[MD] Morality and Prudence

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Matt:
What I suggested originally to put an MOQ analysis together on the issue (that dmb thinks ought never be done for some reason) is that morality and prudence cashes out in the MOQ with regard to psychopaths is that they are following the social rules for the most part as biological patterns. 

dmb says:

Huh? I think we should never do what? You're supposedly talking about my position and yet I honestly have no idea what you mean or what you're referring to.



Steve What doesn't seem to be allowed in the MOQ though is to say that one behavior is morality and another is merely prudence since all behavior (and everything, period) is a matter of morality. 


dmb says:

By that reasoning, there can be no such thing as immorality in the MOQ. Does this not strike you as an absurd conclusion? It's like saying everything is Quality so there is nothing bad and all things are excellent. It's just silly. 


Steve continued:
... Its a matter of which moral code or applying the wrong moral code in a given situation. Often the biological code leads us in the same directions as the social code if only because society has imposed biological consequences for defying the social code. It seems that one can follow the social code by participating in social patterns (identifying with others) or one can follow it to save one's own skin. I think that distinction replaces the prudence-morality distinction in the MOQ.

dmb says:
Hmmm. Anti-social personality disorders are basically a result of the lack of empathy, or an inability to identify with the feeling of others. That's not exactly the same as ordinary vice or otherwise defying social level morality. I mean, although the psychopath is not going to have any moral qualms about seeking biological pleasure, he's way beyond normal human folly or weakness. The psychopath is a dangerous predator whereas the ordinary sinner is far more common and much less dangerous. Some people with anti-social personalities can be very ambitious and don't particularly suffer from a weakness of will. As one of the articles pointed out, they can blend right into a corporate environment. Apparently, the capacity to feel shame, guilt, remorse and empathy just aren't important factors for a successful business man. 

And the "morality and prudence" distinction showed up in several of the articles about sociopaths and psychopaths as well as a podcast interview I heard recently. They know how to save their own skin and they know that acts like murder will put them at risk. The do not refrain for moral reasons and they cannot empathize with the victims of murder but they will abstain because they are not stupid or insane. They know what the death penalty and they are deterred by it. That's prudence, not morality. (Although prudence seems too kind a word for it. It's more like a rational calculation with self-serving motives. Prudence seems to imply a certain kind of wisdom of foresight whereas the restraint exercised by a psychopath may simply be calculated so as to avoid detection. I guess it's like the difference between a considerate person and a cold-calculating person.)

 Anyway, the lack of empathy is precisely what makes them merely prudent or calculating as opposed to being moral. It seems they all agree that you just can't have a moral person without empathy. It's so basic that very young children and our primate cousins both exhibit it. It's positively basic and primary and all the finer, higher, more subtle forms of morality can't function without it. I mean, the inability to experience empathy utterly wrecks human morality. What amazes me most, is that this epic lack has no apparent effect on rationality or the capacity to be logical. What does that tell you about rationality? What does it tell you about our culture that such people can be very powerful and successful in our culture. 


Steve said:
What's important here is selfhood and the expansion of selfhood to include more and more of reality rather than a self limited to a biological organism. That's the sort of moral progress that Rorty talked about as "self-enlargement," as becoming ever more sensitive to the pain of others, at seeing others as part of yourself, and at better meeting the needs of others. Rorty describes moral progress as “a matter of wider and wider sympathy.” We can aim at “taking more people's needs into account than you did previously.”

dmb says:
Yes, that's a very lovely idea. I think it's also quite true and I'm glad you like it. But Rorty is far from unique and I'm sure he's not the first to say such things. You can hear the same idea among the ancients or from Ken Wilber or Carl Jung. It's a classic, a real beaut. Seriously. The old idea of enlightenment being a matter of identifying with the whole universe is the logical conclusion of the ever-expanding enlargement of identification, most especially beyond one's ego. Now we've got from sub-normal or abnormal psychology and an almost total lack of morality to cases of extraordinary psychological states and superlative moral intelligence. We've gone from people who are morally retarded to people who are morally gifted. The psychopath doesn't have an expanding circle of empathy. His cirlcle is just the dot he stands upon. Everyone and everything, he thinks, is there for him to use as he pleases, like a giant baby with a gun a 130 I.Q. The thought shivers me timbers.