My Ethical Philosophy

Morality, as I define it, is a set of culturally and emotionally derived principles regarding what people consider to be good vs. bad.  Scientists believe humans evolved to be moral as a means of improving the survival potential of our peer groups.  This biological drive to be moral, coupled with the evolving needs and perspectives of cultures and societies, produced a wide variety of ideas regarding how people ought to behave.  While many of these moral systems share common elements and provide desirable outcomes, many notions remain relevant only to those who originally devised them and are not universal.  The study of Ethics seeks to rectify this problem by utilizing reason and universal principles to understand what is good and bad for everyone in every context.  Unfortunately, philosophers don’t agree on which approach to ethics is truly universal.  According to philpapers.org, most philosophers are divided between 3 different approaches:

• Deontology (26% of Philosophers): Rightness or wrongness is based on the adherence to moral laws or duties.  Deontologists care more about the intention of an action, rather than its consequence.  (Example: Murdering innocent people is wrong because murdering innocent people is inherently wrong.)
• Consequentialism (24% of Philosophers): Rightness or wrongness is based on the consequences of an action, regardless of the intentions or character of the actor.  (Example: Murdering innocent people is wrong because it leads to undesirable consequences such as fear, pain, and grief.)
• Virtue Ethics (18% of Philosophers): Rightness or wrongness is based on the character of an individual.  Certain traits are deemed “good” and others “bad”.  Actions are not morally right because of an outcome or adherence to a duty.  Instead, they are good if a person is acting as a result of a virtue. (Example: Murdering innocent people is wrong because it requires the absence of certain virtues such as compassion and fairness.)

I am a consequentialist because deontology and virtue ethics cannot be justified without considering how certain duties or virtues impact the world.  Nothing is “good just because”.  Most who hold this view generally believe duties/virtues are “good because they’re natural” or “good because of God or a higher power”.  The former is based on the naturalistic fallacy and can be dismissed outright, given that not everything “natural” is universally considered to be good and not everything “un-natural” is universally considered to be bad (e.g. AIDS is natural, but computers are not).  The latter should be dismissed because there is no reliable evidence nor compelling arguments that support the existence of any god or anything supernatural.  This would be why 78% of philosophers (the world’s argument experts) are either atheists or agnostics, and only 26% claim to be non-naturalists (i.e. believe in supernatural forces).  It is also why 75% are scientific realists, which means they believe judgments should be based on current scientific models for how the universe works.  As it happens, there are no widely held scientific models of the universe that include the supernatural or any gods.

Now, the 18% of philosophers who are virtue ethicists and 26% who are deontologists might still beg to differ.  A virtue ethicist may suggest that ethics are imprecise and consequentialism is too difficult to be able to be applied to every situation.  Some don’t believe it is even worthwhile to have universal ethical theories, since they can’t account for every possible scenario.  Instead, they consider their approach to be more useful to how people actually approach ethical decisions.  Yet, not all “virtues” espoused by the majority of our society are truly virtuous.  For example, males are taught that repressing emotions is a virtue while females are taught that submissiveness is a virtue.  Each to the detriment of society and to the individuals who seek to adhere to these virtues.  How can these virtues be argued for or against without pointing to how they impact the world as I just did?  Even the idea that virtues are more useful is one that begs the question “useful for what?”  The “what” being the desired consequence.  A virtue ethicist may still argue that consequentialism requires people to act in ways that aren’t in their own best interest in order to do what is best for others.  Yet, if everyone in the world was completely selfless, they would lose their best advocate for their own wellbeing.  Even if everyone else was focused on making an individual happy, how could they know how to do so without the person being self-aware and selfish enough to communicate their desires?  A world of selfless people would have less happiness than one with some selfishness.  Thus, consequentialism does not necessarily require people to always or even frequently act against their own best interest.  

Deontologists, on the other hand, may argue that they are not championing arbitrary rules that just exist in a vacuum with no logic behind them.  For example, Kant thought there was one universal principle that all rules derived from: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”  Yet, a universal law for a sadist, masochist, suicide cult member, or Ayn Randian Objectivist would be very different than one espoused by a social worker, environmentalist, or altruist.  Different minds have different ideas about what is good, and a different tolerance for what is bad.  In addition, the problem with the idea of these laws and duties is that they are meant to be applied in every kind of situation regardless of context.  Yet, sometimes even lying, murdering, and stealing are the only way to save one’s life or the life of another.  One would have to qualify each rule with every sort of context in which they would not apply.  Yet, the question is WHY would those rules need to be broken for those contexts?  The answer: because sometimes adhering to a rule or duty would lead to a negative consequence.  Thus, the consequence is what ultimately matters, not the rule or duty.

