Law and Morality

In a morally ideal society, there are no laws. Everyone does what they should out of the goodness of their heart not fear of legal consequences. The whole apparatus of law does not exist—police, courts, lawyers, prisons, etc. It sounds wonderful: no one steals, murders, rapes, cheats on their taxes, speeds, or litters. Laws exist only because people are morally imperfect, evil, sinful, egotistical, greedy, depraved. They are not good in themselves, merely useful in curbing immoral behavior. We would do without them if we could. It is not a source of pride to be “a nation of laws” because this is an admission that the nation is not “a nation of moral right”; a better nation would be to be a “nation of nice”. Laws are an indication of moral weakness or wildness.

But it is worse than that. Consider a society wholly ruled by laws: everything that is morally wrong is covered by a law, perhaps a stringent one. In such a society no one does anything right because it is right but because it is illegal to do anything else. Or rather: morally right action is overdetermined motivationally, with prudence predominating. Suppose children are raised to respect the law but not instructed in morality; any innate morality they possess withers away in such an environment. Suppose that moral thoughts and emotions scarcely exist in this society, replaced by a fear of laws. Wouldn’t that be a horrible travesty of a human being? Wouldn’t it be spiritual death? What would art be like, or friendship, or love. Right and wrong would be swallowed up by legal and illegal. Human life would be one long battle with the law—evading it, being punished by it. Moral consciousness (conscience) would be replaced by legal calculation. It would be a kind of hell. A nation of laws and only laws is a dystopia of the soul. It would be a complete distortion or deformation of the soul, a destruction of human nature. If offered the prospect of such a society, we would do well to decline the offer. We might even prefer a lawless society if morality could thrive in it—morality being the thing that keeps that society on the rails.

I think we can enunciate the following (natural) law: the more a society is governed by laws, the less it is governed by morality. The more morality exists, the less need is there of laws. This is not a paradox but a logical consequence. Laws are proxies for moral precepts, so they lead to the attenuation of such precepts, even to the point of extinction. Morality goes extinct when laws take over its territory. Legal prudence takes over moral altruism. Conscience gives way to self-interest. Doing wrong is no longer an occasion for guilt and shame but merely for self-centered regret (“I wish I been more cunning”). And what happens to doing good? It degenerates into legality: the action wasn’t legally punishable. That is a pretty thin emotion and hardly a reason for (proper) pride. Laws eat away at the moral core of a person. They give us less scope for doing good and dilute our reasons for avoiding doing bad. Laws tend to destroy the moral center of human life by converting altruism into egoism. They are really bad if overly indulged in. And the point is not merely theoretical: casual inspection reveals that this process is going on right now. People in a certain country (I won’t name it) have lost their grip on morality and ceded it to the law. They have little ability to talk intelligently about morality, still less to engage privately in genuine moral reasoning. They are apt to be moral relativists or nihilists or simply oblivious to moral discourse. Fortunately, we still have a society in which law has not yet penetrated to every corner of human life, particularly personal life, but we are well on the way to fixing that problem. Imagine if marriage or friendship or parenting were subject to laws at every level—for example, marital rows are now illegal, friendships are legally enforced, and parents are forbidden by law from teaching their children right from wrong (the law has taken that over that function). As things are, morality no longer governs our business dealings or property rights or divorce proceedings; imagine a world in which the law also controls everything else that happens between people. Imagine if promise-breaking were punishable by six months in jail, if you are caught (otherwise you have nothing to worry about). The essential point is that morality and the law have quite different psychologies: morality is about our duties to others, altruism, not inflicting suffering, basic human decency—whereas the law is about self-interest, connivance, not getting caught, taking advantage of other people where it is legally permissible. You can evade the law, but you can’t evade morality—conscience will always “catch” you. We don’t need more laws (and less morality); we need fewer laws (and more morality). We need to educate our children in moral right and wrong not legal prohibitions. The ideal is not the universal rule of law but lawless moral integrity. We need to get rid of the law (defund it). Of course, I don’t mean go cold turkey on the law; I mean we should re-direct our efforts to make the law unnecessary. The law is at best a necessary evil not a desirable end in itself. It is not civilization but the decline of civilization, properly understood. Just think of the freedom you would feel if there were no law to fear, with all its errors and rigidity and injustice. It is a terrible burden on the human spirit not a welcome helping hand. No police, no judges, no prisons–just morally refined individuals doing what they know is right. Is that our future or just more legal overreach? We want a world without doctors because there is no illness; likewise, we want a world without lawyers because there is no wrongdoing (or just a tiny bit here and there). We want the unpaid hand of morality not the overpaid agent of the law. As it is, we have a faltering grasp of morality combined with a bloated system of law. The latter should be phased out as the former regains its authority (think of human society before laws but tightly controlled by morality). The problem is that as law gains more of a stranglehold on our psychology and behavior, the less power morality possesses, to the point where it becomes in danger of extinction. Morality and law are more rivals than collaborators, as things stand. The law is about what you can get away with; morality is about what must be done. I thus advocate moral maximalism and legal minimalism as a guiding principle.

