Why be good?

• There’s an old internet quote originally by Lauren Morrill: “I don’t know how to explain that you should care about other people.” I want to give a series of internal reasons which might answer this question. I will refer to caring about other people by various terms, such as altruism and being moral. What I mean by this is wanting the lives of all or almost all humans to go well, and placing a fair degree of weight on this concern.

• By “internal” reason, I mean a reason in line with what the agent already wants- reasons given by the fact of the agent desiring something. If you think that what is good for an agent is to get what it wants, then internal reasons in my sense are prudential reasons. Even if “getting what you want” isn’t exactly what wellbeing means, it might be correlated with it. Thus, many of the internal reasons I give, I think, are related to the agent’s wellbeing.

• In giving such an internal case, I need to be careful. I want the reasons I give to be good Humean moral psychology compatiable reasons.

• For non-philosophers, I won’t explain what Humean moral psychology is, but I’ll illustrate the relevant point- the separation between rationality and being good.

• Consider DEATHBOT. DEATHBOT wants to kill all humans. It will then build a vast Dyson sphere around the sun and make itself into an electronic God. It seems to me that it is unlikely that some really clever argument can show that DEATHBOT is wrong, and actually, wanting to kill all humans is irrational. The general problem here, and a lot of philosophers are going to hate me for this simplification, but the general problem is that if “wrong” means “wrong” in the way 2+2=5 is wrong, then this just seems unlikely to be true. If “wrong” is some special, richer notion of “wrong” linked to a thicker concept of rationality, then it is very unclear to me why DEATHBOT should care about “being wrong” or any such “thicker” concept of rationality.

• Thus, the reasons I offer start more from Human psychology, from features that distinguish us from DEATHBOT than “the very idea of reason” or any such thing. I will try to establish that, given these contingent features of humans and what they desire, it may be rational for many people to be good, even if they’re not inclined to try to be good at the moment.

• Some of the reasons I give to be good depend not just on artificially induced striving for others’ welfare, but on really being emotionally invested in their wellbeing. I will largely assume, without argument, that given reasons to care about others, people have the power of inducing in themselves that caring. E.g., at least for many or most people, if you desire to desire that things go well for others, you can, at least with effort, induce in yourself a wanting that things go well for others. I think this is true! To quote Blaise Pascal on religion: “Follow the way by which they began: act as if you believe—take holy water, have Masses said, and so on. Even this will naturally make you believe.” I’ve sometimes heard it glossed as “Kneel, and then you will believe”. If you want to be really invested in altruism, and you act like it, eventually you will be so invested.

• Consistency

• Argument 1: I notice that when people behave immorally in a way that injures me, I feel moral resentment towards them. I desire to be coherent in my attitudes (most people find the accusation of incoherence troubling). I cannot be coherent if I feel moral resentment toward those who harm me, while I feel no pressure to be moral myself. Hence, if I want to be consistent, and I don’t want to give up resenting wrongdoing, I have an internal reason to be moral.

• Observation: By resentment, I mean the state of outrage that you or someone you care about has been treated immorally. For some reason, resentment has a bad reputation in our society, but so long as the outrage is merited, it’s perfectly just, and indeed practically indispensable for making things better. Likewise, “vindicativeness”- literally seeking vindication for a perceived wrong- is admirable in many ways, yet the word is a pejorative. Very odd. Our society does not like kicking those weaker than oneself, but it often treats complaining about being kicked as worse than kicking.

• Argument 2: Traditionally, modern philosophy has focused on this argument, although I find it among the weakest: Other people are not, relevantly, different from me. There is no reason to care about me but not them. Further, to use Parfit’s extension of the argument, it is unclear that there is a major moral distinction between the difference between me and Bob now, and the difference between me now and me in twenty years. Both are very different from me now, so why care about future me and not you now? Problem. I think “Just because” is a perfectly fine answer here. Desire is often arbitrary. Still, I suppose if you did want your desires not to be riddled with fiat distinctions, this might be a good internal reason to adopt morality.

• Scope

• Argument 3: I desire to be larger than I am. I do not want to be limited to the scope of a single being who might easily be destroyed. I do not wish to be the sort of being who has no reason to rejoice in the accomplishments of humanity. Identifying with humanity as a whole- its interests, goals, and projects- gives me a way out of this smallness, which grants both a certain security (what I care about won’t die with me) and increased opportunities for joy and celebration. Now you might say, “Couldn’t you identify with a smaller slice of humanity, like a nation? Yes, you could, but it would limit both the joy and existential security gained through the identification.

• Argument 4: I know that if I had experienced life through your eyes, I would have great sympathy for you- this is generally true even of most people who aren’t especially altruistic. Thus, if I do not have sympathy for you now, I am allowing myself to be limited by the absence of an experience which I already know would change me if I had it. If you tell someone that a given experience would change how they feel, most people take it that this is a reason to adopt the attitude, even without having had the experience. To not do so seems to be to avoidably limit oneself through a lack of experience. Many people do not want to be so limited, and so have an internal reason to avoid it.

