This week for my secular morality post, I’m going to try to explain my “first principles.” An ab initio description of morality is challenging even for philosophers who have made a career out of it, and I don’t pretend to be giving a 100% definitive answer to the problem. However, I’ve spent a while trying to figure out where my moral judgments come from, and this is the result of those reflections.
I don’t think that there’s any magical set of ethical rules sewn into the fabric of the universe. As far as I understand, the concept of ethics is something that humans have made up because we have evolved brains capable of conceiving of such things. Animals just have behavior, and there’s no argument to be had. Humans, though, can debate what the right behavior looks and feels like — and that is the study of morality.
Perhaps you are asking, “How do we really know what morality is?” And that’s a reasonable question. But as someone who’s been involved in far too many eyeball-melting conversations with philosophers on the subject, I’m content to say: we just do. Not perfectly, of course, and there are ways to refine our understanding (as I’ll get to later on). However, at a very basic level, we have to judge morality based on our moral intuitions, and there doesn’t need to be any deeper foundation than that. The formulation of the best moral system in large part consists of finding the rules which best resonate with our intuition.
Naturally, we have to exercise caution in this. It’s easy to imagine a psychopath whose moral intuition tells him that gruesomely murdering people is the right thing to do, and we wouldn’t consider such a principle to be part of an ideal moral system. (Although… even that statement is an appeal to intuition.) My approach — basically because I’m not aware of a more reasonable one, though I’m open to suggestions — entails picking apart my intuitions to find the strongest and most primitive ones, and working from there. (Note: I mean primitive in the mathematical sense, not the historical one.) I also compare my intuitions to what I gather about others’ intuitions; if I’m going to develop an understanding of general principles to guide human behavior, I need to make sure I’m not basing it on some quirky idea that only I have. I might be crazy, after all.
So when I examine what I think about right and wrong, cut away all the higher-order judgments and try to leave the most fundamental principles, cut away the more controversial ideas (which are often higher-order judgments anyway), and focus on the things I and others tend to feel most strongly about as undeniably true, I’m left with something like:
- It’s good to increase the happiness of oneself and others.
- It’s good to decrease the suffering of oneself and others.
…and my moral calculations begin from a point that looks a whole lot like utilitarianism.
I’m of the opinion that utilitarianism broadly stated turns into something like, “good things are good” — which is tautologically true, so I have no qualms about beginning there. The problem comes in deciding what counts as a good thing. The greatest weakness of utilitarianism has to do with how we weigh various goods against each other. It doesn’t jive with our intuition to say that it’s okay to kill one random person in order to harvest her organs for transplant into a dozen sick people, but many formulations of utilitarianism would endorse it. In the broad sort of utilitarian framework I think makes more sense, I would look at what increases everyone’s happiness and general well-being overall — which could easily include an outright rule against certain kinds of behavior, granting everyone greater peace of mind even while forbidding acts that might be utility-maximizing on a smaller scale.
Thorough examinations of particular situations like these are best left for separate posts. All I am trying to get across here is that I think our intuition itself can and does form a reasonable starting point for analysis of moral questions. In fact, to the extent that morality is just the way we ask the question, “What kind of behavior is the behavior humans like the most?” our intuition is the only reasonable starting point. Human moral intuition has certainly been wrong at times in the past, but if we start from these most basic principles that virtually everyone would agree on and look at actual evidence regarding what reduces suffering and promotes happiness, I believe we can correct mistakes and build up a moral system that is as correct as we have the patience to make it.
Jill on 
Trav on 
Jojo the Hun on 
Sinead
/ May 22, 2011 at 4:39 pmI agree, they are as good a starting point as any.
Keith
/ May 24, 2011 at 2:40 pmI like your approach of relying on intuitions that are held by a majority of people rather than, say, a few psychopaths.
My only word of concern would be that you recognize the origins of intuition: it is undoubtedly an evolutionary instinct (or set of instincts) whose function was to promote stable, reproductively successful societies.
Unfortunately, these tuitions can sometimes be discriminatory (and widely held). For instance, many people have a natural reaction of disgust toward homosexual acts, or a natural sense of mistrust towards those who look different from ourselves. So, if you are going to rely on intuition as a source of morality, then you must explain why these particular intuitions should be excluded.
As you know, my own approach to morality is utilitarian, and I think most of the problems with this system can be disposed of as follows: morality, as you point out, is a tool we use to govern our behavior and there is no absolute, perfect form of morality written into the fabric of the universe. This means that no one has the authority to impose moral prescriptions on other people against their will. This, at the very least, protects the person whose organs an extreme utilitarian would recommend be harvested.
Sabio Lantz
/ May 24, 2011 at 10:14 pmMorality stuff is hard for me to read. Luke (at Common Sense Atheism) has posted a great deal on this with Alfonzo (the Ethical Atheist).
Have you read his stuff. Especially , have you read about Desirism?
