I’ll accept that willpower means something like the conscious mind trying to reign in the subconscious. But when you use that to defend the “ethics as willpower” view, you’re assuming that the subconscious usually wants to do immoral things, and the conscious mind is the source of morality.
On the contrary, my subconscious is at least as likely to propose moral actions as my conscious. My subconscious mind wants to be nice to people. If anything, it’s my conscious mind that comes up with evil plans; and my subconscious that kicks back.
I think there’s a connection with the mythology of the werewolf. Bear with me. Humans have a tradition at least 2000 years long of saying that humans are better than animals because they’re rational. We characterize beasts as bestial; and humans as humane. So we have the legend of the werewolf, in which a rational man is overcome by his animal (subconscious) nature and does horrible things.
Yet if you study wolves, you find they are often better parents and more devoted partners than humans are. Being more rational may let you be more effective at being moral; but it doesn’t appear to give you new moral values.
(I once wrote a story about a wolf that was cursed with becoming human under the full moon, and did horrible things to become the pack alpha that it never could have conceived of as a wolf. It wasn’t very good.)
In one of Terry Pratchett’s novels (I think it is The Fifth Elephant) he writes that werewolves face as much hostility among wolves as among humans, because the wolves are well aware which of us is actually the more brutal animal.
I’ll accept that willpower means something like the conscious mind trying to reign in the subconscious. But when you use that to defend the “ethics as willpower” view, you’re assuming that the subconscious usually wants to do immoral things, and the conscious mind is the source of morality.
On the contrary, my subconscious is at least as likely to propose moral actions as my conscious. My subconscious mind wants to be nice to people. If anything, it’s my conscious mind that comes up with evil plans; and my subconscious that kicks back.
I agree. I’m not sure if you’re accusing me of holding the position or not so just to be clear, I wasn’t defending ethics as willpower—I was carving out a spot for willpower in ethics as taste. I’m not sure whether the conscious or unconscious is more likely to propose evil plans; only that both do sometimes (and thus the simple conscious/unconscious distinction is too simple).
On the contrary, my subconscious is at least as likely to propose moral actions as my conscious. My subconscious mind wants to be nice to people. If anything, it’s my conscious mind that comes up with evil plans; and my subconscious that kicks back.
What do you call the part of your mind that judges whether proposed actions are good or evil?
You referred to some plans as good and some plans as evil; therefore, something in your mind must be making those judgements (I never said anything about specializing).
In that case, I call that part of my mind “my mind”.
The post could be summarized as arguing that the division of decisions into moral and amoral components, if it is even neurally real, is not notably more important than the division of decisions into near and far components, or sensory and abstract components, or visual and auditory componets, etc.
Oh yes, I should probably state my position. I want to call the judgement about whether a particular action is good or evil the “moral component”, and everything else the “amoral” component. Thus ethics amounts to two things:
1) making the judgement about whether the action is good or evil as accurate as possible (this is the “wisdom” part)
2) acting in accordance with this judgement, i.e., performing good actions and not performing evil actions (this is the “willpower” part)
Why do you want to split things up that way? As opposed to splitting them up into the part requiring a quick answer and the part you can think about a long time (certainly practical), or the part related to short-term outcome versus the part related to long-term outcome, or other ways of categorizing decisions?
I’ll accept that willpower means something like the conscious mind trying to reign in the subconscious. But when you use that to defend the “ethics as willpower” view, you’re assuming that the subconscious usually wants to do immoral things, and the conscious mind is the source of morality.
On the contrary, my subconscious is at least as likely to propose moral actions as my conscious. My subconscious mind wants to be nice to people. If anything, it’s my conscious mind that comes up with evil plans; and my subconscious that kicks back.
I think there’s a connection with the mythology of the werewolf. Bear with me. Humans have a tradition at least 2000 years long of saying that humans are better than animals because they’re rational. We characterize beasts as bestial; and humans as humane. So we have the legend of the werewolf, in which a rational man is overcome by his animal (subconscious) nature and does horrible things.
Yet if you study wolves, you find they are often better parents and more devoted partners than humans are. Being more rational may let you be more effective at being moral; but it doesn’t appear to give you new moral values.
(I once wrote a story about a wolf that was cursed with becoming human under the full moon, and did horrible things to become the pack alpha that it never could have conceived of as a wolf. It wasn’t very good.)
In one of Terry Pratchett’s novels (I think it is The Fifth Elephant) he writes that werewolves face as much hostility among wolves as among humans, because the wolves are well aware which of us is actually the more brutal animal.
I agree. I’m not sure if you’re accusing me of holding the position or not so just to be clear, I wasn’t defending ethics as willpower—I was carving out a spot for willpower in ethics as taste. I’m not sure whether the conscious or unconscious is more likely to propose evil plans; only that both do sometimes (and thus the simple conscious/unconscious distinction is too simple).
Oh! Okay, I think we agree.
What do you call the part of your mind that judges whether proposed actions are good or evil?
I would need evidence that there is a part of my mind that specializes in judging whether proposed actions are good or evil.
You referred to some plans as good and some plans as evil; therefore, something in your mind must be making those judgements (I never said anything about specializing).
In that case, I call that part of my mind “my mind”.
The post could be summarized as arguing that the division of decisions into moral and amoral components, if it is even neurally real, is not notably more important than the division of decisions into near and far components, or sensory and abstract components, or visual and auditory componets, etc.
Notice I said mind not brain. So I’m not arguing that it necessarily always takes place in the same part of the brain.
Oh yes, I should probably state my position. I want to call the judgement about whether a particular action is good or evil the “moral component”, and everything else the “amoral” component. Thus ethics amounts to two things:
1) making the judgement about whether the action is good or evil as accurate as possible (this is the “wisdom” part)
2) acting in accordance with this judgement, i.e., performing good actions and not performing evil actions (this is the “willpower” part)
Why do you want to split things up that way? As opposed to splitting them up into the part requiring a quick answer and the part you can think about a long time (certainly practical), or the part related to short-term outcome versus the part related to long-term outcome, or other ways of categorizing decisions?