I started really thinking through this chapter when recently, a friend repeated a version of an old existential cliché, "I don't believe in any real moral code. I would be a good mass murderer. I could just go out and kill people". First of all, this statement came from one of the most thoughtful and peaceful people I know. He was trying to make a point, however clumsily, about moral codes. It was basically this: if there is no "absolute" and "objective" (i.e., externally imposed) moral code, then all morals are relative, which means one moral standard (or lack thereof) is as good as any other. In other words, if we cannot deduce or "prove" a universal morality, and if no god has given us one, then we are allowed to do whatever we want, right? Dostoyevsky's character, Ivan Karamazov said in The Brothers Karamazov the same thing, "if there is no god, then everything is permitted".
Frequently, that is the first, superficial reaction many people have to their own personal, nihilistic and existential discovery that "god is dead". They think, then, that chaos reigns - the mice will play while the cat's away - we can all just make our own rules, or even have no rules at all.
However, just a cursory understanding of what the Existential philosophers, such as Sartre, were trying to accomplish shows exactly the opposite. It is not an argument for anarchy. In their view, because there is no god, and because there are no externally imposed rules we must follow, we (as individuals and communities) have to shoulder the entire responsibility for our actions. We can't share that burden with god. We are free, but with that freedom comes responsibility. As Eric Fromm wrote, our attempt to "escape from freedom" (existential freedom) can become a retreat back to mindless conformity, submission to authority, or self-destructiveness. Fromm urged us instead to accept and embrace our freedom, to live life fully, to choose our moral paths consciously and deliberately, to fulfill ourselves while also helping those with whom we share the world find fulfillment.
Because, in the Existentialist view, there is no a priori good, and because there is no a priori standard for humanity, and because there is no god, we alone must take control of our actions, both individually and as a community. Sartre's moral imperative was not unlike Kant's: to "Act if and only if in acting you desire that all men do likewise." Sarte believed that we made a moral choice, we were not only choosing for ourselves, but through that choice, willing that all men would choose similarly. It was not to climb a bell tower and shoot people just because you can.
But the existential approach is just one of many. I won't use this chapter to try to outline all of the major moral philosophies. There are quite a few, those that address how society should act, how individuals should act in society, and how individuals should lead their own lives. Among these many competing theories, some of which have been around for millenia, no one of them has been "proven" to be the one right one. Morality is not the type of thing that can be deduced as we could derive a mathematical law or be discovered as we might discover a new element or star.
Although a later section will discuss "objective morality", I lean towards morality not being "out there" in the world in the sense of existing independently of us, as does a solid object. It is not a presence like a physical object that everyone can observe and agree that they all see the same. Although it lacks that kind of objective existence, people do recognize rules that they call moral laws which are more than simple "etiquette" or custom. It is objective in the sense that morality, across all human cultures, has roughly the same set of fundamental purposes - to strengthen the community, to reduce strife, chaos and lawlessness, to bind the members closely to its history, to promote behaviors that further its goals of prospering and thriving, and of encouraging conformity and unity of purpose from its members, and in many version, to nurture individual growth and happiness.
However, the implementation of moral systems do differ from society to society, and within a society, from person to person. As a species, we generally adopt moral rules that promote individual, family, tribal, community, national, or cultural flourishing and well-being (in varying proportions, from culture to culture). Different groups emphasize different aspects or moral "pillars" (this idea is expanded further below). Examples can be given of acts that are so abhorrent and vile that we would have difficulty believing that they are not "objectively" evil. But a desire for morals to be objective and external to our minds may itself be a human psychological preference that we, particularly in the western world, want to be true. There is no independent "rule" that a fundamental, external moral/ethical framework exist (unless your rulebook is the bible).
Types of Moral Systems
Anyone can search through Wikipedia or some other philosophy website and find descriptions of ethical systems, and I recommend doing just that. Other people have done a much better job of defining these than I can or even want to do. The branch of philosophy called "Ethics" deals with moral issues, and "Normative Ethics" deals with what we "ought" to do. For the purposes of this chapter, I will summarize some of the more well known ones very briefly:
- Virtue ethics emphasizes the role of one's character and the virtues that one's character embodies for determining or evaluating ethical behavior. It is the type of ethical systems recommended by Plato and Aristotle.
- Deontology judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. It is sometimes described as "duty" or "obligation" or "rule-based" ethics, Kant's "categorical imperitive" was of this type
- Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.
- Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
- Consequentialism (of which Utilitarianism is one type) looks at outcomes of actions and judges the rightness or wrongness based on whether the general well being of some target group is enhanced or diminished. From a Consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as "The ends justify the means".
- Role ethics is a variation or specialization of Virtue Ethics, but focused on the role of the individual with respect to the community, and the individual's responsibilities to that community, rather than on the individual alone. Examples are Confucianism or other East Asian family/community-based moral systems.
- Pragmatic ethics takes a more scientific approach to ethics. Fundamental to this view is that progress is possible in ethics, just as it is in science, law, technology, medicine, or any other evolving feature of modern civilization. Pragmatic ethicists believe that society can and has progressed morally in much the way it has progressed in these other fields.