A bonus is that we get a smaller state under the recommended social system. A large part of the power of the state derives from its legal apparatus: its legislature, its courts, its prisons. This is expensive to run and potentially oppressive. It enables the government to exercise power over its citizens, especially when allied with the military. A society with a minimal (or nonexistent) legal system is cheaper and less oppressive; morality costs nothing. The stronger morality is in a society, the less need there is for law, and hence the less need for a powerful government. Virtue undermines big government, or would if it were sufficiently prevalent (imagine if everyone observed speed limits from moral conviction). The difficulty is that most people tend to obey the law not their own conscience (if they have one), and that means they do what they think they can get away with not what they recognize as right. The optimistic view is that the law is just a passing phase in human history, destined to be replaced by a more developed moral sense; the pessimistic view is that the law will eventually strangle morality and leave something truly terrible in its place (law-abiding moral idiots).[1]

[1] It might be said that crime is part of human nature and therefore ineradicable. I think this is not true: morality is innate and therefore part of human nature, as has been persuasively argued; but crime is acquired and hence localized. Moral motivation is a genetic given, but criminal motivation is a result of upbringing (though there may be predisposing genetic factors). Crime can in principle be eliminated without revision of human nature, but morality is here to stay, short of genetic alteration. Laws are imposed, morality is original. This does not, however, prevent law from replacing morality psychologically, since genetic programs can be suppressed. There is nothing natural or inevitable about crime. Laws are not a necessary condition of good behavior.

No Reply

I recently wrote to the University of Miami philosophy department asking when, if ever, the ban on my visiting the campus would be lifted (I live five minutes from there). I also asked what the reason for the ban was. I got no reply. Then I wrote offering to make a donation to the department in honor of Ed Erwin, to be awarded to a deserving graduate student. I got no reply. I wonder what would happen if I offered to give the department a million dollars no questions asked.

Can Dogs Talk?

I watched a very interesting documentary last night on PBS about whether dogs can talk. Of course, they do talk—they talk dog. There could be an interesting documentary on whether humans can talk…dog language. They might to a limited degree, but not as well as dogs. But the documentary was about whether dogs can talk human, i.e., whether they are bilingual. Everyone knows that dogs understand many human words (from 80 to 200 in some cases), but the question is whether they can communicate with humans using human words (they do pretty well with dog words). A new technology allows them to press buttons with their paws that make word sounds—food, walk, etc. They have gotten quite good at this, it turns out. I wish to make two points about this research. The first is that the reason dogs don’t talk to us in English (say) is that they lack the vocal apparatus—not the cerebral apparatus. They just don’t have the right kind of larynx and mouth; their brains are up to the task. Their understanding of English is not hooked into their motor systems in such a way as to produce speech; it isn’t a cognitive problem. A human with a damaged vocal tract might have the cognitive capacity to speak but not the anatomy, and dogs are like that. The reason they don’t speak is not like the reason trees don’t speak—that they are linguistically incompetent. In principle, we could fit them with a vocal prosthesis that enables them to convert their linguistic understanding into spoken words. Then you could literally talk to your dog and it would reply in kind: you, “What do you want?”; dog, “Walk”. This would completely change our relationship to dogs and it is within the bounds of possibility. It might even change our whole attitude to animals (see Dr Dolittle). They have the mental power in them already. This is quite predictable from the fact that they understand human speech (to some degree).