NFQ
/ May 25, 2011 at 10:11 am@Keith: You’re absolutely right about the prevalence of discriminatory and otherwise wrong intuitions. That’s why I eliminate what I call “higher-order” judgments when I’m trying to figure out what the first principles are. Generally, precepts like “it’s wrong to engage in homosexual sex” or “people different from me ought to be treated as inferior” have whys behind them, and those links can be questioned and challenged. If you keep going back and back asking why, though, I think you get to the most basic intuitions that are shared by virtually everyone and seem self-evident.
And actually, I do think that moral prescriptions can and should be imposed on others who don’t consent. Otherwise, how would we deal with those murderous psychopaths? The key, I think, is to make sure that our moral judgments are right before we force them on others (easier said than done, of course), and refrain from acting until we’re pretty certain.
@Sabio: Yes, I followed Luke and Alonzo’s desirism series for a while. I actually don’t plan to do many of these very general morality posts, but rather examine specific moral dilemmas each Sunday and show how an atheist might reason through them, in the absence of supernatural commands. It’s just that at some point, laying down my starting point is necessary for constructing a compelling argument in those specific cases.
Sabio Lantz
/ May 25, 2011 at 10:57 amI wish I was better at labeling stances of Ethics and Meta-ethics. It sounds like you are laying out your metaethics and then will do some normative ethics.
Most people have not thought out their meta-ethical systems at all. I applaud you for trying. And among atheists, there are many different stances, yet alone completely contradictory normative ethical positions on every position imaginable. Being an atheist helps us very little in eithers, except (as you say) in eliminating the divine command theory which is only one of many systems — one actually that not all Christians hold by any means.
So, really, your exercise sounds like it won’t tell us much about religion or philosophy but more about you. For you say:
You arbitrarily decide that “happiness” is what the commodity to calculate your utilitarianism. Yet we have ample evidence that humans only use “utilitarian” calculators at sometime and not at others. Further, some would gladly sacrifice happiness for power or offspring. The strength of desirism, is that it does not arbitrarily decide what desire is the most important.
Further, you casually dismiss psychopath’s happiness as if it there is not a spectrum on desires that are vastly different from your priority of happiness.
You said,
So I think this is mistaken for several reasons:
(1) most of us are blind to how or why we act. What we put forth for “why we act” is often at variance with the truth.
(2) I think a large part of are actions are far from acting to promote happiness and we would not have them otherwise
(3) Large number of people would disagree with you.
So, while I admire yet another philosophical attempt to layout “How We Ought to Behave”, I have to wonder why you are doing this. Are you trying to convince others? (I get that, but then I am challenging your rhetoric at its base). Are you trying to discover the truth — part of me thinks this is the wrong way about it.
I have no better answers. So my criticisms are sort of silly perhaps. I think that negotiating our preferences is very important and free-speech, rule-of-law are highly desirable. Thus ethics are attempts to persuade laws — which are compromised contracts of sorts. I see no more basis for these than preferences (which I agree with you). But I won’t go so far as to give them the noble stamp of a rational meta-ethic — that almost strikes me similar to the religious ethic position minus the divine.
But your planned exploration sounds fun. I hope that even part of my feedback was useful.
Keith Harrison
/ May 25, 2011 at 12:02 pmNFQ:
“And actually, I do think that moral prescriptions can and should be imposed on others who don’t consent. Otherwise, how would we deal with those murderous psychopaths? ”
I see morality as a social contract. A person voluntarily “signs” the contract, thereby agreeing to subject themselves to the rules of the moral system, including punishment for wrongdoing. So, while moral prescriptions may certainly be imposed upon them from that point forward, it was their choice to sign up to the system in the first place.
Of course, because most of us are born into a moral system (whether it be the system of our nation or church or family, etc.), so we don’t often have the chance to proactively adopt it. However, we do have the chance (in western democracies) to lobby for change in the system, or simply to leave it and find another system. But until such changes are made, or until we have left for another society, it is assumed implicitly that we are on board with the local social contract, and are therefore subject to its laws.
So, for instance, if all psychopaths wanted to go on murderous rampages unhindered, they would be quite welcome to start up their own society in which murderous rampages were the norm (it would not be a very prosperous society of course!). But as long as they were still living in a society that rejected murderous rampages, they would be subjected to laws against such activities.
Aristarchus
/ May 25, 2011 at 12:35 pmOk, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I in general agree with a lot of it, but I wanted to make a few separate points, just in the interest of discussion.
