Guy
Kahane recently (2016) published a paper called “If Nothing Matters”,[1]
which attempts to settle the question whether it matters whether or not
anything matters. Kahane’s answer: it doesn’t matter if there is anything that
matters, but what does matter is
whether or not we believe that
something matters.
The
paper starts with a brief description of Richard Hare’s argument in “’Nothing
Matters’”, which I have discussed in a previous post. To recall, Hare argued that things only matter if they matter to someone, so that as long as something
matters to you, you cannot truthfully say that nothing matters. To do so would
be a contradiction. Since for most of us most of the time something matters, it
is generally not true that nothing matters. Though I’m not usually a fan of
Hare’s, I find this argument rather elegant and quite persuasive in its
simplicity. Kahane, however, rejects it offhand - curiously without making any
serious attempt to actually refute it. Apparently he thinks that Hare’s
argument is so obviously misguided that it doesn’t really need a rebuttal. Hare
got it wrong, he simply declares, because “there really are things, like
suffering, that objectively matter”. (p. 2) This is, then, what people mean
when they say that nothing matters: that nothing matters objectively. Things may still matter subjectively (i.e., we
find something worth doing) but if they don’t matter objectively (i.e., it
really is worth doing), then they
don’t really matter at all. That
nothing matters objectively Kahane takes to mean that the universe is “devoid
of value” and that, accordingly, even the grandest achievements are actually
worthless (p. 1). The view that nothing matters can therefore be understood as a
form of evaluative nihilism (i.e.,
the view that nothing is worth anything).
Kahane
contends that this nihilist view is quite common among today’s metaethicists
(which supposedly was not the case in the 1950s when Hare wrote his paper).
Unlike Hare’s Swiss student who clearly believed that whether or not things
matter is a matter of great consequence, today’s nihilist metaethicists do not
seem to care very much one way or another. They conclude that nothing matters,
but are quite happy to carry on as before and to expect everyone else to do the
same. They appear to think that it doesn’t matter whether or not things matter.
The lack of objective value in the universe does not seem to bother them, let
alone plunge them into despair (as it seems to have happened with Hare’s
student). That is because they do not see any reason for it. Now, given their
commitment to evaluative nihilism, this actually seems quite consistent. After
all, if nothing matters, then this – the fact that nothing matters -
doesn’t matter either. Or in other words: it cannot possibly be bad that
nothing is really good or bad. Kahane agrees with this: if we “take evaluative
nihilism seriously enough, then anxiety about it makes little sense.” (p. 5).
Generally speaking, then, nothing follows from evaluative nihilism. What
matters to us will continue to matter
to us, whether or not it objectively
matters. Perhaps, if nihilism is true, we have no good reason to pursue
whatever it is that we are pursuing in life, but the point is that we have no
good reason not to pursue it either.
Things are just the same as ever. Nihilism has, as Kahane says, “no normative
implications. It cannot make the world bad or worse, or give anyone reasons to
do or feel anything – or, for that matter, not
to do or feel something. (…) The truth of nihilism, the total absence of all
value, makes no normative difference.” (8)
However,
what might make a difference,
according to Kahane, is whether or not we believe
in nihilism. This is not because believing in nihilism would logically commit us to stop valuing
things. As we have seen, it does no such thing. It may, however, still have
some causal impact on our attitudes.
“What matters is how a person’s psychology
would respond to a belief in nihilism.” (p. 9-10) So how would it respond?
Kahane thinks it is very likely that belief in the truth of nihilism will result
in the loss of our substantive evaluative beliefs. In other words, if I truly
believe that nothing really matters, then I will also believe that this (whatever ‘this’ is) does not
really matter. To hold that even though nothing matters such and such does in
fact matter is as inconsistent as not believing in witches and at the same time
insisting that so-and-so is a witch. Consequently, if we believe that nothing
matters, we will most likely also believe that, for instance, suffering does
not matter, i.e. that it is not really
bad (even though it may continue to appear bad to me). But usually our
subjective concerns are not independent of our evaluative beliefs. If I think
that such and such is really bad, then I am likely to be concerned about it.
Conversely, if I don’t think that
such and such is really bad, then I am much less likely to be concerned about
it. Accordingly, if I don’t think that suffering is really bad (that it matters
whether or not people suffer), then I am less likely to be concerned about
people’s suffering. We will stop caring, or not care that much anymore. (Note
that this effect would ensue even if nihilism was false. This is very important for Kahane’s argument: it is the belief in nihilism that causes our
subjective concerns to change and diminish.) Admittedly, some basic animal
drives and motivations (like our aversion to pain, hunger, or cold) might
survive the nihilist onslaught, but everything else including our “moral
principles and ideals, and even (…) our long-term prudential goals” (17) would
most likely not.
