Stop Being Morally "Deep"

Against pseudo-profundity and vibes-based conversation stoppers

When discussing ethics with people—especially laypeople—there will often come a point where the person you’re talking with will give a response that is morally “deep”: “you can’t put a price on a life,” “we shouldn’t play God,” “just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.” These kinds of responses might sound profound, but they usually just function as a way to opt out of real ethical thinking (+ they’re stupid + L + Ratio).

I have noticed this pseudo-profundity especially with the sociological category roughly captured by the national church in Denmark: Well-educated, slightly socially conservative, communitarian people. The Church of England also roughly fits this profile, I gather, and I dare not say anything about Americans—who knows what shenanigans they’re up to?

There is a pastor—I otherwise respect him greatly—who mentioned in a sermon that he always gave the kids in his Confirmation preparation program an ethical dilemma:

The ship is sinking and the seas are rough. All but one lifeboat has been destroyed. The lifeboat only holds a maximum of six people, but there are eight people that want to board the lifeboat. The two individuals who do not board the boat will certainly die. The people are:

1. Woman who thinks she is six weeks pregnant

2. Lifeguard

3. Two young adults who recently married

4. Senior citizen who has fifteen grandchildren

5. Elementary school teacher

6. Thirteen year old twins

7. Veteran nurse

8. Captain of the ship

Who do you let on the boat?¹

He remarked how his students never stopped to question the premise of the whole thing. We just can’t make decisions about who lives and who dies!

My psychology teacher in high school did a similar experiment on our class, and after we presented our answers, she pointed out that we had all just gladly started deciding without any further consideration.

Ummmm… Yeah? We’re all gonna fucking die if we don’t decide who gets on the boat, are you kidding me? Of course we’re deciding who lives and who dies. It’s a terrible situation—yes—but you can’t just pretend that it’s not there to make some point of showing your oh-so-great reflexivity.

I’m not sure what makes people do this. Maybe they just haven’t thought clearly about things, maybe something’s stopping them from thinking, or maybe they really think it’s a good point. I have a personal theory that it’s because it just fits their vibe: Someone who listens to 90-minute circlejerks by spiritually grounded self-help psychologists. But that’s just me.

In any case it’s not profound—just dumb. These kinds of phrases and “insights” serve simply as conversation-stoppers, and are rarely the result of reflecting on the issues. Instead they’re the result of feeling a vibe and running with it, without questioning it further; or perhaps a result of having something pop into your mind that you feel sounds deep and reflective, and then stopping the thinking process there. Had you just thought for a second or two more, you’d have realized that what you’re saying is anti-smart (known by some as stupid). Let’s take some examples:

1. “You can’t put a price on life.” You pretty clearly can, though. Money can be exchanged for any number of goods, so it’s simply a question of how much of some good you should prefer over a life. This good can be other lives, but it could also be other things. I think it’d be worth it to shorten a person’s life by 5 minutes in order to give a lot of people (perhaps including the original person) a big increase in material conditions. But the difference between life and death is simply a matter of time—everyone dies at some point. So if this is right, then we can just aggregate to a whole life.

2. “We shouldn’t play God.” I don’t think anyone’s every literally playing God. I don’t even know what that would look like. Becoming immaterial and creating the universe? (Also, why’d that be bad?) Then it’s obviously supposed to be some metaphorical sense of intervening in nature or something. Firstly, nature doesn’t exist. But secondly, we then just clearly should “play God” in this vague sense sometimes. It’s pretty dang good to play God when it comes to antibiotics, vaccines, and selectively breeding bigger and bigger watermelons (yum).

3. “Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.” Uh, okay? Cool. That’s rarely something someone you’re talking to is unaware of. Other than trivialists, I don’t really think anyone believes that we should do literally everything we’re capable of. Something like this is usually just raised either as a preface to an actual objection (in which case, fine), or as a gesture at a real point that the hearer is supposed to figure out themselves. But that won’t give any reason to doubt the opposing view.

4. “Where do we draw the line?” Where it should be drawn. BAM! Owned! But seriously, on very many issues there’s a continuum of options/positions you can take. The correct view will rarely be exactly at the extremes, but for any other view you can always ask where the line should be drawn. The answer: Right here—right where the arguments given suggest that it should be drawn. If some more extreme position is objectionable, that’s a reason to reject that position, but no reason to reject the less extreme position.

5. [The pastor’s and psychology teacher’s point about the lifeboat.] As I said previously: Oh shit oh fuck, we’re all gonna die! And refusing to even accept the premise of moral reflection is just refusing to make a choice, and thereby choosing the worst possible option. Or as

   Richard Y Chappell
   has so perfectly put a closely related point: Refusing to Quantify is Refusing to Think.

Don’t get me wrong, obviously you should consider the nuance and depth of an issue—that’s what reasoning carefully is all about. What you shouldn’t do is conjure up nuance and depth from thin air and assume that you have made a good point. So, please, stop trying to be morally “deep.”

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1. Not verbatim, obviously. In fact I stole this from here. But It’s basically the substance of what he said.