Telling Right from Wrong
Cooney, Timothy J.
TELLING RIGHT FROM WRONG: WHAT IS MORAL, WHAT IS'-IMMORAL, AND WHAT IS NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER Timothy J. Cooney/Prometheus Books/$17.95 Ernest van den Haag A his book has an interesting...
...He is no more wrong than the others, but wrong enough...
...But since he defines morality as "an ultimate guide to action" we may well be curious about applications...
...He tells us that when we have a shared desire, "we go from is to ought all the time," and gives as an instance the decision "Jones is the wrong man for the job...
...After all, Random House has unblink-ingly published a book, by a convicted murderer, which had no other merit (pace Norman Mailer) than having been written by a convicted murderer...
...Fearing (wrongly, as it turned out) that his manuscript had no chance of being read unless recommended by a philosophical heavyweight, Timothy Cooney forged a letter of praise from the philosophical heavyweight, Robert Nozick...
...Cooney thinks, apparently, that if we believe them unfree we might go to war endangering survival...
...Cooney claims that his discoveries are original and correct...
...So far I have followed Cooney in his abstract explorations...
...He thinks being is better than not-being because it is desired by those who exist...
...Is sticking to the truth not a moral matter for Cooney...
...But I find no argument for this assumption...
...Now, granted that we all share the desire to continue the world (there are some nihilists, but let that go), why does this make the desire morally good...
...This is, to say the least, counterintuitive...
...Sure, without survival there can be no justice...
...It deals with the suitability of means, not with the justification of ends, which is what morality is concerned with...
...Non se-quitur...
...Cooney here fails to distinguish between his (correct) explanation of the prohibition in terms of social survival, and the morality of the act prohibited...
...The question is not answered by saying that whatever is universally desired, or useful, or without which life could not go on, is moral (and that nothing else is morally relevant...
...Perhaps this explains the' publisher's pique...
...Cooney contends that we all share the desire not to have everything (the world, society) destroyed, and that morality derives from this desire...
...But murder would be immoral even if it didn't lead to the consequences Mr...
...This slippery slope argument is unpersuasive...
...Cooney writes well enough to have earned the right to be taken seriously, wherefore I will Ernest van den Haag is the John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University...
...Well, the desire not to see everything extinct is (as desires usually are) neither true nor false...
...But it is not morally relevant...
...This view (shared by utilitarians) requires an argument which Cooney does not offer...
...The editors at Prometheus Books are to be congratulated on their common sense and their dedication, to publishing books on their merits, rather than following whatever murky principles inspired Random House...
...Cooney here simply confuses the universally desired with the universally desirable (the moral), and thus leaps from "is desired" to "should be desired" (is desirable...
...It would be morally wrong to kill or mistreat a subgroup, he writes, for "if we wiped out all the redheads because we didn't like them" then "the reason [i.e., "not liking people"] could be used to wipe out people ad infinitum...
...Cooney assumes it would be...
...In fuzzying up the distinction between ultimate ends and means and thus between what is morally right and what is useful for survival, Cooney has a lot in common with some pragma-tists...
...This "ought" has no moral relevance...
...Cooney assumes...
...I mention the similarities not so much to deflate Cooney's claim to originality-he is original enough, even if not as original as he thinks-as to suggest that he is in plentiful company...
...Why is a faker worse, particularly a comparatively harmless faker like Cooney...
...Spain did not treat the native South American very well...
...One cannot accept Cooney's idea that survival is the supreme good without a better argument than he offers-that we all desire His conviction leads Cooney to assert that it is a "fiction" that people in Eastern Europe are not free...
...The Soviets merrily murder much of their population in the Gulag without worrying about the destruction of everything...
...Fortunately other publishers are not so silly...
...Indeed Mr...
...I'm not even convinced that if any of these things were necessary to the survival of the world they would become moral...
...point out his errors rather bluntly...
...An act is immoral only if it threatens to destroy society...
...If one hires an accountant, of course, the purpose is already implied...
...Cooney seems not to have heard of the Nazis and the Jews, or of Burundi and, generally, tribal warfare in Africa...
...He is wrong on both counts...
...He deals quite unsatisfactorily with the important problem of institutionalized evil, which he illustrates with "the problem of redheads...
...Slavery, or ritualized rape, or human sacrifices, or torture for the pleasure of the torturer would be immoral only if and when they would lead to the destruction of everything...
...Ironically the book was accepted by Random House on its merits before the letter was seen...
