I have a position that is somewhat unusual: I think there are some cases where it is morally acceptable to cheat.
First, the couple has to be really, really sexually incompatible. I am not talking “I wish we could have sex three times a week, but we only have sex two times a week” here, and I am not talking “we rarely have sex but we’re both okay with it” (that is called a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship). Fetishes can be a cause of severe sexual incompatibility: she’s a diaper fetishist, but her husband is absolutely repelled by the concept of involving diapers in sex. Another cause is a very large gap in libido: zie wants sex once a year… maybe… while zir boyfriend wants sex once a week or even more.
Of course, not all relationships with a libido gap or incompatible fetishes are unhappy. If she’s perfectly happy fantasizing about diapers during her sex with her husband, then there’s no issue; if he’s fine masturbating (perhaps while zie snuggles him), then there’s no issue.
But I think a lot of people are unsympathetic to the pain that very sexually incompatible relationships can cause. For a lot of people, sexuality is a core way of expressing affection. They can feel hideous, repellent, utterly unattractive; if the issue is a fetish, they can feel ashamed of their sexuality. They may become depressed. Often, they can grow bitter about their partner; they can feel like their partner doesn’t love them or care about their needs.
Second, there has to be no possibility of a satisfactory resolution. If the lower-libido partner is working on feeling more comfortable in zir body so that zie feels sexier, the high-libido partner is going on an SSRI in a few weeks, the diaper fetishist is expanding her ideas of what she finds sexy, or the diaper-averse husband is trying to learn to appreciate his wife’s arousal, then it would be unreasonable to cheat. Similarly, if the couple is opening their relationship, then it would be unreasonable to cheat. As long as both of you are working on the problem in good faith, you shouldn’t cheat.
Of course, even when people are trying their best, not all diaper fetishists can be turned on by something that isn’t diapers, and not all lower-libido partners are going to want sex more than once a year. And many people are genuinely distressed by the possibility of their partner having sex with someone else. Unfortunately, we do not live in a world in which people can cause changes in their sexuality by really really wanting them.
And equally unfortunately, not everyone understands the importance of sexuality to their partners. Even an otherwise kind and reasonable husband can feel that the problem is their wife having that disgusting fetish and she just needs to learn to like normal sex; even an otherwise kind and reasonable partner can think that zir boyfriend just needs to calm his raging, overactive libido and then everything would be okay. (It can happen that someone claims to be working on the problem, but drag drag draaaaags their feet on actually doing anything; I think the person considering cheating must be discerning about whether their partner is honestly doing their best or just trying to keep them off their back.)
Third, the relationship has to have solid fundamentals. A lot of sexually incompatible relationships don’t, or if they did once it was lost in the conflict over the sexual incompatibility. If you and your partner hurl cruel insults, feel rage and contempt about each other, or are completely emotionally disconnected from each other, then the wisest course is to break up.
For some unlucky people (I’m in this category), having sex with people other than your primary partner doesn’t scratch the itch– it’s not that you want to have sex in general, it’s that you want to express your love and caring to your primary partner through sex with them. I think if you have those preferences a breakup is probably wise.
Fourth, there has to be some reason why it would be very bad for the couple to break up. The classic example, of course, is children. Research suggests that children experience negative consequences from divorce if their parents were in a low-conflict relationship. (Of course, if you and your partner are in a high-conflict relationship, divorce is best both for you and for your children.) For that reason, many people don’t want to divorce while their children are under the age of eighteen. Of course, some people are capable of being celibate for years or decades while they wait for their children to grow up. But some are not. Indeed, for some people, the resentment they feel about their sex life poisons the rest of their otherwise good relationship.
Another example is someone whose partner is dying. Oftentimes, well spouses who have affairs are talked about as uncaring sociopaths who care more about their boners than their spouses. But caregiving is really hard, and illness can make it impossible for the well spouse to have the affection they’re used to. For some people, the stress and grief of their spouse’s illness, combined with their touch starvation, make them short-tempered and nasty to their partners. Having an affair with someone else can be a brief break from the misery that allows them to have their need for touch met; it can make people happier, calmer, and better able to make loving memories with their spouse in the time they have left. Of course, not all well spouses have any desire to have an affair– but some do, and in my opinion, one would have to have a heart of stone to condemn cheating in this circumstance.
Fifth, you must take steps to minimize the damage to your primary partnership. Of course, taking appropriate precautions against STIs and pregnancy is a must, and you must be discreet about your sexual relationships. Equally important is minimizing the threat to your primary relationship– after all, the whole purpose of this is to maintain that relationship.
Consider hiring a sex worker. Hiring a sex worker essentially eliminates the risk that you’ll be tempted to leave your primary relationship for a shiny new lover. If you’re a submissive, prodomming without sexual intercourse is legal in most locations; you can have fetishy sex without risk of STIs, pregnancy, or legal repercussions. (Unfortunately, prosubs are far less common.)
Consider Internet sex. For many people, their desires may be met through flirting, exchanging naked pictures, cybersex, or some combination. That eliminates the risk of STIs and pregnancy and may reduce the risk to your primary relationship, particularly if you establish a persona that’s pretty different from you. Do be careful not to get caught, however.
Thing of Things 
This strikes me as the relationship equivalent of pushing the fat man in front of the trolley. It’s possible to construct a scenario where it’s ok, but in the real world “being the type of person who wouldn’t do that” is a much safer bet.
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I think you greatly underestimate the number of people in libido-mismatched relationships. It’s Dan Savage’s most common type of letter.
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Boo-hoo. They can deal with it like grown-ups, then: either break up or deal with it.
Did someone put something in the world’s water for the past 20 years that eliminates self-control?
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It also eliminates empathy, charity, and non black-and-white thinking.
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Dan Savage often gives similar advice.
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…and although I nod sagely when he gives it, I think one thing that’s missing from your analysis is: don’t make this decision on your own. You don’t necessarily need to write to an advice columnist, but at least talk it over with a friend who you trust to tell you if you’re full of shit. Otherwise, there’s a high risk of motivated reasoning.
