Shyun J. Ahn 安 丁 秀賢

While standing in formation for the graduation formal, my peer asked how much I drank. When I told him I seldom drink, he complimented me on my high moral character. This struck me as odd because seldom drinking is a mere predilection for me. I simply like the feeling of being sober better than that of being tipsy. I am not controlling myself against temptation nor am I rationally deliberating when I decide not to drink. In other words, I seldom drink for the same reason people who like to drink often drink. Therefore, even though drinking in moderation is considered a moral act, it does not necessarily make my character more moral than theirs.

For example, think of a robot arm that is programmed to save a drowning child (“child-saving robot arm”). The owner of a commercial swimming pool decides to buy a robot arm to save the cost of hiring swimming guards. Upon detecting drowning children, this robot arm automatically submerges into a pool and saves them. With no artificial intelligence, this is done mechanically, i.e., without rational deliberation, inner conflict, or self-control. While saving a drowning child is clearly a moral act, can we say the robot arm has a moral character? Alternatively, if the robot arm has a wiring problem and thus watches a child drown, can we call the robot “immoral?” In short, can we attribute a moral character to the robot arm? An intuitive answer is “No.” Simply wired to carry out a certain act that happens to be moral, the robot arm has no moral agency. The morality of his act is the result of coincidence.

Now, consider the following two examples. Suppose there is a moral saint who was born morally impeccable (“gifted moral saint”). He simply does what he likes to do without any rational deliberation or self-control, yet every single act—so long as it is morally relevant—is moral. In a way, he is like a child-saving robot arm that is wired to perform an infinite number of acts that happen to be moral. Also consider the other example: a moral saint who has become effortlessly moral through cultivation (“trained moral saint”). Like a gifted moral saint, she simply follows her heart without rational deliberation or self-control yet everything she does is moral. However, this saint was not born this way. She became effortlessly moral owing to countless analyses, reflection, and self-control.

Can we say these saints have moral characters? The latter is clear Yes. She is the archetype of saintly figures admired across the world for their high moral characters. Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, just to name a few. Unlike the robot arm, her ability to act morally is established by her moral agency. How about the former? I argue that this moral saint always acts morally yet does not have a moral character for the reason I explained in the robot arm paragraph. By definition, the gifted moral saint simply does what he likes and has never rationally deliberated or controlled himself to make a moral choice. The moral quality of his acts is the product of coincidence, not moral agency. One may object to this conclusion. The gifted moral saint, unlike the robot arm, must have a moral character because he can act morally in limitlessly many ways. Moreover, he never fails to act morally, not even once in his life. However, an individual’s character is not a simple aggregation of his or her acts. Had my character been a mere aggregation of my acts, I would have an inconsistent character by eating Panda Express at the shopette one day and refusing to eat Panda Express at the same shopette another day. A character constitutes something more fundamental than acts. Therefore, even though the gifted moral saint acts morally all the time, these acts alone are not enough to conclude that he has a moral character.

To illustrate this point further, imagine the gifted moral saint has a slightly inferior twin. This twin is just like the gifted moral saint… Well, almost. After acting morally countless times, he acted immorally just once. The problem is this inferior twin has never done anything differently, whether the outcome of his act was moral or immoral. He simply did what he liked to do without rational deliberation or self-control. Nonetheless, this one unfortunate immoral act reveals that the inferior twin has no internal apparatus to morally guide his acts although he has acted morally throughout his life except for once. Now that we can see this incompetence in plain sight, can we say that this inferior twin has a moral character? The answer is a clear No. And this is exactly how his superior twin, the gifted moral saint, functions as well. He has no internal apparatus to rationalize his acts and control himself to realize moral values. And this observation should be enough to show that the gifted moral saint likewise has no moral character.

Even if we play devil’s advocate and say that the gifted moral saint has a moral character simply because he never fails to act morally, this is an unrealistically demanding expectation for all of us in the real world. None of us is born perfectly moral and always acts morally. At least for me, I can easily name the occasions where I have failed to act morally. Therefore, for me to have a moral character, I must have moral agency, unlike the gifted moral saint. Coming back to my initial point, seldom drinking does not prove that I have a high moral character because I do not deliberately reason or control myself to drink seldom.

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P.S., One thing I overlooked is that liking entails inclination, so acting morally based on predilection might be different from a random act that happens to be moral. Perhaps the gifted moral saint is salvageable and can be saintly again. My gut is telling me No, based on the past development of metaethical literature. But who knows. What do you think?