The Metaethics of Posthumanist Discourse – Part 1

Transhumanism and critical posthumanism are, above all, ethical theories about how we should respond to the realisation that we live in a posthumanist age. Yet, their theorists fail to direct their critical-realist lens upon the damage done to the possibilities for ethics by a scientific-materialist imaginary. They also fail to appreciate the coercion inherent in the category of the normative, i.e. the category of what ought to be, as distinct from that which is. In this first of two posts, I will introduce the argument that theistic coercion is at the core of the normative. In the next post, I will relate this more directly to the metaethics of posthumanist discourse (metaethics involves the question of what it is about the world that grounds moral and normative truths – what makes them true or in what sense are they true? – quite apart from the first-order question of what we ought to do/be).

A striking feature of moral reasons for or against something is their unavoidability, i.e. that indifference to moral obligation is not an available option. Someone who cheerfully agrees, in one breath, that it is morally wrong to engage in an extramarital affair and, in the next, that they are meeting his lover again next Tuesday, appears to have missed something. But what?

The non-viability of indifference cannot be that of impossibility, because there can be and has been such a person as the amoralist, who knows what morality requires and yet does not consider herself to be bound by moral obligation, at least with respect to local moral concerns relating to sexuality, violence, property, dependents etc. This suggests it is possible for someone to be a global amoralist, someone who fails to see the force of any moral reasons, and psychopaths might be actual instances of these. However, she can tell right from wrong as well as we do and is still happy enough to carry on ignoring the distinction in practice. It seems as though indifference to morality is viable for her. What could she be failing to take into account? What could we say in response the question, “Why can’t I disregard moral reasons?”

One response might be that such a person would fail to flourish or be punished or ostracised by her society. Such resort to social and psychological consequences show that practical reasons are the intuitive explanation for unavoidability. Yet, they do not go far enough, because subjectively intrinsic and socially enforced consequences are avoidable in a way that morality does not seem to be. Adjusting the example, we can not only conceive of one such amoralist, but we can also conceive of a possible situation in which an entire society is indifferent to moral obligation, and therefore they never accept moral reasons as decisive reasons for anyone to do, or omit to do, anything. Perhaps a drug has been administered to everyone in this society to take away their moral scruples, or they have been genetically modified to turn off their moral feeling gene. Notice what is not being said, here. It is not that the hypothetical society develops a new set of beliefs about what morality requires, though that is certainly conceivable. The amoralist society knows most, if not all, of what morality demands, and yet they are not motivated by that knowledge. Such a morally indifferent society is supposed to be non-viable, in some sense, and yet it seems possible for a society to operate solely on the basis of reasoning about desire and power. So, it seems as though indifference to morality is viable for members of this society. What, if anything, do they lack or fail to understand?

There must be some further reason for accepting the demands of morality that we can offer to the amoralist, beyond thumping the table and shouting, “You’re just wrong!” After all, he can always reply, “I know. So, what?” There must be something to be said for the intuition that ignoring moral reasons is an option open to no one.

The only alternative to impossibility that gives any substance to this unavoidability of moral reasons is that immoral behaviour necessarily results in overwhelmingly adverse consequences according to the standard of a person’s subjective desires. This would make morality really matter, and indifference to moral obligation a non-viable option, in the sense that immoral conduct invariably comes at a relatively extreme subjective cost.

Of course, the fundamentally impersonal nature of the observable universe does not show us anything like consequences consistently correlated with moral or immoral conduct. The law-like regularities that have turned out to be most fruitful in explaining and predicting changes to the physical universe over time concern the behaviour of purposeless forces and particles, rather than the states of consciousness and intentions of persons. Yet, persons are the subjects of moral obligation, so that the unavoidability of morality is grounded in consequences for the ultimate satisfaction or non-satisfaction of personal desires. Therefore, the irrelevance of personhood to the law-like regularities of the physical universe makes the prospect that the right consequences to enforce morality will emerge from those regularities seem remote, at best. Instead, in the end, everyone’s subjective purposes are frustrated in the same ways: death; mutation; and entropy. If the natural laws as we understand them remain uniform, then, over a long enough time scale, our bodies, our species and the matter of the universe are each doomed to annihilation.

This problem is exacerbated by the sense that moral reasons for action remain invariantly compelling despite variations to individual desires, whether of one person over time or as between distinct persons. Specifically, moral obligation cannot be defeated by the idiosyncratic desires of a perverse mind. We can conceive of persons, much like actual masochists, who derive pleasure from extreme levels of pain. So, if the invariant consequence of immoral behaviour were the infliction of great pain, then this would make the weight of moral reasons for action variable as between persons with perverse dispositions and persons with normal inclinations. The final consequences incurred by persons who behave immorally must therefore either be individualised to account for their particular desires, or the consequences must include the transformation of personal desires to become uniformly amenable to the same kinds of rewards and punishments. Either option requires a degree of sensitivity and responsiveness to personal desires that seems utterly alien to the reactions of impersonal forces that are observed in nature.

There are two possible solutions that could save morally relevant consequences in an impersonal universe. Firstly, there could be a parallel spiritual universe that operates according to the principle of karma, reincarnating souls in physical bodies according to their past deeds and thereby enforcing a universal morality. However, this solution would require the universal soul-allocation machine to select from embodied experiences thrown up by chance in a physical universe governed by impersonal natural laws. It could not then be a certainty that all souls would be embodied in such a way as to yield all of the right consequences for moral and immoral conduct in preceding lives. For example, it is possible that all sentient life in the universe will die out and remain extinct for the balance of eternity.

