4.2.1 |
TRUE STATEMENTS, PROMISES AND THREATS |
Typical of
the doctrine of neutral-inclusivity
is not only the non-supernaturalist interpretation of
truth but also its application to
both promises and threats. Traditionally,
ethical theorists treat the duty not to lie, or the duty to tell
the truth, and the duty to keep one's promises as separate,
independent duties. Deontologists, for instance, will recognize
these duties but seldom or never a duty to make good one's
threat. While they hate to get (too much) involved in consequences,
this is just another indication that the consequences
of acts they prescribe or forbid may already be implicit in the
descriptions or formulations of these acts. (Compare the tendency
not to call an utterance "a promise" when the bad
consequences of doing something else than 'foretold' are, or
would be, small or negligible; that is, the bad consequences
with respect to people's, or other people's, happiness or
well-being.)
How can the misleading 'intuition' to recognize a duty to
keep one's promises and not to recognize a duty to make good
one's threats, even not a prima facie one, be explained? The
reason cannot lie in what promises and threats have in common,
namely that they refer to the future, usually to something the
person promising or threatening will or will not do if a certain
state of affairs does or does not hold. The reason must lie in
what distinguishes promises from threats. And this is, first and
foremost, that what a person intends to do in a promise is
something of which
'e supposes that the person
to whom 'e promises it likes or prefers it, or something that the
promiser supposes to be good or better for that person. On the
other hand, what a person intends to do in a threat is something
of which 'e supposes that the person whom 'e threatens does not
like or prefer it, or something that the threatener supposes to
be bad or not as good for that person. The difference between
promises and threats is therefore not a question of truth but of
well-being, beneficence or preference. Nonetheless, granted that
there is a duty to keep one's promises which cannot be entirely
derived from the duty to be beneficent, or which is to be more
than a derivative utilitarian duty (as deontologists will claim
with us) and granted that factual-modal morality or passed-on
intuition cannot be accepted as an argument per se, this duty to
keep one's promises must ensue from the general duty to tell
the truth. For this latter duty does not only concern the
relationship between what a person says now and the past or
present but also that between what 'e says now and what 'e will
do or not do
'imself in the future.
(The way certain people used to, or still, react to the
difference between
aggrandizemental
discrimination and
abnegational
discrimination can be similarly explained: relevancy-conditionally
there is not any difference between the two, just
as there is truth-conditionally no difference between keeping
one's promise and carrying out a threat. The difference lies in
eudaimonistic considerations. Aggrandizemental discrimination is
supposed to make someone happy or to serve
'er well-being,
whereas abnegational discrimination is supposed to make someone
unhappy or to be unfavorable to 'im. Those who condemn the
abnegational but not the aggrandizemental manifestations of
discrimination thus completely neglect what is essential to
discrimination, namely the relevancy-conditional aspect. Moreover,
also here the deontologists among them turn out to be
secretive consequentialists of the eudaimonist brand in their
intuitive selection of so-called 'ultimate' or 'intrinsic'
duties.)
From the point of view of truth it just does not matter at
all whether the relationship between what one says now and what
one will do or not do in the future is a relationship with a
state of affairs which is liked or not liked, preferred or not
preferred, by the person to whom it was said. Therefore, from
the point of view of truth proper there is not only a duty to
keep one's promise but also a duty to make good one's threat.
Both these duties are intrinsic (in our sense of
doctrinal but
also in the deontological sense of perfective or
noninstrumental); neither one is ultimate, however. Ultimate is
the duty to tell the truth, or not to lie, in the widest sense possible.
Yet, this is not to say that the principle of truth is the sole
principle underlying the duty to keep one's promise: the
principle of beneficence is certainly part of this duty as well.
In questions of promise-keeping truth and beneficence support
each other almost by definition. (Exceptions are cases in which
the total utility would decrease by keeping a promise.)
This is quite unlike the nature of threats: here telling the truth, or
having told the truth, and beneficence tend to pull in opposite directions,
which is the very reason why traditional thinkers have (almost?) never had
an instinctive urge to defend a duty to make good one's threat.
As we ourselves feel bound not to base our normative doctrine on
conventional, arbitrary or incoherent intuitions, we must conclude that a
consistent interpretation of the principle of truth requires us to adopt
the existence of a prima facie, derivative duty to make good one's
threat even
tho there is at
the same time a derivative duty of beneficence according to which one
should not do things which harm people or sentient beings.
Keeping one's promise is a nice thing to do, and both
deontological and consequentialist theorists have probably found
a duty such as carrying out one's threat a task too unpalatable
for their taste. But if an act of making good one's threat is
(believed to be) disagreeable, it is not disagreeable as an act
in which an utterance is made true but as an act which has bad
effects with respect to a purely nonpropositional value
(particularly the minimization of unhappiness). The implication of
our position is therefore not so much threaten and carry out your
threat but rather never threaten, unless you are willing and
able to stand the effects. The recognition of a prima facie
duty to make good one's threats should not contribute to an increase
of maleficent acts by people who have been threatening others
with such acts; instead, this recognition should be conducive to
a decrease in the number of threats, and preferably to their
total extinction.
One reason that
the DNI does not allow its adherents to
edify children or people by indoctrination and commination is precisely
that its respect for truth also extends to threats, inclusive
of comminations, whether godly or not. Only
theodemonical or other
ideologies for which truth is nothing else than a believer's duty not to
lie or a believer's duty not to break a promise can promise anything and
everything, and can threaten people with anything or everything, without
bothering about the question whether these promises and these threats
will certainly or probably come true.
Not only should we not threaten someone, unless we are
willing and able to create the unpleasant condition and to stand
the consequences, we should not promise anything either, unless
we are willing and able to create the pleasant condition and to
stand the consequences too. In both cases the good consequences
should on the whole outweigh the bad ones. Even when a threat is
carried out which harms the person who has been threatened, the
action in question should have more good than bad consequences,
especially when taking into consideration the preventive effects
of such an action. Consequences in themselves, however, are not
part of the truth-conditional aspect of keeping a promise or
carrying out a threat. The principle of truth is not a
consequentialist principle even tho we look upon truth as a value.
With respect to keeping a promise and making good a threat it is
past-regarding and noncausal, and could therefore be called
"antecedentialist". Like consequentialist principles the principle
of truth is future-regarding with respect to statements
about the future, but the relationship concerned is now one of
correspondence between a proposition and a lower-level reality
and not one of causality as in consequentialism. The principle
of truth is present-regarding and noncausal with respect to
statements about the present, and also past-regarding and
noncausal with respect to statements about the past. This order
is reversed for promises and threats since the utterance is
there in the past and the reality it is about, schematically
speaking, in the present.
If one promises something, one should keep one's promise;
and if one threatens with something, one should carry out
one's threat from the perspective of truth; that is, other
things being equal. However, the principle of truth does not require
people to promise something to others, or to threaten others
with something, by any manner of means. In the same way it does
not require people to say something or to believe something. It
is only if one says or believes something that it should be
true. Instead of telling and believing in what is far-fetched or
irrelevantly unneutral, we should have the courage to acknowledge
that there are things beyond, or still beyond, our ken.
True humility bows to verity and silence rather than to
comforting or threatening falsehoods.
