Wee frill

Edward: Hello, Jack. How are you feeling?

Jack: Well, Edward, I feel well. Not by an inch or pinch does even a dinky bit of my pinkie feel any inclination or aspiration for poetry. And my cat bite is healed, too. See?

Edward: That's great to hear—and see.

Jack: Yes, though, taking the remainder of the Prose-Lack prescription made for an epic two weeks of beautiful description, though later sometime did rhyme and meter both peter.

Edward: Are you sure that the effects have fully worn off?

Jack: Yes. Why do you ask?

Edward: No reason.

Jack: Well, through no lack of reason of my own did I figure out that all of ethics is baseless.

Edward: Oh really?

Jack: Yes really! You see, that prescription of Prose-Lack and its resulting psycho-physical effects raises an important question.

Edward: What question is that, Jack?

Jack: This: that if I or anyone else can be made to act in a certain way merely by popping a pill, then what does that mean for freewill?

Edward: I suppose it means that our freewill is somewhat limited.

Jack: Not just limited. It's nonexistent.

Edward: That seems a rather contentious conclusion. Many philosophers as well as many non-philosophers disagree with you on that point.

Jack: That's only because those people haven't yet done a careful analysis of all the evidence, which, I may add, I have done these last two weeks.

Edward: Truly that's an impressive—an epic—quantity of research carried out in such little time.

Jack: Thank you, but I assure you that it could not have happened any other way.

Edward: So what does our lack of freewill have to do with ethics?

Jack: Everything. Or nothing. If a person acts in a good way or bad way then it is because that person has chosen to act in a good way or bad way. Only by our choices can there exist good and bad and right and wrong.

Edward: I see.

Jack: Call it the Doctrine of Ethics-Is-Stupid. All of ethics is like Monday-morning quarterbacking and amounts to nothing more than analysis of something that cannot be changed, for our behaviors cannot go any other way than they do. Ethics equips us with the power to blame and to fame people whose actions could not not have been what they were, and ethics is a wasteful endeavor. As some say, “Ought implies can”—emphasis mine.

Edward: Your point is emphatically taken. I have a question, though.

Jack: Of course you would. It could not have happened any other way.

Edward: Yes … If everything that happens, including people's behaviors, does so out of mechanical determinism, then wouldn't that include philosophizing about ethics and pursuing “wasteful endeavors”?

Jack: Yours is a question that could not not have been asked.

Edward: And as I'm hoping your answer can not not be given.

Jack: Of course it can't not. It's that … Well, it's like … You see there's … Blast, Edward! Why do you insist on asking about such things!