First, this is in some ways very much a moral relativist framework. Without some sort of larger reason why our moral intuition should be “correct” we’re essentially just enforcing a set of our preferred values as “morality”. That may sound like a criticism, but I’m actually totally fine with it. Part of the reason is that, as much as I hate stupid semantic debates, they’re basically unavoidable at this basic level of foundational reasoning. Defining the word “morality” is basically impossible. I checked a dictionary online, and got something like “doing the right and just things,” except that when you look up “right” in that sense you get “stuff that is moral”. It’s completely circular. And that’s true of all words to some extent. We have a mental understanding of some concepts and as a child we learn to attach words to them. And I think the word “morality” basically gets attached to that intuition and therefore it’s kind of hard to definite it as meaning anything else. (The only other way I can think of defining “morality” is as “actions that further human happiness” or “actions that follow God’s commands” or whatever of other basis for morality you’re choosing, but that seems a stupid way of defining away the question…)
Then there’s the question of whether this sort of framework, which is in some basic way moral relativism, can be imposed on others. Above, there are two comments on this. First Keith:
And then NFQ:
I agree with NFQ on the larger point. I think it’s fine for the 99.9% of people who happen to value human happiness above all else to form an alliance and forcibly impose their values on the other .1%. Keith, you say that no one has the “authority” to impose their beliefs, but why do you need authority? You’re assuming some sort of individual rights or libertarian morality here when saying you can’t impose your beliefs on others without just authority, but if we just agreed that there’s no “right” morality weaved into the web of the universe, then how do you derive the need for such authority? (I think this is the real reason imposing beliefs is ok, rather than just the “How do we deal with psychopaths?” response NFQ gave. That is a valid question, though, and I suspect you don’t really think imposing morality is wrong, since I suspect you’re fine with intervening to stop murderers.)
However, NFQ, I think you need to be more careful with your words in response. You say that before we impose them we need to make sure they are “right”. But this doesn’t make any sense. If you’re just imposing what is essentially your moral intuition, then it’s not clear what it means for it to be “correct”. I think what you mean is that we need to make sure our higher level rules that we’re imposing are “correct” in that they are consistent with the goals (i.e. human happiness) that we got from the lower-level intuition-checking. It’s more of a semantic quibble, but I think it’s important to being clear in this case.
Ok, that was long, but hopefully it made sense.
Aristarchus
/ May 25, 2011 at 12:44 pm@Keith (who commented while I was writing my above comment):
I don’t generally like social contract arguments. First, I don’t think they work on this level of first principles, because you’re assuming that it’s wrong to restrict the freedom of people who haven’t agreed to it and that it’s ok to force people to abide by agreements they’ve made in the past even if they change their mind. Those are totally reasonable, but they’re assuming a good amount of moral principles already, and there’s no basis for assuming them.
Second, I think the “of course, no one actually consents” thing can’t get brushed over that easily. You’re saying it’s wrong to force morality on people who haven’t consented, but then you’re saying being born into an area where people think something is wrong constitutes consent. What if you can’t move to get away because no society exists with your prefered moral system (and one will give you land to make one)? I also have trouble seeing the extremely limited ability an individual has to influence law in a big country as a valid substitute for consent.
NFQ
/ May 25, 2011 at 1:05 pm@Sabio: Regarding your number (1), I personally reflect a lot on my actions and carefully consider why I do what I do. This series of blog posts is one manifestation of that. But certainly, if I catch myself (or someone else catches me) giving one set of reasons for my actions while actually acting by a different metric, I reevaluate my metric! I don’t want to just throw my hands up and forget about it altogether.
On your (2), “I think a large part of are actions are far from acting to promote happiness and we would not have them otherwise” — really? I’d like an example or two. I cannot think of a single thing. Maybe you are limiting your definition of happiness to the very short term…?
And (3), “Large number of people would disagree with you.” … Undoubtedly. I’m an atheist. But I don’t think they would disagree with the basic premise that happiness is good and suffering is bad. Or do you mean that that itself is a very controversial notion?
My goal in this series is primarily to address those religious people who cannot imagine a morally upstanding atheist and who claim that moral calculus is impossible without religious beliefs. Additionally, I think having some forum for the nonreligious to discuss morality and the human condition is a good thing … and while I don’t pretend that a weekly blog post could be a secular replacement for the church experience, I do think it fosters a sense of community here, which I like. Hopefully that clears up my point a bit.
Keith Harrison
/ May 25, 2011 at 1:05 pmAristarchus:
I gladly acknowledge the difficulties you have with the idea of social contracts, but practically I don’t see any way around them. Who, for instance, is going to take it upon themselves to enforce NFQ’s version of morality on everyone? NFQ herself? Good luck with that!
Since morality is about how people in a society interact with each other, the rules about such interactions can only be agreed upon by the society itself, i.e., by the people who are going to be subjected to those rules.
The fact that we are involuntarily born into societies with already-established moral systems is, I think, problematic, for the reasons you suggested. However, this seems to be an inescapable fact of reality. The best we can do, then, is structure society in such a way that objections to the moral system can be duly heard and considered by those on whom we have conferred the duty of enforcing that system. We can also strive to educate young people about the different ethical viewpoints that are out there, so that they can make informed decisions about the society they live in.
This has actually worked quite well, on occasion, in the U.S. For instance, the civil and gay rights movements are the result of people protesting what they see as immoral laws in their government which, in many cases, have been changed for the better.
Keith Harrison
/ May 25, 2011 at 1:07 pmNFQ:
“and while I don’t pretend that a weekly blog post could be a secular replacement for the church experience, I do think it fosters a sense of community here, which I like…”
Amen!
