Deterministic Utilitarianism: The Answer to Moral Nihilism
Morality in a postmodernist world is characterized by a vast plethora of interpretations and our inability to segregate the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ due to the relativist nature of any and all ideas.
Modernism, the predecessor of Postmodernism, was based on pure reason, rationality, and logos. The Modernist outlook on Morality is objective i.e. there exists a certain set of morals that can be universally applicable. Modernists believe in the presence of some higher truth.
On the other hand, Postmodernism develops skepticism toward the modernist school of thought. It vanquishes all the structures of modernist philosophy and replaces objectivity with subjectivity. In other words, it considers that none of the moral virtues can be regarded as universally omnipotent and, we can’t even claim one moral interpretation to be superior to the other.
Postmodernism, as a result, leaves us with moral nihilism. Indeed it is not peculiar that moral nihilism is the norm of virtually all the philosophy departments across the globe.
The absence of a creator( which may serve as the source of morality) has been the contributing factor leading to the confusion and the destruction of the moral fiber.
Such sort of divine command theory ( wherein God is the ultimate source of morality) provides a rigid moral structure with explicitly defined rules for conducting oneself in different situations.
God being intrinsic to society helped retain the objectivity in place.
The recent chain of events in human history (renaissance and the scientific revolution) have butchered god. The idea of an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God is not compatible with our naturalistic understanding of the world.
Postmodernism is in part a consequence of the death of God.
“ God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe the blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
In light of God’s death, many thinkers have made their attempts to confront the meaninglessness of existence. The Philosophy of present-day thinker, Jordan Peterson is aimed at responsibility and restoration of Christian values through pop psychology and as a result finding meaning in the meaninglessness of existence.
The twentieth-century philosopher Albert Camus made a rather compelling attempt to deal with nihilism. This remarkable attempt came to be referred to as Absurdism.
According to Camus, there exists a fundamental contradiction between people’s craving for meaning and the ultimate nature of reality i.e meaninglessness. This contradiction is what Camus calls the ‘Absurd.’
Instead of finding meaning in the meaningless, Camus asks us to confront the ‘Absurd’ and live on.
The meaninglessness triumph considering the subjectivity around. The bleak situation gets worsened once we take into account the ‘absence of free will’ or ‘the ability to choose your actions.’
The Naturalistic view not only deprives us of the creator but also our sense of self, deeming it to be a mere illusion.
The Philosopher Jay Garfield articulated that since our actions are just a part of the ‘physics’ of all things, we may not be the free-rational agents we perceive ourselves to be.
This school of thought wherein past events determine the occurrence of future events is termed Determinism.
One major proponent of Determinism was the French Scientist Marquis De Laplace. His model suggested that the scientific laws would allow us to predict everything that would happen in the universe once we get to know the complete state of everything at one point in time.
(When the French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte read Laplace’s work he asked “I see no mention of God in your work.”
To which Laplace answers “There is no need for God in my hypothesis.”)
Hence if just by measuring the position and velocity of all the particles in the universe we can predict the next action, it would imply that all the major things in one’s life- choosing a profession, falling in love, playing a cricket match were predetermined.
This further adds to the postmodernist confusion and pulls us further towards turmoil and chaos.
The absence of free will destroys the basic structures around which societies are formulated.
It further chops God’s corpse by taking away our privilege of holding people morally accountable(since they did not choose to act in that manner).
It is only in the combination of two philosophies ‘Determinism’ and ‘Negative Utilitarianism that we can handle the baselessness of existence and find a unified answer to Moral Nihilism.
Deterministic Utilitarianism
The fundamental error with all the failed attempts has been the association of morals with divinity(regardless of belief in God).
Deterministic Utilitarianism invites the possibility that morality is not some virtuous entity that is used to attain some higher truth, but rather just a set of tools employed to organize society.
The classical Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham emphasizes maximizing pleasure for the largest number. The trouble that accompanies such a view is the priority of pleasure over suffering. Maximizing pleasure does not conceive the potential suffering which may occur as a result of maximizing pleasure.
For instance, killing a Jew in front of a group of Muslims instigated by the Israel- Palestine conflict may be a pleasurable task for the greatest number, but ends up increasing the overall suffering.
The justification of hurting an individual to benefit a couple of others appears to be the moral blind spot of classical Utilitarianism.
The negative Utilitarianism of Karl Popper stands for its sheer ability to focus on the minimization of suffering rather than the fulfillment of impulsive pleasure of the masses.
Humans, by nature, tend to be loss averse. Throughout evolutionary history, our mental structures emerged in such a manner that the presence of potential threats assumes weightage.
The laws of logic indicate that loss and gain do not weigh equally, so it may be implied that 1S will always be greater than 1P.
(1S= One instance of suffering, 1P= One instance of pleasure. Both the instances are similar in all its outlook separated only by the impact of the emotional response. For instance, winning a million dollars and losing a million dollars can be compared as one’s opposite yet generate a different impact on the well-being).
While there may not be a concrete objective source of morality, viewing it as a tool for the benefit of society help embrace the subjectivity of morality.
The biggest existential question, we face perhaps would be “Why ought we be moral if life is intrinsically meaningless?”
The Historian Yuval Noah Harari gives a plausible reason. The foundation of all human behavior is the fulfillment of selfish individual needs. Once the layer of social interdependence is added, we are left with no ‘will’ but to expand compassion. Since our social surroundings affect our well-being and follow the selfish nature (as built-in us by evolution), the plausible thing would require us to care for others. Minimizing suffering appears to be the best course of moral tool we can employ collectively.
“Karl Popper’s Negative Utilitarianism, as a result, stands out as the much-needed moral theory.”
The other biggest source of moral nihilism has been
‘The Problem Of Free Will.”
“How can we hold people accountable if they never even had the will to act in that manner?”
Sure, Determinism destroys the traditional structures of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and threatens us with complete cultural annihilation of civilizations, still, it provides us with a much softer way to look at things.
The mere realization of the absence of free choice persuades us to feel empathetic toward the needs of the criminal. It augments the notion of Rehabilitative Justice rather than Retributive justice, with the latter imposing harsh punishments on the wrongdoer. It promotes an empathetic understanding of social phenomenons as Weber puts it.
Rehabilitative Justice involves eradicating the existing tyrannical constitution of the wrongdoer. For instance, revising the neural functioning causing the mass murders.
With our current understanding of science, the action of brutally punishing the wrongdoer doesn’t seem like the ‘right’ thing to do.
The end goal is to minimize suffering while keeping the ‘empathetic’ framework in the collective consciousness.
While Determinism extracts the divinity out of Morality, viewing it as a set of tools to organize society deems the question of divinity pointless.
On the whole, Deterministic Utilitarianism amends the fundamental errors of the prior approaches. It inculcates the rationale in the moral structuring being consistent with the greatest of the moral blind spots. Deterministic Utilitarianism might not provide the utopia but is surely ‘determined’ for great things.
The End
