Note: This is part 3 of a series on morality and ethics. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 4, and part 5.
In my previous post about morality, I gave a list of baseline premises I think we can use to rationally derive a system of morality. To review, here are the premises, in roughly descending order of importance:
- Perpetuation of the human race
- The value of human life
- Individual autonomy and accountability
- Importance of community
- Respect for living things
- Intentions and consequentialism are both relevant when evaluating an act’s morality
- Utilitarianism: we should maximize the benefit to the greatest number of people without violating the above principles
Now can we apply these premises to derive a moral system of comprehensive rules which can be mechanistically applied to give us the “correct,” unambiguous moral answer in all circumstances? No. Morality is complicated. There are people who devote their entire career to studying ethics and morality. Ever since writing was invented, people have been writing about morality and debating about ethics. The human condition is too complicated and nuanced for someone to be able to write down a set of moral rules that are always applicable at all times. For example, while most of us would agree that it is immoral to lie, most of us would also agree that it is immoral not to lie in certain circumstances. Clearly people who hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II were morally justified in lying to the Nazi authorities to protect human life.
But on the other hand, it is too easy to use the incompleteness of any moral system to justify unethical behavior. We humans are good at rationalizing and justifying our behavior. We are all natural-born hypocrites. Honestly recognizing the inherent flaws of any ethical system is not a license to act unethically. The more explicit and systematic that we are in our thinking about morals and establishing moral rules, the harder it will be for the hypocrite in all of us to rationalize immoral behavior. These moral premises are a good starting point, therefore, to deriving a set of moral rules that can have the power to help us shape ourselves and how we live to be more moral.
There are three basic moral rules which derive from the above premises:
1. Be selfless and loving and live the golden rule
2. Act for the future
3. Promote the community’s welfare
These rules are broad principles which encompass many more specific moral rules. And those specific moral rules include both positive rules (rules about what we should be doing) and negative rules (rules about what we shouldn’t be doing). More immature systems of morality focus on the negative rules; they worry more about what we shouldn’t be doing. Negative rules are important, but they are only a starting point. “Do not kill” or “do not harm others” would be subrules that fall within Rule #1. Mature morality, though, goes beyond worrying about not causing harm to someone, but with actively taking steps to help improve that person’s life. In the next three posts in my series on morality, I’ll individually discuss each of the three moral rules.
There is a fourth class of moral rules which are of lesser importance. These are rules of cohesiveness, which are rules not based on the fundamental principles I’ve discussed so far, but are instead rules of behavior which help members of a community establish their separate identity. Examples of these sorts of rules include Mormonism’s prohibition on coffee, tea, and wine or Judaism’s dietary restrictions (such as avoiding pork). Mormons and Jews will tell you that they follow these rules because God commanded it. Whether or not you believe that is true, there is no external moral reason to follow them, other than God’s purported command. I think even Mormons and Jews will acknowledge that these rules are not universal moral rules binding on people outside their faith,1 as opposed to the above three universal rules. For example, Mormons who own food service businesses will feel no guilt preparing coffee and serving it to non-Mormons, but Mormons expect even non-Mormons to follow the Golden Rule. Divine origin or not, the practical purpose served by the Mormon and Jewish dietary rules is thus to help members of those groups distinguish themselves and set themselves apart from society at large by following behavioral restrictions binding only on group members. These rules of cohesiveness can serve an important purpose for group members, but should never be confused with the universal moral principles embodied in the three rules.
Footnotes
1 Indeed, you could argue that some of these rules contradict other, more universal moral principles. It is a moral principle that we should keep our bodies in good health. Mormonism’s restrictions on coffee, tea, and wine don’t serve any empirical health purpose, since the best research shows that all of these things are actually good for you. You could argue that, in general, it is more moral to consume these substances than to abstain (full disclosure, I myself am a practicing Mormon and don’t drink coffee, tea, or wine).
