Puzzle Reflections

Further discussion of the "moral puzzle" posed in "Philosophical Reflections Meets the Puzzle Page"

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In the last issue of TableAus, PB wrote that the Boatman puzzle I related was as arbitrary as the Fishers puzzle which I criticised; that the characters' motives were ambiguous; and that he expected my analysis to be on the basis of freedom of trade.

On the first point, I agree that the boatman puzzle is arbitrary: but there is a big difference between using an artificial scenario as an interesting way to explore morality, and using it as evidence in a moral debate. Illustration, application and investigation are valid uses of such a puzzle; derivation is not. For example, although I ranked L as the most moral in the Boatman puzzle, it would be completely unjustified to extrapolate from that to a claim that promiscuous, gratuitous adultery is the ideal basis of a relationship. It is similarly invalid to argue from "I can make up a bizarre scenario in which force might be justifiable" to "the proper role of government is the initiation of force against some citizens to satisfy the wishes of others."

On the second point, I didn't create the puzzle: and the ambiguities actually make it more interesting. But of course the "correctness" of one's moral assessments are in the context of your judgment of why they acted as they did.

The last point is the most significant. The basis of my ethics is not trade but value. That life and happiness are conditional is the link between what is (reality) and what ought to be (ethics). What life and happiness require - what they are conditional on - is the achieving of values. How one achieves values is by virtues. The morality of trade is not a primary assumption but a consequence of this value-based morality: that is, since all values that aren't free for the taking have to be produced by someone, the only moral way to acquire them from the people who produce them is by offering them a value of your own in trade, which they must be free to accept or reject according to their own standards of value. Any other system is anti-life, because it punishes those who create the things life requires; it is the morality of looters, as opposed to producers.

Life Imitating Art?

In Time magazine, June 18 2001 (p. 75), is this information on the life of film director Ingmar Bergman:

In 1949, Bergman and a journalist named Gun Hagberg, both unhappily married, entered into a passionate affair, beginning with a long tryst in Paris, and continuing after their return to Sweden, where she discovered she was pregnant with his child. A bitter wrangle with her husband over custody of their children ensued. One night, Hagberg's husband called and proposed meeting to discuss an amicable solution. He was lying: he would settle with her only if she would sleep with him one more time. Hagberg succumbed to what amounted to a form of rape.

Bergman immediately discovered the truth and, instead of offering sympathy, flew into a jealous, unappeasable rage. There was an attempt to patch things up, and their child was born, but their love died, and they separated. Hagberg died years later in a car crash, having inspired, according to Bergman, at least five of the women in his films, a model of "indomitable femininity."

Though there are obvious differences, there is a remarkable similarity between the three players here and the characters in the Boatman puzzle. Also remarkable is how Bergman behaved so much like the man M from the puzzle - and spent the rest of his life regretting it.

To say that Hagberg's husband's action "amounted to a form of rape" is however inaccurate. The essence of rape is physical force, which was notably absent here. While he drove a nasty bargain, it was not "a form of rape."