Customer Reviews

The Myth of Morality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

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This is, no doubt, a very dangerous, yet enlightening, book. Much of the structure of our society is built on a foundation of moral beliefs. For instance, our whole political system is based on moral claims like the "inalienable" rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. In the Myth of Morality, Joyce takes the sword of reason and with it, utterly destroys those foundations (with great skill, I might add). Then, lest everything come crashing down, he proposes a very plausible alternative foundation: fictionalism. If we act *as if* moral claims - like the right to liberty - were true, then social confusion and disintegration are avoided. And in no way is doing this illegitimate: as Joyce explains, we have practical reason to do so, and as long as we all understand that morality is hogwash, there need be no deception in make-believe.

This book is much more comprehensive and convincing than its predecessor, Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (you might want to read the first few chapters of that book before reading Joyce, but thats not necessary). The basic idea is similar: there is something mystical about the property of "ought-not-be-doneness." But whereas Mackie argues directly from morality's mysticality to its error (anything mystical doesn't belong in our ontology), Joyce takes a more sophisticated route. His basic argument is as follows:

1. Moral claims apply regardless of your desires

(when we condemn a criminal, do we change our minds if we learn it was in his self-interest to commit it?)

2. If we morally ought to do something, we have a reason to do it.

(If we ask "why am I morally required to vote?", we couldn't take seriously someone who had no other response than "well you simply *musn't*!)

3. So, if we morally ought to do something, we have to have a reason to do it that applies regardless of our desires.

4. Such reasons don't make sense.

(this requires a complicated defense, and I won't attempt to summarize it)

5. Therefore, moral claims make no sense.

This argument, while not exactly a proof of morality's error, is rock-solid when bolstered by Joyce's formidable defense of it. He goes in depth examining premises 1 2 and 4 (the others don't need defending), and his fairness, carefulness, and rhetorical skill in doing so are nearly unmatched.

As if this weren't enough, Joyce provides a natural, evolutionary explanation for why we have morality, making morality's falseness all the more plausible. I was skeptical that morality could be explained naturally at first - isn't it entirely a social construction? But Joyce answered all the objections I could think of. The particular claims of morality may be explained by culture, but our disposition to make moral claims in the first place is natural.

Finally, Joyce goes on to examine fictionalism. This section was very enlightening. Before I had assumed that if something people think is true is actually false, well *obviously* we should just replace it with the truth. Not so, as Joyce explains. Its not just silliness to make-believe something as serious as morality. It might require a change of attitude, but we can pull this off, and its very important that we do so, in order to avoid giving in to our irrational habit of acting on present desires to the detriment of long-term ones.

My one complaint about this book is that it doesn't describe how exactly we might get from here to there. How can we switch the foundation of our society without it collapsing in the meantime? In fairness, though, this is a very tough question that perhaps deserves a book of its own. Overall, I can't recommend the Myth of Morality highly enough - it is philosophically rigorous while maintaining popular accessibility (at least to generally well educated people), and its implications are nothing less than earth-shattering. This book should be on the shelf of anyone who has any serious interest in moral issues.

If you are already leaning towards an anti-realist position in ethics, this book will secure those leanings against any possible doubts. If you are a realist, well, you will have a lot of explaining to do after reading this book and should, for better or worse, take seriously to heart the arguments in this book. Joyce's main targets are the Moral Naturalists but he must also tackle the irrealists, e.g. the expressivists, in order to establish an error theory. One of the most interesting arguments draws from his take of the consequences of the evolution of morality. For more of his views on this, see his other book, "The Evolution of Morality."
I also recommend "The Moral Society" by Ian Hinckfuss, "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong" by Mackie and if you have access to JSTOR or other online scholarly journals I suggest you read other fictionalists (some moral, some modal or mathematical) like Daniel Nolan, Mark Eli Kalderon, and Stephen Yablo.

There are three non-theological approaches to moral theory that have fueled disputes for centuries. The first is virtue ethics, championed by Aristotle, which claims that the goal of moral behavior is to possess certain 'virtues' (such as courage, wisdom, justice and temperance) which are inherent in being a fully flourishing human being. The second is deontological, according to which there are rules governing our behavior (e.g., Kant's Categorical Imperative) that must be followed regardless of our desires and independend from the effects of our actions. The third is utilitarian (Bentham, Mill, Sidgewick et al.) which counsels acting to maximize some form of social happiness. I have come to the conclusion from my study of human behavior that each of these three captures the way some people organize their moral life. Richard Joyce appears to make a meta-ethical analysis of morality, but in fact his is a strong attack on the deontological approach to morality, followed by an argument (to me unconvincing) that without a solid foundation of ethical obligation, the rest of moral discource will be irreparably weakened. Because he recognizes the social utility of morality, he champions a "fictional" approach to ethics: just as we can enjoy novels and other forms of make-believe, so we can embrace moral discourse, even though it is fake.

The problem for Joyce is simple. We treat moral statements as though they have truth values, and we even debate which moral statements are true and which are not. But moral statements are not facts, and they cannot have truth values in the same sense as in everyday life (the water is in the glass) or science (water is a diatomic molecule). So if moral obligations are not true, why should be obey them? Whence the myth of morality.

Let me say first that my personal morality is more of a virtue morality than any of the other brands. I do not steal or kill, and would not even if I were assured of getting away with it, because I find such activities filty and demeaning. For me, moral values are part of my preference function, just as is my love for ice cream and fast cars. Moreover, I am constantly trading-off virtuous behavior for other valued goals I might have, such as personal comfort or meeting someone elses' needs. Morality is not a fiction, but perhaps moral obligation is, from my point of view.

But I know many people who build a strong moral life around "obeying the rules." My pious relatives obey the rules of the Talmud simply because they are the rules by which the Jews are obliged to live their lives. Some are judgmental and feel superior to those who ignore these rules, while others are perfectly tolerant of others who live by different rules, or even by different ways of organizing their ethical priorities.

I believe humans make morality in the same way they make language: it is simply the way we evolved. A linguist recognizes that every language has rules that govern correct and incorrect speech, but it is folly to ask what are the ultimately correct rules. Languages have lots in common all over the world because humans evolved a mental structure conducive to certain linguistic regularities. Similarly, humans have evolved a fairly common set of moral principles across a wide variety of forms of social organization. It is true that we speak of moral principles as right or wrong, true or false, but that does not mean that we are wedded to a "realist morality." Note that we say "the sun rises in the East and sets in the West," and this does not commit us to an earth-centric astronomy. Language is simply too flexible and subtle an instrument to treat out-of-context discourse as though they betray epistemological or ontological commitments.

That said, I highly recommend Joyce's book as a first-rate mental exercise.