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The Mortimer J. Adler Archive |
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Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
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Index:
The words "certainty" and "probability" do not apply to propositions that are either true or false. These propositions entertained by us with suspended judgment should never be qualified as either certain or probable. In the Anglo-American common law there are degrees of certainty and doubt. Certainty attaches to judgments beyond the shadow of doubt; not certain are judgments made with a reasonable doubt; and less certain still are judgments made by a preponderance of the evidence. The last two are judgments to which some degree of probability must be attached, the former more probable, the latter less probable. The propositions in each of these two cases, when entertained with suspended judgment, are either true or false. Certainty and probability qualify our judgments about the matters under consideration on the propositions entertained with suspended judgment. This statement brings us to consider what happens by chance and what is causally determined. Here we must distinguish between the mathematical theory of probability and the philosophical theory of what happens by chance. In the mathematical theory of probability, which begins with an essay by Blaise Pascal, one can calculate the chances of anything happening by the number of possibilities present; for example, in the toss of a coin, the chance of its being heads or tails on any toss is fifty-fifty, because in the long run, with many tosses, that is how one should wager on the next toss, if we know that the coin being tossed is not affected by an extraneous factors. In the philosophical theory of probability, what happens by chance is what happens without a cause. Consider the coincidence of two individuals who happen to meet on a particular street at a particular time. Why do we call this a coincidental meeting, and regard it as an uncaused event? The answer is that each of the two individuals is caused to be at the spot where the chance meeting occurs by all the causal factors operating in his own past, but nothing in their separate pasts causes them to meet each other there. The coincidence is, therefore, an uncaused or a chance event. While we are dealing with caused and chance events, let us spend a moment on the Aristotelian theory of the four causes -- the material cause is the nature of the materials on which the artist operates, the formal cause is the productive idea in the artist's mind. The final cause is the end or purpose that motivates the artist to produce the work of art, and the efficient cause is the action of the artist's hands and tools. But when we depart from the sphere of artistic production, final causes do not operate. What happens naturally happens without any purpose or end to be served. The critics of Aristotle in modern times who denied teleology or purpose in the physical world were correct in dismissing final causes, but they were incorrect in dismissing the operation of material, formal, and efficient cause in the works of nature, corresponding to those in works of art. In human activity, free choice as well as physical cause operate. Freedom of choice is present when in deciding on any activity, the individual could have chosen otherwise. His action is, therefore, causally determined by the exercise of his willpower rather than by the kind of causes that operate in nature. It is, therefore, incorrect to think that there is an irresolute conflict between free will and causal determinism. The freely chosen decision is causally determined, but not in the same way that events in the physical world are causally determined.
On what factual presuppositions about the nature of man does a teleological ethics depend for the truth of its normative conclusions? There are, it seems to me, only four. First, that man, like any other animal, has a certain, limited number of natural needs, and that the natural needs that are specifically human will differ from those of other animals, as man differs specifically from them. I have dealt with the question of how man differs from other animals in an earlier book, "The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes." I think that book decisively establishes the proposition that man differs in kind from other animals by virtue of his having the related powers of propositional speech and conceptual thought, powers totally lacking in all other animals. Future scientific discoveries may falsify this proposition, but at the moment there is not a shred of empirical evidence to the contrary. Second, that man, because he has the power of conceptual thought, is uniquely a time-binding animal--the only animal whose consciousness embraces an extensive past and a far-reaching future. Human memory and imagination, augmented and transformed by the power of conceptual thought, emancipate man from imprisonment in the immediate present. This proposition about man, like the preceding one, is supported by all the scientific evidence now available. The importance of its truth for the truth of a teleological ethics should be evident on a moment's reflection. Man could not engage in the pursuit of happiness--he could not seek the ultimate end of a whole good life--if that temporal whole, encompassing his past and his future along with any present moment, were not an object he could hold before his mind at all times in his life, except perhaps the period of his infancy. Third, that man does not have any genetically pre-formed patterns of species-specific behavior, that is, he does not have definite instincts, as other animals do. While he does have instinctual drives or needs, these are subject in man's case to inhibition and sublimation by his power of conceptual thought, with the result that each man determines for himself the manner in which he responds to or satisfies his instinctual drives or needs. Although this proposition is challenged by some behavioral scientists, and especially by popularizers of ethology, it has the support of overwhelming empirical evidence. Its significance for a teleological ethics should be evident: that each man ought to make a really good life for himself presupposes that he can determine for himself how he shall respond to his natural needs, including those that are called "instinctual" such as the sexual drive. This would