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I fail to see a generalizable principle here, and disagree substantively with your examples: if a behavior is acceptable only so long as you aren’t caught, it isn’t actually an acceptable behavior; first, because it wouldn’t actually be acceptable to the people whose moral sanction matters with respect to the behavior, but also because the moral acceptability of the behavior is dependent upon factors substantively out of your control.
If your partner isn’t providing you with what you need, either renegotiate the terms of your partnership or dissolve it. Yeah, it’s a horrible conversation and it is a horrible situation, but you don’t get to unilaterally change the terms of your partnership without your partners’ consent and knowledge just because your life would be improved if you do. That’s not a partnership, and if you’ve already decided it’s not a partnership, it is incredibly abusive to continue to accrue the substantive benefits of the partnership while denying them to your partner.
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> but also because the moral acceptability of the behavior is dependent upon factors substantively out of your control.
This in particular seems to me to be a deontology vs consequentialism thing. From a deontological perspective, it doesn’t make sense for the moral acceptability of an act to depend on factors outside your control. In the context, the action is right or wrong. However, to the consequentialist, the old cheater’s justification “what they don’t know can’t hurt them” actually has a lot of force.
Of course, a more sophisticated consequentialist would probably say “don’t try to be clever, you have principles for a reason.
Additionally I feel like Ozy’s recent post argues for the position that factors that are out of your control can influence the moral acceptibility of your actions.
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I don’t see how “do it as long as you’re not found out” is an inconsistent general principle. Imagine you’re at Carol’s going away party for her permanent reassignment to Antarctica. Your mutual friend Bob is there; your wife Alice is not, having come down with the flu. During the party, Carol remarks that Alice is a stupid hypochondriac drama queen, and she’s glad she didn’t come.
Alice has the prestated preference that you tell each other when people talk about you without the other around, so you can strive for self improvement. However, you think carol isn’t exactly offering constructive criticism here, and besides, she’s going away indefinitely so her relationship with Alice can’t possibly be a big concern. You don’t tell Alice.
A few days later, Bob tells Alice.
What do you think?
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Pretty obviously you should tell Alice immediately, since there’s a stated agreement, virtually no consequences (the move to Antarctica), and your relationship with Alice should take precedence over all others.
How is this even remotely ambiguous, difficult, or complex? It’s transparently obvious.
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@Cerastes, “virtually no consequences” is a false assumption. Passing the news along to Alice is likely to upset her, maybe severely (does she have self-esteem issues?).
Telling her immediately is only the “obvious” choice if the only thing that matters in your moral code is fulfilling people’s stated preferences. But fulfilling people’s stated preferences doesn’t necessarily maximize happiness (theirs or yours), and they aren’t always glad you did it. In other words, stated preferences are generalizations that often fail to account for edge cases, and it’s not unreasonable to question them once in a while.
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@taradinoc – Then ask them. Like a grown-up. Say “If someone said something hurtful about you behind your back, would you like to know full details, know simply that it was said and was hurtful, or not know.”
Even if we look at it from “maximize happiness”, which is worse: that you caused them brief discomfort (and then knowing you promptly chewed out Carol in front of everyone and humiliated her at her own party (unless you’re a coward)), or finding out from Bob, thereby suffering the same discomfort, plus knowing that she cannot rely on you.
Alice is a grown-up, and knew when stating her preference it could result in you relaying unpleasantries. By taking that choice away from her, you disregard her agency and treat her like an infant, rather than an adult who can make her own choices. It’s not only hurtful, it’s cowardly and disrespectful to Alice.
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@Cerastes
All right, so you say that, and Alice (making the obvious connection) interprets it as: “Someone at the party said something hurtful about you behind your back. Do you want to know the details?”
Now you’ve upset her and taunted her with a mystery. Either she declines and lets her imagination run wild, or she hears the details and gets more upset.
Yes, that’s the question you have to ask yourself, and the answer isn’t as cut-and-dry as you seem to think. It depends on things like: how likely is she to hear it from Bob at all? If she does, how much time is likely to elapse — will she be less upset if she hears it later, when Carol is already gone? How will she respond if you explain why you didn’t tell her (remember, there’s no “self improvement” to be had from Carol’s comment, so the stated reason for Alice’s preference doesn’t apply)?
People aren’t clairvoyant, so the general preferences they state aren’t always what they’ll actually prefer in situations they haven’t thought of. Most people aren’t lawyers or programmers used to specifying every last edge case, either, and so the general preferences they state might not even be what they actually prefer in situations they have thought of. These facts may be inconvenient, but they’re true.
Unless you’re a robot, there’s nothing forcing you to interpret instructions without context. And unless you’re a fairy-tale genie, you probably don’t enjoy interpreting people’s instructions to the letter even in the face of a strong belief that they’d actually prefer something else. You have the power to use your own judgment, and sometimes that’s the best choice.
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@taradinoc-
First, I don’t know how to do the quote thing, so excuse the lack of precision.
Second, this is hardly a situation that should be unexpected, and if this issue wasn’t addressed at the time of the stated preference, that’s just negligent on both party’s sides.
Lastly, you’ve completely evaded my main point – treating Alice like an adult who can make her own decisions. Yes, yes, blah blah happiness blah blah weighting blah blah. If you aren’t treating her as an adult, if you are willing to fundamentally undermine her own judgement, that’s a fundamentally unequal and problematic relationship.
If you can’t make decisions for yourself, do you even have a life of your own, in any meaningful sense? If you’re going to supercede her will, there had better be a damn better reason than “I know her mind better than she does” or “it’s for her own good”. Both of those are, IMHO, the fuzzy edges of an abusive relationship.
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@Cerastes
To quote, enclose the text in [blockquote]…[/blockquote], but with angle brackets instead of square brackets.
No, I’ve addressed your main point. If all you got out of my response was “blah blah happiness blah blah weighting blah blah”, maybe you should read it again.
Treating people as adults doesn’t mean following their words to the letter even when you think they’d prefer something else. That isn’t the behavior of an adult, either — it’s the behavior of a spiteful child (“I picked up my toys, just like you said! Then I put them back down!”). Or a fairy-tale genie. Or a robot.
Suppose Alice tells you, “I want to study tonight, I have a big exam next week. If anyone comes looking for me, just tell them I’m not home.”