The difference between these approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral dilemmas are approached than in the moral conclusions reached. For example, a Consequentialist may argue that lying is wrong because of the negative consequences produced by lying—though a Consequentialist may admit certain consequences might make lying acceptable. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any potential good that might come from lying. A virtue ethicist, however, would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie says about one's character.
Hypothetical ethical scenarios can show the weaknesses in each of these systems. None are able to embrace all aspects of morality - each has one or more deficiencies or blind spots. For example, a true utilitarian consequentialist would consider rescuing his own child from an imminent danger to be less important and "consequential" than rescuing two children living a continent away, but if we witnessed a parent making this moral choice (allowing his child to be killed while sending a generous check to Unicef), we would consider that person negligent, or even insane. Deontology can be so mindlessly duty-bound that its followers would make decisions that violate all common sense (not tell a lie even to save a life, for example). A committed Virtue Ethicist may find himself with competing and conflicting virtues (what if the virtues of kindness and honesty collide, and one must violate one to honor the other?). Virtue Ethics also lacks any particular social focus, emphasizing the individual character above the good of others - in other words, it can tend towards the selfish, as well as being highly subjective about what constitutes virtue. And it also is notably incapable of answering many of the most pressing ethical questions such as those involving abortion, war, economics.
Rejection of Radical Moral Relativism
There are, and there have been, many cultures that have engaged or still engage in ritual and sanctioned cannibalism, bestiality, child predation, murder, sacrifice, mutilation, mass killings, honor killings, and torture. In their world, these were not immoral. And in the past, our own societies have embraced behaviors and norms that we, today, judge to be highly immoral (slavery, child abuse, torturing animals for entertainment, cruel and unusual punishments, discrimination, oppression of minorities, and even genocide, for example). Some actions we perform today (eating animals, allowing poverty and starvation in the 3rd world, polluting the environment, changing the climate, abortion) may be considered immoral in the future. Our ancestors and these other cultures didn't consider themselves to be evil, and they probably had high moral standards in the context of whatever they took to be their moral frameworks. However, it is not improper for us to say that some elements of their moral standards were mistakes. Unless one is a radical moral relativist, which I am not, we cannot sanction wanton abuse of another's autonomy as occurs in torture, rape, murder, and genocide. We cannot sanction the "morally retarded" views of otherwise enlightened leaders like Theodore Roosevelt who thought "the only good Indians are the dead Indians", or Winston Churchill who was on record as strongly in favor of using poison gas against "uncivilized tribes". As Steven Pinker wrote:
Though they were surely decent people with perfectly functioning brains, the collective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was as primitive by modern standards as their mineral spas and patent medicines are by the medical standards of today ... They never took the mental leap that would have encouraged them to treat the people of other races with the same consideration <as their own>.It is not out of bounds to say that some cultures (including our own) have had some rather bad ideas in the moral arena, and we should not be ashamed to admit this. We have no qualms about judging other acts of past cultures as mistakes:
- Dumping raw sewage in the street, as was done before the advent of modern sanitation.
- Performing surgical procedures in unsanitary conditions, as was done before modern hygienic procedures were invented.
- Using poisonous lead pipes for plumbing, as did the Romans.
- Destroying the environment through deforestation and other abuses leading to societal collapse, as the Easter Islanders did.
- Hunting mammoths, camels, lions, sloths, and other large animals to extinction, as did the prehistoric American Indians.
- Torturing and murdering suspected witches and sorcerers (as happened in Europe and America centuries ago, and still occurs today in Africa).
Has the world seen moral progress? The answer should not depend on whether one has a sunny or a morose temperament. Everyone agrees that life is better than death, health better than sickness, prosperity better than privation, freedom better than tyranny, peace better than war. All of these can be measured, and the results plotted over time. If they go up, that’s progress.
Still, if we respect the lessons of history, we have no choice but to conclude that morality is human dependent: a set of choices and judgements and preferences that we make as societies and as individuals. We choose to obey these rules - to honor, and even to regard them as sacred and inviolable. We feel them deeply - they are more than abstract intellectual abstractions. We choose for ourselves, and we allow the society to choose for us if we desire to remain members in good standing. We "will" (wish) that these choices be regarded as true, even "absolutely" true. Although it may be uncomfortable to consider this, they are not "absolutely" true, but they seem to work better if we believe that they are.
Some, though, conclude (incorrectly, I think) that if they are not absolute, in the sense of existing outside ourselves as fundamental properties of the universe, then they don't exist at all. This is Moral Nihilism.
Moral Nihilism
There is a problem with naive moral nihilism - the belief that moral/ethical laws are illusions, that they don't really exist, that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral. This moral philosophy assumes a false dichotomy exists: Since there is no objective, independent, externally imposed meaning or objectively constructed values, then there is no meaning or values at all! However, it is not a given that morality must be wholly external or wholly illusory. In fact, this actually leaves a lot of room for alternative views of meaning and value. There is such a thing as ethics, and there is such a thing as meaning in life. However, both morality/ethics and meaning in life have human and social sources. That makes them contingent on human affairs and human nature, not absolute and abstract. But it doesn't make them arbitrary.