In general, ethics is about doing good and not doing bad.  Even when goodness and badness are based on consequences, which are concrete, observable, and tied to the physical universe, one still has to justify why the consequences are actually good or bad.  As already stated, nothing is “good just because”, and there is no supreme arbiter of good and evil.  The universe does not care whether or not one person murders another.  Yet, we know goodness and badness exist because we have experienced them in our lives, and we know others have as well.  We know that some things make us happy, and those are good.  We also know that some things make us sad, and those are bad.  Thus, goodness and badness are the positive and negative reactions to life circumstances of individual feeling entities.  However, even on an individual basis, it’s difficult to understand what is ultimately good or bad.  Suffering sometimes leads to positive outcomes, and happiness sometimes leads to negative ones.  To understand the ultimate goodness or badness experienced by an individual, one has to take into account the positive and negative reactions to circumstances experienced throughout the span of their life.  The greater the moments of satisfaction vs. dissatisfaction, the better the life.  

Goodness and badness exist on a spectrum.  For example, most would agree that having one’s finger accidentally cut off is bad, but having one’s leg cut off would be worse.  Likewise, finding a $5 bill on the street is good, but finding a $100 bill would be better.  Thus, the goodness or badness of a life isn’t merely based on the percentage of positive or negative moments experienced through a lifetime.  It’s the average degree of positive and negative moments.  For simplicity’s sake, we can use a scale from -100 to 100 to assess the degree of life satisfaction or dissatisfaction experienced in any given moment.  A good life would be one in which the average of all moments would be above 0, but the best life would be the one with an average that is close to 100.  To the individual, any event that brings the average down is bad, and any event that brings the average up is good.  However, an event that takes someone from 70 to 50 would be better than an event that would take someone from 10 to -10, despite the event being worth -20 in each case.  This is because the end score is what ultimately matters.  Accordingly, in terms of priority, we should first desire to experience events that will first keep us above 0, then events that will increase the average.  Sure, -5 is still better than -50, but -5 is still an overall bad life.  

While it is important to understand goodness and badness from the perspective of an individual, ethical principles generally apply to groups of individuals.  Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to do what is in everyone’s best interest all of the time, considering that sometimes what improves the lives of a few people deprives the lives of others.  Slavery is one example of this, but so is factory farming, Ponzi schemes, and patriarchal societies.  Therefore, any ethical system that seeks to do what is good and avoid doing what is bad for all group members will require compromise.  To do good, according to our understanding of what is good for individuals, the ethical system needs to prohibit actions that bring members below 0 and promote actions that increase the average score.  In other words, first do no harm, then maximize happiness.  Given that some individuals are more capable of achieving these aims when given appropriate incentives and resources, it is better to allow them to achieve a better life than others who are less capable.  Thus, while the ultimate goal may be limiting bad lives and maximizing the wellbeing of group members, inequality is useful as long as it helps to achieve this goal.  On the other end of the spectrum, those who have a negative impact on the wellbeing of the group have to be handled quite differently.  Their negative impact would need to be minimized, reversed, or eliminated.  Yes, eliminated.  If someone cannot exist without causing others to go below 0 without themselves going below 0, their existence is bad for the group.

It seems that “do no harm” and “eliminate those with a negative impact” are mutually exclusive, but they are not.  It’s the “lesser of two evils” principle.  If faced with the possibility of an action leading to 100 people below 0 and another action that would lead 10 people below 0, the latter is the ethical choice.  However, this is assuming there is no 3rd choice wherein no one would be below 0.  If this 3rd choice existed, the first two would be considered unethical.  So, is it permissible to kill one person to harvest their organs and save the lives of others?  If this scenario existed in a vacuum, then yes, it would be ethical.  However, in the real world, there would be other effects from the murder beyond ending one life and saving others.  A society that would allow innocent people to be killed and harvested for organs would be one in which the population would fear for their lives and where it is virtuous to be a murderer.  I would venture to guess that to be that type of murderer would entail the loss of personality traits that benefit society, such as empathy and kindness.

Since the basis of goodness and badness are life experiences, the greater the number of individuals with good lives the more the goodness there is in the universe.  Thus, any person who seeks to be “good” in a universal sense, ought to consider the life experiences of all entities capable of having a good or a bad life.  Often, the scope of our ethics tends to be rather narrow, in that we care about the humans who are a part of the groups with which we most identify.  We may care about the welfare of some animals, such as our pets, but don’t consider the type of life our chicken nuggets once had when they were living, feeling animals.  However, given that many animals can experience a good or bad life, they ought to be included in the population under consideration, as should other humans who are not a part of our immediate peer groups.  The largest of all possible groups, which should thus be given the greatest consideration, is the future generations of humans and other feeling entities.  There may be 7 billion humans now, but imagine how many lives could be experienced in the next 7 billion years if humans and other animals continued to exist.  The universe may end at some point, but it may be possible for us to continue to thrive up until that moment.  If we were to put the heaviest weight on the welfare of future generations, then our primary imperative is to ensure that they will be allowed to exist to experience good lives.  Therefore, to be “good” in a universal sense requires the adherence to these 3 directives, which are prioritized in the order in which they are presented:

1. Act in ways that will enhance the likelihood that humans and other feeling entities will continue to exist indefinitely.
2. Never act in ways that cause others to experience a bad life unless it is the only way to ensure that more do not experience a bad life.
3. Act in ways that maximize the positive life experience of as many other humans and feeling entities as possible.