Discover more from Overcoming Bias
Peter WInch discusses a case in which an Amish elder kills a man who is threatening to shoot a young woman (in “Moral Integrity,” from his collection Ethics and Action). Winch concludes that although this man did what he had to do, he nevertheless judges that he did something wrong in killing another person (which follows from his commitment to non-violence). (The case is taken from the 1950s film Violent Saturday.)
Some might claim that this simply shows that the elder is mis-judging his action (in thinking that it is wrong to act as he did), and that he should revise his moral views (that all forms of violence are immoral). How could this elder judge that he had to do what he did, if he believed that doing so is morally wrong? If he is to remain committed to Amish ideals, then he can only look back on what he did and judge that it was morally wrong. But equally, it seems that in looking back, he may continue to think that he had to do it.
If thinking in this way manifests a bias, it is not obviously a self-serving bias. (True, thinking this way might be a condition for his remaining in the community, so it might be.) He is choosing to live with the (deeply troubling) judgment that he has done something wrong even though he also believes he could do nothing else. Many of us might be inclined to think that the elder did the right thing, but he himself would disagree: he did what he had to, but it was still wrong.
This suggests that we might agree about the “solution” to the problem, yet disagree not only about the reasons that justify that solution – as discussed in Robin’s post on the convergence of multiple ethical theories on similar practical questions – but also about the moral status (the rightness or wrongness) of the solution. This is deeply puzzling because, as Winch notes, it raises a huge question about the purpose of moral thought.
Or, do we simply dismiss the elder as an irrational old man, and cling to the claim that if it has to (ought to?) be done, it’s the morally right thing to do? It is tempting to hold that the elder expresses the simple bias of being convinced that his moral views are correct, even in the face of a situation that suggests otherwise. But might this case also reveal that most of us have a bias in thinking that morality must always provide comfortable pronouncements about the moral status of our actions, even when they are things that we have to do? (Other examples that might challenge this? "I had to give him a good shaking. But still, I see that it was wrong to do so." I was in a situation like that recently.)
Having to Do Something Wrong
"To imagine how the elder would feel, ask youself the question: would you save someone's life, if you knew that saving them would transform you into a peadophile?"
That's a useless comparison! A paedophile goes on to inflict harm on numerous innocents, is viewed negatively by the rest of the population. The elder never did, nor ever does harm innocents, and only he views himself in a negative light.
The problem for the elder is that he can't judge that this is the right thing to do (given his moral convictions) - although he isn't willing to abandon his moral ideals (at least in thought), the world (which contains vicious robbers) makes it quite difficult to live up to his own ideal standards. (We might think of the adoption of the non-violence ideal as adopting a vision of the way the world ought to be, but doing so is not - as this case illustrates - always practical.) The difficulty lies in making sense of what he has done, without hedging on his ideal moral vision. To that end, what Stuart has us imagine (that this act of killing is a temptation of sorts for the elder) makes sense: if he doesn't live up to the ideal, then who will? And even if we can't in practice without letting horrible things happen, this doesn't make, for the elder, our less-than-ideal acts right. (So, again, he might claim that there is a kind of bias against, as Anna says, condemning ourselves even where there is no other option. But having no other option doesn't mean that the option we have is a good one...)