[Back to Morality]

The Problem

Context

This article is about how we can distinguish between good and bad, between moral and immoral, or between ethical and unethical.  When people disagree about the moral status of an action, how can we explore - and maybe resolve - that conflict?

Many people will offer a clear answer to this challenge: they will say that the Bible (or some other religious work, or reason...) tells us what is good, all we have to do is accept it.  But, in the modern world, in a multicultural society, it is fairly obvious that whatever source of moral authority you look up to, many other people do not recognize it as an authority in their life.  We live in a society in which morality matters, but we have no agreed way to tell whether an action is moral.  That is a problem.

In any case, whatever the formal basis for morality may be, people have always disagreed about what it means and how it applies.  The claimed agreement about a basis of morality always falls apart when you start to press it.  We cannot go forward by reverting to some imaginary time when everybody agreed on what was right and wrong.

There are just a couple of points we need to make before we start to get into the detail.

Firstly: please don't get too concerned about the language being used here.  We are talking about 'morality', as opposed to 'ethics' or any of the alternatives, primarily because we need to be consistent.  If you are concerned about this terminology, have a look at The Language of Morality.

Secondly, we are talking about real morality, not just personal preferences, social conventions or local laws.  For the sake of this discussion, we are assuming that morality is, in some sense, real - that some actions are morally right and other actions are morally wrong.  If you are concerned about this assumption, have a look at Morality: An Introduction.

And thirdly, we are talking about the morality of actions - physical, observable activity.  We can, if we wish, move from there to talk about internal and intangible things, but we cannot directly observe them, and this discussion inevitably gets more difficult and more abstract.  Let's try to build a solid basis for such exploration.

Morality and Society

Every human society needs a common morality (or, if you prefer, a shared ethical system) to survive.  This starting point is fairly obvious: firstly, every observed human society has a shared ethical system; and, secondly, it is intuitively obvious that a human society without a shared ethical system would collapse under the weight of the inevitable conflict it would experience.

But a reflective human society will want its ethical system to be grounded in a moral framework which makes sense to its members - which 'works' for them, which helps them identify and respond to injustice and to novel situations.

Societies have laws, and people like to think that the law works to support what is right and punish what is wrong.  Rulers make the rules, so in general you need to derive morality from something more reliable than the current warlord or emperor - which is why, in pretty much every society throughout history up to the last century or two, morality comes from religion, from the gods.  Their teachings and expectations are normative.

Since the dawn of human civilization, this moral framework was provided by the religion of the time.  Every state had a state religion, which lasted until the state was defeated by a stronger neighbour - and this was inevitably interpreted as a success for the stronger and more powerful religion of the invader.

Something seems to have changed around 500 BC; there are many ideas and theories which aim to explain why this was the case, but the available evidence doesn't enable us to test and choose between them.  However, we see existing religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and Judaism, firming up and collecting their writings, and we see the birth of both Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama ('the Buddha').  Soon after that, many 'Mystery' religions and semi-religious philosophies (such as Stoicism and Epicureanism) spring up.

In short, over a fairly brief period of history, many religions become much clearer about what they believe, and many alternatives enter the religious marketplace.  The link between the ethical system required by the state and the moral framework provided by the state religion started to be stretched like never before.  And then the early Christians started to promote the idea of a secular state, one which allowed freedom of religion.  The idea took a long time to catch on, delayed as it was by the arrival of Constantine and the 'conversion' of the Roman Empire.

Today, there are many states which do not impose or assume a common religion shared by its citizens, which creates a problem.  Without a shared moral framework, how do the citizens agree on how to shape their laws and values?  We may agree that there is an important difference between moral and immoral activity, but when one of us believes a thing to be moral and the other believes it to be immoral, how can we resolve this conflict?