Aristarchus
/ May 25, 2011 at 1:25 pm@Keith:
I don’t think there’s any shortage of people willing to impose their own morality on others… In general the problem in history has been too many of them (or that they’re wrong about their morality) rather than too few.
I fully agree with the ideal scenario. It’s good that we educate people and debate what proper morality is. (In this case I’m referring to the higher-order rules, since I think the basic principle of valuing happiness is more of a preference than a “true” good in some sense, but we can judge the higher order rules by whether they are consistent with that basic preference that basically everyone shares.) It’s also good that we have a democracy where social progress can come as people convince others to improve their morality, etc.
In my moral system as I believe it, which is basically some rules that derive from valuing happiness, the right to not have things imposed on you by a dictator is pretty important. I think that democratic legitimacy is necessary for certain laws. In fact, that is part of my morality that I would feel comfortable imposing on others – I support, say, a revolution to depose a dictator. But I do think it is ok to impose morality on others without that democratic legitimacy in some cases. In fact, I think our society recognizes this by placing some principles above democratic vote – say, the Bill of Rights or the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Genocide is wrong, and I have absolutely no moral problem with someone who thinks so killing a Hitler-equivalent, even if they have no democratic mandate to do so.
Think about it another way. Say someone is an ancient king with complete control over some society. Obviously it would be better for them to step down and transition to a democracy, but even if they aren’t doing that (or in the meantime while they do) I would find it to be a moral thing for them to do to punish serial killers.
Of course, while I think imposing morality on others is ok, it’s important to also acknowledge that one might be wrong in one’s logical transition from “happiness good” to particular rules/laws. As a result, we should be very careful about taking drastic action to further the moral good. Things are more likely to be true, for example, when large numbers of people agree on them, so democracy seems like a good way to go about things. Part of the rules I derive based on “human happiness is good” is “If you’re killing someone to stop a moral wrong, it better be an extreme moral wrong and you better have extremely good reasons for being sure it’s that extremely wrong.”
Yes, there’s no way around collective societal action. Societies and governments are totally necessary in the real world. That doesn’t mean “social contracts” are necessary as a basis for moral action. I can derive similar principles and rules for political behavior, it’s just that for me they’re higher-order principles and come from a lower-order system in which imposition of morals on others is ok.
Sabio Lantz
/ May 25, 2011 at 6:40 pm@ NFQ
I have obviously not done a good job explaining myself. Oddly, I tried to express similar thoughts to a Buddhist on his site but he did not understand me. So I think I must work on reformulating and maybe posting something on my site — ah the list of posts to come abound. I am sure you know the burden.
But thanks for replying.
NFQ
/ May 26, 2011 at 12:56 pm@Aristarchus: Sorry I missed this before –
You’re absolutely right on this. I mean that we should be correct in our judgment that a higher-level rule really does increase happiness and minimize suffering overall — that is what I meant by “make sure it is right.” Thanks for calling me out on the ambiguity.
@Keith and Aristarchus: The question of authority is a tricky one, as you both see. I guess when I say I have no problem enforcing my morality on others, I really am saying I have no problem judging others according to my standard. In that sense I’m perfectly capable of “enforcing” them. To the extent that we can agree that good things are good, though, it seems to make sense to intervene in other people’s lives to do things that would definitely promote overall goodness — taking a child away from abusive parents, for example.
As I explained in an earlier post I believe in the importance of abiding by the law, and I think it is pretty easy to see that an orderly society where you don’t have to worry about being shot, robbed, etc. on a daily basis is good for overall happiness and well-being. I do think we should have an open dialog about what our laws should be — what sort of laws are best at promoting “good” stuff and eliminating “bad” stuff (as judged by those common axioms). As Keith wrote:
I agree that these were changes “for the better.” What was happening there is that protesters were pointing out that existing laws did not actually maximize happiness and minimize suffering, i.e. that laws promoting racial segregation, etc. were not based on any kind of logical inference from our most basic moral presumptions and in fact were counterproductive.
Sabio Lantz
/ May 27, 2011 at 5:41 amHave you met A Naddar? Here just wrote a post that challenges your position. Perhaps you will disagree, but the dialogue may be interesting. I agree with Naddar’s thoughts on the post.
keddaw
/ May 27, 2011 at 10:08 amSo you don’t believe in a magical, pre-existing morality but you do believe in an objective morality? Interesting (and almost definitely wrong.)
They do. Humans are simply uber-intelligent animals, but any social mammal (possibly animal, possibly not) has a set of norms that the group has found effective and enforce in some circumstances and not in others. Some of these are things like fairness, justice and not inflicting harm on others. Sounds like basic, ground level morality to me. Rats refusing food when another, unknown to them, rat is punished. Dogs refusing a treat for a trick because another (again unknown) dog is receiving less for the same trick. Beware human exceptionalism, it puts you in the religious camp on biology.
In your opinion. But this could be expanded to anyone that disagrees with what you decide is the perfect moral system. Beware the totalitarian dictator.
