Transcript Nov 7 - Acsu Buffalo

5 Is the Highest Good Possible?
Why the Postulates of Morality?
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The basic issues
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Experience of duty
How know it? (3 formulations of CI)
Highest Good (keystone of morality)
Is it possible?
The postulates of morality
– Freedom
– Immortality
– God
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Morality and the highest good
• The moral choice leads ultimately to the ideal
of the Highest Good.
• The good—those who put humanity first—
should be rewarded – have their desires met.
The bad, egotistical actions, should produce
suffering.
• =justice
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Why the first Matrix failed
• 1st Matrix: world of happiness
• Given to people, not earned, deserved, or
merited.
• For merit there must be
– A choice
– Involving sacrifice
– Without clear assurance of a final reward
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Keystone of morality
• All moral duties point to the Highest Good as
the keystone of morality
• 1) Do your duty
• 2) against your desires
• 3) but then you should be rewarded for this—
happiness should follow.
• 4) though you don’t act for the sake of reward.
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Our Highest Duty
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To create a just world
Where people in general do their duty
And they are happy—as a result of this.
Where crime doesn’t pay.
Where honesty is the best policy
Etc.
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Significance of Zion
• Tank: If the war was over tomorrow, Zion's
where the party would be.
• Zion = realization of the Highest Good—city of
happy people who deserve to be happy.
• Must freely create our own happiness.
• We cannot be really happy if we are not
worthy. (“Happy” but not “content.”)
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Two motives for happiness
• 1) I tell the truth because I will get a reward.
– =Ego-based action: for me.
• 2) I tell the truth because it is a duty
– Even when it is painful or costly for me
– Ego is subordinate to duty (humanity)
• 3) Will I get any reward or recognition? I don’t know.
• 4) But it would be wrong if I am punished for telling the
truth (=injustice)
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Morality may be a pipe dream, illusion
• What cannot be done cannot be a duty.
• =“Ought implies can”
• Is the Highest Good—a just world—really
possible?
• Kant: if not, then morality is a pipe dream.
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Evidence against the possibility of the
moral world
• Happiness requires having one’s needs and
desires satisfied
• This depends on money
• Do people receive money based on their
performance of duty?
• i.e., are the rich the good people, and the
poor the dishonest shirkers?
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Morality and economics
• Kant’s third formulation: the ends of
economics should be subordinate to moral
ends.
• But the laws of the market are not based on
morality
• A Smith: economics is based on self-interest,
not morality
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Smith on economic reason
• As every individual, therefore, endeavors as
much as he can both to employ his capital in
the support of domestic industry, and so to
direct that industry that its produce may be of
the greatest value; every individual necessarily
labors to render the annual revenue of the
society as great as he can.
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Goal: not the public interest
• He generally, indeed, neither intends to
promote the public interest, nor knows how
much he is promoting it.
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“his own gain”
• By preferring the support of domestic to that
of foreign industry, he intends only his own
security; and by directing that industry in such
a manner as its produce may be of the
greatest value, he intends only his own gain,
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Invisible Hand
• and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by
an invisible hand to promote an end which
was no part of his intention.
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Self-interest > public good
• Nor is it always the worse for society that it
was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest
he frequently promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he really intends
to promote it.
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Morality is an affectation
• I have never known much good done by those
who affected to trade for the public good. It is
an affectation, indeed, not very common
among merchants, and very few words need
be employed in dissuading them from it.
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Who is more rational?
• What are the chances of success of the
Nebuchadnezzar?
• Cypher’s rational calculation of the odds
• Morpheus’ belief in Neo as the Savior.
• Is it right to die for what you believe is an
illusion?
• Don’t we have the right to save ourselves by
any means possible?
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Cypher’s advice to Neo
• Cyper to Neo: Did he tell you why he did it?
Why you're here? Jesus. What a mind job. So
you're here to save the world. What do you
say to something like that? A little piece of
advice. You see an agent, you do what we do.
Run. You run your ass off.
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Form merit, need for a time of testing
• Cypher to Morpheus’ inert body: If you would have
told us the truth we would-a told you to shove that red
pill right up your ass!