An hour later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Alice’s best friend, and she reserved concert tickets for Alice’s favorite band — Alice has been excited for this concert all year, and was crestfallen to learn it was sold out, but it turns out her friend got the last seats. If Alice wants them, she has to go pick them up in person, right now, one block away. But if she isn’t there in the next hour, they’ll be sold to someone else.
You tell her Alice isn’t home.
Do you suppose that’s what Alice would’ve wanted?
Were you negligent in not asking “even if it’s your friend coming by with tickets for that concert you thought was sold out”?
If Alice says “you should’ve known better, you saw how bummed I was when the site said it was sold out”, will you tell her she was negligent not to state her preferences more clearly?
If you explain “I wanted to treat you as an adult, and that means respecting your judgment, and you said if anyone comes looking for you I should tell them you aren’t home, and I didn’t want to be unequal and problematic”, will she be negligent if she tries to open your service panel and look for malfunctioning circuits without administering a Voight-Kampff test first?
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I’d tell Alice. It’s not even a question; that Carol is badmouthing her in front of her other friends is valuable social information she needs to have in order to deal with and/or mitigate damage that has already been done. Have other friends been acting strangely towards her lately? Carol has probably been up to this for a while, and she would be better-placed to make a judgment on that matter.
Beware of other-optimizing. Give Alice the information she can use to best optimize her own situation.
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@taradinoc – thanks on the quotes!
[blockquote]Treating people as adults doesn’t mean following their words to the letter even when you think they’d prefer something else.[/blockquote]
I think the problem is we’ve gone so far out into the real of hypotheticals that I just had to re-read this thread to figure out how we got here.
The problem is, we’re not *actually* talking about studying or behind-the-back insults, or other situations where the consequences are reasonably minor. The OP was on cheating, which represents a tremendous breach of trust with a person you’ve made a commitment to. “I know better” is one thing when considering tempting them with a concert, it’s very much another when it’s likely to cause massive pain, total relationship failure, etc. Nobody’s ever killed themselves over missing a concert, but plenty of people who’ve been cheated on do. Once the consequences become sufficiently severe, it’s not longer a difference in degree, but a difference in kind.
It’s one thing to say “I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but that concert just became a possibility”, it’s quite another to say “I know we promised to be monogamous and that you would be terribly hurt if I cheated, but I’m gonna go bang anything with a pulse because I’m not sexually satisfied.”
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@Cerastes
So we’re in agreement that using your own judgment instead of following someone’s stated preferences to the letter isn’t necessarily “unequal”, “problematic”, “abusive”, etc. It depends on the circumstances. Right? This is progress!
As do people who feel trapped in unfulfilling relationships. Sex is more important to some people’s well-being than you seem to realize, and breaking up isn’t always a viable option.
I agree, those are different. Luckily, no one has suggested the second one.
You seem to have eluded all the conditions and nuance of Ozy’s post. Nothing I’ve seen here comes anywhere close to a universal license to cheat whenever one partner is sexually unsatisfied.
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@taradinoc
It’s not “nuance”, it’s rationalization.
If something is a dealbreaker in a relationship, and you don’t do due diligence to figure out if the other person meets those conditions, and you don’t inform that person of the dealbreaker, it’s your own goddamn fault, you’re an idiot, and it doesn’t justify sneaking around. Whether that dealbreaker is sex, having kids vs not, living in a particular region, whatever.
If you legitimately cannot continue in a relationship without whatever sexual compatibility issue being fixed, either break up and deal with the consequences, or fix it.
However, I also think that not even mentioning “just deal with it” as an option is automatically taking an *extreme* position that sexual incompatability deserves *so much* ethical weight that it’s comparable to a huge host of extremely negative consequences ranging from all-night screaming matches to damaging divorces to driving your cheated-upon spouse to suicide if/when they find out.
If sex matters that much to you, it’s your responsibility to do the legwork before the relationship becomes solidified, and your failure to do so is your own fault. If it’s not, you have no justification for cheating due to the massively negative weighting of other outcomes.
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@Cerester
You seem to be under the impression that nothing ever changes within a “solidified” relationship to cause it to become sexually unfulfilling. Read a few Savage Love columns if you’d like to be disabused of that notion.
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Taradinoc – then you renegotiate or leave, simple as that.
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@Cerastes – I see you’re still denying the existence of situations where renegotiation is impossible and the consequences of splitting up are worse than the consequences of cheating. I don’t think there’s much point in me continuing this conversation as long as you’re doing that. Have a nice day.
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@taradinoc
In real relationships this isn’t a one shot, people get to update their stated preferences from one event to the next, if the last time something similar came up they think it made them unhappy without any benefit you get to discuss that and decide that in future if there’s no self improvement possible then they don’t want to know.
On the other hand you may not have all information and your partner had been planning to do some remote work with Carol in future and is now glad that she can avoid future interactions.
I’m seeing what people mean about tending to view negatively people who say they’d take the option of pushing the fat man in front of the trolley. I have a feeling I wouldn’t be able to trust you in a relationship because no matter what I’d said you’d just ignore it and go with whatever you found easiest for yourself.
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@Murphy
I wouldn’t want to be In a relationship with someone who thought so little of me that they assumed I always did whatever was “easiest” for myself with no regard for their feelings, so I guess it all works out.
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@taradinoc
Murphy was definitely a little uncharitable there, but I think it can be extended. I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to trust you in a relationship because no matter what I’d said, after taking my thoughts and feelings into account, you’d always do what you believe to be the right thing.
You can say that you wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who thought so little of you that they wouldn’t trust you to override their explicit wishes without first checking in and/or declaring that you’re doing so, and that’d be completely fair. If that’s the case though, I sure hope you check and verify that this person wants you to trust your judgement over their agency and that you’re not just using your judgement on that one too.
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I’m situations where my wife has superior information to mine, or a better or even just significantly different emotional perspective, I DO trust her to make choices that may go against my previously stated preferences. I don’t expect her to do exactly what I would have done in her shoes every single time, and I expect the ongoing progress of our marriage to occasionally involve disagreements about those sorts of choices, but, yes! Trusting your partner to exercise their own judgment in unexpected circumstances and understanding that sometimes that judgment may contradict yours is, in fact, an important part of being in a serious, long term, multi faceted relationship!
