Why Reason Is Not The Basis Of Morality

Book 2, Part 3, Section 3 has proven that reason:

• is perfectly inert, and
• can never prevent or produce any action or affection.

Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood.

Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement to:

• the real relations of ideas, or
• real existence and matter of fact.

Therefore, whatever is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement:

• is incapable of being true or false, and
• can never be an object of our reason.

Our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement.

They are original facts and realities that:

• are complete in themselves, and
• imply no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions.

Therefore, it is impossible they can be:

• true or false, and
• contrary or conformable to reason.

This argument has a double advantage to our present purpose.

It directly proves that actions do not derive their:

• merit from a conformity to reason, nor
• blame from a contrariety to reason.

It proves the same truth more indirectly.

It shows us that reason:

• can never immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it, and
• cannot be the source of moral good and evil which have that influence.

Actions may be laudable or blameable, but they cannot be reasonable.

Therefore, laudable or blameable are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable.

The merit and demerit of actions frequently contradict and sometimes control our natural propensities.

• But reason has no such influence.
• Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason.

Reason is wholly inactive.

• It can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.

No will or action can immediately be contradictory to reason.

But a contradiction may be:

• in some of the attendants of the action, or
• in its causes or effects.

The action may:

• cause a judgment, or
• may be caused by a judgment obliquely, when the judgment concurs with a passion.

The same contrariety may be ascribed to the action, on that account.

We will now consider how far this truth or falsehood may be the source of morals.

Moral judgments

In a strict and philosophical sense, reason can influence our conduct only in two ways:

• When it excites a passion by informing us of the existence of its proper object, or
• When it discovers the connection of causes and effects, so as to afford us means of exerting any passion

These are the only kinds of judgment which can:

• accompany our actions, or
• produce them in any way.

These judgments may often be false and erroneous.

A person may be affected with passion by supposing a pain or pleasure in an object which:

• cannot produce pain or pleasure, or
• produces the contrary to what is imagined.

A person may also take false measures to attain his end.

• He may retard, instead of forwarding, the execution of any project by his foolish conduct.

These false judgments may:

• affect the passions and actions connected with them, and
• render them unreasonable, figuratively.

But these errors are so far from being the source of all immorality.

• They are commonly very innocent.
• They draw no guilt on the person who makes them.
• They do not extend beyond a mistake which moralists generally regard as being perfectly involuntary and not criminal.

I am more to be lamented than blamed:

• if I am mistaken in the pain or pleasure produced by objects, or
• if I do not know the proper means of satisfying my desires.

No one can ever regard such errors as a defect in my moral character.

I see a fruit that is really not delicious.

I fancy it to be delicious by mistake.

• This is my first error.

I reach for this fruit, which is not proper for my end.

• This is my second error.
• No third error can ever possibly enter our reasonings on actions.

Can a man guilty of these two errors be regarded as vicious and criminal?

• Are such errors the sources of all immorality?

If moral distinctions were derived from those judgments, then they must take place whenever we form those judgments.

There will be no difference:

• whether the question is concerning an apple or a kingdom, or
• whether the error is avoidable or unavoidable.

If the essence of morality consisted in an agreement or disagreement to reason, then:

• other circumstances:
  • would be entirely arbitrary, and
  • could never bestow or deprive virtue or vice on any action,
• this agreement or disagreement would then not admit of degrees, and
• all virtues and vices would be equal.

Some think that:

• a mistake of fact is not criminal, and
• a mistake of right is often criminal and may be the source of immorality.

I answer that it is impossible such a mistake can ever be the original source of immorality.

• Since it supposes a real right and wrong, independent of these judgments.

Therefore, a mistake of right may become a kind of immorality. But it is:

• only a secondary kind, and
• founded on some other kind, antecedent to it.

Our actions never cause any true or false judgment in ourselves.

Our actions only have such an influence on others.

Thus on many occasions, an action may create false conclusions in others.
    A person who sees my lewd behaviour with my neighbour's wife, might be so simple as to imagine that she is my own wife.
        My action resembles a lie, except that I do not do it intending to create a false judgment.
        I do it merely to satisfy my lust and passion.
        However, it causes a mistake and false judgment by accident.
            The falsehood of its effects may be ascribed to the action itself.

But I still do not see why the tendency to cause such an error is the original source of all immorality.12

Footnote 12:

William Wollaston (The Religion of Nature Delineated, London 1722) seriously affirmed that such a falsehood is the foundation of all guilt and moral deformity.
His fallacy is exposed by considering that a false conclusion is drawn from an action, only through an obscurity of natural principles.
    These principles:
        make a cause secretly interrupted in its operation by contrary causes, and
        render the connection between two objects uncertain and variable.
The same uncertainty and variety of causes:
    take place even in natural objects, and
    produce a similar error in our judgment.
If that tendency to produce error were the very essence of vice and immorality, then even inanimate objects might be vicious and immoral.

It is in vain to urge that inanimate objects act without liberty and choice.
Liberty and choice are not necessary to make an action produce a wrong conclusion in us.
    They cannot be essential to morality.
If the tendency to cause error were the origin of immorality, that tendency and immorality would be inseparable in every case.

If I closed the windows while I indulged with my neighbour's wife, I would not be guilty of immorality because my action was perfectly concealed.
It would have had no tendency to produce any false conclusion.

For the same reason, a thief who steals through a ladder at a window and causes no disturbance, is not criminal because he will not be seen.
If he is seen, he cannot produce any error.
People will see him as a man entering through a window.

Those who are squint-sighted, readily cause mistakes in others.
We imagine them talking to a person, when they are really talking to another.
Are they therefore immoral because of that?

In all those arguments, there is a reasoning in a circle.
    A person who steals another's goods and declares them to be his own, is a falsehood which is the source of the immorality of injustice.
But is property, right, or obligation understandable without an antecedent morality?

Should a man who receives favours be grateful to his benefactor?
Is it his duty to be grateful?
    This supposes that there is some antecedent rule of duty and morals.
    Is it because human nature:
        is generally grateful, and
        makes us conclude that an ungrateful man never received any favour from the person he was ungrateful to?
    But human nature is not so generally grateful, as to justify such a conclusion.
    If human nature were generally grateful, then would every case of ingratitude be bad because it is an exception?

This whimsical system leaves us under the same difficulty to explain why truth is virtuous and why falsehood is vicious, in the same way as we explain the merit or wickedness of any other action.
    This is enough to entirely destroy this system.
I shall allow that all immorality is derived from this supposed falsehood in action, if you can answer why such a falsehood is immoral.
    If you answer correctly, you will find yourself in the same difficulty as at the beginning.

This last argument is very conclusive.
    Because if there is no merit or wickedness annexed to this kind of truth or falsehood, then it can never influence our actions.
    Who ever thought of refraining from any action because others might draw false conclusions from it?
    Who ever performed any action so that he might create true conclusions?