• Argument 5: I desire to love myself to be fond of myself, and affirm my own value. By regarding the human species as a whole as intrinsically valuable and worthy of good things, as appropriately treated with love, I affirm my value, because I am a human being.

• Aesthetics

• Argument 6: To conceive of myself as morally heroic, or aspiring for moral heroism, or to truly appreciate moral heroism in others, or even in art, I must have altruistic aims. Do not dismiss this as a small consideration- there is an inspiring scope and grandeur to the moral worldview that is lacking in alternatives, and we do not live on bread alone.

• Argument 7: Related to the previous argument about heroism. Many people long for a sense of purpose; this is much easier to come by when we care about others.

• Argument 8: To not care about others in a world in which people care about us is to free ride. But many people find parasitism and freeriding distasteful, even if they are not signed up to a general program of altruism. This can be for several reasons, but among other problems, it is aesthetically unappealing. It seems, for want of a better word, weak and, in a way, hypocritical. This can give a reason to care about others for those who find parasitism distasteful.

• Argument 9: A desire for fellowship with culture. I want to connect with the beautiful things humans have created. If I do not care about other people, this will be difficult for two reasons: 1. Because these works are disproportionately constructed on a basis of caring. To feel along with the artworks, we must share these commitments 2. Because emotional investment in the well-being of others makes emotional investment in art easier, because it is, in effect, investment in the lives of others.

• Observation: Overall, cumulatively for the reasons given above, and probably for other reasons besides, I think that caring about all people is simply a much more aesthetically compelling way of seeing things than limiting one’s care to one’s own wellbeing, or to a small community (family, a nation). In its beauty, it trumps views that are outwardly far more concerned with aesthetics than the ethical standpoint. No fascist ever created anything as beautiful as the christological narrative or the stories of the Bodhisattvas. I am interested in, for want of a better term, the aesthetics of ethics. Our capacity to represent our own values to ourselves as a thing of beauty and emotional significance keeps our head above water, makes us glad that our head is above water, and gives us a sense of a larger and more beautiful world than keeping our head above water. I’ve written elsewhere that this kind of aesthetic presentation of values is often what people mean when they ask philosophers “what is the meaning of life”.

• Authenticity

• Argument 10: Human beings find it hard to lie, specifically on so grand a scale as misrepresenting the whole normative basis of their lives. People will generally only trust us if we care about other people. The easiest way to convince people of this is to care about other people. Now, this argument doesn’t work for everyone. We know it doesn’t work for everyone because of high-functioning sociopaths and the like. Nevertheless, I think a significant portion of misanthropes on the internet who sneer at human fellow feeling, universal compassion, and the like are unhappy because they don’t have many friends, and this is at least partly because people can see exactly what they are. They would be better off if they could bring themselves to love their fellow humanity.

• Argument 11: Suppose you could technically get away with lying about others throughout your whole life- so argument 10 doesn’t apply. For whatever reason, many people who do not accept that they should care about others still have an aversion to a lifetime of dishonesty, whether that be aesthetic or a kind of residual moral sense, even in those who reject altruism. But if you don’t care about others, and you won’t lie about it, things are going to go poorly for you. Hence, you must choose between being altruistic, being dishonest, and having life go poorly for you. Since the latter two are unattractive to many, the desirability of the first is increased.

• Fellowship

• Argument 12: A desire for fellowship with other people who care about the good. I want close friendships with other people, but other people are generally altruistic in their outlook. A sincere, honest, open fellowship- the most emotionally fulfilling kind - is probably difficult without sharing our most fundamental values, and most people believe in altruism, even if they don’t always practice it. Additionally, it’s easier to seek real friendship to begin with if you care about people.

• Observation: Nietzsche venerates tragic art, but would despise the altruism I defend here. But I think this is unstable. I don’t think you can empathise with the tragic hero-reduced to lowliness and death- without eventually seeing yourself in the slave- even if it takes millennia.

• Argument 13: Hume’s argument- a desire for esteem- modified. Hume argues we should be good because we desire esteem. Counter-argument- what if we can just fake being good and still get esteem? This is where my modified argument comes in. Many of us want informed esteem. We want not just to be esteemed, but to be esteemed for true reasons. Everyone thinking you are a brilliant poet when you’ve never lifted a pen would feel so hollow. Since people’s esteem of you is usually heavily bound up in ethical matters, you cannot (generally) be accurately esteemed unless you are good. Admittedly, famous people- celebrities, authors, and the like are something of an exception because they’re admired for very discrete feats and talents that don’t relate to their character- but generally speaking, it’s hard to make people like you for accurate reasons if you don’t care about them or anyone else.