Our intuitions on moral things are so commonly wrong, our actual morals being as changeable as the weather, situation and time dependent, it strikes me that starting from those is an effort in futility. We are educated, wealthy, safe and comfortable humans, we should be able to come up with an ethical system that is beyond ‘gut feelings’ or you may as well ask George W. Bush for input. You state that increasing the happiness of yourself and others is good, but our instincts tell us to value ourselves first, our family second, social group third and out-group last. Is that really the starting point you want for an ethical framework?
What if this is the best thing for society? Have a lottery each month to save a group of people. I can easily see this being a civic duty (extreme jury duty) and enhancing that society greatly, perhaps using criminals rather than citizens. Now that is not a society I want to live in, I would consider it an immoral act even if it does increase the general well being. What does this mean for my morality? I guess it means there are ethical lines in the sand that utilitarianism cannot cross for me. Am I wrong? Perhaps but you’d have to convince me in a way that cajoles my preferences into alignment with utilitarianism.
Keith Harrison
/ May 27, 2011 at 12:10 pmkeddaw:
“Have a lottery each month to save a group of people. I can easily see this being a civic duty (extreme jury duty) and enhancing that society greatly, perhaps using criminals rather than citizens.”
I suspect that this would not enhance a society’s net well-being. For sure, the relatively tiny fraction of people in need of organ transplants would get their operations, but the cost would be widespread fear in the rest of the population.
NFQ
/ May 27, 2011 at 11:36 pm@keddaw: Thanks for your interesting comments! I’m loving this discussion.
Snarky (and rather misleading)!
I believe that all we have to go on, at a very basic level, are our moral intuitions. I think we should be cautious not to be misled by our intuitions, because they can be (and are often) wrong, so my approach is to keep asking “why” until I get down to the nittiest-grittiest intuition/s that are most broadly agreed upon by all humanity. We can then evaluate more specific moral judgments based on whether or not they factually satisfy those most basic axioms, and I believe we can be “right” or “wrong” by that standard, so I am comfortable saying I believe in an “objective” morality. Make more sense?
That is fascinating; I had not heard of that. (Links are appreciated, if you’ve got ‘em, but I’ll Google for them over the weekend sometime, too.) Mostly, this objection convinces me that my original argument was poorly worded / on a tangent at this point. If animals have a moral sense, but we cannot communicate with them about it, it’s irrelevant. If animals have a moral sense and we devise a way to discuss moral philosophy with them, it’s not clear that their thoughts should trump a human consensus regarding human behavior, but my guess is that they’d share even these axioms. It’s also possible that this behavior is not as philosophically complex as it might seem to us anthropomorphizing observers. ::shrug::
No matter what your ethical framework is, you still at the end of the day have to warrant why you chose the axioms / guiding principles you did. Who cares whether people get treated as means to ends rather than ends in themselves? Why should we concern ourselves with whatever your system deems the greatest good? It’s all going to be arbitrary on some level, and my point is that rather than look in some crazy old book, or pick a “virtue” out of a hat, or follow some other essentially random rule, I opt to examine my own (and others’) understanding of “right” and “wrong” and try to pare it down to its most basic statement, then reason my way back up from there. I do think, as I said in my post, that “morality is just the way we ask the question, ‘What kind of behavior is the behavior humans like the most?’” so I think this framework makes sense. It’s quite possible that you could reason your way from these principles to some more formulaic ethical rules — but this would be your warrant for having chosen those rules. “Applying the categorical imperative will result in maximized happiness and well-being,” or what have you.
I completely agree with Keith’s answer on the organ harvesting lottery.
keddaw
/ May 28, 2011 at 12:05 pm@Keith, depends how it was framed and sold tot he population. I do recall many societies practiced human sacrifice and it was seen as a great honour to be chosen by the gods and, sometimes, you were given a year of bliss before being sacrificed. Also, the prisoner scheme tends to mitigate most of the societal problems that might be brought up.
@NFQ, so you have an ‘objective’ morality based on the majority of people’s subjective whims? Okay, but I maintain that is subjective.
I am very worried by your approach though as it leads to tyranny of the majority. It leads to shifting moral rules as the population shifts and becomes more/less educated/tolerant or whatever. As I said, people’s instincts tend to be formed by their genes which means our basest instincts are formed for the propagation of our genes. If that’s the level of morality you want to work to then have at it, but I’ll stick to the more intellectual side of things if that’s okay.
Again, you’ll find base gene survival at the bottom. Perhaps we can find a virtue that is somehow above the others? One that doesn’t impact any of the others, i.e. has no trade off and can be pursued without impacting anyone else…
Aristarchus
/ May 28, 2011 at 12:21 pm@keddaw:
I think the real point here is that even just as a matter of formal logic, you can’t derive something from nothing. (The things you can prove with just formal logic – say, math – are all at their heart implications. Things like “If there are things called integers with properties A, B, and C, then they also have property D.”) That means you need to assume something. Moral systems all do this. (Utilitarianism assumes happiness is “good”, etc.) You can’t ever give an intellectually rigorous reason why you assume a particular thing (otherwise it wouldn’t be an assumption…) so whether they say it or not, everyone with a moral system is either being illogical or basing it on some assumptions that are at heart an acceptance of some basic intuition.
