Can an insincere quasi-good action be morally good?

[Epistemologist]

I should give a relevant quote:

Quote by: Kahlil Gibran He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.

For instance, many kids are made to do volunteer activities and participate in community service projects. I would hesitate to say that all of them or even a majority sincerely care about the people they're helping. I doubt that their intentions are true, in other words, because many of them have to do these projects and things in order to get into college, get a scholarship, or even graduate. Their intentions are fundamentally selfish. We might say that their intentions are bad vis-a-vis the good intentions of those sincere volunteers who actually care about the people they're helping. However, the outcome of all their actions is often good because the people who need help are ultimately helped regardless of why the volunteers did it.

Another seemingly less obvious example is that of missionary "aid" workers who go to so-called "third-world" countries, pass out food, and try to convert people to their religion, which is often Christianity; it even applies to those tricky individuals who loudly drop their nickels in a bucket to give to some "cause" in some detached land. I could argue that even their actions are insincere in that they don't really care about their subjects; rather, they care about themselves to some extent. Their egotism is either materialistically temporal or, especially in their case, otherworldly divine. The former motivation might be that they like the recognition and fame of being a so-called "selfless" humane worker, they want to extend their culture to more people thereby maximizing their cultural security, or they just feel like asserting their cultural quasi-superiority by establishing a position of dominance as the "giver" versus their subjects. The latter might be that they want to have eternal life and see God in Heaven by spreading His word to others. Regardless, I would say in most situations, their intentions aren't really sincere per se. However, they usually "get 'er done" and yield a tangible end benefit.

It seems that Gibran assumes that rather than morality, people who seem to practice such things are actually practicing pseudo-morality; that is, they are insincerely practicing prima facie morals in order to effect some social benefit or something similar.

Even beyond the teleological ethical view, I think it is necessary to be sincere if your actions are to be moral. Regardless of whether you are an ethical teleologist or deontologist, you are performing an action under the sincere belief that it is ethical or moral per se. However, a pseudo-moral practitioner, who a contemporary critic might call a “poser,” does not even operate with a sincere moral thought.

So, even if your actions result in some great moral benefit, you would not be a moral person within your own frame of reference unless you intended that action to be moral. Of course, within the frames of references of others, you may be considered moral, because of course, they may think you are sincere. But perhaps the cynical individual might be able to see through your lies. And it seems as if such a pseudo-practice is also immoral per se.

Any mandate that makes so-called volunteers and community activists systematically and thus insincerely practice altruism, which in turn becomes pseudo-altruism, is bad. Once it becomes systematically practiced, altruism is not real. And yes, there may be some benefit for doing these activities in that society may be visibly benefited, but ultimately it is often meaningless for the person involved.

Thus, insincere quasi-moral acts prove to be pseudo-moral and even immoral in many cases. Yes, they may be prima facie beneficial, but they are not moral in most contexts. Also, I think that the insincere human ceases to be human as well; rather, they may be considered cold robots of quasi-utilitarianism. To parade about as a moral citizen defeats the purpose vis-a-vis perhaps the most important context: that of that very person who is seemingly moral.

But then again, those are just my views (some of which were taken straight from an article I wrote a while back). What do you think?

[Slevin57]

No, on the basis that good intent (aka good will) is a moral construct. If you do something "Good" like volunteering just to put it on your resume that is not morrally good.

As for missionaries... It depends where the intention lies. If they are going for the sole purpose of converting these people, then I do not consider it ethical. Our morals do come from religion, like it or not. By definition it's morally okay to convert someone to your religion, as long as it's of there own free will.

[Epistemologist]

Yes, within the frame of reference of not necessarily your moral construct but the moral construct of the person in the example, I think that an insincere action that would otherwise be judged as good would not be morally good.

And yes, perhaps conversion and proselytism would be morally good from the missionaries' moral frame of reference, although usually that's not their only goal.

But then again, we don't necessarily judge their actions as immoral based on a general moral frame of reference. Rather, we might do based on a single criterion, such as the maximization of people's welfare, or some other criterion that even the action-doers might provide in the explanation of their action.

The missionaries, for instance, might say that they help the people because they want to maximize the welfare of human beings. Here, they've given their public intention. Their real intention, however, is usually not corresponding to this public intention, and that's when we say they're insincere. To give this criterion and then convert the people might also be considered a sort of insincerity.

I think that perhaps many of the times where we claim someone's actions are insincere, we see that their true intentions are selfish to some extent. Usually, people don't give selfish public intentions, and thus we see a lie. Then again, this "we" I'm referring to is probably just cynics, and may not include you.