But, simply because there is no transcendent rule-giver doesn't mean that all of the moral systems, and all of the meanings we construct here on Earth are all equally valid and workable. Human beings are a particular type of social and biological animal, with certain innate capabilities, characteristics, desires, strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. Our many ethical systems tend to be designed to promote individual and group flourishing, prosperity, and well-being. These words - flourishing, prosperity, well-being - are perfectly suited for underlying the diverse ethical systems found throughout the world precisely because they are so vague. They accommodate many different variants of the same basic ideas. Very few people will think that flourishing means living a life of pain, suffering, starvation, and cruelty. Those rare and few individuals who do believe this, and who act on their belief to bring misery and pain to others we call insane, and they are treated as criminals, as they should be. We can, I believe, stipulate that moral systems are designed to promote well-being, rather than to destroy it, and in that sense they are absolute and objective. They are as objectively true as it is objectively true that living beings should eat, should breathe, and should reproduce. Individual and group survival, and thriving, depend on all of these.
Moral Foundations Theory
Jonathan Haidt, in his fascinating book, The Righteous Mind brings centuries of moral philosophy together with modern empirical research and presents a description of how diverse social groups can differ in their moral frameworks, while still basing them on the same fundamental underlying moral pillars. Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists (including Jonathan Haidt) to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. See "MoralFoundations.org".
In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world. Moral Foundations Theory is supported by extensive experimental results as well as having synthesized moral philosophies from Kant, Hume, and Bentham through Peter Singer and a lot of international anthropological studies of both modern and primitive societies (2nd and 3rd world peoples have unfortunately been left out of moral philosophy studies until just the last 20 years or so).
The foundations are (I remember these with the mnemonic, "CFALLS"):
- Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, compassion, gentleness, and nurturance.
- Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, fairness, proportionality, and autonomy.
- Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.
- Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
- Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions and institutions.
- Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination, as well as by the near universal tendency to find objects of worship. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants, and elevated by discipline, self-sacrifice, and a "pure" lifestyle (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
As an example of how flexibly these foundations can be deployed, each group utilizes liberty/oppression differently: Liberals see capitalists as oppressors of the weak and poor, which interacts with the care/harm pillar. Conservatives see foreign countries and ideologies (Communism, Socialism, Godlessness) as oppressive and threatening to our nation and its institutions. Libertarians see our own government as oppressing its citizens, subverting their autonomy and individuality. The same is true with the fairness/cheating pillar - Liberals tend to see fairness and "equal sharing", where Conservatives tend to see it as "getting what you deserve".
Anyhow, because these groups differ in their fundamental moral premises, and how they implement moral systems based on these premises, they end up talking past each other, each thinking the other has a poorly formed sense of right and wrong, or is evil, or insane, or just plain ignorant. And each group views the others as being morally blind (conservatives think liberals are sacrilegious, subversive, and disrespectful, while liberals see conservatives as selfish, lacking compassion and empathy). In terms of simple plausibility, it is probably not likely that an entire half of our nation is insane, ignorant, or evil.
Also from Jonathan Haidt's book:
I was particularly drawn to a new theory of morality Shweder had developed based on his research in Orissa. They found three major clusters of moral themes, which they called the ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity. Each one is based on a different idea about what a person really is.The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages.
The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous — a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends.
The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted. People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.
I think that humans are hardwired to be "good", to value goodness in others, and to hate "evil" (i.e., people who cause harm, are unfair, treacherous, oppressive, subversive, and disrespectful). Even other animals demonstrate what could most parsimoniously be interpreted as moral (or possibly "pre-moral") behaviors. Franz de Waal, an expert primatologist, has described in books like Good Natured, and others, that gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees, dogs, and many other intelligent mammals show the basics of what, in humans, evolved into a moral code. They are either born with them, learn them, or are born with the ability to learn them. They care for their injured, show generosity, have patience, experience grief at the death of kin and friends, rejoice by themselves or with friends, can be kind, be protective and nurturing, work on their reputations, appreciate the reputations of others, recognize injustice, and become upset by unfair situations. They recognize strange and deviant behavior, and will attack and drive out members of their own species that violate expectations and norms. You probably have seen how a poorly socialized dog, who was not brought up with other dogs, has trouble throughout his life accepting and being accepted by other dogs. A poorly socialized dog is a "dog nerd" who doesn't follow the norms that well socialized dogs adopt - they are breaking the rules, the animal rules which in human society evolve into our moral and ethical codes.
So, I think that human hominids, like their ape cousins are implicitly moral, or have a moral instinct. Because of our higher intelligence, language, and complex societies, we have created sophisticated laws, customs, taboos, and rituals to teach and enforce common moral codes. Complex societies motivate the creation of complex moral systems - they are the glue that hold the society together. Philosophies have sprung up to rationalize and explain the morality, but the pre-logical, innate moral sense came first. As in religion, (to paraphrase Hume) reason is the slave of passion. The desire for goodness and to be recognized as being good (however we choose to define it) drives the rational systems that explain it. Without the underlying desire, there would be no motivation for doing good or for doing evil. Again Hume: "It is not against reason that I should prefer the destruction of half the world to the pricking of my little finger." It is the desire for the good that drives good action. Again, "good" is not an absolute term, but interpreted by each individual.