And no, it’s not subject to tyranny of the majority, at least not in the way you’re thinking of it. The kind of “intuition” that changes with education level, for example, is the higher-order stuff that NFQ isn’t paying attention to. The most basic things (she lists “human happiness good” but I would also add some sort of basic “justice/fairness” type principle) are reasonably independent of that stuff.
keddaw
/ May 28, 2011 at 12:43 pm@Aristarchus
It IS tyranny of the majority. It just so happens that you’re part of that majority and see it as benevolent. If the majority of people were ambivalent to the needs and suffering of their fellow man then that would be what NFQ calls moral.
Even though all ethical systems need some basis, or some assumptions, I don’t using this arbitrary point in time of random evolutionary processes as the basis for one is going to be the optimal solution for whatever outcome you happen to think is beneficial.
Sabio Lantz
/ May 28, 2011 at 12:54 pm@ Aristarchus
So if you assume “intuitions” as the something from which to derive something, you get way too much “something”. If our intuitions are a result of our genes interactions with environment, we will have a huge variety of initial settings (intuitions) upon which to base moral systems.
To conveniently ignore the intuitions of those unlike you (“sociopaths” or “personality disorders” or …) in building a system seems very problematic.
Aristarchus
/ May 28, 2011 at 2:39 pmSo what assumptions do you prefer?
Sabio Lantz
/ May 28, 2011 at 3:26 pm@ Aristarchus
One classic position is that all ethics is arbitrary, relative and are worked out only by contracts, wars and spontaneous order.
Rationalizations of systems are simply that, “rationalizations”. You get people to agree on a few rules as convention, and go from there. Even those, like a constitution, may come up for grabs later.
If people buy into your rational system and rationalization, then great — but it is purely rhetoric and club rules.
That is one classical Meta-Ethical position, no?
keddaw
/ May 31, 2011 at 6:39 am@ Aristarchus
1. Solipsism is ignored. (Otherwise we get nowhere.)
2. Adults are autonomous.
3. No-one has any rights/power over anyone else.
4. Everyone has the same rights.
5. Everyone can exercise their autonomy in any way they see fit up to the point it interferes with someone else’s right to do the same.
Surely those beat the heck out of the remnants of base instincts that have been evolutionarily advantageous (or non-detrimental) in social mammals. Frankly, if we can’t beat nature then what good are we?
Aristarchus
/ May 31, 2011 at 10:09 am@keddaw
So why do you like those assumptions? According to what criteria do they “beat the heck out of” any other possible assumptions?
keddaw
/ May 31, 2011 at 11:49 am@ Aristarchus
Well, if you assume solipsism is true then you may as well stop thinking right there. It isn’t exactly false, but it means investigation into reality is not possible because reality isn’t real and could change at any moment. So that’s 1.
2 is the assumption that other people are people like you. If you don’t assume this then you do not really empathise with them and are not morally bound to them in the same way you are to similar creatures/minds.
3 is simply the assumption that there is no ‘natural order’, that autonomous individuals (2) are not born into a position, except as society deems them to be, but that is society’s problem rather than a brute fact of the universe.
4 is the idea that everyone is effectively equal and no-one has special privileges as a natural right, but autonomous individuals can lavish special treatment on some if they so wish.
5 is the idea that there is no limit to an individual’s liberty except where it interferes with another’s liberty.
Why are these better? Because they do not detract from anyone’s autonomy or freedom. They are assumptions that we are equal and free. They are positive assumptions in that none of them are restrictive in any way, assuming one has enough space, and so can be applied freely to someone without negatively impacting anyone else. They are also assumptions which are unlimited in scope, meaning that they are not a scarce resource and granting rights of this sort to Person A does not reduce the rights of Person B (where A and B can be reversed.)
They are assumptions that may lead to social libertarianism. They may also lead to economic libertarianism, but that’s a whole different ball game.
Keith Harrison
/ May 31, 2011 at 11:59 am@keddaw:
You are quite right that if we lived in a bizarre universe in which people were ambivalent about the needs of their fellow humans, then behavior that ignored those needs would be considered “moral”.
But so what? The fact is, we don’t live in that sort of universe. Indeed, one might argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, such a universe is impossible: you can’t successfully evolve a social species whose members have no interest in one another’s well-being.
This idea, taken together with the fact that only in social situations is the concept of morality meaningful, we have to conclude that, almost by definition, morality must have something to do with concern for one another’s well-being.
keddaw
/ May 31, 2011 at 12:25 pmKeith, I agree that morality only has meaning in a social context. However, we need not be like we are – the argument I always used to put forward was that if we had evolved from lions we’d think it normal (possibly even moral) to kill the young (from another father) of the woman we married.