One obvious strategy is to kill or banish the heathens and heretics - everyone who does not share our (obviously right) moral framework - and we can punish everyone who remains but does not affirm the correct set of beliefs.  That works, in so far as it enables us to enjoy a society in which most people agree - at least, in public - on the moral framework which holds society together.  But can we find a better option?

Interlude: Objective and Subjective Approaches

This entire article is an attempt to present a reasonable and helpful approach to understanding morality.  It ignores a vast amount of detail, but I hope that it includes all the essential ideas; big and important concepts are summarised, but my intention is that the summary is a fair one.  This section is especially open to criticism; I'm applying the same guidelines here, but if you feel anything important is being misrepresented, please say so in the comments.

The question before us is: can we find a better framework for morality than getting rid of the people who disagree with us?  Many people claim to have done so.  The most obvious claims come from two distinct directions: science and reason on the one hand, and Existentialism on the other.  So - what do these two approaches have to offer us?

Science and Reason

For a long time, many people believed that we could replace religion with reason: science would show us the way!  Some people actually believe that this has been achieved.  After all, in Western democracies today, all right-minded people agree on modern liberal values: we are all against slavery and domestic violence, aren't we?  Perhaps.

But what about abortion and euthanasia?  What about the places of refuge for victims of domestic violence which want to be able to exclude men, and members of the trans community who want to be allowed access?  You don't have to look very hard to discover many issues where people today still bitterly disagree on what is right, despite claiming to base their views on science and reason (and genuinely believing that this is what they are doing).

Utilitarianism seemed to be a nice, objective basis for morality: the greatest good for the greatest number.  It's hard to disagree with that as a principle.  The problems appear when you try to put it into practice: you rapidly discover that my good conflicts with your good, and we have no mechanism for balancing one against the other.  Utilitarianism provides no help at all in resolving the moral conflicts we are struggling with.

Science can investigate our moral choices - the various versions of the 'trolley problem' demonstrate that people all over the world share some fairly obvious moral insights: we don't want to be responsible for other people dying; in general, when we have to decide, we prefer that fewer people die, rather than more people.  But science cannot tell whether our moral insights derive (possibly in confused or flawed ways) from our perception of a moral reality, or whether that perceived moral reality is purely imaginary.

And science can inform our moral choices: it can tell us about the consequences of destroying the Ozone Layer, or of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  Science can tell us about the probable effectiveness of various courses of action.  But science cannot tell us how to choose between the various options: it can tell us about how the world is and about the risks we face, but it cannot tell us what we should do as a consequence.

Existentialism

Wikipedia neatly describes Existentialism as "a family of philosophical views".  Existentialists tend to view life as obviously absurd or incomprehensible, and consequently believe that humans should struggle to lead an 'authentic life'.  Beyond this, they tend to disagree on most things.

Their world view means that, for them, there is no objective, external morality, but morality is nonetheless important, so each individual must create their own morality, their own set of values.  For most Existentialists, my morality is whatever I choose it to be, and you cannot possibly tell me that I'm wrong.

[We also touch on Existentialism in Morality is simply a useful fiction, which contains this paragraph:
People find it very difficult to operate without morality, even when they deny that morality is real.  To take just one example, in Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre argued that we are morally obliged to recognize the value of both our own freedom and the freedom of others.  He claims we have a real moral obligation while denying the reality of morality, and describes how to create morality out of thin air.  The argument seems to be that we cannot avoid making choices, and many choices imply that this (the chosen option) is better than that (the rejected option), so a morality is created by our choices.  But if morality does not exist, then I cannot be morally obliged to do anything; and if I choose to do something because I believe it is the right thing to do, then I am simply in error - or fooling myself.  The fact that I make choices does not have to mean that my choice is better than the alternative, only that I want it more: no morality is required, and no morality is created by any choice in his universe.]

