thinkers for being too affluent. There are many other famous, affluent thinkers who do care about global poverty and suffering. This whole post is a transparent excuse to bash the rich for being privileged. But none of us has a general objection to affluent thinkers. We've all been influenced by them, and this isn't going to change. Your real gripe is with specific conclusions by specific thinkers. For instance, I agree that Sagan's statement is wrong. But the explanation why it's wrong isn't that there's a Sudanese man who personally doesn't care about Sagan's observations. You and I are able to figure out that Sagan is wrong by using our own powers of reasoning.
Post a Comment