Absolutism vs. Consequentialism vs. Intentionalism

I've been meaning to post this for a while now and have been putting it off, but I just watched something on ted.com (awesome website by the way) about this experiment a graduate student at MIT conducted about the human brain. Basically, she was able to isolate a part of the brain that is involved in making moral judgments about other people's actions, and by doing so, have the ability to measure or even manipulate the extent to which people were able to make personally accurate decisions about another person's character. People who know my ideals well will not be surprised to find that this information immediately struck my mind with cognitive dissonance. I believe in free will and the principle of the human spirit, which are more aesthetic and ethereal. However, I also believe in scientific evidence (for the most part), which, unfortunately, was now conflicting with my belief of free choice. How could someone be stimulated against their will to make improper moral judgments? I thought. It shouldn't be possible that other people should be able to control (to whatever extent) what we think is right and wrong.

Before I go on, I should clarify the premise of the experiment and its results (or you can just go see it in detail on ted.com, search for "reading other people's minds"). Basically, the experiment involved evaluation of a fictitious scenario in which a person named Grace and her friend were visiting a chemical factory (for whatever reasons) and decided to go for a coffee break (and no, it wasn't the prospect of a coffee break that caused my moral duress). Grace is preparing the coffee and sees a container labeled "deadly poison", which, unbeknownst to her, is actually sugar (suspension of disbelief, people). Grace, having murderous intentions (again, suspension of disbelief), decides to put this supposed harmful substance into her friend's cup of coffee. Her friend drinks the coffee and experiences no side effects, much to Grace's dismay. The subjects were asked to evaluate the morality of Grace's actions. As I expected, most of the subjects rated Grace's actions high on the blame scale even though her friend was fine. In parallel experiments, subjects were presented with alternate scenarios: one where the container was labeled "sugar" and it was sugar (the neutral control), and one where it was labeled "sugar" but was actually deadly poison (accident). Thankfully, the subjects rated Grace's accidental poisoning of her friend lower on the guilty scale than her attempted but failed murder attempt (to you consequentialists, I'll explain why I said "thankfully" later). However, when the region of the brain previously isolated was activated with strong electrodes, people tended to underrate Grace's guilt in the attempted murder scenario and overrate Grace's guilt in the accident scenario (relative to the non-stimulated subjects). As previously stated, I was appalled (and rather frightened) that it was possible to sway another's moral judgment of people's actions, no matter how largely.

I was introduced to the concepts of absolutism and consequentialism in the beginning of my senior year when I was participating in Lincoln-Douglas debate. For the sake of clarity, (By the way, whenever I define anything in this blog, it will be according to MY definition and the connotations I hold on the subject, regardless of what the denotation (dictionary definition) is. If you don't like it, don't read my blog.) absolutism is defined as holding a view of universal morality. In other words, whatever moral laws one believes, they have the opinion that these moral laws apply to every conceivable situation and that there are no exceptions to any rule or law. For the most part, I disagree with this view. Consequentialism is interpreted as basing the extent of the morality of one's decisions on the consequences of one's actions. For example, a consequentialist would deem Grace guilty for accidentally poisoning her friend because the situation had the consequence of her friend's death. For the most part, I disagree with this view. There is also an auxhiliary viewpoint known as intentionalism that evaluates morality based on choices regardless of the consequences, that a man should do what he thinks is right in order to be moral. An intentionalist would blame Grace for attempting to poison her friend, even if she wasn't successful. For the most part, I disagree with this view.

So what do I agree with? Well, a recurring theme that you'll see in this blog is that I agree and disagree with all of them simultaneously. (This principle, however, doesn't apply to my interpretation of my religion, I will always believe in my church's teachings and decisions.) The reason why I hold flexible loyalty to absolutism, consequentialism, and intentionalism is that I consider them to be philosophies of man and, therefore, are neither perfectly true nor perfectly false. I disagree with absolutism because it contains components of extremism. I agree with absolutism because it allows for moral constancy in one's life. I disagree with consequentialism because I don't believe that accidental occurences garner blame on anyone's part. I agree with consequentialism because it contains the important societal component of utilitarianism. I disagree with intentionalism because I believe that man is naturally flawed and therefore cannot live morally according to only his own principles. I agree with intentionalism because I believe that attempted murder or attempted suicide should be punished just as severely as if they were successful. I developed most of these standpoint from Lincoln-Douglas debate during the September-October 2009 topic: "It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people." (This was, by the way, my absolute favorite resolution of all time and, though I hate to admit it, really the only one I ever liked (sorry, former debate coaches, I was always meant for oratory anyways).)

Finally, I return to the topic I was originally going to address: that of being able to manipulate one's sense of moral direction (to whatever extent). I believe that our brains and bodies are somewhat flawed. I believe that, though our physical bodies are a great gift to us and I am very grateful for them, they are themselves imperfect and consequently cause imperfections in us. This is how I reconciled the disturbing information I learned today with my moral precepts: that the brain, being a part of our imperfect physical body, slightly impairs our once-pristine spiritual powers of moral judgement. I don't mean to say that we were perfect in the premortal life, far from it. But we did live in the presence of God and we did know exactly what was right and wrong, even if it was difficult to follow what we knew. Once we passed through the veil and gained a physical body, we forgot some of the principles that we knew before and had to relearn (using, in part, our brains) what being "good" really was in our imperfect and not-yet-resurrected bodies. This is why we can be morally manipulated, because our physical bodies (being able to be manipulated), influence what we think. Everything we generate on this earth is in some way flawed because we are flawed. An evil fountain cannot bring forth pure water, however small the extent of its evilness. This does not mean that such things as scripture and religion are flawed, because they come directly from God. This is where I reluctantly bring up the heavily-quoted, convenient, but true LDS aphorism that goes "the church is perfect, but its people are not" (and yes, those who don't know me and have not figured it out already, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, popularly known as LDS or the Mormons). I take this opportunity also to say that these blog posts, being a product of my the workings of my physical brain, are also inherently flawed because I am. I don't know the extent to which my religious inspirations influence my blog posts and how much comes from my own sometimes-flawed logic. I agree that my faith has a heavy impact on the material of my blog posts, but I plead for the reader to realize that much of this is only my own forays into philosophy and should not be interpreted as immutable truth. Therefore, I urge you not to interpret the things I write here as "doctrine", no matter how logical or emotionally sound they may seem. I am only a man, and my beliefs fall short of my actions far more often than I wished.