I find the “I don’t think I could trust you in a relationship because I think you’d do what you believed was right even if it contradicted what you said sometime in the past” line to be so unbelievably alien. Part of what you’re supposed to appreciate about a committed partner is their judgment. If you fear the idea of your partner applying their own moral compass, the problem isn’t that you don’t think you can get them to effectively pre commit to restraining it.
And let’s not even get started on the implication that promises to behave in ways that violate ones moral compass are an ok thing to make, or expect, in a healthy relationship.
Did you know that you can (this is not legal advice; check your jurisdiction before trying this, my knowledge is not 100% as to local development of this historical rule) literally walk into court, admit that you violated a law, argue that the circumstances were beyond what the legislature contemplated when they wrote the law, and explain your reasoning in the particular instance and context in which your act occurred? Yeah. You can do that with actual laws.
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>I find the “I don’t think I could trust you in a relationship because I think you’d do what you believed was right even if it contradicted what you said sometime in the past” line to be so unbelievably alien.
Well sure, so do I. That’s not the line I’m talking about at all. If you read more charitably (and perhaps carefully) you’ll notice that I never actually said anything against trusting your partner to overrule things. The point is that you probably shouldn’t *presume* trust that hasn’t been agreed upon, let alone trust that they have gone out of their way to not give you. It’s what “hard limits” are about, and it’s a very good thing that “I thought that hard limit was bad, so I violated it” and “a good sub doesn’t have hard limits because they should trust their dom” are big no nos, even if you were full of good intentions when you violated their hard limit, and even if subs do trust their doms in good relationships.
Let me put it this way: Yes, you are physically capable of breaking agreements and then “appealing to the court” afterwards that it was the right thing to do. Yes, you might be right. Yes, you might convince “the court”. Yes, you might be *reliably* right and convincing, and have good reason to believe you will be. This is not inconceivable to me, nor do I discount it. Neither is it inconceivable to me that someone might give their partner their blessing on breaking any agreement they made if they break it in good faith. In fact, I think that’s a laudable goal that too few strive for.
However, there’s far more to the story. I could go on forever about this, but I’ll ask you this: Is it conceivable to you that you could be certain you’re right, break the law/violate that stated hard limit, and then fail to convince the court that you acted morally? If it is, is it conceivable to you that you were actually wrong and they right? Is it conceivable that you didn’t just “get unlucky” but that you were fundamentally arrogant and obliviously smashing through chesterton’s fences? Is it conceivable that people that wouldn’t trust you and/or argue against your point already see your side of it and still hold their own not out ignorance but out of seeing things you don’t?
If you can really imagine it and put yourself in those situations, how do you react when you are wrong? How do you rule them out so that you don’t make these mistakes? If you *can’t* really imagine it, then what makes you think that it’s due to justifiable confidence and not just short sightedness?
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I think the generalizable principle (I’m inferring this from reading once in full then skipping through just the numbered points to remind myself of the highlights) is this: Cheating is morally acceptable when a reasonable partner would agree to an open relationship but your actual partner won’t or can’t, the consequences of deceiving your partner are likely to be less severe than the consequences of leaving, and the personal consequences of not cheating are worse than both.
I’m not sure how often situations actually come up, and I’m not sure how much people should trust themselves to accurately assess these issues, but there does seem to be a generalizable principle.
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Insofar as it generalizes, it generalizes far, far wider than that. As in, it’s a trivial matter to use the same kind of logic to justify killing people, provided you are starting out wanting to do so, and have an interest in proving it.
Because consequentialism has a tendency to justify whatever outcome you set out to try to justify.
I could argue in return that, at a personal scale, being the sort of person who engages in this kind of “moral calculus” makes you much less trustworthy – implicitly, as this discussion more or less demonstrates – lowering your personal utility in the long term. On a social scale, it erodes trustworthiness entirely, since the value of truth is eliminated in favor of moral calculus – again, lowering overall utility. And with a relatively small amount of armchair logic, I can “prove” that it’s worthwhile to precommit not to engage in this sort of behavior.
But in practice, it’s easier just to say: Stop trying to use consequentalism to argue for things you want to prove to be moral, because it’s trivial to argue either case, since all the utility values end up getting made up anyways.
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Ah yes, ye olde consequentialist case against consequentialism. Good luck with it.
There is irony in mentioning the allegedly horrific possibility of a consequentialist argument in favor of killing when western civilization already has three nearly universally accepted consequentialist cases for killing, two of which broadly follow similar reasoning to Ozys (war, self defense) and the third being the least widely accepted (the death penalty) precisely because it deviates from the justifications for the first two, and overly relies on non consequentialist justifications.
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Patrick –
Don’t even go so far as to look for the “good” reasons to kill somebody; my implication was that the true test of a moral system is whether or not you’d feel secure if a psychopath (however you care to interpret that term) followed it religiously.
I know more than one person who I think the world would be significantly better off without. Consequentialism has… some unfortunate implications there.
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First, there is no reason that we ought optimize our morals for their adoption by psychopaths. While an interesting thought experiment, psychopaths who religiously follow a specific societal code of conduct are not a thing.
Second, you’re failing your thought experiment on it’s own terms. When you imagine a psychopath following a consequentialist moral system religiously, you’re actually imagining a psychopath utilizing motivated reasoning in order to provide minimally passable but not actually correct consequentialist justifications for the things the psychopath already wants to do for non consequentialist reasons.
Third, there is continued irony in your use of consequentialist arguments to attack consequentialism. This irony is abated somewhat by realizing that it’s not so much consequentialism you’re attacking but the idea that emotionally invested individuals are capable of dispassionately evaluating consequences, but thanks to the way you phrase your position it’s still there.
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There’s a very good reason to consider psychopaths: They’re the only ones who would actually follow the moral system, because they don’t have a moral normality to add up to.
If a moral system told a normal person to do something immoral, they’d either ignore it or find a new moral system. That’s the point of the thought exercises like The Repugnant Conclusion; demonstrating that a moral system isn’t actually moral.
