Jean Kazez, who overlapped with me by a year or two at the University of Arizona, has a letter in today’s New York Times. I’m not sure what her point is, unfortunately. It has something to do with the permissibility of classroom advocacy. Here’s how I approach teaching. In my Ethics course, for example, I expose students to a number of normative ethical theories. We discuss act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, egoism, Kantianism, contractarianism, and Rossian deontology. At no point do I try to get my students to subscribe to a particular theory. I frankly don’t care which theory, if any, they subscribe to. What I want them to do is to understand the various theories, so that their choice (even if it’s a choice not to choose) is an informed one. Students have no idea which theory I subscribe to; nor do they need to know. It’s no more important to them than which brand of cereal I prefer.

Please don’t say that I have an obligation to teach the truth. Normative ethical theories aren’t the sort of thing that can be true or false. The point of a normative ethical theory is twofold: to systematize one’s moral judgments and to guide one’s conduct. What could it mean to say of a normative ethical theory that it is true? To say that something is true is to say that it corresponds to reality. How can a normative theory, ethical or otherwise, correspond to reality? There are no values, standards, or norms “out there,” independently of human belief or judgment. There are only things—which we imbue with value. I realize that there are people who believe that there are objective values. I have never been able to make sense of this. It’s like saying there are ghosts. That people imply that values are objective only shows the human propensity to give their values more authority than they have.

Every theory, normative or otherwise, has costs. It allows one to believe certain things but precludes belief in other things. Just because most people aren’t willing to believe what egoism entails doesn’t mean that nobody can believe what it entails. Everyone has bullets to bite, meaning that everyone must, from time to time, stick with one’s theory even when it produces painful results. Ultimately, only the principle of noncontradiction limits what can be believed. I cannot consistently subscribe to act utilitarianism while rejecting one of its implications. If the theory produces a result that I find painful or repugnant, I can either reject the theory, modify the theory so that it no longer has that result, or bite the bullet and accept the result. There is no reason why everyone must adopt the same strategy. This is why only some people are utilitarians. Many people (perhaps most) are unwilling to accept the theory’s implications. Some are willing, even happy, to accept them. There is nothing more to say or do. People’s values differ, just as people’s tastes differ. This allows them to subscribe to different normative theories. A theory (such as egoism) that systematizes my judgments may not systematize yours.

If I were to try to get my students to be egoists, I would be indoctrinating them, for egoism is a doctrine. I would be trying to plant that doctrine in them. I have no interest in doing this; nor would I be doing my job if I were to attempt it. I want my students to think for themselves, even if they end up in a different place from where I am. I might add that I teach my Philosophy of Religion course the same way. It doesn’t matter to me whether my students come out of the class as theists, atheists, or agnostics; but by god, they’ll have a better understanding of theism, atheism, and agnosticism than they did at the start of the class.