However, we can look much closer to home for a similar example, the Inuit often practised infanticide when conditions were near desperate. This was a cultural norm (and probably a positive for survival of the genes) and yet we view such an act as outrageous. Should we exist on an resource-hungry, icy planet this view may still be prevalent.
Is it not obvious that what is moral can only come from a position of comfort? Indeed, we can see that morality is a function of, among many other things, circumstance.
From this we can go down NFQ’s route and say that we need to get at the root of what caused the Inuits to do this (survival) and declare that as moral.
Or, we can sit back in our armchairs with a glass of Scotch and with no pressure debate what it is that constitutes morality and what the aim of it is. In reality what constitutes morality differs for each person and even on the metrics that are agreed upon they are weighted differently. The outcomes are also viewed differently and I think the idea of an objective morality is flawed since the metrics and goals (and the metrics of the goals) are all inherently subjective.
Which is not to say we can’t have a discussion, but we must be careful to remember that ‘morality’ is simply a shorthand way of listing your preferences and/or values and that your audience may not share them. When I discuss which Saturday is the best looking with my friend we may disagree but we have enough in common to have the discussion and we ultimately stop saying who is best looking but break it down into X has better eyes/legs/face/body and then we might agree on that (if we value the same things) but disagree over whether legs are more important than face. Sorry to be sexist about it, but that’s the analogy that came to mind.
PS. I have no idea what The Saturdays look like.
Keith Harrison
/ May 31, 2011 at 2:11 pmkeddaw:
I agree with you that each of us carries different sets of values but, like NFQ, I think if you dig down deep enough, you will find that these values spring from more basic desires or instincts that are common to (just about) everyone, such as the desire to be happy or avoid pain*.
And, while it’s true that each of us sees morality differently, at the end of the day our society needs a firm structure in place to help us arbitrate our interactions with each other, hopefully in some sort of consistent, even-handed fashion. The practical question of morality is, I think, the question of what sort of system most people would sign up to, i.e. which system would they regard as looking out for their best interests. It seems to me that the only successful way of doing this, especially with large numbers of people, is to appeal to the fundamental desires that all people share.
—
* With regards to the survival instinct: I’m not sure we really have one. Instead, evolution has ensured that we seek survival indirectly by avoiding pain – rather a nifty trick, I think, similar to the trick of making sex feel really good: this ensures that we reproduce, even though we might not have an actual reproduction instinct.
keddaw
/ May 31, 2011 at 5:54 pmKeith, history views your ideas as bogus – whether that makes them so or not is another thing – but I can’t think of any society formed for the appeal to the fundamental desires that all people share. Ignoring, rather impressively, that not all people share those desires, or that higher order desires, that do not spring from lower desires, might be of more import to some (e.g. me!) Most societies evolved, a few (French, US) came about through the thoughts of bright men. but never to maximise happiness or avoid suffering, more to maximise an individual’s ability to seek happiness and avoid suffering. The only societies that might have fallen into your ideas are socialist or communist ones, but they rarely perform well by their own metrics compared to free(er) states.
I agree with the neat trick nature played, but does that mean sex is moral or reproduction is?
NB. I am a moral error theorist so discussions on morality are kind of a moot point to me.
Aristarchus
/ May 31, 2011 at 8:00 pm@keddaw:
Let me respond to these separately.
“It would mean we can’t figure anything else out” isn’t a reason why it’s false… but I really don’t care about this one. I’m fine with assuming the world as we see it exists – that’s a factual question, not a question of morality.
I asked you why these are good assumptions, not what they were. Yes, if we didn’t assume this we would not be morally bound to do good towards other people…. but maybe we aren’t morally bound to do good towards other people. I would claim that you’re rejecting this because the implications are counterintuitive to you, and that you have some sort of basic premise (like, the correct idea of morality should result in it being good to be nice to other people, for example) that you are deriving from intuition and you are testing other principles for consistency with that premise.
Again, this is not a reason, just a restatement/explanation of what you’re assuming.
Again, no reason.
And you assume that that’s true why…?
These assumptions are better because they are assumptions that we are “equal and free”? How are we to know that it isn’t morally better to treat some people as special? You say “I assume X” and I ask “Why assume X?” and you’re response is “Well, X is consistent with Y.” I think really you’re now just changing to assuming Y instead of X. And that’s logically guaranteed. Everything has to be justified in terms of something else. You can’t construct something purely from logic. You need some starting point. And I think everyone uses moral intuition as a starting point. NFQ just happens to be being clear and upfront about that and doing it in the most reasonable way possible.
You then in a later comment say this:
But that seems to just be completely agreeing with the original point. If morality is just a personal preference then how is it not based on your intuition?
I think you’re really not understanding the point NFQ was making here. NFQ isn’t arguing that we look at old Inuit infanticide practices (which btw happened in basically all prehistoric societies) and say “oh, well I guess for them it’s moral”. She’s saying that we look at that and say “Oh, well opinions about infanticide seem to be time/place/culture-dependent, so those are not the base-level intuitions we’re looking for.” We push back to the most simple and agreed-upon assumptions (happiness is good, etc.) and then derive from them an opinion about infanticide.
keddaw
/ June 1, 2011 at 5:21 am@Aristarchus
You are right, I was slightly distracted.