It’s important to keep in mind, when evaluating moral questions, that moral systems aren’t complete; we fill in a lot of the gaps with our moral intuitions. Thus, when moral systems arrive at a result which looks immoral, the problem is probably with the moral system, not with the person trying to figure out what to do.
(That said, I think different moral systems are appropriate at different scopes of concern. At a population/governance level, utilitarianism – properly considered and very carefully applied – is probably a better moral system than deontology. At a personal level, deontology or virtue ethics are both superior, in that they’re less likely to lead you astray.)
I’m not arguing against consequentialism using consequentialism; I’m arguing a particular consequentialist argument with another consequentialist argument, pointing out that the results you get depend upon how you arbitrarily value the different elements.
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Wait, your concern about psychotics isn’t a thought experiment? Its an actual concern about real life psychotic people?
I don’t know what to say to that.
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I erroneously wrote psychotic instead of psychopath. These are not the same thing. Mea culpa.
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Yes. It is a serious question.
Depending on how loosely you define the concept, I could fit. I have no sense of shame or embarrassment, no sense of guilt, no sense of social anxiety, no built-in morality. The list of people I mentioned? I seriously believe the world would be better off without them. It goes without saying that it is vitally important to me that I have a moral system that actually arrives at the correct answer. (Virtue ethics does a great job of this, and is particularly applicable for the group of people without innate moral systems, since a lot of us are -really- good at running emulations of other people.)
I excised those along with all my other emotions as a young teenager in a mistaken belief that straw-vulcanism was a superior approach to existence. I’ve experienced generalized anxiety exactly once as an adult; I may or may not have experienced guilt once – I’m uncertain, as I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like – but either way, it was, like the anxiety, generalized and not attached to anything, and unrepeated.
Given the absence of an internal guide, I take moral systems very seriously, and consider it… problematic for people who don’t actually use the moral systems they advocate, to advocate them for general use, or to use them to justify positions using logic that is transparently unsafe to use in a more general way.
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If you have that serious of a problem with people not actually using the moral systems they advocate, you should probably stop trying to talk people out of consequentialism and into virtue ethics by explaining the negative consequences you believe follow from consequentialism.
Your “would this moral system function well if we presume a maximally dishonest, maximally rationalizing psychopath with no other moral instincts or empathic reflexes” test is hack work. I’ve been avoiding going into this because it takes time to explain, but…
No real world deontological system, virtue ethics included, passes that test.
They just LOOK like they pass that test because they’re vulnerable to back hacking and retroactive adjustment to hit previously unknown benchmarks.
Deontological rules accrue more and more caveats and fine print over time, usually directed towards helping them emulate consequentialism. See the doctrine of double effect, etc. And people constantly and gleefully defend consequentially bad courses of action by insisting that they’re metaphorical broccoli we have to eat as part of our deontological diet. Of course no deontologists ever acknowledges this as a flaw- they just insist that anyone doing this with whom they disagree just got the deontology wrong.
Virtue ethics are worse. It’s well established that the list of virtues typically rolled into a virtue ethics works view will often come into conflict. Truth versus loyalty, loyalty to one person versus to another, kindness versus justice… none of this is surprising. A virtue ethics works view, once it goes from being a sort of meditative guide to self cultivation to being an actual guide for behavior, requires some means of adjudicating between virtues in the context of actual application. Some virtue ethics systems try to get around this by claiming “wisdom” as a sort of meta virtue, but this is just the old “people who don’t get the conclusions I do have the deontology wrong” dodge in a new context. And worse, when you ask people to describe how they actually adjudicate between virtues… consequences tend to play a big role.
Which kind of gives away the game.
As for your implied “if you talk me out of virtue ethics I might murder people” argument- I’ve been through this before with Christians who insist they’d rape and murder people without the belief that god will punish them if they try it. The point isn’t that this is perfectly analogous, but simply that your argument isn’t going to shock me or anything; I’ve been here before.
The short answer- it is trivially easy to come up with a solid consequentialist case against vigilante murder.
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And consequentialism is pseudo-rigor pretending at being a functional ethics system which is full of people not even bothering to make up the numbers they’re pretending to use – which is why it’s trivially easy to come up with a solid consequentialist case supporting any moral precept we’ve already decided we agree with.
Vigilante murder, by its nature, is going to overwhelmingly target those who cause harm in society; as a process, it reduces harm-causing and prevents the profitability of systemic gaming of social and legal rules. The current system of low-vigilante murder is full of people who use laws as weapons against innocent people, a problem which current solution, such as anti-SLAPP laws, have proven deficient; if people were more willing to kill people for abusing legal processes and social norms for self-profit, it would improve society’s incentive system and produce a more robust and cooperative society. By encouraging a social norm of vigilanteism while simultaneously punishing it, we can further reduce the specific harms to innocent people by imposing a penalty that only those with genuine and substantial grievance would be willing to accept.
That’s not meant to convince you, incidentally. If I wanted to convince you I could fairly easily add a few well-placed numbers, statistics, and citations, and strengthen my position by counting out the negative effects then provide a superficial weighing of pros and cons, which, owing to my intent of “proving” my case, will naturally come out supporting the argument that vigilante murder is a good thing, and yet still provide an appearance of balanced weighing.
Like pretty much every consequentialist argument.
Your argument on the basis of religious people’s objections is… well, showing a distinct crutch-kicking tendency. That is, you’ve decided that because you don’t need something, and some other people who think they need it also don’t need it, nobody ever needs it. (Also, your argument against virtue ethics is essentially “This isn’t perfect, there are still edge cases.” Well, no, it isn’t, and yes, there are; it’s a highly subjective and situational ethical system, which is fine, because ethics are highly subjective and situational, and any ethical system which pretends otherwise is going to fail in a likely spectacular way. Also, the edge cases in virtue ethics are between two positive elements instead of two negative elements, which means the failures, as a rule, don’t tend towards the catastrophic, but merely the suboptimal.)
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If you’re going to flat out admit that view use ethics is a crutch, you’re kind of handing me the debate in a platter, don’t you think?
