Anti-Semitism as a Product of the Ideology of Interventionism

[I_Ryan]

@nirgrahamUK

I find that paragraph difficult to assent to… I’m thinking the first sentence struggles in the face of the fact that all moral law’s geared as they are to guide conduct do concern themselves with means and ends. How else could they not. Taking Kant just for example; the principle against lying is against any/and all acts of lying, and the device which Kant promotes, of reflecting on the logical consequences of all acting in such a way, focuses ones attention on consequences. (Kants ‘objective imperative’ appears to ape the form of a particularly ‘rigid’ rule utilitarianism fore example)

I agree, that there is a spectrum of superficially more and less ‘consequentialist’ moral theories, but all moral theories have the core consequentialist attributes of concerning themselves with acts, and will almost certainly have been informed by some reflection on the likely consequences of the rule adoption would be for the individual and community of individuals concerned(if they are not merely uncritically assessed gifts of traditional wisdom - formed by accident and not perpetuated by the positive consequences of adopting the traditional mores)

I’m not totally sure that I know where you going with this, but I think that I like it.

First, check out this post:

@I. Ryan

@CommonSense

Maybe, but I thought for one decision you are actively killing the children, for the other you aren’t. One has nothing to do with you morality; if I let nature happen I don’t think that could be declared immoral, but killing people is. That was just my general thought process, how is my thinking “wrong” (Because morality is really subjective).

Remember, not doing anything is as much of an action as doing something.

As an actor in this position, you must choose between two incompatible outcomes: In the first one, 30 innocent people die; and, in the second, 100,030 innocent people die. Not only that, but also the 30 people who would die in the first are included in those who would die in the second. As an actor in this position, you have an idea about some causal connections: If you don’t control your body in such a way that the train explodes, those 100,030 people will die; but, if you do control your body in that way, only 30 of those people will die. Knowing those causal connections gives you a chance to act, but your action is necessarily geared toward the outcome.

Not controlling your body in a particular way is just as much of an action as controlling your body in that way. Actions affecting the outside world start in your mind and end in your body. Deciding to not control your body in that way is nothing except deciding that you prefer those 100,030 people dying to just 30 of those dying, unless of course you have some metaphysical ideas about morality which would lead you to think that there is something more to this situation than a choice between those two outcomes, which could mean that you wouldn’t just decide between a situation in which 100,030 innocent people die and a situation in which just 30 of those die, but that you would decide between a situation in which 100,030 innocent people die and you feel guilty because you played an “active role” in them dying and a situation in which just 30 of those die and you don’t feel guilty because you played a “passive role” in them dying.

I think that, in that post, I showed the main import of the difference between the “superficially more or less consequentialist moral theories”, and those not “superficially more or less consequentialist”. Notice that I didn’t say that he couldn’t act in accordance with his metaphysical idea, but just that it was metaphysical. I don’t think that fundamentally there’s anything to that situation but decision between letting 100,030 people die, and letting just 30 of those people die. But, if you play with words, and come up with a metaphysical idea saying that it is different to have an “active role” in somebody’s death than to have a “passive” one, then you might end up doing something much different: Deciding between letting 100,030 people die, and not feeling guilty, because you played a “passive role” in their deaths, and letting just 30 of those people die, and actually feeling guilty, because you played an “active” role in their deaths.

In a sense, we can’t say that any moral theory actually impels people to act outside of the nexus of means and ends - that would be nonsense. But we can say that somebody could trick themselves into thinking that there’s something that there’s not. We could say that somebody could use play with words and trick themselves into making an end out of being able to apply an arbitrary sequence of words to their action. They could want to apply the words “passive role” to their role in that context. And then they would have to balance one end, wanting less people to die, with another end, wanting to be able to apply those words to their action. In that sense, they aren’t outside of the nexus of means and ends. In fact, in any sense, they aren’t outside of the nexus of means and ends.

It is interesting that, in these sections, Ludwig von Mises is essentially pointing out something that should be ridiculously obvious, that there isn’t anything to morality but utility. Well, how could anybody disagree? There isn’t anything to morality - which is a kind of human action relating to how people interact with each other - but utility - which is by definition the “drive” for human action. How could it be any other way? We can’t act except for our own utility. Seriously, how could anybody disagree? Well, what people do is just play with words, and assent to the idea that they should try to apply a particular sequence words - such as “passive role” - to their actions. But what the hell does that mean?

I think that we could make his point clearer - or fix it - by saying that “all nonutilitarian systems of ethics” don’t simply “look upon the moral law as something outside the nexus of means and ends”, but instead pretend to “look upon the moral law as something outside the nexus of means and ends”. It is impossible to look upon human action from outside the nexus of means and ends. But it is possible to trick yourself into assenting to meaningless, empty “symbols”, and ignore what morality really is - a bunch of rules about how to interact with each other to maintain society.