So, um, if I believe that social beliefs are determined by a combination of epigenetic rules and cultural practices, how can I believe in any specific system of morality?
This wouldn't be too much, of a problem, except I clearly do judge events by moral criteria: I fairly regularly decide that it would be right or wrong to do something. I can do that because of some system of beliefs (however unsystematic) I uphold. That's fine: I contain some moral knowledge that guides my behavior.
But, I sorta assume that such knowledge is incomplete: that in addition to failures of will (where I know the right thing to do and don't do it) I also experience failures of knowledge (where I don't know what it is that I have done wrong). Which means, of course, that there is some more perfect system of beliefs that I should be holding and that I could more completely emulate.
Of course, if 1) my system of beliefs is in some respect flawed and 2) I by definition don't know the nature of these flaws, how does my own system of beliefs hold any moral authority? And where does this (by definition partly unknown) greater moral knowledge come from? And how can I learn it?
There are a couple of answers. One could claim that all moral knowledge is either inherent in me or knowable through the world. Then my own system of beliefs must be verifiable through some check against the world, and all moral failures become failures of will.
Or one could take the opposite approach and assert that morality arises entirely from this interplay of genes and culture. If this is true, I've been tricked up by a misunderstanding of the word "knowledge." I've assumed that "to know" is like "to see," in bothj requiring a subject--me--and implying the existence of a viewed thing.
When I see, say, a hamburger, I imagine a certain set of patterns and colors, the concept "hamburger" presents itself to me, and I may salivate. At the same time, I know that if I reach out, I will be able to touch this hamburger; I can pick it up, throw it, point to it, etc. When I say that I see a thing, I am also making a claim that such a thing exists in the world. (Of course, there are other uses of "see," but this is an important one.)
When I know what it is to be good, on the other hand, I feel certain impressions and certain images appear in my head, and then I take some course of action. There may not need to be anything that it is that I am knowing. And of course, my epigenetic rules and cultural patterns will account for the images.
I'm not really excited about either option. More than that, I can feel the books I'm reading start to cancel each other out. I've never felt the danger of wrong ideas so strongly; I'm tumbling towards a weird self-contradictory belief in nothing and I'm not sure what to make of it..
A woman came up to me and said
"I'd like to poison your mind
With wrong ideas that appeal to you
Though I am not unkind"
She looked at me, I looked at something
Written across her scalp
And these are the words that it faintly said
As I tried to call for help:
There's only one thing that I know how to do well
And I've often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that's be you,
Be what you're like,
Be like yourself,
And so I'm having a wonderful time
But I'd rather be whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
Whistling in the dark
There's only one thing that I like
And that is whistling in the dark
A man came up to me and said
"I'd like to change your mind
By hitting it with a rock," he said,
"Though I am not unkind."
We laughed at his little joke
And then I happily walked away
And hit my head on the wall of the jail
Where the two of us live today.