You are (repeatedly, actually) flat out conceding that you think virtue ethics are worth encouraging because you think that human fallibility being what it is, virtue ethics will more frequently help people reach the right outcomes than other ethical systems.
If you actually believed in virtue ethics, you’d be telling me that virtue ethics answers literally are the right answers. Not that the consequences if poor moral reasoning are dire, so we need moral systems that create good consequences when applied on the ground.
A consequentialist argument if ever there was one.
Your position appears to amount to “virtue ethics is an important crutch, and calling it a crutch is kicking it out from under people who need it, so stop calling my crutch a crutch.” To which I can only say, “you started it.” No one in this thread has more enthusiastically called virtue ethics a crutch than you.
The biggest problem is where you seen to go from there- reasoning that your crutch won’t work unless everyone agrees it’s not a crutch, so people who endeavor to walk without crutches must hobble themselves in order to avoid accidentally implying that crutches are unnecessary.
Well… they’re unnecessary. You’ve all but proved it in this thread by repeatedly arguing that vigilante murder is consequentially bad, so we must engage virtue ethics as a prophylactic against considering it. If the only objection you had to vigilante murder was a virtue ethics one, you wouldn’t make that argument.
It’s the same error the Christian makes in my above example, by the way. If the only reason the Christian is declined to engage in rape and murder is the possibility of divine punishment, the idea of engaging in it in the absence of divine punishment wouldn’t seem so horrific. There’s a reason people always use things like rape and murder in that apologetic, and not sleeping in on Sunday.
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Yes, it’s a crutch, as every ethics system is; I am missing whatever it is that most people rely on for ethical decisions. I find it vaguely amusing that you think this detracts from my case; I actually use the thing in my daily life, I’m a master crutch-walker, whereas you just try it out for fun from time to time.
Virtue ethics -doesn’t- arrive at the “right answers”. That is a gross misunderstanding of what an ethics system is, as well as what it’s for. Every non-contradictory ethics system arrives at the “right answers” according to its own standards (being an ethics system, it gets to define the standards!); it’s trivial to construct an ethics system, the hard part is making an ethics system whose conclusions match the loose internal heuristics of human ethics.
Virtue ethics has three advantages: First, it’s fast, at least for the subset of people who can easily predict what other people will do, and can readily identify the people that society recognizes as virtuous. This makes it ideal for people like me; deontology works better if you can’t easily predict other people’s behavior, or can’t figure out who society regards as virtuous and who isn’t. Second, it’s quite accurate for daily use, and fails gracefully; in edge cases where it breaks down, it doesn’t pretend to give you an answer. Third, it doesn’t bear rationalization very well – it’s quite difficult to argue in its framework at all.
This doesn’t make it the ur-ethics, however. There is no ur-ethics. The ethics of the fox make no sense for the rabbit.
As for why I’m arguing this way? Because I’m arguing with a consequentialist, and I’m trying to frame things in terms of your ethical system. And apparently I’m doing such a great job you think I’m secretly a consequentialist, and that my “real” ethical system, under the covers, is consequentialism. It… well, isn’t. That should give you a moment’s pause, but I doubt it will, and indeed I doubt you’ll actually believe me.
While we’re comparing our argumentative partners to religious people, because apparently that’s polite now, this argument is reminding me a lot of arguments with religious people with regard to belief in god, and about how I really believe in god even though I say I don’t. No, I don’t use consequentialism, because running it side-by-side against virtue ethics, virtue ethics screams “No”. There’s a reason “The ends justify the means” is a villain’s trope.
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You argue that virtue ethics is “accurate,” but your standard for accuracy in this particular comment (not elsewhere in this thread) is “match(ing) the loose internal heuristics of human ethics.” The only reason virtue ethics appears to match people’s gut moral instincts is because “tends to make choices typically approved of by others” and “is virtuous” are literally defined to be coterminous.
You argue that “in edge cases where it breaks down, it doesn’t pretend to give you an answer” but virtue ethics is not an action-guiding moral system. It doesn’t ever “give you an answer.” It encourages you to cultivate in yourself a tendency to value certain traits. Which for the record means that if your self description is accurate, you’re literally not a virtue ethicist. You’re following some sort of weird recursive formula where you ask “what would a virtuous person do?” and then do that.
You claim that you’re only arguing from a consequentialist perspective because I’m a consequentialist. That would make sense if you were arguing for a particular public policy, but it doesn’t make sense if you’re arguing for abandoning consequentialism. I believe I’ve adequately summarized the argument that’s resulted- that virtue ethics is important as a check on motivated reasoning that might otherwise waylay ground level application of consequentialism. While checking motivated reasoning is valuable, you are quite literally asking me to agree that I and others not only need a moral crutch, but that I need a particularly extreme one. Or you’re asking me to pretend to use a moral crutch out of compassion for others who need it more, your exact argument has varied.
In any case your claim that you’re only arguing consequentially because I’m a consequentialist is belied by your repeated insistence that the validity of virtue ethics is of particular personal importance TO YOU, because of the possible consequences if you didn’t accept it. You constantly personalize virtue ethics in terms of a need, you raised the entire crutch metaphor yourself… you are not making consequentialist points purely because you think they might be arguments I find appealing.
You argue that virtue ethics don’t bear rationalization well- virtue ethics bear rationalization incredibly well, as a result of the pluralism of contradictory virtues (loyalty versus honesty, loyalty versus loyalty, generosity versus thrift, etc, etc, this list can go on for ages), and the absence of an in-system means of adjudicating between them, barring back-hacking a pseudo virtue like “the wisdom to choose which virtue is best applied in a given situation.” And it doesn’t give a coherent explanation of what “best” means in that sentence, both because that sentence is supposed to BE the explanation in the virtue ethics systems that use it, and because a moral system that isn’t action-guiding can barely choke together the words to acknowledge that this is an issue.
“The ends justify the means” may be a villain trope, but “I’m torn between two choices each of which is supported by a different virtue” is like 90% of internal conflict in all of fiction. It is not a merit of virtue ethics that no matter what such a person might choose, their choice can then be justified in terms of a virtue.