My assumption, then, is that giving people the maximum total freedom leads to the most beneficial outcomes long term. My second assumption is that a simplistic metric like ‘happiness’ or ‘pleasure’ is not good enough. Progress (economic, technological, educational etc.) are higher order values that are often achieved at the expense of lower order values (e.g. going to school to learn rather than play in the streets) and, assuming they don’t lead to greater pleasure later, are good in and of themselves without having to refer back to lower order values.
Indeed, a greater understanding of the universe (higher order value) can often lead to a decrease in happiness (lower order value) and yet that is a conscious decision that people will often choose. Ignorance may be bliss, but some people prefer the despair of reality.
Aristarchus
/ June 1, 2011 at 8:33 am@keddaw
Ok, but that seems to me like you’re just saying that in addition to “happiness is good”, you’re also deriving a principle of roughly “knowledge is good” from your intuition, which is totally reasonable to me. It still seems like the basic method for reaching that conclusion is basically the same as what NFQ described.
NFQ, I’d love to hear more about what principles you actually come up with. I know the “happiness is good” one in the post is a obvious one, but I don’t think you meant it to be exhaustive. Something like valuing knowledge seems reasonable, and I also think there’s a pretty strong intuitive basis for some sort of fairness/justice sort of value. (Caring about distribution of happiness rather than just total amount.) I can’t think of any other potential principles right now, but there probably are some.
keddaw
/ June 1, 2011 at 10:35 amNot exactly. While I do think, subjectively, that knowledge is good I cannot get it from any base first principle which is what NFQ was using as the baseline for morality. There is nothing about our evolutionary past or, up to 2000-ish years ago, that would make knowledge a ‘good thing’ in the sense that it is something worth having for its own sake.
Which is kinda the point. Morality is subjective and we can’t simply take point X in the evolutionary history of species Y and declare that the base desires of that species at that time is what we will declare objective morality. In fact, given the state of that species at this time you’d end up saying that obeying make believe rules to a non-existent deity was a morally good thing – regardless of what those rules are and what that deity was, just so long as you believed and followed the rules. And I’m not playing along with that.
Aristarchus
/ June 1, 2011 at 1:52 pmBut what you’re saying is that instead of taking the broadly accepted first principles of the only known intelligent species over the course of recorded history, you’re going to take your personal dispositions at this particular point in time. I agree that morality is somewhat subjective, but it seems like what you’re doing is more arbitrary and random, not less.
I also think it’s pretty clear that humans as a species do share a desire for knowledge. They’re not always super rational about how they look for it, but they generally try. People do want to know things and are generally (to varying degrees) curious. Curiosity is a pretty general trait amongst humans and in some sense is most clearly defined as the desire to know things. Something like religion varies by time/culture, but if we’re doing what NFQ suggested, we might get a general value of knowledge – the details of what we then decide are true (religion, science, etc.) can be logically derived from there.
keddaw
/ June 2, 2011 at 5:29 amHuman exceptionalism. Beware. Many animals exhibit intelligence and many some hominids seem to have been at least as intelligent as us (obviously this may fall foul of recorded history, but many current animals still have intelligence.)
Keith Harrison
/ June 2, 2011 at 12:52 pmkeddaw:
“I can’t think of any society formed for the appeal to the fundamental desires that all people share.”
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution says “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
This is surely an appeal to fundamental desires.
“Ignoring, rather impressively, that not all people share those desires, or that higher order desires, that do not spring from lower desires, might be of more import to some (e.g. me!)”
No moral system can make everyone happy.
More importantly, I’m not sure it’s even true that there exist higher desires that do not spring from more fundamental desires. Perhaps you can provide an example?
“Most societies evolved, a few (French, US) came about through the thoughts of bright men. but never to maximise happiness or avoid suffering, more to maximise an individual’s ability to seek happiness and avoid suffering.”
I’ve never claimed that a government should actually take on the responsibility of making people happy. The point of morality is not to hand people their happiness on a silver platter.
Aristarchus
/ June 2, 2011 at 1:02 pm@keddaw:
You can quote one clause and call out “human exceptionalism,” but you’re completely ignoring the real point. You’re going with your own personal desires. It’s a comparative debate. You’re being more arbitrary, not less.
I would posit further that some of the things NFQ is arguing for (“happiness is good”) we can pretty safely assume were also felt by early hominids, chimps, dolphins, etc. And saying “there are other intelligent animals” is just willfully missing the point. There are other animals with nonzero intelligence, but humans are obviously orders of magnitude more intelligent than any of them.
And what’s wrong with being human-centric? We’re arguing about first principles here, so there’s no principle of species equality of fairness or anything under which this is bad. You haven’t actually given any basis for choosing first principles other than personal preference. Why should your personal preference of “treat other species as equals” hold over mine?