Philosophy Section 1 Guiding Questions
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Week of January 15
What is an amoralist? What challenge does the amoralist pose to morality?
The amoralist is a figure proposed by Bernard Williams that is a sort of attractive alternative to morality.
The amoralist is someone who seems indifferent to moral requirements, living outside of morality, rather
than having a genuine desire to treat others with consideration and respect. Might think of some of
Tolentino’s scammers, who don't really seem to care at all about whether they are taking advantage of
others to get ahead in their own lives. The challenge that the amoralist poses to morality concerns is
surrounding the idea that human social life presupposes cooperation, and this is possible only because
people by and large comply with basic moral standards in their interactions with each other. We need to
be able to count on people to speak truthfully, keep their word, etc. without trust, we can't effectively
achieve our individual ends. The amoralist doesn't deny this but asks: why should I care about being
trustworthy myself, so long as enough other people are willing to invest trust in each other to keep
cooperation going? (ex. Tolentino's definition of the scam “the abuse of trust for profit” which only works
if other people are by and large trustworthy)
Why can’t amoralists experience resentment, or take pride in how courageous they are?
The amoralist is someone who seems indifferent to moral requirements, living outside of morality, rather
than having a genuine desire to treat others with consideration and respect. Someone genuinely
impervious to moral considerations will ex. not see it as a problem with scamming that it takes advantage
of the vulnerable, or enables them to amass wealth through fraud or exploitation. Williams thinks if this is
your position, then you are also not entitled to resent others when they exploit or defraud or take
advantage of you, or when they treat you unfairly. Resentment presupposes that it is wrong to treat people
unfairly or exploitatively (objectivism about moral standards), and that its being wrong is a strong reason
not to act in these ways (objectivism about moral reasons). Our natural tendency to resent it when we are
treated unfairly or taken advantage of suggests that most of us acknowledge that there are reasons to
respect moral standards in our interpersonal relations. Some scammers and the like might take an attitude
of self-congratulation, thinking that they are admirable or heroic in some way in virtue of their rejection
of (bourgeois) moral standards—may be courageous in facing up to the fact that our conduct isn’t really
subject to moral constraints (“YOLO!”). Williams thinks this too is a potentially incoherent thought,
presupposing objective moral standards of virtue that everyone has good reason to care about.
Williams thinks that, if amoralists are all psychopaths, that wouldn’t pose much of a challenge to
morality. Explain this suggestion.
The psychopath does not have the potential for morality, and is completely indifferent to the welfare and
suffering of other people (including those who are close to them). This is a coherent possibility, something
that is sometimes depicted in literature and film, and possibly even exhibited in some real or hypothetical
public figures. But the life of a psychopath is not very attractive: it is bleak, devoid of significant
relationships or real joy, containing no achievements that are worthy of admiration or emulation. Williams
says the psychopath is not a threat to morality, because no sane person would
really want to live that way. Since Williams suggests that no sane person would willingly want to live as a
psychopath, and an amoralist interested in self-gain and able to manipulate others must be rational to a
certain extent, so amoralists living as psychopaths wouldn't threaten the moral standards of other people
since they would live a more isolated life.
How is Williams’s amoralist gangster different from his amoralist psychopath? Does the difference make
the gangster a more attractive alternative to the moral agent? Why or why not?
The movie gangster is “the ruthless and rather glamorous figure who cares about his mother, his
child, even his mistress”. The gangster, unlike the psychopath, is capable of having meaningful
relationships and concern for others, rather than living a solely selfish life. Gangsters can still be amoral,
seeing as they don't care for the morality of everyone (only specific people), so they still choose to be
ruthless and even cruel towards others whom they don't love. But they are still outside morality, insofar as
they don’t acknowledge that the interests of all persons count for something; they are willing to be
ruthless or cruel with people they don’t happen to love.Perhaps the scammer is a better example of this
than the gangster someone willing to exploit the vulnerable for gain, but who would not take advantage of
their own mother or their children.This makes gangsters more attractive than psychopaths since the few
valued relationships a gangster has can add meaning to their life, and they can experience genuine love,
whereas a psychopath leads a desolate life.
Explain the difference between partial altruism, and the kind of impartial concern for others
characteristic of morality.