The Existentalist position is (possibly) self-consistent, but there are several fairly obvious problems with it.  Most obviously, they talk about morality, but the morality they talk about has no connection with what we ordinarily mean by the word.  Also, they talk a lot about morality in the ordinary sense - humans 'should' struggle to lead an authentic life, each individual 'must' create their own morality, and so on - so they define morality in one way, but then use it in another, in a way they claim has no meaning.  And, while some of their literature is still interesting and entertaining, very few people attempt to take Existentialism as a philosophical position seriously these days.  For these reasons, among others, they cannot help us resolve the moral conflicts we face today.

Proposal: Building Agreement

I would like to suggest the possibility of building a shared moral framework from first principles.  This approach is deliberately side-stepping the question of whether morality is real: if we can agree on a culturally-agnostic framework within which we can discuss moral issues, it functions as something real.

Level One: Survival

Life is good.

Every living creature seeks to survive: it works to find food and avoid being eaten.  The moral framework here is very simple: life is good, staying alive is good.

This works for the most primitive single-celled organisms, and it works - in general - for the most advanced and complex organisms.  The main complication arises once sex is invented, because sexual reproduction requires the eventual death of the parents: your aim is not survival, but reproduction; you want to produce as many successful offspring as possible, and at some point this means that you do not compete with them.  Your aim is reproduction, but in order to succeed - to reproduce - you must survive up to the point where that becomes possible.

Some species (like salmon) die immediately after reproducing; some die after reproducing multiple times; and some only die after caring for their offspring and raising them to maturity.  So, for many creatures, 'life is good' does not mean that I must live for as long as possible; it means that I must live until I have done all I can to produce successful offspring who will live after me.

Nietsche understands and expresses this level of morality very well.  He generally talks about 'power', but his 'will to power' is little more than the desire to survive.

Level Two: Society

Protecting society is good.

Every living creature has an inbuilt aim of surviving in order to reproduce.  Some living creatures are social, and their survival and success is tied up with the survival and success of their group - their pack, band, troop or tribe.  The group offers both provision and protection to its members, and requires their work and loyalty in return.  So every social creature has two moral principles, because their success operates at two, quite different, levels.  Life is good, but the success of my group is also good - and sometimes those two principles will conflict.  Sometimes what is good for my group is not good for me personally, and I have to make a choice.

If every individual places their wellbeing above the wellbeing of the tribe, the tribe will fail and the individuals will die.  So, for a social creature, the wellbeing of the group must be more important than their individual wellbeing: the group must come before the individual.  This is the basis of pretty much every moral code throughout history: when I have a choice, I have to choose the group before myself.  Kindness and generosity benefit the group, they are good; selfishness and cowardice (self-protection) harm the group, they are bad.

Belonging to a tribe imposes a moral obligation towards the tribe; this is a very real cost, but the alternative - the failure of the tribe - is far worse.  However, this moral obligation only extends to my tribe.  In every society, murder is wrong - but, for most people, at most times, murder has been clearly defined as killing a member of your tribe.  If you happen to kill a member of another tribe, that may be unwise (they might retaliate, if they find out) - but it isn't clearly wrong, and sometimes it is praiseworthy.

If I must put the wellbeing of my tribe before my own needs, then I must know who my tribe is.  Tribal boundaries must be clear and unambiguous: when I meet someone in the forest, I must know - quickly and reliably - whether this is one of us, or not.  How I act (at least, how I should act) towards them depends entirely on whether they are a member of my tribe (a person) or not a member of my tribe (a non-person).

In practice, many tribes do not have a strict binary morality - members of other tribes are offered some rights and protections - but when you have to make a choice, then the wellbeing of your tribe (and your own individual wellbeing) is more important than the wellbeing of a stranger.

We see this functional morality being lived out in the tribes we create in modern society, which can exist at multiple levels, with my family and my extended family often being the first two.  The less that individuals can rely on the provision and protection of the state, the more they band together into groups that look out for one other.  For many criminals, "I'm not a grass" is a clear moral stance, protecting the wellbeing of their tribe despite the personal cost.

Level Three: Sacrifice

Loving the stranger and the inarticulate is good.

