can mystical insight force the liberal overlapping consensus to align on shrimp welfare?

where I think we're at with metaethical constructivism

Quite a few of us are worried about the fact that, especially in ideologically diverse societies like liberal democracies, the lion’s share of disagreements about ethics come down to fundamental differences of opinion. It would be impossible for me to persuade you that suffocating shrimp is a heavy sin because, at the end of the day, it’s just my opinion that the suffering of unintelligent life forms matters, and it’s just your opinion that it doesn’t. Fundamental differences like this are worrying because, from either of our perspectives, some very bad shit is going down: shrimp are being cruelly tortured to death, and hundreds of thousands of charity dollars are being wasted to save them. No matter what you want, you have reason to want consensus on important ethical questions. It should frustrate all of us that, for some disagreements, it seems like the only way to generate consensus is through the exercise of power. I don’t want to have to bully you into caring about shrimp. You don’t want to bully me into redirecting my donations to the Against Malaria Foundation. We both want to talk to each other and give each other reasons to see things our way.

So, it’s a popular philosophical project to search for some common ground where we can settle our differences of opinion. Usually, the first step looks like trying to identify some value that all of us — or at least, those of us whose opinions are worth worrying about — have in common. Some more popular historical examples might include the Good, the Categorical Imperative, and Utility (Aristotle, Kant, Mill). Some less popular but maybe more interesting examples might include Self-Understanding, Self-Constitution, or Resilience-Against-Impermanence (Velleman, Korsgaard, Street). Once this shared value has been specified, the second step is to show that everyone either should or already does see this value as the foundation for judgments about what should be done. If this can be shown, then we’re in business: we can tell each other why we’re evil, and it will finally mean something. We have a shot at building consensus reason by reason, rather than noogie by noogie.

So far, I haven’t encountered a single theory that persuasively managed the second step. It is very, very difficult to show that some value should be foundational for one person, let alone all persons. For each theory, it is much, much too easy to imagine a person who says, “Value, shmalue — sure, I like the Good, willing maxims as universal laws, Utility, Self-constitution, Self-Understanding, and Resilience as much as the next guy, but treating any of them as foundational? That would be kind of arbitrary.” I call this sort of hypothetical person a Shmalien, because it is a very common response for theorists to defend their pet theories by saying, “Well, too bad — either you treat this value as foundational or you’re not really a person. You’re not worth worrying about. You’re an alien.”

I sympathize with the Shmalien, because the Shmalien lives inside all of us. Last week I was chatting with a new friend at a Curiosity Café who, after we’d bickered for a couple hours about maps and territories and navigation, explained that he felt like he was standing at the edge of an abyss. He didn’t feel like any of his values were secure, like any of them could be counted on. And, because of that, he didn’t feel like he could count on himself. He was asking himself, roughly, “Is the fear of becoming someone I might hate the only thing keeping me from becoming someone I might hate?” This kind of insecurity is, though not a happy place to be, very normal. It’s normal because we have a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to question whether we should value what we value.

Given that we all have a little Shmalien living our hearts, we might question whether there’s any point in searching for any kind of stable common ground. I don’t believe we should give up, but we do need to reframe how we think about this common ground. We should accept that our connection to our values is fragile, that the conditions have to be just right and hold steady. We shouldn’t fuck with theories where being oriented towards some particular value is what qualifies us as people.

Okay, so that’s the negative part of this essay. Here’s the positive part. In that conversation with my new friend, I explained that my values do feel secure. I feel like I can count on myself. And this is not because I’m a philosophical genius who theory-crafted their way to a complete set of unquestionable moral axioms plus mint-condition operation manual. It's because I have, in a few scattered moments of clarity, internalized what feel like simple, factual insights about being alive in the world, and these insights somehow make it impossible to resist adopting an ethic of universal care. Experiences like this are very common: the moments when we feel the most connected to reality, to deep truth, seem to tell us something about ethics, and what they tell us seems to be undeniable. If there is some set of simple, factual insights, available to any of us, which speak to us in the same undeniable way, it would be a promising place to look for common ground.

I’ve emphasized “seems to” above because I recognize that what’s going on here is very odd. It’d been a long time since philosophers thought that values (not to mention “undeniable values”) could be inferred just from the observation of facts. Nonetheless, it seems like we do. We have experiences of squeezing blood from stones. I think we need a good account of what we’re doing when we make this kind of inference. It could be that what’s happening is totally arational, intuitive, and beyond assessment. It could be that even the deepest insight so severely underdetermines what values can be inferred that it’s useless for building consensus. But, on the chance that this kind of inference is even somewhat rational, one the chance that it’s possible to make better or worse such inferences, and to thereby arrive at a somewhat overlapping consensus, it’s worth investigating.

It will help if you know what I’m talking about when I talk about insights. Here are a few that have left their marks on me, along with corresponding inferences.

1 - Insight: I care about a bunch of different things that are often (or usually) in tension with each other to some degree. Inference: I should aim for some balanced whole which honours everything I care about.

2 - Insight: Everything I care about depends on an endless network of things that I don’t usually care about. Inference: I should aim to extend my care to those things that my cares depend on.

3 - Insight: Everyone I care about knows more about what’s good for them than I know about what’s good for them. Inference: I should care about even what’s unknown to me.

4 - Insight: What I love most in the people I care about (including myself) also exists, to some degree, in everyone I don’t usually care about (including non-human animals). Inference: I should care about everyone I don’t usually care about, to some degree.

5 - Insight: In at least a few significant ways, I am the same as everyone else — even people I am usually in tension with, even people I don’t usually care about, and even non-human animals. Inference: I should aim for some balanced whole which honours everyone — even people I am usually in tension with, even people I don’t usually care about, and even non-human animals.

These insights are all indexed to Me, Jesse, but I would wager the fortunes of 1,000,000 shrimp that they are true for you, too — for anyone. I don’t expect that you’d make the exact same inferences on the basis of these insights, but it would surprise me if our inferences were not directionally similar. And, importantly, when I imagine a conversation between two people whose inferences are not entirely aligned, it is not hard to see how they could reason each other into greater alignment. Intuitively, there are better and worse inferences to draw here — more and less arbitrary responses to this set of facts — and we can help guide each other towards less arbitrary conclusions. My hope is that this intuition is right.

The inferences above impressed on me that:

— I should care about everyone, even non-human animals, even shrimp.

— Caring about everyone means pursuing a “greater good” which involves balancing incommensurable interests and accepting some amount of failure.

— The greater good will always elude my full comprehension, leaving no place for paternalism, solipsism, or dogmatism.

This rudimentary ethic of universal care is a pretty typical result of pretty typical mystical experiences. Maybe it’s a coincidence that some of the most viral spiritual movements throughout history have converged on similar ethics, or maybe it’s not. Maybe all it takes is a teacher, or a bird, or a mushroom, to point out what is obviously true, in a way that you can’t deny that it matters.

The End.

I know this is all sketchy, and I’ll admit I don’t have the kind of epistemological background that is probably required to assess this metaethical strategy in a serious way. But! I hope that it’s at least clear what the strategy is, and that it’s at least interesting! Let me know if you have any recommended reading.

P.S.

I didn’t cite any sources here but basically every idea here I stole from other people so if you’re curious I can add some footnotes.