When I first heard the allegations of serial sexual misconduct against the American folk-rock singer Ryan Adams earlier this year – that he had emotionally and psychologically abused several women and underage girls, using his status in the music industry as leverage – I didn’t want to believe it. Yet this desire to not-believe strongly preceded any acquaintance I had with the actual facts. Indeed – and as I am now ashamed to admit – I initially read the facts with great skepticism, hoping that they were wrong. Only with effort have I forced myself to put aside my initial disbelief, and consider things impartially, making a more balanced assessment. Why?
One answer comes from feminist theory. As a man who has been raised in a male-dominated society, one that tends to privilege the status and testimony of men, and to cast aspersions on those of women – most especially when it comes to issues of sex – I am ideologically conditioned to react this way. Sadly, I suspect there is much truth in this. But it is not the only explanation in play. Another consideration is that I didn’t want Adams to be guilty because I like his music. And the worry that I had – initially, without even realising it – was that, if Adams is indeed guilty, then I won’t be able to enjoy his music any more. And I don’t want that to be the case. Hence, I initially read the accusations against Adams with skepticism, precisely because I (subconsciously) wanted to protect my future enjoyment of his records.
It is not uncommon to find that one’s enjoyment of something is irrevocably damaged if that thing turns out to be closely connected to somebody who has committed serious wrongs. Many people will now feel deeply uncomfortable watching films associated with Harvey Weinstein. Similarly, critically acclaimed movies starring Kevin Spacey – even if made long before any accusation of wrongdoing was levelled against him – will no longer seem the obvious choices for Saturday night viewing that they once were. And this is not simply because we want to take a moral stand against Weinstein or Spacey (though that might certainly be true). It is because we feel that the films themselves are tainted.
But this is odd. A film or TV show, after all, is a thing ultimately independent of the private actions of the actors or producers who happened to help make it. And yet one seems to bleed inexorably into the other. Once you know the charges levelled against Weinstein, you can’t simply carry on watching his films as you did before. The same, I fear, will be true of Adams’s music if it turns out that he is as bad as they say. Many people are currently experiencing precisely such anxiety regarding the music of Michael Jackson, given the latest and most distressing of the allegations made against him. (...)
The fact that good things can come from bad people is a separate issue from the fact that knowledge of somebody – or something – having done a bad thing can deeply affect how we view the status of the thing itself. Take a simple but effective example, borrowed from the philosopher Simon Blackburn’s recent paper on this topic. Imagine I invite you over to dinner and, while carving the roast, I casually mention that this is the very knife that the assassin used to murder my wife and children. Would you still be comfortable eating the slice of beef I’ve just plopped on to your plate? And it can work in the other direction, too. Imagine I have a room filled with 20 Fender guitars. I tell you that you can have any of them you like – but one of them was the very guitar that Jimi Hendrix used during his last performance! I bet I know which one you’ll pick, whether you want to keep it for yourself or quickly take it to auction. (...)
Yet, when you think about it, this is rather strange. After all, it is simply a matter of luck that these particular objects have these particular histories. The assassin could well have used her own knife, or picked a different knife from the drawer. But she picked this knife – and so this knife is now the one that disturbs us. Hendrix (let us suppose) could have picked any of the available Fenders in the shop that day, he just happened to favour that one – and so now that one is special. The examples of Adams, Spacey and Weinstein fit the pattern, too. How come we extend our discomfort backwards, to cover artistic products associated with them from a time when they themselves were not (let us suppose) morally compromised? Weinstein is only one producer among many in Hollywood. Why is his financing of a film once upon a time – when it could easily have been someone else – enough to make us dislike that film today? (...)
Why does bare luck make such a difference to how we feel? Are we simply irrational when it comes to such matters? Perhaps not – and perhaps because asking about whether it is rational for us to have these luck-dependent aversions and attractions is not the right way to think about what is going on.
The best discussion of why we react in these varying – and perplexing – ways comes from the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. Nowadays much more likely to be known (somewhat misleadingly) as the ‘father of economics’, Smith was employed as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow for around 12 years, and hence spent much of his time teaching and writing on such matters. Indeed, his first book – The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) – puts forward not just the earliest sustained discussion of the issue of what philosophers now call ‘moral luck’, but one of its most compelling evaluations.