The modern state claims the loyalty due to your tribe, but often fails to live up to the obligations of provision and protection which goes with this status.  Despite this, most people try to be good citizens, even if we often function as members of smaller tribes.

The temptation is to reduce my tribe - the people I am really committed to, the group whose wellbeing I put before my own - to the smallest possible group.  This is the most immediate, most reliable (when it works) and least costly approach.  But it is possible to resist this temptation and move the tribal boundary the other way - outward - to embrace the whole human race, and all of creation.

Many people accept at an intellectual level the idea that every human life is of equal value - whatever their age, sex, religion, nationality or bank balance.  But we can't actually live that way: consistently and fully living according to that belief is unachievable, for many reasons.

Our resources are limited, and even if it were possible, even for a billionaire, dividing everything equally between 8 billion people would make no practical difference to anyone; even if we only targeted the 7 million people in extreme poverty, the benefit would be negligible.  And the actual needs of those 7 million people very greatly - clean water supply, being allowed to return home, the end of the war which displaced them, access to medical care, and so on.  We need to find better ways to respond to global needs, to the struggles and suffering of millions of poor people around the world.

But, despite the practical challenges, it is hard to argue with the basic premise: my life (and the lives of the members of my family, village or nation) is no more valuable than those of the poorest and most vulnerable people anywhere on the planet.  And, if the people matter, then the health of the planet - on which we all depend - also matters.

Levels one and two - life is good, and society is good - are moral beliefs, but they also make sense from an evolutionary perspective.  On these levels, it makes very little difference whether you believe in the moral principle, or simply act out of enlightened self interest.

But level three requires us to act against our own self interest, expending resources which could be used to benefit ourselves, and applying them for the benefit of strangers, people we will never meet and who cannot possible help us in return.

At least, level three requires us to act against our own short-term, immediate self interest. It makes sense to work for my tribe to be happy and successful, but it also makes sense to work for the tribes around us also to be happy and successful: if they are struggling and feel threatened, they are much more likely to think about taking the good stuff we have; the worse their own situation, the more they will be willing to risk, in order to improve it. I can only be securely happy and successful if my tribe is, and my tribe can only be securely happy and successful if the tribes around us are too.

And, for all of us, a secure and successful future depends entirely upon a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. In practice, this means a healthy global ecosystem: everything is connected, and no part of the planet can be isolated from the other parts. Sand from the Sahara fertilises the Amazon rainforest.

Putting it Into Practice

There are many practical challenges, questions about how to live a moral life, and the detailed answers may well be different for each individual.  But, it seems to me, that understanding morality in terms of these three levels, can give us a starting point for discussing these difficult questions.

Every moral disagreement is precisely that - a disagreement between people upholding two different moral principles.  And it is often obvious from the outside that both parties are seeking to uphold a perfectly valid moral position.  The rhetoric may say that we are upholding obvious moral principles, while they are evil - opposed to the good and uncaring about the harm they cause - but the moral argument is generally little more than the claim that our ethical principles must over-rule their ethical principles.

So, for example, with abortion: it is hard to disagree with the one side saying that women should have the right to say what they do with their own bodies, but it is also hard to disagree with the other side saying that unborn babies should have the right to live.  If we see it as a clash of moral principles, then conflict is inevitable: both sides want to resolve the conflict in their favour - and because these are abstract principles, any such resolution will mean that one side will always win over the other.

But life does not consist of the clash of moral principles - it consists of concrete activity, each action in one specific situation.  Telling the truth is a clear and obvious moral principle, but when the secret police ask you to tell them the location of a political dissident, truth telling is probably not the only moral principle to consider.

If we want to address moral disagreements in a constructive way, the only plausible approach is to accept at the start that both sides are right, and it is very unlikely that one side should, on all occasions, in all circumstances, over-rule the other.  So the actual question to consider is not 'which side is right?', but 'in which circumstances should this principle take priority over that principle?'