• Trinity: That’s not true, Cypher; he set us free.”
• Cypher: Free, you call this free? All I do is what he tells
me to do. If I have to choose between that and the
Matrix, I choose the Matrix.
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Duty and freedom
• “You call this free?”
• Can we be free and do our duty?
– Experience of duty: opposes what I want to do (freedom as
realization of desire)
– But it’s my duty (soldier in wartime)
• Freedom and destiny?
• Oracle to Neo, who must choose between his life and
that of Morpheus
– “You’ll remember you don’t believe in any of this fate crap.
You're in control of your own life, remember? Here, take a
cookie. I promise, by the time you're done eating it, you'll
feel right as rain.”
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Three kinds of freedom
• Freedom as doing what I want to do.
– But desires are caused by circumstances,
education and nature. (science)
– So “free” people have no free will.
• Freedom as not being bound by external laws
(free will—negative freedom)
• Freedom as realizing a law I give to myself.
(positive freedom)
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Heteronomy
• When I act for ego-based desires, caused in
me by outside forces, I alienate my freedom.
• = “heteronomy” (heteros: other; nomos: law)
• We determine ourselves to be governed by
outside forces. We allow ourselves to be
enslaved.
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Ego-based desires
• When I act as an ego, I see myself as separate
from others (other egos)
• Egotism therefore implicitly creates a world of
others who act against me.
• There is a law implicit in ego-based action:
“Each man for himself, and the devil take the
hindmost.”
• =We create a world based on this “law.”
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Autonomy
• True freedom is acting on the basis of laws we give
ourselves.
• The law of egotism is also a law, but not one that we
can consciously will.
– I don’t want others to harm me.
• Autonomy is acting according to a law we can
consciously will.
• = A law in which ego is subordinate to our shared
humanity.
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Why we can’t know that Zion will
triumph
• Scientific knowledge is deterministic
knowledge of causal laws
• But “Zion” is possible only on the basis of
freedom—free choice.
• Cypher’s approach: rational, scientific
calculation rules out the possibility of
freedom.
– He “knows” what he must do
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What is the world we “know”?
• Hobbes: each individual is self-interested
• Adam Smith: the world is the outcome of the
self-interested actions of individuals
• The power of the Market is the expression of
separate individuals.
• It rules over them as an apparently separate
force, an “Invisible Hand”
• =The God that rules the world.
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Why the Postulates are needed
• We can’t know that the Highest Good will be
realized.
• Empirical experience shows us a world of
egotism which results in powers greater than
any separate individual.
• But the Highest Good (Zion) is possible only
through morality as the realization of a united
humanity.
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Zion (Highest Good) is possible
• If the world really is governed by causal laws
• If human beings really are ego-centered
beings
• Then no alternative is possible
• Kant: But determinism is a subjective
approach (a “postulate” of science)
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A Postulate of freedom
• Hence people must believe they are capable of
morality:
• postulate of freedom—ability to do one’s duty
against the forces of one’s desires and fears.
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B Postulate of God (1)
• We must have believe that we have the power
and intelligence to realize the highest good.
• Q: But how can we counteract the power of
the Market?
• A: This is our own power, alienated
(heteronomy)
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Postulate of God (2)
• Invisible Hand of Adam Smith
• =outside power, intelligence, (Intelligible
world) regulating the market (sensible world)
• = A system of power ruling over individuals
who feed into this system their life energies
and intelligence.
• =The Matrix
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Postulate of God (3)
• Recall Kant on relation between intelligible
and sensible worlds:
• “the person as belonging to the sensible world
is subject to his own personality as belonging
to the intelligible [supersensible] world.”
• =the person is the cause of The Matrix.
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Postulate of God (4)
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New Matrix of shared humanity.
Law of “third formulation” of CI
Results in realization of the Highest Good
Humanity is the “invisible hand” that creates
The Matrix of The Market – by its law of
egotism
• Humanity can recreate the world by the law of
shared humanity. Hence the humanity in us is
holy (God)
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