The second point is less technology-fictiony but more interesting. It doesn’t follow from the fact that dogs don’t or can’t talk out loud that they can’t talk at all. Not once did the documentary mention the possibility, which might be empirically verified, that dogs could be talking to themselves. I am morally certain that they do. They hear the English words in their minds, much as we do. For their minds follow their ears, which are exceptionally acute. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that when they want to go for a walk, they hear the word “walk” in their head, perhaps quite insistently; they just can’t say it. Or they can’t say it outwardly; inwardly, they might be saying it quite clearly. They could be having inner speech, with meaning, in English—along the lines of “Boy, could I use a walk right now!” or in dog English “Walk-walk!”. They can talk in English internally using auditory imagery. In fact, they have been doing this for centuries and in many human languages—they are veritable (silent) chatterboxes. Perhaps some scientist could do some brain scans to test for this. Do children go through a similar phase before they begin outer vocalization? It is a wonderful thought that your dog, your best friend, is hearing your voice inwardly all the time, perhaps conversing with you in some primitive way—who knows what the dog imagination is capable of? We know that dogs dream and the odds are that they experience auditory vocal imagery: maybe they converse with their owners while dreaming. So, actually, they are far more linguistically active than the researchers believe; it just takes place in their inner world. Do they dream of asking their owners to take them for a walk—in English? That is not disproven by their inability to vocalize outwardly like a human. Can dogs talk? Yes, they do it all the time and have been for thousands of years, but secretly. Perhaps this is why they pick up the trick with the buttons quite quickly—because it simply externalizes what has been going on internally their whole life.[1]

[1] Of course, no philosopher was consulted in this documentary. But, you know, we can actually talk. Chomsky makes the point that most human linguistic activity takes place in silent speech not in overt behavior.

Meaning Explained (Finally)

It’s really very strange that we can’t say what meaning is. Surely, we know what we mean! Meaning is a mental act and we know our mental acts, don’t we? Yet all attempts hitherto have foundered, often embarrassingly so. Mental images, sensations, definite descriptions, objects in the world, rules of use, behavioral dispositions, words in the language of thought, infusions from above (okay, I made that one up)—all these theories have come and gone, covered in shame. One might therefore suppose that the answer must be unobvious, hidden, a matter of far-out conjecture, because nothing on the surface does the trick (or else we go eliminative—the “myth of meaning”). We might even stipulate it as a condition of adequacy that the nature of meaning should be something far away from our common conceptions (compare consciousness). It should be something not evident to ordinary thought—a bit like the chemical structure of the genes. Meaning is clearly somewhat of a mystery, so we would expect that some ingenuity is going to be required in order to get it right, and some adjustment of theoretical expectations. We might have to reconfigure what we think a theory of meaning should look like—its methodology and structure. The key concept may not be what we have been led to expect; paradigms might shift under our feet (like tectonic plates). In other words, prepare to be shocked, even outraged (like being told the center of the universe is not the earth).

Let’s go back to basics. Take a simple proper name, say one that belongs to a family member or close acquaintance; and imagine the early days of human language. You make a sound, or perhaps a hand gesture, in hopes of securing reference to someone. This (putative) name is supposed to “stand for” a certain individual. How does it do so? Well, we might imagine a pre-linguistic background: up to now you have impersonated or mimicked the individual in question, and you are quite talented in this regard. You perform certain actions intended to resemble the individual; this will cause your audience (the term is apt) to bring that person to mind. If you utter the would-be name and get looks of incomprehension, you might trot out your little impression, thus securing uptake. Your hearers will then remember your act and associate it with the sound or gesture you produce. The reference of your utterance is the person you impersonated. It is in virtue of this association that the name means what it does in your close-knit community. If you are a good mimic, the association will stick, perhaps eliciting mild amusement. Here we see the germ of what I will boldly call the impersonation theory of names. Names mean (express) the impersonation they are linked to: not knowledge of a description but an ability to mimic. This is the psychological background to the institution of naming; one could write an article called “Naming and Mimicry”. We might loosely say that names are impersonations of their bearers—they evoke memories of such impersonations, or actual impersonations. People use them so as to avoid having to do an impersonation—they are “short for” such impersonations. These names are synonymous with impersonations. They “stand in” for impersonations. Impersonations symbolize the individual impersonated, and names partake of this symbolic power. Names rely on an underlying psychological capacity—the capacity to copy or imitate other people.[1] This capacity predated names and language generally, and indeed goes back to primitive capacities to mimic (like butterflies that mimic other butterflies because those others are poisonous to predators). Mimicry is common in the animal world and would no doubt have been present in pre-linguistic humans. It provides the foundation of meaning in simple cases. Language doesn’t picture objects; it impersonates them. Mimicry is the cradle of reference and hence meaning. It is the “cognitive architecture” on which meaning rests—what the meaning mind must be like in its deep structure. This structure is hidden, as promised, and it will take some persuasion on my part to get the theory accepted as a general theory of meaning.