not be so if his instinctual needs were fulfilled by genetically determined patterns of behavior, the same for all men because they are species-specific. Fourth and last, that man, having the power of conceptual thought, also has freedom of choice--a freedom that enables him, at any moment of his life, to choose one partial good rather than another, without being determined to do so by his past experience, the habits he has formed, or the character he has developed up to that moment In other words, he has, through freedom of choice, the power of self-determination, the power of creating or forming himself and his life according to his own decisions. Freedom of choice is presupposed by any form of moral philosophy that involves categorical oughts, for a categorical ought is meaningless unless the individual it obligates is free to obey or disobey it. Unless he had freedom of choice, the individual subject to categorical oughts could not be held morally responsible for his acts. This presupposition is even more important for a deontological ethics that is also teleological, for without freedom of choice at every critical moment in a man's life, he could not be responsible for making or failing to make a whole good life for himself. Is this presupposition factually true? All I need say on this score is that there is no scientific evidence against it. I have dealt elsewhere with the philosophical dispute about free will and determinism and with the possibility that freedom of choice will be falsified or confirmed by scientific evidence in the future. To sum up: in the present state of the empirical evidence, none of the factual presuppositions of a teleological ethics can be dismissed as false. On the contrary, the scientific evidence now available and the evidence of common experience overwhelmingly favor the first three presuppositions, and while the fourth is still philosophically disputed, there is as yet no decisive evidence to the contrary.
If human beings could engage in their pursuit of happiness more effectively without living in states and under the auspices of government, then neither the state nor its government would be necessary as a means to the ultimate objective at which human beings should aim--living decent human lives. The goodness of the state or civil society lies in its being indispensable to living a civilized life and obtaining all the real goods that individuals cannot obtain by themselves alone or under the conditions of family and tribal life. The goodness of the state or civil society is thus seen to be inseparable from its necessity as an indispensable means to the ultimate good we should seek. What holds for the state holds also for government. Its goodness resides in its necessity--in its indispensability as a means. But a means to what? Is it not possible for human beings to achieve good lives for themselves without the constraints imposed by government through its sanctions and the coercive force of its laws? Is not the road to happiness on earth more open to those who pursue that goal without being subject to government? Those who call themselves anarchists--philosophical, not bomb-throwing, anarchists--answer such questions with resounding affirmations. When they call for the immediate abolition of the state or for its gradual withering away, they identify the state itself with government by might, that is, by the coercive force of its various sanctions. This is what they abominate. They think that it is quite possible for human beings, either as they are now or as they might become under altered conditions, to live peacefully and harmoniously together in society and to act in concert for a common good in which they all participate, and to do this without the restraining force exercised by the state or its government. They do not see in the complete autonomy that everyone would have under anarchy any threat to the peace, harmony, and order of social life. Why are they profoundly wrong? One answer was given by Alexander Hamilton when he said that if men were angels, no government would be necessary for social life. Spelled out in a little more detail, Hamilton's reference to angels expressed his understanding of angels as completely virtuous, and so obedient by free choice to just laws. When he rejected as illusory the attribution to mankind of angelic virtue, he did not thereby intend to deny that some men have sufficient, if not angelic, virtue to obey just laws out of respect for their authority and without responding to the threat of coercive force. Some men, yes, but not all! That is precisely why some portion of the individuals living together in society must be constrained by coercive force from injuring their fellows or acting against the common good of all. Hence, government with its sanctions is as necessary for social life as that, in turn, is necessary for the pursuit of happiness. Hamilton's argument is not only sound, but unanswerable by philosophical anarchists in the light of all the known historical realities. Their only out is to appeal, beyond the facts about human beings as they now are, to what human beings might become under radically altered future circumstances. The hope for a new type of man, with a different human nature that has been altered by external circumstances, is bizarre and groundless. The specific nature of any living organism is gene-determined, not determined in any essential respect by external circumstances. Human nature may be overlaid by all the nurtural influences imposed by the environment, but that natural overlay does not alter the underlying nature. There is one point with respect to which one must concede some soundness to the philosophical anarchist's position. The coercive force that is exercised by a tyrannical and despotic government is an evil from which human beings should be emancipated. But constitutional and just governments also exercise coercive force; and then, as Hamilton argued, that confers a benefit to be sought, not an evil to be avoided. Sound and answerable as Hamilton's argument may be, it is not the only or complete answer to the position of the philosophical anarchist. The other part of the answer consists in seeing that the authority of government, quite apart from its exercise of coercive force, is necessary for the concerted action of a number of individuals for a common purpose.
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The Adler Archive Index |
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