Objective Morality?
Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, host of the podcast, Rationally Speaking, says that moral reasoning is similar to, though not exactly the same as, mathematical reasoning. Both depend on the premises that you start with. For example, if your premise is that the ultimate moral value is to cause more happiness for more people, or to fulfill people's preferences, as opposed to causing more unhappiness, then Utilitarianism is probably going to seem very reasonable to you. If, on the other hand, your basic value is to respect individual rights and autonomy above everything else, then Objectivism is going to suit you. If your value is to obey the commandments in the bible, or the laws of the land, or otherwise follow what you conceive of as a god's or a government's instructions, then you would probably adopt Deontology for your moral framework. If you value character development and cultivation of personal excellence, then you would likely prefer Virtue Ethics above the other moral philosophies. If the scope of your moral concern is your immediate or extended family or a close-knit group, then you may reason that you should treat those around you well, and let others fend for themselves. Some may choose to extend the "circle of moral concern" (see Peter Singer) to other races, nations, and even to animals.
The reason there is no one, single "best" moral philosophy is because we all start with different premises, and those premises are based on our value systems. There is no logical proof that one value system is superior to another. Values are givens - they are the axioms and premises of morality. Sometimes we choose our values, but frequently we simply have them, just as we have tastes and preferences for different music or food - they precede and trump any sort of logical justification.
Ethics is really, then, a form of applied logic. You can start with different premises to come up with completely self-consistent, coherent, moral frameworks, none of which is superior to the other but offer different solutions to the "moral problem", and none of them refutable on purely theoretical grounds. We can easily see that different branches of geometry are not superior or inferior to one another, but reach different conclusions because they start with different axioms. We can see that one type of geometry may be far more useful and applicable in the real world in which we find ourselves than another. The same is true of moral systems. Although we may not be able to apriori judge one superior to another, some are very probably far more able to be successfully applied to human and social environments than others.
Regarding "objective morality" (I interpret this to mean the existence of moral standards independent of humans and their moral preferences, and contrasted against purely relativistic morality), I see this as is a false dichotomy. Having to choose between moral relativists and moral absolutism is too limiting. There doesn't have to be just two choices on the menu. Massimo Pigliucci says there is a third way, which is to apply "moral reasoning". It is probably not correct to say "X is universally right / wrong" (objective moral absolutism), and it is not correct to say "X is right / wrong within a particular culture at a particular historical moment" (moral relativism). You can always find extreme cases that make each of these extremes seem totally ridiculous. What works better, and is probably more aligned with what we actually do when we take the time to make calm moral decisions, is reason: "If assumptions A/B/C are accepted, then X is right / wrong." In other words, it all starts with premises and values, and from them you can reason your way to moral conclusions. So, for example, as far as cheating on an exam goes, if we accept the premise that "everyone should get a fair shot at taking this test", then cheating is wrong. As for murder, if we can accept the premise that personal autonomy, self-determination, health, and happiness matter, then murder is wrong. What if a potential cheater or murderer doesn't buy into these premises? Then they don't get to be a part of the society that has formed around the premises (expulsion/imprisonment/punishment).
I reject the forced absolutism/relativism choice for the same reasons that I would reject an argument in favor of a one, "true" geometry. The choice of a geometry or of moral system all depends on the starting premises. Euclidan, Hyberbolic, Riemann, and other geometry systems are all "true", but each starts with different axioms. The same idea applies to moral systems. They are "true" in the sense that they each follow logically from their founding premises - given their starting points, they are internally consistent, coherent, and well-defined. In ethics and morality, there probably is no fundamental value or axiom that is clearly superior to the others. There certainly are, and have been, unworkable, low quality premises, such as "murder and mayhem is a core value", or "exterminating all undesirable people is virtuous". There are, and have been, some people and nations that held these values. But values such as these are incapable of serving as the foundation of a coherent, sustainable moral system. In those unbalanced moral systems, the value that works for you today can be turned against you tomorrow (you may wake up one day and find yourself to be an "undesirable"). Core values such as these lead to degenerate and failed moral systems, full of contradictions, are self-limiting, and which cannot allow the people who practice them to even survive for the long term (Nazism, anarchy, and vicious and bloodthirsty regimes in some less developed countries, for example). Likewise, one could (and this has happened before) devise geometric axioms that are mathematical dead ends incapable of producing a useful geometry, or are incapable of application in the real world of human concerns.
There are many internally coherent moral/ethical systems that don't suffer from internal contradictions and which serve the goals which are embedded in the premises that underlie them. However, moral systems have to be anchored to the factual aspects of human nature, and the nature of society. If they are not, then they are entirely abstract and irrelevant to human interests. They become the equivalent of a mathematical model which has no application in reality. You can do math in that system, but you can't do physics with it. Ethics, as an applied discipline, has to deal with human beings and human culture, not with abstract notions. This requirement reduces the set of viable ethical systems down substantially, but still leaves room for a large variety of very diverse approaches. There are a number of alternatives that are perhaps equally reasonable and perhaps equally defensible. But those alternatives are not infinite in number - they don't represent the entire set of logical alternatives. They are tethered to the actual realities of what it means to be a human being living in a human social environment. If we were birds, or wolves, or any other type of being we wouldn't even be having this conversation, or if we could converse about this, our radically different natures would cause us to adopt a very different type of ethical system.