Assuming
that we have followed Kahane so far and are willing to accept his claim that
belief in the truth of nihilism is likely to undermine our subjective concerns,
we might be inclined to think that such an outcome is not exactly desirable.
People should care, and if believing in nihilism makes people care less about
things (including justice and fairness, and our interests in general), then
surely we have every reason to dissuade people from such a belief. It would be
bad for them, and most likely bad for us, too. Kahane, however, disagrees, on
the grounds that if nihilism is in fact true, then nothing matters, and if
nothing matters, it doesn’t matter whether or not nihilism affects subjective
concerns and what those concerns are. If evaluative nihilism is true, then
whatever the actual effects of a belief in nihilism may be, it is all the same
because none of it matters.
And
now Kahane’s argument is getting really interesting. It takes the form of a
variation of Pascal’s famous wager. After denying that the likely psychological
effects of correctly believing in
nihilism would give us any reason to avoid and discourage such a belief, Kahane
goes on to argue that those effects would,
however, matter if nihilism were false,
i.e, if things actually did matter. Because then we would “no longer recognize
the values and reasons out there” (p. 19), and this would be very bad indeed.
Such an outcome would be “very
harmful”, “disastrous” in fact, because it would lead to “many bad consequences,
both prudential and moral, and might be bad in itself”. That is why, while we
have no reason to fear nihilism, we have plenty of reason to fear “mistaken belief in nihilism” (p. 19).
To
sum up: if nihilism is true, then we have nothing to worry about whether or not
we believe that it is true, and if nihilism is not true, then we still have nothing to worry about as long as we
don’t believe it’s true. But if we
believe nihilism is true while in fact it is not true, then we are in
big trouble. Since not believing in nihilism will not harm us either way, it
follows that we have good “pragmatic reasons to believe (or to try to make
ourselves believe) that nihilism is false” (p. 19) and indeed to avoid and
suppress “anything that might lead us to believe in nihilism” (p. 21) Let us
call this Kahane’s Wager.
COMMENTARY:
Kahane’s
argument is intriguing, but it seems to me that it suffers from a fatal flaw. Right
from the start, it is simply assumed that it makes good sense to say that
something matters objectively. But what exactly are we saying here? I find this
far from clear. Kahane mentions suffering as an example of something that
(quite obviously) matters objectively. Let us see whether we can figure out
what that means. Clearly, my suffering matters to me. Whether or not I suffer
and how much I suffer makes a huge difference to me. I cannot be (or at any
rate, I am not) indifferent to my own suffering. Other people presumably feel
the same about their suffering. In addition, most people are also concerned
about other people’s suffering, though in varying degrees and generally not in
the same degree that they are concerned about their own. But it often does
matter to them. People, as a rule, are not entirely indifferent to the
suffering of other people (or, for that matter, animals). So (my and possibly
your) suffering matters to me, and (your and possibly my) suffering matters to
you. But that would still only be subjective
mattering, wouldn’t it? There is, after all, someone to whom it matters. If it matters to someone, it matters subjectively.
Admittedly, it might also matter
objectively, but in that case it cannot simply matter objectively because and
insofar as it matters to someone, because then what matters objectively would
be indistinguishable from what matters subjectively. If there is a difference
between subjective and objective mattering, then there must be some way to
distinguish the two. It must be, in other words, (at least theoretically)
possible for there to be objective mattering without subjective mattering. So
what we seem to be saying when we insist that suffering matters objectively is something like this: that
my suffering would still matter even if it did not matter to me or to you, or
to anyone at all. Suffering would still matter even if there were nobody to whom it mattered. But once
again, what does that mean? Perhaps
we are tempted to say that it means that even if it does not matter to anyone,
it should matter to us. But that does
not really get us anywhere. If someone asks us why suffering should matter to us if it does not already do so, all
we could say is that it should matter
to us because it does matter, namely
objectively. We should attach importance to it because it is important (though for and to no one in particular). A
prescriptive interpretation of supposedly objective values thus merely begs the
question. We have just deflected from the problem instead of solving it. So,
one more time, what does it mean that suffering matters objectively? Frankly, I
don’t have the slightest idea, and what is more, I doubt that anyone really
understands this claim, not even Kahane himself.