To take a less emotionally charged example: the old story of two monks asking their abbot for permission.  One asks if it is acceptable to smoke while you are praying, and is told no; the other asks if it is acceptable to pray while you are smoking, and is told yes.

If you think about the abstract principle, the decisions are absurd and contradictory, but life is not lived in abstract principles: in a monastery, the monks will have time set aside for prayer, and at those times it is not acceptable to be distracted by smoking while they are praying; on the other hand, monks will also have some limited free time when they are permitted to smoke, and at those times it is very acceptable to use their time more constructively by praying while they are smoking.  In the real world, the decision is not absurd, but wise and practical.

We will never resolve the conflict between opposing moral principles, but it is entirely possible that, in the real world, we can find wide and practical ways to handle the specific instances where these principles pull people apart.

The details of how to resolve these conflicts must be beyond the scope of this article, but I hope that it sketches out a framework within which a resolution can become possible.

Some Further Reflections

Three Systems

Sadly, the three levels described above do not neatly map onto our Particles, People and Purpose framework, as the most basic level – life – clearly belongs in the middle part with the people and biology.

But, interestingly, when you study Ethics, you are presented with three main systems – three alternatives, which each claim primacy, and which do map reasonably neatly into our framework. You choose between them, depending on whether you consider Action, Character or Principle to be the most important factor in making an ethical decision.

If you believe in consequentialism, you care most about the Action and its results; if you believe in virtue ethics, then the Character and intentions of the people matter most to you; and if you believe in deontology, then you care most about the Principle being applied, how appropriate it was, and how well the rules were followed.

Consequentialism focuses on the Action and its consequences; it usually judges these on the basis of the overall happiness (or, sometimes, well-being) of the group, which leads to Utilitarianism as promoted by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. It fits neatly into the ‘Particles’ part of the framework: happiness and well-being are considered to be objective facts, which are in principle measurable, rather than subjective experiences.

Virtue Ethics focuses on the character of the person performing the action. Rather than following strict rules, it asks what a good, virtuous person would do in that situation, and what sort of person you would become if you follow one course of action rather than another. You can find virtue ethics in the writings of Aristotle, and it fits clearly into the ‘People’ part of the framework.

Deontology focuses on the Principle being applied: it asks about obligations, duties, rules, and rights. It asks whether the act was based on adherence to moral laws, regardless of the consequences. Immanuel Kant promoted this approach through his ‘categorical imperative’, and it clearly fits into the abstract ‘Purpose’ part of the framework.

Kohlberg’s Three Levels

Lawrence Kohlberg described three levels and six stages of moral development. That is, he described three levels, each of which can be divided into two parts, the early parts of which many people move through, and the latter parts fewer people manage to reach. In brief, he identified them as follows.

Level 1: Pre-Conventional Morality. This is mostly seen in young children. It consists of stage 1, ‘Obedience and Punishment’, in which actions are judged only by their direct consequences, so you obey rules to avoid punishment; and stage 2, ‘Self-Interest’, in which behaviour is shaped by the perception of personal gain – either direct benefit or fair exchange.

Level 2: Conventional Morality. This is mostly seen in older children and adults. It consists of stage 3, ‘Interpersonal Accord’, in which decisions are based on social approval, because people want to be viewed as good and kind by their peers and authority figures; and stage 4, ‘Authority and Social Order’, in which people obey laws and carry out their duties because they believe the rules and duties keep them safe ensures that society remains stable.

Level 3: Post-Conventional Morality. This is considered to be rare, even in adults. It consists of stage 5, ‘Social Contract’, in which laws are understood to be flexible social agreements rather than absolute rules, so people support the rules and laws that they believe protect fairness, individual rights and the common good, but want to change unfair rules and laws; and stage 6, which is described as ‘Universal Ethical Principles’.