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Respectively: Yes, incorrect, wildly incorrect, incorrect and uncharitable, incorrect and ignorant, and missing the point.
Your understanding of virtue ethics is incomplete. I am describing agent-based virtue ethics, and your response is to deny that that is virtue ethics. You could, I don’t know, read the first thing that comes up in Google when you search “virtue ethics” – it’s really not hard to find. Yes, that is virtue ethics. You’re being quite belligerent about things you are apparently quite ignorant about.
And speaking of belligerence, and at this point I’ve already corrected you once on what my moral system “truly” is, and you telling me I’m wrong about what moral system I use is, well, quite droll.
As for the rest, I don’t find that you’ve added anything substantive to the debate, as you appear to be arguing not out of desire to reach any kind of truth, but to win, to sore points. At this point I think that if I suggested that I thought protons were real, you’d argue they weren’t.
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The very first google link (nor any of the other top options) in no way shake any of the points that I’ve made. Calling my fairly basic summation of the common criticisms of virtue ethics “ignorant” and telling me to go google it is effectively a flounce- an odd way to finish a conversational line you started sui generis when all I initially did was point out that contra your original post a generalizable principle was present in the OP- and I will treat it as such.
Why an agent based virtue ethicist was hunting for a generalizable principle, I will never know.
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Or, radical idea, people can suck it up, exercise some basic self-control, and learn that just because they want something doesn’t mean they have a right to deceive and break their word to the person (or people) who are supposedly most important to them, and whom they supposedly care for most.
For shit’s sake, millions of people over history have gone without sex for far longer (or forever) just because of some imaginary sky fairy or other, while in this case it would mean breaking your word to people you supposedly care about.
Either go without or have a discussion with your partner like a freaking grown-up. If it’s clear things won’t resolve, and every outcome is sub-optimal, then deal with it like a grown-up, pick the least bad option, and deal with the consequences – nobody forced you into a relationship, or forced you to agree to exclusivity.
Self-control is necessary for ethical behavior. Without it, internal ideals cannot translate into actions nor be maintained in the face of adversity or temptation, which is, from the external viewpoint, indistinguishable from not having those ideals at all.
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I think the idea is that sometimes “the least bad option” is cheating.
I’m glad that nobody has ever forced you into a relationship or exclusivity, but please don’t pretend that it’s never happened to anybody.
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@Imuli – If it’s forced, it’s not a relationship, it’s a slow-motion rape which should be left ASAP.
And since when is “cheating” less bad than simple abstinence? This isn’t food, water, shelter, or air. You won’t die without sex.
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Isn’t that what Ozy is suggesting, that sometimes breaking your word is the least bad option?
TBH, this rhetoric about “dealing with the consequences” is reminiscent of some of the more patronizing pro-life arguments about the consequences of sex: they start by taking one of the options for “dealing with the consequences” off the table, then denounce people who don’t like the other options as being unwilling to take responsibility for their situations. That’s the textbook definition of chutzpah, or at least it was in the first printing before the Texas school boards got involved.
If you want to take an option off the table, you have to make that argument first. You seem to be taking it as a given that breaking your word is the worst thing you can do. Others disagree. So… why?
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Simple – nobody has to cheat. You don’t *need* sex. Yes, you may be less happy, but the consequences of cheating are highly dependent upon not being revealed, something you have little to no control over, though you may take precautions.
And can the “pro-life” crap. I’m not suggesting criminal penalties or banning a life-saving procedure. I’m suggesting that a MASSIVE hole in the reasoning is the assumption that the person cannot simply exercise self control, and that this failure does not excuse them from the ethical consequences of their action.
And, since we’re drawing baseless analogies, how is the post any different from any of the convoluted rationales the right offers for torturing prisoners? “Yes, it’s bad, but there’s this litany of excuses of why we can’t get the info any other way, and we’re just going to ignore the option of stopping, so therefore we should torture.”
Self control. Without it, a person is little more than a sophisticated monkey that’s learned how to post to Instagram.
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Here’s how: in this case, your objection rests on the axiom “thou shalt not lie”. In the other, a common objection rests on the axiom “thou shalt not torture”. When you’re basing your argument on axioms — instead of, say, trying to convince people that lying is always worse than breaking up or staying in an unfulfilling relationship — then you’re entering a popularity contest, and I suspect “thou shalt not torture” is going to win.
Isn’t it kind of silly to pretend that a person who decides to cheat after reading a 13-paragraph moral argument and carefully weighing the pros and cons is lacking in “self control”?
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@ taradinoc
Your comparison evades the substance of my argument at two levels. First, I was only using the torture example to show how such facile comparisons are uninformative, as the prefix to the entire paragraph clearly stated. Second, it fails to address the central problem, which is that, with enough rationalizing, you can talk yourself into damn near anything, no matter how morally abhorrent.
You also never address that fact that nobody seems willing to consider “forgo sex” or “reduce sex” (or variants thereof) as a meaningful option, a willful blindness without which this convoluted justification collapses on its head.
I can write 130 paragraphs justifying any damn thing in the universe, but if I’m ignoring a blatantly obvious option, my analysis, however elborate or long, is fundamentally flawed.
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@Cerastes
What an odd thing to say. Of course people consider that option! For example, see these parts of the original post:
“First, the couple has to be really, really sexually incompatible. I am not talking “I wish we could have sex three times a week, but we only have sex two times a week” here, and I am not talking “we rarely have sex but we’re both okay with it” (that is called a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship). […]
Of course, not all relationships with a libido gap or incompatible fetishes are unhappy. […]
But I think a lot of people are unsympathetic to the pain that very sexually incompatible relationships can cause. […]
Second, there has to be no possibility of a satisfactory resolution. […] As long as both of you are working on the problem in good faith, you shouldn’t cheat.
[…] Unfortunately, we do not live in a world in which people can cause changes in their sexuality by really really wanting them.
And equally unfortunately, not everyone understands the importance of sexuality to their partners.”
As far as I can tell, what’s really bothering you isn’t the idea that people don’t consider the “just suck it up” option — it’s the idea that they might ever consider other options.
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Some of this, I guess, comes down to how central sex is to a person’s identity and fulfillment.