Smith’s discussion didn’t just cover objects or people, and the taint that can be associated with them because of their good or bad histories. It also covered the irregularity of our responses to outcomes that are heavily affected by luck. Imagine the following case: I carelessly throw a brick off the top of a building, but fortunately it doesn’t hit anybody, and shatters harmlessly on the pavement below. You’re likely to think that I’m a bad and irresponsible person, and deserve to be admonished accordingly. But you’ll probably also think that the matter should end there. Now vary the scenario: imagine that the brick does hit somebody, and kills them. The likelihood is that you will now think that I deserve much more in the way of blame, and indeed of punishment. (Prison seems a perhaps not unreasonable response.)
Let us suppose that my motivations – eg, sheer indifference to the safety of others – and my actions – chucking a brick without looking – are identical in both cases. Why, Smith asked, do we feel that the latter is so much worse than the former? It was, after all, simply a matter of luck that somebody walked along at that precise moment, got hit by the brick, and died. (It works in the other direction, too: we would surely feel it too harsh to send a person to prison simply because the brick might have hit a passerby, when in fact it didn’t.)
Yet this kind of scenario led to a puzzle. Smith thought it undeniable that we assess the morality of actions not by their actual consequences, but by the intentions of the agent who brings them about. To see that this is indeed true, consider the following example. Imagine that you see me rescue a cat from a tree. When I get to the ground, the cat wriggles free and scurries away. Assuming that my intention was to save the cat, you’ll likely think that I did a good thing. But what if you now find out that my intention was to barbeque the cat for dinner? In both cases, the consequences are the same – the cat is brought down from the tree, wriggles free, and runs away. Yet your evaluation of the morality of the act will shift markedly once you learn of my culinary intentions. Try any example you like, and you’ll get the same result: it’s the underlying intention that determines whether or not we approve of an act, not the consequences of the act alone.
For Smith, it is a truism that we assign different moral weight to intentions, not to consequences, and one that nobody will deny, at least when it comes to philosophical theory. Nonetheless, in practice, we often find ourselves heavily swayed by consequences even when, on the face of it, those consequences shouldn’t matter. Take the brick-throwing example again. In both cases, my intention was bad, because in throwing the brick I showed callous disregard for the safety of others. In theory, then, I am equally culpable whatever the outcome, at least if intentions are supposed to be what counts. But, in practice, we feel far more strongly in the case where the brick does hit somebody. So consequences do matter after all – even though moral philosophers tend to think that it’s only intentions that should matter.
One answer comes from feminist theory. As a man who has been raised in a male-dominated society, one that tends to privilege the status and testimony of men, and to cast aspersions on those of women – most especially when it comes to issues of sex – I am ideologically conditioned to react this way. Sadly, I suspect there is much truth in this. But it is not the only explanation in play. Another consideration is that I didn’t want Adams to be guilty because I like his music. And the worry that I had – initially, without even realising it – was that, if Adams is indeed guilty, then I won’t be able to enjoy his music any more. And I don’t want that to be the case. Hence, I initially read the accusations against Adams with skepticism, precisely because I (subconsciously) wanted to protect my future enjoyment of his records.
It is not uncommon to find that one’s enjoyment of something is irrevocably damaged if that thing turns out to be closely connected to somebody who has committed serious wrongs. Many people will now feel deeply uncomfortable watching films associated with Harvey Weinstein. Similarly, critically acclaimed movies starring Kevin Spacey – even if made long before any accusation of wrongdoing was levelled against him – will no longer seem the obvious choices for Saturday night viewing that they once were. And this is not simply because we want to take a moral stand against Weinstein or Spacey (though that might certainly be true). It is because we feel that the films themselves are tainted.But this is odd. A film or TV show, after all, is a thing ultimately independent of the private actions of the actors or producers who happened to help make it. And yet one seems to bleed inexorably into the other. Once you know the charges levelled against Weinstein, you can’t simply carry on watching his films as you did before. The same, I fear, will be true of Adams’s music if it turns out that he is as bad as they say. Many people are currently experiencing precisely such anxiety regarding the music of Michael Jackson, given the latest and most distressing of the allegations made against him. (...)
