5 Is the Highest Good Possible?

1. 5 Is the Highest Good Possible? Why the Postulates of Morality?

2. The basic issues • Experience of duty • How know it? (3 formulations of CI) • Highest Good (keystone of morality) • Is it possible? • The postulates of morality • Freedom • Immortality • God

3. Morality and the highest good • The moral choice leads ultimately to the ideal of the Highest Good. • The good—those who put humanity first—should be rewarded – have their desires met. The bad, egotistical actions, should produce suffering. • =justice

4. Why the first Matrix failed • 1st Matrix: world of happiness • Given to people, not earned, deserved, or merited. • For merit there must be • A choice • Involving sacrifice • Without clear assurance of a final reward

5. Keystone of morality • All moral duties point to the Highest Good as the keystone of morality • 1) Do your duty • 2) against your desires • 3) but then you should be rewarded for this—happiness should follow. • 4) though you don’t act for the sake of reward.

6. Our Highest Duty • To create a just world • Where people in general do their duty • And they are happy—as a result of this. • Where crime doesn’t pay. • Where honesty is the best policy • Etc.

7. Significance of Zion • Tank: If the war was over tomorrow, Zion's where the party would be. • Zion = realization of the Highest Good—city of happy people who deserve to be happy. • Must freely create our own happiness. • We cannot be really happy if we are not worthy. (“Happy” but not “content.”)

8. Two motives for happiness • 1) I tell the truth because I will get a reward. • =Ego-based action: for me. • 2) I tell the truth because it is a duty • Even when it is painful or costly for me • Ego is subordinate to duty (humanity) • 3) Will I get any reward or recognition? I don’t know. • 4) But it would be wrong if I am punished for telling the truth (=injustice)

9. Morality may be a pipe dream, illusion • What cannot be done cannot be a duty. • =“Ought implies can” • Is the Highest Good—a just world—really possible? • Kant: if not, then morality is a pipe dream.

10. Evidence against the possibility of the moral world • Happiness requires having one’s needs and desires satisfied • This depends on money • Do people receive money based on their performance of duty? • i.e., are the rich the good people, and the poor the dishonest shirkers?

11. Morality and economics • Kant’s third formulation: the ends of economics should be subordinate to moral ends. • But the laws of the market are not based on morality • A Smith: economics is based on self-interest, not morality

12. Smith on economic reason • As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can.

13. Goal: not the public interest • He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.

14. “his own gain” • By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain,

15. Invisible Hand • and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

16. Self-interest > public good • Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

17. Morality is an affectation • I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

18. Who is more rational? • What are the chances of success of the Nebuchadnezzar? • Cypher’s rational calculation of the odds • Morpheus’ belief in Neo as the Savior. • Is it right to die for what you believe is an illusion? • Don’t we have the right to save ourselves by any means possible?

19. Cypher’s advice to Neo • Cyper to Neo: Did he tell you why he did it? Why you're here? Jesus. What a mind job. So you're here to save the world. What do you say to something like that? A little piece of advice. You see an agent, you do what we do. Run. You run your ass off.

20. Cypher and Trinity • Cypher to Morpheus’ inert body: • If you would have told us the truth we would-a told you to shove that red pill right up your ass! • Trinity: • That’s not true, Cypher; he set us free.” • Cypher: • Free, you call this free? All I do is what he tells me to do. If I have to choose between that and the Matrix, I choose the Matrix.

21. “You call this free?” • Can we be free and do our duty? • Experience of duty: opposes what I want to do • Freedom as realization of desires and interests: • is compatible with determinism • because desires are caused in us by outside forces: nature, environment, education • The experience of duty proves that we are really free • And then when we act against our duty to realize our desires, we are doing so freely • I.e., we are alienating our freedom, but doing so freely

22. Three kinds of freedom • Freedom as doing what I want to do. • But desires are caused by circumstances, education and nature: science • So “free” people in a free market have no free will. • Freedom as not being bound by external laws (free will—negative freedom) • Laws of science are based on a subjective framework • “Methodological determinism” • Freedom as realizing a law I give to myself: positive freedom

23. Heteronomy • When I act for ego-based desires, caused in me by outside forces, I alienate my freedom. • = “heteronomy” (heteros: other; nomos: law) • We determine ourselves to be governed by outside forces. • We allow ourselves to be enslaved. • We enslave ourselves

24. Autonomy • True freedom is acting on the basis of laws we give ourselves. • The law of egotism is also a law, but not one that we can consciously will. • I don’t want others to harm me by their egotism • Autonomy is acting according to a law we can consciously will. • = A law in which ego is subordinate to our shared humanity.

25. Ego-based desires • When I act as an ego, I see myself as separate from others (other egos) • Egotism therefore implicitly creates a world of others who act against me. • There is a law implicit in ego-based action: “Each for oneself, and the devil take the hindmost.” • =We create a world based on this “law.”

26. Why we can’t know that Zion will triumph • Scientific knowledge is deterministic knowledge of causal laws • But “Zion” is possible only on the basis of freedom—free choice. • Cypher’s approach: rational, scientific calculation rules out the possibility of freedom. • He “knows” what he must do

27. What is the world we “know”? • Hobbes: each individual is self-interested • Adam Smith’s economics implies that • our world is the outcome of the self-interested actions of individuals • The power of the Market is the expression of separate individuals. • It rules over them as an apparently separate force, an “Invisible Hand” • =The God that rules the world.

28. Why the Postulates are needed • We can’t know that the Highest Good will be realized. • Empirical experience shows us a world of egotism • which results in powers greater than any separate individual. • But the Highest Good (Zion) is possible only through morality • as the realization of a united humanity. • “The postulate of God”

29. Zion (Highest Good) is possible • If the world really is governed by causal laws • if human beings really are ego-centered beings • Then no alternative is possible • Kant: But determinism is a subjective approach (a “postulate” of science)

30. A Postulate of freedom • Hence people can/must believe they are capable of morality: • postulate of freedom—ability to do one’s duty against the forces of one’s desires and fears.

31. B Postulate of God (1) • We must believe that we have the power and intelligence to realize the highest good. • Q: But how can we counteract the power of the Market? • A: This is our own power, alienated (heteronomy)

32. Postulate of God (2) • Recall Kant on relation between intelligible and sensible worlds: • “the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible] world.” • =the person is the cause of The Matrix.

33. Postulate of God (3) • Invisible Hand of Adam Smith • =outside power, intelligence, • (intelligible world) • regulating the market • (sensible world) • = A system of power ruling over individuals • who feed into this system their life energies and intelligence. • =The Matrix • It’s their own power, alienated

34. Postulate of God (4) • New Matrix of shared humanity. • Law of “third formulation” of CI • Results in realization of the Highest Good • Kant: Humanity is the “invisible hand” that creates The Matrix of The Market – • by its law of egotism • Humanity can recreate the world by the law of shared humanity. • Hence the humanity in us is holy (God)