What is really meant by the argument for moral relativism? I don't think its proponents are in favor of "anything goes" or "if it feels good do it". They are saying, I think, that moral systems depend on culture and history. I would agree. They also agree on human nature. Since we are all humans, and we all experience the limitations of our human natures and bodies, many of those underlying features of our human natures are the same. We all want to survive, even to thrive and to prosper. We want the same things for our families and communities. We want safety, security, respect, love, and all the rest. Sometimes we want to survive and prosper, even at the expense of others. Most moral systems implement rules that make it possible to achieve these common goals. But. we obviously see many different moral systems. That probably is a reflection in our different cultures, histories, and different weightings of the various components of our shared human natures (some systems value individual freedom, some family unity, some community, etc). So, yes, moral systems are relative, but bounded - they are not relative without limits. Examples of fundamental values that serve as the basis for different moral frameworks are described by Jonathan Haidt (these are outlined in more detail in a previous section). His moral spectrum included these moral "pillars" (axioms):
- Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm.
- Fairness/cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions
- Liberty/oppression, characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized.
- Loyalty/betrayal to your group, family, nation. (He has also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
- Authority/subversion for tradition, elders, and respect for legitimate authority.
- Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He has also referred to this as Purity.)
The world of morality can be split roughly into two camps: Moral realism and moral antirealism. Moral realists believe that objective morals do exist, independent of humans or collections of humans. For example, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is "out there" in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape). In other words, computer programs and stylized cooperative "public goods" games that simulate human social interactions can demonstrate that incorporating certain sets of moral rules generates optimal outcomes both for the individual and the communities of which they are a part, while other rules are destructive to both. Obviously the antirealists do not subscribe to an externally existent morality. One type of Antirealists is the "Emotivist" who believes that talk of morals is no more than emotional talk, expression of preferences, whether we do or do not like something, whether something pleases us or disgusts us. Noncognitivists would say that talk about truth within morality is a type of Category Error. Examples of Category Errors would be arguing about what kind of cheese the moon is made of, or whether ducks are conservative or liberal, or how the color blue smells. Moral values do not lend themselves to having a "truth value" any more than ducks have a political affiliation. According to noncognitivists (and I consider myself among them) moral systems don't have a truth value, either - they are only instrumental in helping us achieve outcomes that are consistent with our moral values. In other words, moral rules are not, by themselves "good", but they are good for something. Psychologist/neuroscientist Joshua Greene (famous for the "Trolley Car Problem") thinks that morality and ethics spontaneously arise (self organize) when people begin to try to live in groups. They are emergent concepts that don't exist outside of that context.
One could argue that there are objective moral truths, but that might be playing a little fast and loose with the word, "objective". I will try to avoid drifting into the sin of postmodernist redefinition of words to suit my purposes, at the same time trying to clarify the word so as to (hopefully) remove some ambiguity.
"Objective" is a strange word - it lends itself to many interpretations. I use it here to mean "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice, based on facts, unbiased and unprejudiced". By this definition, if one wishes to cross the street, it is objectively better to wait for the "WALK" signal than to wander into oncoming traffic. I don't use the word to refer to some external, transcendental truth.
Morality exists between humans in a culture, and in the relationship an individual has with himself (in the form of self respect, purity of the body, purity of thought and action, cultivation of the virtues, living up to one's personal ideals, etc). Biology and Anthropology teach us that because all humans are the same kind of animal, we can reasonably assume that the same things nourish us and other things harm us. We all have the same basic needs and all avoid the same basic set of dangers. For the most part, the same kinds of things give us pleasure (nourishment vs starvation, comfort vs. torture, air vs. suffocation, hydration vs. desiccation, acceptance vs. rejection, success vs. failure, etc). With some variations across cultures, the same glues binds us together in a society. These are objective facts that can't really be disputed. They are scientific facts that have to do with the kind of animal that we are.
If we can stipulate that a person values the continuity and strength of the culture to which he belongs, and if he values his own prosperity and survival, then it is objectively true that certain behaviors and moral codes will apply (i.e., will make those outcome more likely). If one does not value the community, or himself, and wants to engage in self-destruction, excommunication, and exile from his community as a sociopath, then that person, of course, is free to reject all morality and to walk away from any sort of moral constraint - to walk into the wilderness and perish. To argue about some values, though, is really borderline ridiculous and hardly worth considering. To say you do not value human life, or prosperity, or making those who you live with happy rather than miserable, or having a good character and reputation, it is arguable that you are objectively wrong to want to be a liar, cheat, traitor, and outcast. To want to cause suffering and to bring destruction on your community, would indicate (and Aristotle and his contemporaries would agree with this), you are objectively wrong. You are as wrong as a squirrel who refuses to collect nuts for the winter, or the lion that refuses to hunt. Aristotle would say that you are socially and morally ill - you have a moral disease; you are morally insane.
