[Back to Morality]

Introduction: 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 recognise 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.

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.

And, to be clear, 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.

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 my (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

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 gasses 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.  In short, they talk about morality, but the morality they talk about has no connection with what we ordinarily mean by the word.  And, to state the obvious, they cannot help us resolved 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 succcess 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.

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, 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 difference to anyone; even if we only targetted 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,

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.

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.