The fact that good things can come from bad people is a separate issue from the fact that knowledge of somebody – or something – having done a bad thing can deeply affect how we view the status of the thing itself. Take a simple but effective example, borrowed from the philosopher Simon Blackburn’s recent paper on this topic. Imagine I invite you over to dinner and, while carving the roast, I casually mention that this is the very knife that the assassin used to murder my wife and children. Would you still be comfortable eating the slice of beef I’ve just plopped on to your plate? And it can work in the other direction, too. Imagine I have a room filled with 20 Fender guitars. I tell you that you can have any of them you like – but one of them was the very guitar that Jimi Hendrix used during his last performance! I bet I know which one you’ll pick, whether you want to keep it for yourself or quickly take it to auction. (...)
Yet, when you think about it, this is rather strange. After all, it is simply a matter of luck that these particular objects have these particular histories. The assassin could well have used her own knife, or picked a different knife from the drawer. But she picked this knife – and so this knife is now the one that disturbs us. Hendrix (let us suppose) could have picked any of the available Fenders in the shop that day, he just happened to favour that one – and so now that one is special. The examples of Adams, Spacey and Weinstein fit the pattern, too. How come we extend our discomfort backwards, to cover artistic products associated with them from a time when they themselves were not (let us suppose) morally compromised? Weinstein is only one producer among many in Hollywood. Why is his financing of a film once upon a time – when it could easily have been someone else – enough to make us dislike that film today? (...)
Why does bare luck make such a difference to how we feel? Are we simply irrational when it comes to such matters? Perhaps not – and perhaps because asking about whether it is rational for us to have these luck-dependent aversions and attractions is not the right way to think about what is going on.
The best discussion of why we react in these varying – and perplexing – ways comes from the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. Nowadays much more likely to be known (somewhat misleadingly) as the ‘father of economics’, Smith was employed as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow for around 12 years, and hence spent much of his time teaching and writing on such matters. Indeed, his first book – The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) – puts forward not just the earliest sustained discussion of the issue of what philosophers now call ‘moral luck’, but one of its most compelling evaluations.
Smith’s discussion didn’t just cover objects or people, and the taint that can be associated with them because of their good or bad histories. It also covered the irregularity of our responses to outcomes that are heavily affected by luck. Imagine the following case: I carelessly throw a brick off the top of a building, but fortunately it doesn’t hit anybody, and shatters harmlessly on the pavement below. You’re likely to think that I’m a bad and irresponsible person, and deserve to be admonished accordingly. But you’ll probably also think that the matter should end there. Now vary the scenario: imagine that the brick does hit somebody, and kills them. The likelihood is that you will now think that I deserve much more in the way of blame, and indeed of punishment. (Prison seems a perhaps not unreasonable response.)
Let us suppose that my motivations – eg, sheer indifference to the safety of others – and my actions – chucking a brick without looking – are identical in both cases. Why, Smith asked, do we feel that the latter is so much worse than the former? It was, after all, simply a matter of luck that somebody walked along at that precise moment, got hit by the brick, and died. (It works in the other direction, too: we would surely feel it too harsh to send a person to prison simply because the brick might have hit a passerby, when in fact it didn’t.)
Yet this kind of scenario led to a puzzle. Smith thought it undeniable that we assess the morality of actions not by their actual consequences, but by the intentions of the agent who brings them about. To see that this is indeed true, consider the following example. Imagine that you see me rescue a cat from a tree. When I get to the ground, the cat wriggles free and scurries away. Assuming that my intention was to save the cat, you’ll likely think that I did a good thing. But what if you now find out that my intention was to barbeque the cat for dinner? In both cases, the consequences are the same – the cat is brought down from the tree, wriggles free, and runs away. Yet your evaluation of the morality of the act will shift markedly once you learn of my culinary intentions. Try any example you like, and you’ll get the same result: it’s the underlying intention that determines whether or not we approve of an act, not the consequences of the act alone.
For Smith, it is a truism that we assign different moral weight to intentions, not to consequences, and one that nobody will deny, at least when it comes to philosophical theory. Nonetheless, in practice, we often find ourselves heavily swayed by consequences even when, on the face of it, those consequences shouldn’t matter. Take the brick-throwing example again. In both cases, my intention was bad, because in throwing the brick I showed callous disregard for the safety of others. In theory, then, I am equally culpable whatever the outcome, at least if intentions are supposed to be what counts. But, in practice, we feel far more strongly in the case where the brick does hit somebody. So consequences do matter after all – even though moral philosophers tend to think that it’s only intentions that should matter.
by Paul Sagar, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Detail from Nelkenstrauss (1910), by Adolf Hitler. Photo by Christof Stache/AFP/Getty