To have a fatally flawed moral value is analogous to having a fatally flawed survival instinct. For example, it would be "wrong" to insist on walking around with a compound leg fracture. To pedantically argue, "what if you want the bone to protrude further and to increase the infection, pain, and bleeding?" is not worth considering. You would be sick and insane and on the road to personal extinction to do that. To argue that the correct course of action depends on your values, is to engage in a silly conversation. Our nature as human beings precludes a value system that endorses that kind of action with regard to a leg injury, just as it precludes excessively deviant and destructive moral systems. To quote Steven Novella,
"To be a critical thinker is to be comfortable with uncertainty and with the limits of human knowledge and to be aware of the many flaws and limitations of human intelligence — and, therefore, to be flexible in the face of new ideas or information, but to not be afraid to acknowledge that some ideas are objectively better than others."In other words, it is a bad idea to value making a compound fracture worse, just as it is a bad idea to ruin your life (and other lives) through choice of self-destructive morals. Given the reality of the kind of biological animal that we are, when we are injured (either physically or morally), our goal should objectively be to get better rather than to commit physical or spiritual suicide by continuing in error. Anyone who would argue otherwise, that it is a matter of perspective and personal preference, is a person who is on their way to individual annihilation, which would (for them) render the moral question moot. Some "incorrect" moral choices are poor answers to the question "how should we live our lives" (which was the original question asked by the early western Ethical philosophers). It would be wrong to walk on a compound fracture, and it would be wrong to be a murderer, thief, traitor, deceiver, or tyrant, to cultivate the anti-virtues of lying, stealing, betrayal, and murder.
We can say that objective morality does exist in this sense - "if we want to flourish as individuals and as a society, it is objectively true that certain moral laws will encourage that outcome (like generosity/kindness), and others will not (like genocide/rape). In this sense, relative to human goals, morality is objective. Outside of individual and culture interests, it doesn't appear possible for morality or moral problems to actually have any existence.
Which Moral Framework to Use?
So, we have these many ways of viewing moral (or ethical) problems and behavior. In this chapter, I'm not attempting to decide which approach is best. I think most people probably adopt a moral system that meshes best with their worldview, their desires, their beliefs, and their values. The question I am most interested in is, "why should we bother choosing among them at all? Why be moral?" A deontologist would argue that the reason to be moral is to please god or conform to society's mores. Consequentialists would argue that you are achieving a non-optimal outcome by behaving immorally, and a virtue ethicist would say that acting immorally shows a lack of character. Someone who subscribes to the Moral Foundation Theory, or a similar evolutionary psychological approach would say that we evolved to be moral. But again, what is wrong with displeasing god, damaging overall well-being, lacking virtue, or rebelling against an evolutionary quirk in our makeup? Are we compelled to have some sort of morality though our individual and group evolution? I think the answer is yes - if we are individually "immoral" (do things we believe to be "wrong") or immoral within our groups, we become personally miserable and unhappy as well as being ostracized, shunned, and condemned by our community. I believe that cultural and genetic evolution have molded us to choose to be moral because it enhances our lives and odds of survival, while developing a reputation for lacking personal morality (cruelty, dishonesty, disloyalty, untrustworthiness) creates a dangerous and unstable environment for the moral rebel, reducing his psychological stability and even his odds of survival.
Utilitarianism is sort of an objective "moral algebra". You can use it to generate an algorithm for deciding on the right action in various situations. It, probably more than any other moral system, is responsible for ushering in the "Rights Revolution", as Steven Pinker calls it in The Better Angels of our Nature. This objective analysis which had its roots in the 18th century Enlightenment forces us to see that the rights of others unrelated to ourselves, of different races and genders, are just as important as our own rights. However, its extreme objectivity makes it sometimes a little "heartless" (like its conclusion that you should harvest organs from a healthy person to save several sick people, or push the fat man onto the tracks in the trolley car scenario). I think it is interesting that many believe that Jeremy Bentham (one of its founders) suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, which we know causes people to have a disconnect with the feelings of others and to treat them sort of like objects. Sometimes I think utilitarianism objectifies people (by coldly quantifying their happiness), allowing you to "score" their well-being and total it up like one would during a warehouse inventory. No surprise that Mr. Spock on Star Trek was a utilitarian ("The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few").
Unfortunately, human experience is colored with all sorts of fuzzy shades of gray and subtle nuances that such an algorithm doesn't always fit. For Utilitarianism, as with all the moral systems, one can devise hypothetical situations that make them underperform. But in general, I think the choice of utilitarianism is a great process to apply to most situations just to see how they fare. Probably in the vast majority of cases, it succeeds in pointing us to the "right" action.
We all know the problems with deontology - it is basically a mindless and dogged following of rules (except, maybe for a deontology like Kant's Categorical Imperative). But certainly the Ten commandments is such an example of empty-headed rule-following (the first four of which define how to worship god correctly). And virtue ethics has the problems of (1) sometimes being pretty selfish, (2) unclear goals (what is "well being", sometimes called eudaimonia). It can range from wild self indulgence to gentle and wise philosophical living, and (3) it can contradict itself - virtues that may appear compatible can occasionally lead you to an action that violates one or the other.