- Partial altruism implies that there is a bias to have altruistic concern only for the people the individual
already cares about or is related to. The scammer just described has some sympathy for others, some
altruistic concern for their interests; but it is partial, limited to people they happen to care about or to be
related to. Note that some degree of partial altruistic concern (for offspring, e.g.) is plausibly part of our
evolutionary heritage and biological nature, something without which we would arguably not have been
able to survive as a species and transmit our genetic information to our descendants.
- Impartial concern means some degree of care is given for the interest of anybody, even if you don't have
a personal relationship with them. Moral standards, by contrast, require some degree of impartial
sympathy or concern for the interests of anybody; that’s why it is wrong to abuse the trust of a person for
gain, even if they aren’t your friend or your mother.
Week of January 22
What is the Euthyphro problem? Relate this problem to Kretzmann’s distinction between
Theological Subjectivism (TS) and Theological Objectivism (TO).
Is what our god tells us to do good just because god has told us to do it, or does god tell us to do what is
good for some other reason? This theory deals with the question of why does god command or approve of
what he does? Plato's Euthyphro essentially creates the dilemma of, "Do the gods love piety because it is
pious, or is it pious because they love it?". "Does god command morally right actions because they are
morally right (T.O.); or are they morally right because God commands them (T.S.)?" Does something
exist as such prior to god acknowledging it, or is it created once god states so? Theological Objectivism:
assumes that actions are morally right or morally wrong, independent of whether God commands it;
objective moral standards (they do not change); presupposes moral standards. Theological Subjectivism:
moral standards depend on god's will or attitude of approval; moral standards DEPEND on god's opinion
(subjective opinion).
What is Theological Subjectivism (TS)? Why does Kretzmann think that (TS) leads to the
“destruction of the basis of morality” (5)?
Theological Subjectivism is the perspective that God's will or attitude is what makes something morally
right or wrong. If God commands it, then it must be morally right because he said so. Moral standards are
entirely dependent on whether or not it is approved or rejected by God himself, making it a subjective
opinion. T.S. denies the existence of moral standards outside of what god commands, but in doing so,
makes moral standards objective to us, since they are independent of our beliefs and attitudes. So long as
God commands something as right or wrong, it will exist as such, regardless if we believe it to be right or
wrong. T.S. makes the content of morality to be arbitrary. Kretzmann argues that to believe T.S. would
then be to believe in the idea that literally any action can be deemed morally correct, so long as god
commands or approves it. T.S. would then be morally accepting of a father to sacrifice his son if god
commanded it, like in Abraham and Isaac; or for rich people to scam the vulnerable for profit. Because of
the way T.S. allows for the distortion of moral standards, by simply excusing behaviors as "god's will,"
Kretzmann argues that T.S. leads to the "destruction of the basis of morality".
Kretzmann writes (6): “if (TO) is right, the answer to the question ‘What does God have to do
with morality?’ is ‘Nothing essential’.” Explain this claim.
Theological Objectivism is the stance that moral standards are objective, in that what is right and wrong
exists independently of whether God says so or not. A basic problem with this option is that it doesn’t
really explain the objectivity of moral standards. It is assumed that certain kinds of actions would be
morally right and wrong, prior to and independently of God's commands. We do not explain objective
moral standards by appeal to god’s commands, rather we explain why god commands what he does by
appeal to objective moral standards.So this claim is merely stating that God does not influence morality,
according to (T.O.). "Nothing essential", as in God is not the essential component in dictating what is
moral or immoral. God is the messenger of morality, but is not the determinant behind morality.
If god commands that we comply with moral standards, does that give everyone a good reason
for complying with them?
God's commands are backed by the threat of divine punishment, which does give some kind of reason for
people to care about morality (assuming they subscribe to the idea of god). Ex. going to hell if diverging
from what god's will or intention commanded to be morally right or wrong, this is what “recommends” or
“speaks in favor” of doing the right thing”. However, the threat of punishment is a prudential, or
self-interested, reason to behave a certain way. So while God's commands might come with a reason for
some people to behave a certain way, this would constitute Kretzmann's idea of prudent behavior as
opposed to truly moral behavior. In short, yes God's commands give a certain reason, but should we
follow that reason, it basically cancels out the morality of the action. Not the RIGHT kind of reason to
behave or act in a moral way, so not a GOOD reason to do so.
What is “veneer theory”? What is de Waal’s basic objection to this way of thinking about
morality and human nature?
The idea that humanity is inherently "selfish and brutish [in] nature," and any observable moral conduct
we see among each other in society is merely a thin "veneer" of civilization that is actually resting on and
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