​AGAINST OVERTHINKING

But that would be one thought too many

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
But that would be one thought too many.  Bernard Williams
 
I always hate finding out something I should have known a long time ago but didn’t. My life would be much easier if I knew then what I know now. And I am not dismissing the value of experience, just my general laziness or forgetfulness resulting in unnecessary ignorance.
 
So, this quotation requires some background. As you probably know, Bernard Williams was a highly influential English philosopher of the last century. He was a contrarian when it came to some of the popular moral philosophical systems of the time, arguing that people do not make moral decisions in categories. Rather, they make them based in their lived experiences and values. He believed that moral philosophy (especially Kantian and utilitarian – look ‘em up) was boring. He dreamed of “a philosophy that would be thoroughly truthful and honestly helpful.”
 
Famously (well, not famously enough for me), he described a man standing on the shore seeing two women drowning. He can only save one. One is his wife, and the other is not. The moral philosophers of his day would have categories of consideration about which woman to save. Williams correctly insists that the guy is going to save his wife. The man could give some thought as to the moral categories that might govern his choice, “but that would be one thought too many.”
 
And, says Williams, that is the morally correct choice.
 
Williams was certainly not the precursor of the permissive culture that promoted slogans like “if it feels good, do it,” but he did validate the notion that lived experience and cultural conditioning would reliably lead to morally right decisions. Now, please don’t try to engage me on how awful culture and bad experience could lead to reprehensible behavior – save it for Nietzsche. Williams instead voted for the wisdom of considering that people who want to do the right thing should be encouraged to include their gut feeling in considering their actions (especially in an emergent moment like the example above) and not some categorical imperative.
 
I am looking around at a world that seems to be filled with bad choices and worse choices. You can fill in your own examples – political contests, armed conflicts, AI technology, crypto, Major League Baseball’s intention to expand again. Name your poison. Not everybody wants to do the right thing (or we wouldn’t have all these bad choices), but most people do. Applying Kantian or utilitarian approaches to decision-making, even if it were possible for the average schmo like me, would not necessarily solve anything and would, in any event, externalize the process in a way that would be grossly unsatisfying (not necessarily a bad thing) and, except for Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, not validate personal moral agency and the responsibility to exercise it.
 
Sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – we find ourselves standing on the shore looking out at two or more people in distress. A right decision about whom to save seems obvious, even if it is not the same decision that seems right to the person standing next to us. We could argue about the principles and hierarchies and categories about the correct course of action, but a discourse that results in universal catastrophe in the name of intellectual integrity is the only unquestionably wrong course of action.
 
I can say without equivocation that if I were on the shore or, all the more so, hoping to be saved by someone who loves me, I know there might be plenty of philosophical reasons to have second thoughts. But that would be one thought too many.