Morality/Ethics is not a "solved" problem - people continue to debate it. One way of thinking about it is like this:
There is a valid form of logical reasoning called “denying the consequent” (aka “modus tollens”) which can be used to show that moral problems do not, in general, have easy, pat answers that you can just look up in your moral handbook:In other words, we will probably not see a convergence in moral outlook in our lifetimes! I expect the same (or similar) debates will still be going on long after we all are dead.If P, then Q.Substituting for P and Q:
Not Q.
Therefore, Not P.If "there is a clear, best, moral framework", then "we would not still be debating it".
But it is not true that "we are not still debating it", even after 2500 years.
Therefore it is not true that "there is a clear, best, moral framework"
I usually consider all of these moral frameworks to be "tools" in my moral toolbox. For challenging moral situations, I intuitively run through all of them to see which helps me generate an action that "seems" (I know, very subjective) to be the right one. And there is the almost subconscious "gut check" to test how a possible action compares against my intuition. No matter how a moral framework crunches through the situation, one can't really follow through with an objectionable result that offends our innate sense of right and wrong.
Rigid moral frameworks can and do occasionally result in what appear to be absurd conclusions. Regardless of what the moral code requires, we rebel at it and will probably refuse to follow that rule. Instead we will continue looking until we can justify an action that is in rough agreement with our intuitions. James Ladyman, author of Understanding Philosophy of Science, said this about the conflicts that can arise between an ethical system and our intuitive beliefs about right and wrong.
...it is clear that, as in other areas of philosophy, we need to reach what is known as a ‘reflective equilibrium’ between our pre-philosophical beliefs and the results of philosophical inquiry. Consider the following analogy; in ethics we inquire into questions about the nature of the good and the general principles that will guide us in trying to resolve controversial moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia. However, ethicists would reject any ethical theory that implied that the recreational torturing of human beings was morally acceptable, no matter how plausible the arguments for it seemed. In ethics we demand that accounts of the good do not conflict with our most fundamental moral beliefs, although we will allow them to force us to revise some of our less central moral views.In other words, even a moral system that we believes works can recommend that we do something our intuition rebels at. We may want to allow Dexter (the TV serial killer who only murders other killers) to continue killing for utilitarian reasons. Or we may tell a murderer where his next victim lives to avoid lying, for deontological reasons. Or we may want to kill an unhappy person, which the virtue of charity would encourage, but another virtue of justice would forbid. We almost have no choice but to do a reality check using reflective equilibrium to test if we believe (intuitively) the act that our moral system advises us to do.
My Own Moral Framework
I subscribe to a combination of several moral frameworks - a cafeteria approach - because it doesn't appear that any one moral philosophy can effectively address all the situations in my life. I was inspired by Massimo Piggliuci's short blog entry in which he very briefly describes his moral system ("Massimo's ethical system, an introduction").
I accept that morality is motivated by biological and social drives, and does not originate outside ourselves. I also assert that it is not purely arbitrary, and "anything goes" is an incorrect conclusion to draw based on the absence of a divine law-giver. I am not concerned with god's displeasure or upsetting any other giver of moral laws, but I do find that I am comfortable conforming to rules of conduct when they are not too onerous (I would not dance on the table at a restaurant, or start shouting in a crowded elevator). These are society's rules, and I try to follow them because it would be uncomfortable for me and for everyone if I didn't. So, I confess I am a rule follower some of the time, because it is convenient, requires little effort, and helps smooth the way when interacting with others. Plus, due to my upbringing, I would personally feel uncomfortable taking my shirt off at work, or giving a stranger a backrub on the street. There is nothing inherently wrong with these actions, but they conflict with conventions I have accepted, would cause needless strife, and I choose not to fight them. As mentioned previously, even animals recognize and reject "deviant" behavior.
I don't believe there is any evidence of a universal moral code, and plenty of evidence against such a thing. Kant's categorical imperative (a deontological rule), phrased in two ways in the previous chapter of this blog, are guidelines that I try to integrate into my choices:
- Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.
- Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
I don't require a god to religion to set up a moral code for myself. Just having grown up in a society which mostly valued harmony, honesty, and good will, I have internalized much of my moral code, so that it is second nature. This means I don't have to perform a moral calculation when faced by situations that would benefit from moral insight. Like most people, it comes to me naturally. This is well illustrated by an exchange between the comedian, Ricky Gervais, and a Christian who could not understand his lack of faith. He was asked, "If you don't believe there is a God to answer to why don't you go round raping and murdering as much as you want?" His response: "I do, which is not at all"
When thinking about how I would respond to hypothetical situations, I frequently turn to Virtue Ethics and find myself evaluating my potential responses in terms of how they reflect on my character, or others' characters, when performing them. I value virtuous thinking and behavior in myself and others, striving towards excellence, achievement, and effort. I am pleased when I see myself living up to this standard, and disappointed when I fall short. Regarding the "six foundations" described by Haidt, I see evidence of all of them in my makeup, but would tend towards more towards the liberal end of that spectrum, especially with regard to the Authority/Sanctity pillars, though I do hold sacred the gift of life that we have and consider it shameful to waste and degrade ourselves and the life we have the good fortune to be living. And I am probably more individualistic than group focused.
