Come to the next Rational Benevolence Collaboratory meeting this Thursday @ 7:00 pm downtown at the De Colores bookstore, 507 Washington Street (after bookstore business hours).

We can have an informal bull-session to help us get acquainted.

And/or

We can discuss the following question:

Does morality really help us ease suffering?

This is a serious question to ponder.

I've collected some passages from some writers who cast doubt on morality's contribution to the relieving of suffering.

From Understanding and Minimizing the Infliction of Suffering, by R. G H. Siu, Page 323

Ethics [or morality], … is concerned with the conformity to and violation of the rules of conduct regarding a wide range of behaviors. These may or may not have anything to do with suffering and its infliction. In general, suffering does come to play. Yet many of the most horrible inflictions have been approved as ethical and moral, such as death-dealing wars and embargoes. Considerable attention is focussed on blaming, with inflicted suffering as punishment. Finally, the infliction of suffering is one of the essential instruments of keeping oneself and society functioning "normally" and "ethically." There is no necessary correlation therefore between the amount of suffering and the degree of morality and justice, as often claimed.

Ethics is therefore faced with several bothersome questions: Does it matter critically whether a given ethical prescription or judgement entails an increase, even a drastic increase, in the level of suffering in people? Are not major ethical decisions being made by the thousands without explicit reference and serious concern with respect to the consequential suffering, especially on unseen third parties separated by space and time? Can ethics itself be entirely ethical without such detailed analysis?

Suppose you have a desire to relieve suffering. (This desire I call "compassion.") Morality can be seen as a destroyer of that compassionate desire, particularly the kind of morality known as "deontological" or "duty-based." This idea begins with the following passages, all stating that compassion is irrelevant to duty-based morality.

[Note: I happen to regard deontological/duty-based morality as the only valid kind of moral theory. Consequentialism, for example, is an unstable position that, when challenged by rigorous logic, slides into either into a deontological/duty-based theory, or slides into blatant non-moralism altogether. Therefore, when I see passages discussing duty/deontolgy, I regard the discussion as applicable to ALL morality. But that's just me.]

So again these passages below describe the dichotomy between (compassionate) desire and duty morality.

From Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand, Page 96

The arch-advocate of "duty" [and therefore morality in general, says I, Luke] is Immanuel Kant; he went so much farther than other theorists that they seem innocently benevolent by comparison. "Duty," he holds, is the only standard of virtue; but virtue is not its own reward: if a reward is involved, it is no longer virtue. The only moral motivation, he holds, is devotion to duty for duty's sake; only an action motivated exclusively by such devotion is a moral action (i.e., an action performed without any concern for "inclination" [desire {including the desire to ease suffering, says I, Luke}] or self-interest).

Page 97, quoting Kant:

"It is in this way, undoubtedly, that we should understand those passages of Scripture which command us to love our neighbor and even our enemy, for love as an inclination cannot be commanded. But beneficence from duty, when no inclination impels it and even when it is opposed by a natural and unconquerable aversion, is practical love, not pathological love; it resides in the will and not in the propensities of feeling, in principles of action and not in tender sympathy; and it alone can be commanded."

…

In a deontological theory [the reduction to which all moral theories boil down, says I, Luke], all personal desires are banished from the realm of morality; a personal desire [including the desire to ease the suffering of others] has no moral significance, be it a desire to create or a desire to kill. … If a man wants to be honest [or to ease suffering], he deserves no moral credit; as Kant would put it, such honesty is "praiseworthy," but without "moral import." Only a vicious represser, who feels a profound desire to lie, cheat and steal, but forces himself to act honestly for the sake of "duty," would receive a recognition of moral worth from Kant and his ilk.

From "Compassion: A Critique of Moral Rationalism, " by William J. Prior

Nor is compassion always necessary to produce [morally] right action. Kant describes the hypothetical case of an unhappy [and un-compassionate] philanthropist:

[begin Kant quote] Suppose then the mind of this friend of mankind to be clouded over with his own sorrow so that all sympathy with the lot of others is extinguished, and suppose him still to have the power to benefit others in distress, even though he is not touched by their trouble because he is sufficiently absorbed with his own; and now suppose that, even though no inclination moves him any longer, he nevertheless tears himself from this deadly insensibility and performs the action without any inclination at all, but solely from duty--then for the first time his action has genuine moral worth. [end Kant quote]

Repeating a bit from R. G H. Siu, Page 323

There is no necessary correlation therefore between the amount of suffering [in the world] and the degree of morality and justice [in the world], as often claimed.

These passages have made the case that duty-based morality finds compassion irrelevant. But does this fact mean that duty-based morality necessarily destroys compassion? Well, if compassion is morally irrelevant, a duty might come along and overrule it.

Repeating a bit from R. G H. Siu, Page 323

Are not major ethical decisions being made by the thousands without explicit reference and serious concern with respect to the consequential suffering, especially on unseen third parties separated by space and time?

Or worse, overrule compassion, not with some benign agenda, but with the justification of actually inflicting suffering. Some writers express this concern:

From "A Woman's Answer to Job," by Nel Noddings

Indeed, my great objection to the dominant [ethical] tradition is that it encourages us to seek justification not only for our own suffering but also for the suffering we inflict on each other.

Here's an example of what Nel Noddings objects to (this is a excerpt from an actual speech by Leonard Peikoff called "America Versus Americans"):

Leonard:

"A war in self-defense must secure victory as quickly as possible regardless of how many innocent civilians are caught in the line of fire or are deliberate targets of that fire."

"These innocents suffer and die because of the action of their own government in sponsoring the initiation of force against us. Their fate, therefore, is their government’s moral responsibility, not ours."

And here's some speculation about at least some of the requisite psychology behind this:

From Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand, Page 100

A Kantian or even a semi-Kantian cannot permit himself to value anything profoundly [including the relief of suffering], since an inexplicable "duty" may demand the sacrifice of his values at any moment, wiping out any long-range plan or struggle he might have undertaken to achieve them.

Right, so why bother nurturing your compassion and planning to act on it when duty might instead call you to go kill people in some nationalistic war?