Savage is also in favor of spouses viewing porn notwithstanding a promise to their spouse that they not; he views going without porn as essentially impossible and that the demand for the promise is therefore unreasonable. (I’m not making a judgment on whether he’s right.)
You can make up a lot of hypotheticals.
On one axis, your spouse is strongly opposed to some conduct, and you promise not to engage in it, then realize you would be much happier if you did it/miserable if you didn’t.
(a) No porn;
(b) No spending money on sex workers;
(c) You promise to be vegan; keep kosher/halal, etc.
(d) No sex with other people;
(e) Various personally unhealthy habits are off the table: gambling, drinking, drug use, fight club, etc.
On the other axis:
(1) Your spouse is dying, and would be very sad if you left him or told him you wanted to renegotiate.
(2) You feel that your spouse is kind of a jerk, but you want to stay together (i) because you fear violence/ (ii) for the kids/ (iii) to avoid disappointing your parents/ (iv) because the financial or custody results of a break-up would be oppressive
(3) Your spouse is actually violent and will harm you if you attempt to leave or bring up the subject.
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I think another big flaw in this is the 5th suggestion in the post, namely about not getting caught.
As one might infer from my username, I’m quite a big fan of snakes, and have worked with everything up to and including vipers in various capacities. Something a friend with considerably more hot experience once told me has always stuck with me: “Sooner or later, you will fuck up, and you will get bitten. The question about keeping hots is whether that bite is worth it.”
It’s trivial to say “Cheating won’t hurt anyone if you don’t get caught”, just as it’s trivial to say “Bushmasters are perfectly safe as long as you don’t get bitten.” The problem is that you cannot rule out getting caught/bitten, even if you take plenty of precautions.
I think my friend’s advice is true to this as well – if you aren’t willing to face the damage that would result from being caught, you shouldn’t do it.
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I’m not sure why this is being seen as justifying cheating specifically. Like, the thing with cheating isn’t ‘you do sexual etc things with others’ (which I fully agree you have the right to do, because right to self). It’s ‘you do sexual etc things with others that your partner, who cares about whether or not you are, thinks you are not doing’.
Which you don’t have the right to do, because you’re violating your partner’s informed consent etc and they have the right to the information that’s important to them in making decisions about their life.
So – it’s important to you to do sexual things with other people, so you’re going to, so tell your partner this so they do have the information. (The exceptions to this being ‘your partner is abusive or other things in that category and are going to hurt you if you tell them’, in which case they’ve forfeited any right to your honesty. But this didn’t seem to be in the post).
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Well, cheating is a known way to wreck those. For instance, by making you and your partner emotionally disconnected from each other. Also, if you find yourself thinking, “my partner is so unreasonable that they don’t deserve to be treated according to normal relationship guidelines,” you already hold them in contempt.
So, it usually goes “solid fundamentals, cheat instead of breaking up” -> “alienation and/or heartbreak, no more solid fundamentals” -> “break up time!”
If you start lying to your partner about something extremely important to them, you’re changing the nature of the relationship.
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This seems to kind of ignore that trust is itself a terminal value in relationships for many. If my partner says X I can reasonably assume X to be true and that they’re not intentionally lying to me.
I might not be thrilled about my partner wanting to have sex with someone other than me but the scale of badness goes something like:
going behind my back to have sex with someone while actively misleading me > having sex with someone when I don’t agree but being honest about it > getting my agreement first.
In the latter case I can still trust my partner utterly, in the middle case I can still trust their word even if they won’t always go along with my preferences, in the first… well there is no trust. At all.
Whatever they say in future I can no longer take it as a reasonable attempt at the truth.
It’s not just with sex, it extends to anything really important to one partner where they’ve made it clear it’s a requirement of theirs in the relationship. If they buried half their family and a previous partner due to liver disease and throat cancer and their primary hard requirement in the relationship is that they don’t want a partner who drinks and you find yourself sneaking out and lying to them then there’s been a breakdown of trust. If and when they finally find out how would you expect them to trust you again? Your word no longer has any value. Whenever it’s more convenient to you you’ll just lie to them again.
I mean, honestly, even your dying partner example is bad, you seem to miss why people consider it bad. It’s the betrayal of trust when someone is at their most vulnerable, like emptying your dying partners bank account to buy yourself cocaine or smiling while you swindle someone with dementia into leaving everything to you in their will.
The possibility has come up in discussion between my SO and myself and we’ve talked about what we’d do in that case. (because we can both imagine the exact scenario outlined and have seen it in close loved ones) It’s a hard, adult conversation but it means we can avoid betrayals of trust in future.
Breaking up in a situation where you want to maintain the relationship for some concrete reasons is bad but throwing all trust out the window is worse because then you’re still stuck with someone only now they, rightly, don’t trust a thing you say.
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I suppose motivated reasoning is less likely if the cheater decides to cheat before deciding with whom to cheat. (I suppose the sex worker recommendation is an extension of this.)
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Honest courtesan had a FAQ entry about sex-starved marriages (usually male but can be something else).
https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/fossil/
Basically sex workers fill this need quite well but it’s not accepted because outdated morals.
I wonder what are the stats for sex-starvation in marriages btw? Any people willing to share their stories?
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Many comments here (and even the post itself, although less explicitly) assume a dichotomy between monogamy and openness, but many couples are in a grey area, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” relationship; where there are implicit rules for when “cheating” is tolerated and when it is not.
I definitely would not call it ideal, but it is a very common arrangement and it can be stable over a long-term relationship (sometimes it does blow up, but so do all other arrangements). It has a certain Burkean/Hayekian emerging order quality to it.
If a large part of the “cost” of one’s spouse cheating comes from feeling socially disrespected, then it actually makes some sense. It often also keeps secondary relationships naturally secondary (you can sleep with anyone when you’re out of town is one of these common implicit rules for tolerated “cheating”).
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Of course there’s a problem if one partner think’s they in the grey while the other thinks(or actually has been) they’ve been black and white.
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Question: Does anyone have a link to where EY discussed this issue? Facebook is terrible to try and search…
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Oh, found it. While it is about “morally acceptable cheating”, it’s not really about the same issue actually.
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