Eudaimonia
I believe that it's not conventional success in life that is its most meaningful measure, but the process one goes through in the drive towards success, and how a person deals with failure: their resilience. I borrow much of my moral framework from Aristotle and Epicurus - I seek out that which causes me to thrive and to flourish. I try to practice the virtues of honesty, kindness, patience, objectivity, understanding, hard work, curiosity, openness to experience, humor, focus, generosity, flexibility, etc. And by extension I "will" (I wish) that everyone adopt these same values (in the spirit of Kant's Categorical Imperative). For each of us, our flourishing and our thriving manifests differently - what helps one thrive varies from person to person, and from situation to situation. These are those things which makes your life "complete" in the Eudaimon sense - the ancient Greek sense of being fulfilled, virtuous, autonomous, and complete - of our life having been a "good project". Success is not the acquisition of objects or power, or the direct "pursuit of happiness", but is living life well, using our limited time and resources in ways that are productive, purposeful, important (at least to ourselves), and satisfying, doing interesting, creative, relevant and helpful work for ourselves and for others, having friends and being a good friend, of having deep relationships, and helping others achieve similar success in their lives. If happiness is to come, it would come as a result of living life this way, rather than by actively seeking it. Identifying the exact contents of such a life is difficult, and is not the same for each person. Everyone who chooses to pursue this type of life would have to discover what helps them flourish, and how to avoid that which impedes their thriving.Aristotle described the eudaimon life life is one of “virtuous activity in accordance with reason”, and Epicurus described it similarly - having pleasurable experiences, good friends, and a meaningful, philosophical life. For Epicurus, "pleasure" was not purely self-indulgent (though, technically, he was a hedonist), rather it involved living modestly, gaining knowledge of how the world works, and learning the limits of one's desires. A life spent in this way would lead one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear. He said, "It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life." A Eudaimon life is not achieved through the direct pursuit of "happiness", but by living life a certain way. Happiness may result from such a life, but it would be a side effect of the more direct focus on the elements of Eudaimonia rather than as an end in itself. Viktor Frankl, a contemporary of Freud, wrote,
"It is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy'. But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'"Along the same lines, Eleanor Roosevelt said,
“Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.”
This is not entirely dissimilar to the Buddhist Eight-fold path:
- Right view: looking at life, nature, and the world as they really are
- Right intention(or right thought): aspiring to move away from that which is wrong and immoral, or as Kant would say, having a "good will"
- Right speech: abstaining from lying, divisive or abusive speech, and from idle chatter and destructive gossip
- Right action: morally upright in one's activities, not acting in ways that would be corrupt or bring harm to oneself or to others
- Right livelihood: not to engage in occupations which, either directly or indirectly, result in harm for other living beings
- Right effort: making a sustained effort to abandon wrong and harmful thoughts, words, and deeds
- Right mindfulness: be mindful and deliberate, making sure not to act or speak due to inattention, fickleness, or forgetfulness
- Right concentration: basically, practicing meditation
- Right knowledge: seeing things as they really are by direct experience, not as they appear to be, nor as the practitioner wants them to be, but as they truly are
So far I have described my own personal ethic - how I live my own life. But regarding how I live with others in society, I subscribe to a general form of utilitarianism, meaning we should do things that maximize the well-being (eudaimonia) of the largest number of individuals. Of course, I realize that one can come up with degenerate cases where the maximization of happiness for the majority causes suffering for a few. Life is tough - this is going to happen sometimes. Not everyone can be made happy, and sometimes we will all be the cause of some unhappiness. In general I would try to avoid being the principal agent of harm, as this would would contradict Kant's imperative, and it would not make for a virtuous life.
Regardless of my choices, or all of our choices for our own moral codes, I agree with Haidt in thinking we have laid on a veneer of ad hoc rationality on moral issues which hides a much deeper motivation - we humans want to be moral; we want to do the "right" thing, whatever we conceive that to be. I think it is our nature, it's in our genes and culture, it's in how we evolved in tribes and communities. I would further say that only sociopaths truly don't care about being "good" (in fact, that is almost a circular statement, because lack of caring is a primary part of the definition of sociopathy).
So, as individuals, we must decide on our values and priorities - what do we want? As Kant defined it, do we want to have a "good will", the desire to do good and to wish well to others? If so, then we will be choose to be ethical and moral, according to whatever model of goodness we believe in. If we do not (and I think that very few people fully reject this in their lives, though some do) then there is no particular need to choose a moral path. However, if one chooses to live with other people, he will quickly find that is impossible to succeed without an ethical framework that conforms in most important respects with that of his community, even in a community of outlaws and outcasts. If one's desire is to be part of any community, then one must have a moral code consistent with the mores and standards of that community. Any other path would yield only discouragement and failure.