It’s an interesting approach, which is generally helpful approach from the perspective of developmental psychology. However, like many descriptions of stages of development, the overall picture tells us more about Kohlberg’s understanding and beliefs than it does about morality.

It’s tempting to attempt a mapping between the three systems described above and Kohlberg’s three levels, but probably not very helpful because he is talking about how people develop and use moral understanding, rather than the nature of the morality being understood. They are talking about different things.

Post-Conventional Morality

I think there is another problem with mapping between the systems and Kohlberg’s levels: it seems to me that Kohlberg is inconsistent in his description of morality. You see it most clearly in his stage 6, where people are supposed to be connecting with ‘Universal Ethical Principles’ – in part because, humans really struggle to agree just what these ‘Universal Ethical Principles’ actually consist of; and, in part, because their moral reasoning is described as being guided by self-chosen ethical principles, which are clearly internal and personal rather than objective and universal.

Of course, stage 6 requires you to adopt a ‘universal perspective’, in which you imagine yourself in the shoes of everyone who may be affected by your actions. But this is a counsel of perfection and clearly impossible to achieve. We may convince ourselves that we have achieved complete impartiality, but it is always a delusion.

At stage 6, people follow their conscience in a way which is disconnected from the moral principles of the people around them, and is potentially also disconnected from anything which other people have ever considered to be moral. “Do what seems good or right to you.” This is not morality, it is the anti-morality of Nietsche’s superman: don’t worry if your actions harm or degrade others, simply be true to yourself.

There may be serious problems with conventional morality, but it seems to me that you don’t solve those problems by aiming to transcend conventional morality: you solve them by identifying the weaknesses, and looking for ways to address them.

Pulling It Together

The basic problem with both the three systems and Kohlberg’s levels is that they each offer a several incompatible understandings of morality. Implicit in each of these approaches is the expectation that, if you want to apply this in the real world, you have to decide which of the options you actually believe, and accept that the other options are well-intentioned but wrong. Is morality fundamentally about Action, Character or Principle? Do society’s laws actually matter or are they simply convenient social agreements?

Kohlberg’s levels may describe normal human development, but they face the old challenge: as David Hume pointed out, you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. This may be a factual description of how human understanding of morality develops, but it can tell us nothing about the nature of the morality we are seeking to understand.

On the other hand the three levels of Survival, Society and Sacrifice are actually three levels of morality: each one is a moral principle, and each one confirms and builds upon the importance of the previous level – Society is important, precisely because it is necessary for Survival.

A Final Thought

What matters is life, not the institutions we built to preserve it.

People build systems, structures and institutions. Sometimes they are designed to restrict and harm, but mostly they are built in order to promote life. But, once built, these systems and institutions take on a life of their own; they may continue to do the intended good they were designed for, at least to some degree, but there is also a cost. There is always a cost.

If you want to do a good thing, you have to plan and organise and pay and maintain; we accept the cost because it is necessary to achieve the good, and that is just the way things are. We don’t always notice when the cost of maintaining the institution becomes greater than the good it achieves, because we know that the institution is good and therefore must be preserved.

We can become intellectually and emotionally dependent upon the systems, structures and institutions we are familiar with; we can treat them as inevitable, as ‘given’, simply because they have always been there. Perhaps we can’t imagine life without them – life without, for example, nations, capitalism or democracy – but that does not make them inevitable, and it certainly does not mean that they cannot be improved, better able to meet the current needs.

Sometimes, what we think of as a moral argument is not actually a disagreement about different moral principles, sometimes it is a disagreement about the tools we use, or which tools we should use; sometimes we fail to distinguish between means and ends, and start to think that the tool is good because we use the tool to achieve some good outcome (or become a better person, or implement a good principle).

In our moral arguments, we need to remember that tools are only as good as the way we use them; we need systems, structures and institutions, but while they may be necessary, they are not good in themselves: they are simply tools which can, if we use them right, be used to do good.

[The 'Further Reflections' were added on 7 September 2026.]