Let
us now turn to the argument itself or that crucial portion of it that I have
called Kahane’s Wager, which relies heavily on the notion of objective
mattering (that is, things being objectively valuable). More precisely, the
argument relies on a distinction between two levels of reality: the subjective
and the objective. These two levels of reality are thought to be ontologically
independent of each other. It is possible that things matter to me subjectively
even though they do not matter
objectively. It is also possible that things do not matter to me subjectively
while they do matter objectively. It
is even possible that they matter both subjectively and objectively, but that I
am completely mistaken about how they
matter. I may for instance think that suffering is bad, while in fact
(objectively) suffering is good. (Kahane explicitly allows for this
possibility, but thinks – for, as far as I can see, no compelling reason - that
such a value reversal is rather unlikely.) This separation explains why, as
Kahane puts it, “the truth of nihilism makes no normative difference.” Whatever
matters or does not matter objectively, it has no effect whatsoever on what
matters subjectively.
Now,
Kahane’s Wager is modeled on Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s wager works because it
is assumed that it may make a huge difference whether or not we believe in God.
There is a lot at stake here, a lot to be gained and lost. Eternal rewards and eternal
punishments are both possible. If I believe in God and there is no God, I don’t
lose much, but if there is, then the rewards are immense. If I don’t believe in
God and there is no God, then I don’t really gain anything, but if there is, I
may have to face eternal damnation. So I’d better play it safe, do the rational
thing, and believe. For Kahane’s Wager to work, we likewise need to assume that
the consequences of believing in nihilism are potentially disastrous, while we
don’t really stand to lose anything if we do not believe in it: if it is not true,
then our subjective concerns are justified, and there is nothing bad about that,
and if it is, then nothing matters anyway, so that wouldn’t be bad either. But
if we do believe in nihilism even
though it is not true (which would be
the equivalent of not believing in God even though God exists), then this would
result in great harm.
The
problem with this argument is that it is hard to see in what way exactly
mistaken belief in nihilism would be harmful. Remember that nihilism itself is supposed
to be not only not harmful: it does
not make the slightest difference for how we experience the world. If things
did matter objectively and suddenly stopped mattering objectively, or did not
matter and then suddenly started to matter, in neither case would we be able to
tell the difference. The world as we know it would remain unchanged. (This
alone should be sufficient to reject the notion of objective value: following
William James’s excellent pragmatist principle that there can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere,[2]
the claim that certain things matter objectively is simply meaningless.)
Now,
believing that nihilism is true may
certainly have consequences: people may get depressed and commit suicide, they
may start hurting other people, and do all kinds of other things that we may
feel are bad. Obviously, however, if belief in nihilism really does have such
consequences, it has them whether or not nihilism is true. Yet Kahane argues
that those consequences would only matter (i.e., be bad) if nihilism were not
true. Exactly the same consequences would not matter at all if nihilism were
true. Therefore, belief in nihilism cannot be thought to be harmful because it
has those consequences. It must be harmful for other reasons. But the only
difference between correctly believing in nihilism and falsely believing in nihilism
seems to be that in the first case our subjective concerns would correspond to objective
values (“the value around us”), while in the second case they would not. Everything
else would be exactly the same. But then again, a lack of correspondence
between subjective concerns and objective value cannot be what makes things bad
either, because if nihilism were true and we believed it wasn’t, there would
also be a lack of correspondence between subjective concerns and objective
value, but that, according to Kahane, would not
be bad. So then the only possible reason for thinking that it would be bad if
we falsely believed in nihilism, but not bad if we correctly believed in it, is
that in the first case the consequences of believing in nihilism would be really (i.e., objectively) bad whereas
in the second case they would not be really bad, but only appear to be so. That
is, they would only be subjectively bad. But if I mistakenly believe in
nihilism, then of course those consequences would not be subjectively bad at
all. Since I now believe that nothing matters, whatever results from my belief
does not matter to me either, and if we all believed in it, then it would
matter to no one. It follows that the consequences of our mistakenly believing
in nihilism would be only objectively
bad, which leads us right back to our original problem: to understand what we
can possibly mean when we say that
something matters objectively or does not matter objectively.
[1] Published in Nous (2016), online first: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nous.12146/pdf
[2] William James, Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of
Thinking, New York/ Bombay/ Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co 1907, p. 50.
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