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Five Dumb Ideas about Morality

pstrongby John Corvino/strongbr /emFirst published at b365gay.com/b on October 31, 2008/embr //p pOn the eve of the election, I am pleased that my fellow Democrats have finally learned not to concede ldquo;moral valuesrdquo; language to the other side./p pIn past elections, we heard a lot about ldquo;values votersrdquo;mdash;a code-term for right-wingers on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Senator Obama, among his many talents, has made the case that we should all be ldquo;values voters;rdquo; that foreign, economic, and environmental policy are moral issues; and that compassion, equality, and justice are values, too./p pStill, my fellow liberals often have a hard time with the language of moralsmdash;whether because of an admirable humility, a lamentable wishy-washiness, or both./p pThat aversion results in a number of common but dumb claims about morality and ethics. (Like most philosophers, I use the terms interchangeablymdash;there is no ldquo;standardrdquo; distinction.) Herersquo;s my take on these claims:/p p(1) bldquo;Morality is a private matter.rdquo;/b To put it bluntly, this claim is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. Itrsquo;s about what we as a society embrace, what we merely tolerate, and what we absolutely forbid./p pWhile morality respects certain private spheresmdash;and while some moral decisions are best left to those most intimately affected by themmdash;morality is generally quite the opposite of a ldquo;privaterdquo; matter./p p(2) bldquo;You shouldnrsquo;t judge other people.rdquo;/b This claim is not only false, itrsquo;s self-defeating. (If you shouldnrsquo;t judge other people, then why are you telling me what to do?)/p pThe reason this claim sounds remotely plausible is because of a slight ambiguity in what it means to ldquo;judge other people.rdquo; Should you go around wagging your finger in peoplersquo;s faces? Of course not. No one likes a know-it-all, and pompous moralizing is counterproductive./p pBut it doesnrsquo;t follow that we shouldnrsquo;t make any moral judgments about other peoplersquo;s behavior. Doing so is often the best way to figure out what traits to emulate and what mistakes to avoid./p p(3) bldquo;I donrsquo;t need anyonersquo;s moral approval.rdquo;/b If this claim means that individuals donrsquo;t need the moral approval of any other given individual, then fine: there will always be those whose moralizing is ill-informed, sloppy or insensitivemdash;and thus best avoided. But to deny that we need the moral approval of anyone at all overlooks moralityrsquo;s crucial social role./p pMorality, unlike law, does not have formal enforcement procedures: police and courts and the like. It relies instead on social pressuremdash;encouraging glances and raised eyebrows, nudges and winks, inclusion and ostracism. (Interestingly, some right-wing bloggers have reacted to my recent work by worrying about ldquo;court-enforced moral approvalrdquo;mdash;as if that concept made any sense.)/p pMoral pressure can help us be our best selves. But in order for it to work, we need to take other peoplersquo;s moral opinions seriously most of the time. Just as unreasonable or unenforceable laws erode our confidence in law itself (think Prohibition), widespread dismissal of othersrsquo; moral views erodes moralityrsquo;s social function./p p(4) bldquo;Morality is just a matter of opinion.rdquo;/b Whether boxers are preferable to briefs is ldquo;justrdquo; a matter of opinion. Whether coffee tastes better with cream and sugar is ldquo;justrdquo; a matter of opinion. To call our moral values ldquo;justrdquo; a matter of opinion, by contrast, is to ignore their social and personal significance./p pThe problem here is that people start with a legitimate distinction between facts and valuesmdash;in other words, between descriptions of the world and normative judgments about it. Unfortunately, the fact/value distinction morphs into the much fuzzier fact/opinion distinction, which then morphs into the fact/ ldquo;mererdquo; opinion distinctionmdash;suggesting that values are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth./p p(5) bldquo;Therersquo;s no point in arguing about morality.rdquo;/b Moral problems are practical problems: theyrsquo;re problems about what to do. ldquo;Agreeing to disagreerdquo; is fine when the stakes are low or when the status quo is tolerable. But when something is badly wrong in the world, we should strive to repair it. That often requires making a persuasive moral case to our neighbors./p pMy own experience as ldquo;The Gay Moralistrdquo; suggests that moral arguments can make a differencemdash;which is not to say they do so instantly or easily. Sometimes they require an extended back-and-forth. Sometimes, they help us get a foot in the door so that an emotional connection can be made. But the idea that they never work is not merely defeatist, itrsquo;s downright false./p pIn short, we should all be moralistsmdash;liberals and conservatives, religious and secular, red-staters and blue-statersmdash;because we all need to figure out how to live together./p

Full post as published by Independent Gay Forum on November 02, 2008 (boomark / email).