Even if that theoretical problem were overcome, invoking reincarnation to ground unavoidability creates a dilemma. On the one hand, it must remain possible in each incarnation to affect one’s karma. Otherwise, morality would cease to be unavoidable, because one’s past lives would render any present actions irrelevant to any future consequences. On the other hand, if it remains possible in each incarnation to affect one’s karma then it is probable that each person’s fortunes will rise and fall in future incarnations regardless of their conduct in a present incarnation, once again defeating unavoidability by making overall future consequences unresponsive to present conduct.

There remains only one other way that our intuitions about moral obligation could be vindicated. The observable regularities in nature that preclude a universe of moral consequences could be dependent upon, and thus would not limit, a feature of reality that both makes moral facts true and determines future consequences for persons according to their prior moral or immoral conduct. The most probable candidate then becomes someone who is also a person, with intentional attitudes about other persons. This fits specifically with the notion of a supremely powerful God who creates and sustains both the matter and energy of the universe, and the natural laws according to which all matter and energy develops over time. Only by this means does the impersonality of the physical universe not preclude the unavoidable character of morality, because a God who is singularly in control may intervene at any point in universal history to suspend or vary the natural laws and bring about the right consequences for the right persons.

Before moving on, an important objection to having recourse to consequences in order to explain Unavoidability must be addressed. It is that people who behave morally solely out of a desire to be righteous, rather than out of fear of punishment or in pursuit of reward, exhibit a superior or genuine morality. Thus, if being motivated by moral obligation alone is more praiseworthy than acting out of self-interest relating to future consequences, then morality cannot be conceptually linked to consequences. The straightforward response to this objection is that just because practical reasons exist for persons to heed moral obligations, it does not follow that those who act for moral reasons must therefore be motivated by these practical reasons that make morality unavoidable. So, explaining the unavoidability of morality by invoking consequences for moral and immoral conduct is entirely consistent with the greater praiseworthiness of conduct that is not motivated by fear of or yearning for such consequences.

One way to respond to the amoralist that was not dealt with above is to assert that she is being irrational. This was certainly the basis of Immanuel Kant’s metaethics. Thus, it is against reason to acknowledge that some action or situation is wrong, and yet to continue acting that way or bringing about that kind of situation. This response is not as effective as it first appears, because it merely delays the problem. The question then becomes, not how to respond to the amoralist, but how to respond to the arationalist, who understands and acknowledges that he is being irrational, yet genuinely fails to understand why he should be rational. The first, most obvious response might seem to be the pragmatic point that failure to reason about the best ways to respond to one’s environment will probably result in adverse consequences such as illness and death for one’s self and for those held dear. However, the arationalist can concede that there is a threshold of practical necessity below which they would not dispense with rationality. They can also use reason to determine where that threshold begins and, beyond that, press their original scepticism about the need to be rational.

In this respect, the arationalist may take particular issue with the claim that they should be rational in matters of morality, given that those who argue that morality’s obligatory character arises from its rationality tend to reject the idea that practical consequences for immoral conduct ground its unavoidability. Beyond that, though, there are many areas of thought about which an individual can harbour irrational beliefs without obviously attenuating the quality or duration of his mortal life, such as spiritual and religious beliefs, beliefs about events occurring at distant times and places, beliefs about interventions by aliens or time travellers using advanced technologies, and even beliefs about theoretical physics, metaphysics and the fundamental constituents of reality. Well might the arationalist insist on knowing what it is that compels him to be rational in these matters.

Shifting focus from the amoralist to the arationalist, in this way, demonstrates that the principle of unavoidability applies intuitively, not only to morality, but to all types of normativity. Recall that normativity has been defined as the category of all discourses that express ways that persons or things ought to behave or be. For example, the discourse of morality is normative in that it concerns ways in which people ought to act or omit to act, and the discourse of reason is normative in that it concerns ways in which people ought to organise their mental life. Similarly, aesthetics concerns those sensory experiences that people ought to favour, teleology concerns the proper roles and functions to which various things ought to be applied, and politics concerns the ways in which power ought to be used by the few to govern the many.

As unavoidability applies to all of these areas of discourse, and the many sub-discourses within them, the same question arises as to what a person who disregards the normative demands placed upon her has failed to appreciate. Therefore, the same form of argument for the existence of a God who imposes extreme, future consequences for compliance and non-compliance with respect to normative demands on persons may be derived from the need to ground unavoidability in all such areas of discourse. This entails that contraventions of obligations to think rationally or endorse experiences of true beauty are grounds for adverse future consequences, and this may seem to be particularly excessive. However, such obligations may be qualified by the preconditions of knowledge and voluntariness, i.e. that one must knowingly and willingly embrace irrationality or disdain experiences of true beauty in order to incur adverse future consequences in the same way as one would for immoral conduct. For example, illogicality due to ignorance or error, or involuntary disgust at a visible manifestation of God, might not contravene an obligation.

The essential normativity of these various areas of discourse, combined with the theistic coercion needed at the conceptual core of normativity to explain its obligatory or unavoidable character, has consequences for posthumanist discourse that will be unpacked in Part 2.