...This is an equivocation because the "ought" in this decision merely is shorthand for "If we want honest accountants then Jones . . . "; which is like saying "If you want to go to Brooklyn you must [ought to] take the A train...
...The publisher's action seems odd...
...But perhaps survival at the expense of justice is not morally justifiable...
...The "ought" here is instrumental...
...Or rather, he identifies one with the other, implicitly denying that there can be a morality independent of usefulness...
...he ought not to be hired" based on a) the empirical knowledge that Jones is an embezzler and b) the shared desire not to have an embezzler as an accountant...
...The American Indians were nearly extinct...
...Does the book have enough merit to warrant publication...
...Cooney himself defines "morality" as the "ultimate guide to action, universal, timeless, not subject to compromise, truth (not opinion) [which] demands the punishment of the immoral...
...Believers in natural law too derive morality from human nature (what we all desire...
...True, the author-murderer didn't murder anyone at Random House, whereas Cooney's faked letter was meant to affect Random House directly...
...They don't usually, and therefore are not immoral according to Cooney...
...Would it be right to torture children if that were the way to survive...
...Fortunately they are not...
...It is written in a clear and lively style and the author has something to say...
...Some fiction...
...The point was made explicitly by H.L.A...
...Why indeed should we select one purpose (e.g., survival) over another (e.g., justice...
...One group can and has enslaved or killed another without any realistic fear that it (the first group) would in turn be oppressed or "wiped out...
...Everything that would, if tolerated, destroy society (e.g., murder) is immoral...
...If, for instance, one were to show, as many believers in natural law have tried to do, that without belief in natural law society would collapse, one would have shown this belief to be useful, even indispensable-but neither true nor morally right...
...But this does not make Communism moral, although Cooney seems to think it does...
...but: "What should our purpose be, what should we desire...
...And from it no moral desirability or undesirability-as distinguished from be derived, except in a purely instrumental, morally irrelevant sense...
...Hart, who was quite modest about it in his The Minimum Content of Natural Law...
...Cooney's criterion, nonextinction, is narrower than the utilitarian criterion of happiness...
...One might infer that everything that helps society to survive is morally good, but Cooney does not deal with this inference: He seems interested only in determining what is morally wrong...
...They are right in this...
...This shows that even apparently harmless philosophical mistakes can lead to political perversions...
...Hence a great number of issues that are often considered moral are not...
...It is not the highest goal always, and it does not settle many matters that are morally questionable...
...But the purpose must be decided on in many other situations, and the desire to avoid extinction does not settle the issue...
...But had Cooney claimed no more, he could not have claimed a great discovery, nor great originality...
...And he is just wrong on the important matters, although there are some nice incidental insights...
...Cooney could not morally object to any of this, unless it threatens the destruction of the world...
...TELLING RIGHT FROM WRONG: WHAT IS MORAL, WHAT IS'-IMMORAL, AND WHAT IS NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER Timothy J. Cooney/Prometheus Books/$17.95 Ernest van den Haag A his book has an interesting history...
...In any event, the argument could not be for morality, as he defines it, but for contingent usefulness...
...Anyway, publication of a book ought to depend on its merits, wherefore all the business about the letter, or anything else about the author-be he an adulterer, a homosexual, a cannibal, counterfeiter, feminist, sexist, or murderer-should not have led Random House to reverse its decision to publish...
...The issue with moral matters is not: "Are the means [hiring Jones, in this instance] consistent with and appropriate to our purpose...
...What Cooney has shown is simply that some of our moral principles are consistent with, or necessary to, the existence of society-some, not all...
...However, when it was discovered that Cooney had faked the Nozick letter, Random House refused to publish his book although already in galleys...
...Cooney is aware of this difficulty, but tries to overcome it by what I regard as an equivocation...
...He is not original since many others have shared his mistakes, although he seems not to be fully aware of this...
...Slavery has existed for millennia...
...The implied conditional merely tells you how to attain the end (moral or not) which you desire...
...Cooney thinks that the statement "murder is immoral" must be true because tolerance of murder would lead to the collapse of society, which we all desire to avoid...
...What would Cooney do with someone who insisted Fiat justitia pereat mundusl John Rawls, for example, obviously thinks that justice is more important than social survival...
...it is certainly no worse than many books published by academics and by professional moralists...
...This helps avoid some utilitarian pitfalls, but does not avoid the difficulty of explaining how we go from: "We all want the world to to: "We should want to maximize continuance (or happiness...
...Nothing else is...
Vol. 18 • October 1985 • No. 10