I think that if it works for names of persons it will work for other words, because it provides necessary and sufficient conditions for meaning in one area of language—and meaning is uniform. But how? Here I must be brief. Consider names of places: these can be handled by invoking the notion of personification and extending impersonation to geographic formations (e.g., imitating the shape of the British Isles or the manners of its people). Names of shapes and colors are explained by the mimicking of shapes with the hands and pointing to color samples so as to provide a performance denoting the color intended (the sample mimics the color). Consider what people do when trying to communicate with others in the absence of a common language: they put on a theatrical performance attempting to mimic what they intend to communicate—for example, imitating someone eating to indicate hunger. They use the common language of mankind embodied in acts of mimicry. In this way facts can be impersonated not just objects—say, an accident witnessed. This repertoire of skills underlies the communication achieved by sounds and marks. Linguistic meaning piggybacks on this. It is the machinery of meaning, supplemented by sensorimotor skills, memory, etc.

There is a further component to be added to this theory, viz. the social nature of meaning. It may be objected that many users of language cannot impersonate the things they mean and don’t know anyone who can. Here we must invoke causal chains, experts, the division of linguistic labor, semantic deference, and linguistic history—the whole social web in which meaning occurs. Impersonation is essential at some point, but it need not be available to every speaker; we must allow for derived meaning, parasitic meaning. We can also bring in analogy, metaphor, intelligible extensions (impersonating a number with the fingers or a moral value with a facial expression). Human language is complex and made up of many things; I am only considering the basic mechanisms here—the deep roots of meaning. The great advantage of this theory is that it views meaning as a special case of something more general and antecedent, something practical and bodily, where it belongs. We can easily imagine communicative acts, in humans and animals, that involve the impersonation of dangers, like predators or precipices; and meaning can spring from these elementary beginnings (it has to spring from somewhere). The basic idea is to derive one kind of symbolism from another—meaningful words from imitative acts. Syntax no doubt stems from somewhere else, but the imbuing of meaning is a matter of imitative symbolism—meaning from mime. It is mime extended, elaborated, and attenuated. If butterflies had a language, it would be closely tied to their imitative wing coloration (we might even say that this is their language—“Keep away if you know what’s good for you!”). Nature is actually highly communicative, mainly by dint of imitation; language is one form of this general trait (plus some). Meaning is what happens when syntax meets impersonation in pragmatic acts of speech. For impersonation (imitation, mimicry) takes us from the thing doing the impersonating to the thing being impersonated—from the individual to the environment. Imitation is the root of reference. The other theories fail, in various ways, to achieve this result.

Humans are great imitators, the best of the best: it’s how we learn. The child in learning to speak imitates his or her elders, remarkably well. It is as if we are all born ready to imitate those around us, professionally. And we can imitate many things—noises, movements, facial expressions. Clearly, imitation comes into language acquisition; according to the impersonation theory, it also comes into the creation of meaning. It is odd that Wittgenstein never mentions this fact of human “natural history”, along with “walking, eating, drinking, playing” (PI 25). It is part of our “form of life”—the “imitation games” we play. Imitation clearly has much in common with speaking; sign language makes this particularly obvious. In the Tractatus meaning is held to consist in picturing, but picturing is a form of imitation. He could have preserved this insight in the Investigations by invoking natural mimicry instead of pictorial geometry; then he would have had an imitation theory of the basis of meaning. Would this be vulnerable to the semantic skeptic? It is hard to see how: the impersonation relation is not indeterminate. Language may not be all onomatopoeia (pure impersonation), but it’s not far off. Speech acts are acts of impersonation, or rely on such acts as a pre-condition. The linguistic brain is really an expert mimic. To understand a sentence is to know what imitative acts would convey its meaning, or to be suitably connected to someone who knows that. Other animals are limited in their powers of imitation (mentally or physically), so they are unsuited to be speakers except to a very limited extent. Humans, though, have an elaborate imitation module in their head, which they put to work when they speak and understand speech. We are certainly extremely good at interpreting impersonation and other forms of imitation; we can see it instantly without thinking. To be impersonation-blind is to be virtually subhuman (I doubt that other animals impersonate each other as we do). Our distinctive sense of humor is bound up with it (jokes often involve impersonation). We have a language-imitation-humor mental faculty. Meaning arises from this suite of capacities and acts back on them. Could there be a language without the possibility of jokes?[2]

[1] You might object that normal human powers of impersonation only extend to a few people, whereas we are typically masters of many names. I reply that probably names were first introduced only within families so that only a few needed to be backed by a distinctive impersonation (see below on the role of social interactions in extending the range of names).

[2] You see what I mean about paradigm shifts and surprising surmises; this is a far cry from formalistic denotation and connotation theories of what meaning ultimately consists in. Meaning is part of human nature in the round not an isolated formal system. It would be hard to develop a scientific theory of it, still less a mathematical theory. It is biologically messy. This is not ordinary language philosophy but ordinary people philosophy—a species of animal indeed. Not Frege but Darwin.