Can you derive an ought from an is?
Consider this hypothesis:
‘Oughts’ must always be accompanied by a goal of some kind. ‘Ethical oughts’ are a subset in which the goal is in some way related to degrees of pleasure or suffering of others.
If we expand on this we can see examples of fairly straight-forward ‘oughts’ like, “you ought to pour the hot water into the tea cup” where the unspoken goal is “if you want to make a cup of tea then…”. This ‘ought’ combined with these ‘ises’ (i.e. there are ‘ises’ in that there is a cup, that there is water, that there is a creature with a goal of making a cup of tea, etc) show that it is ‘wrong’ to pour the water on the bench and ‘right’ to pour it in the cup. If the goal was to clean the dishes then the ‘ought’ would change.
Ethical ‘oughts’ like, “you ought not steal” have unspoken goals like “if you want to avoid making others unhappy then…”. This ‘ought’ is also derived from a bunch of ‘ises’ (there are other people who are unhappy when stolen from, you are a creature with the ability to steal or not steal, you are a creature who doesn’t want others to be unhappy, etc) and shows that, within this framework, there is a ‘right’ way to act and a ‘wrong’ way to act.
When you read the ethical example you are no doubt asking “well, why ‘ought’ you want others to be happy?” You could ask the same of the tea cup example; why ‘ought’ you make a cup of tea? We can step out to meta-oughts and we’ll find that the same rules apply: that even a meta-ought requires a goal of some kind and that an ethical meta-ought will involve some kind of ability to make others suffer.
We ought to make a cup of coffee because we desire it (thirst, addiction, etc). If we are to fulfil this desire then we ‘ought’ to make a cup of coffee. It is ‘right’ in this context to boil the jug.
We ought to want to make others happy (or, at least, not cause others to suffer) if we find ourselves in a society which returns favours or which punishes us when we cause harm. It is ‘right’ to not cause others to suffer in this context.
What about meta-meta-oughts? The same rules apply. Each meta-ought gradually becomes more and more empirically simple, not more and more supernaturally ethereal. They fade out into ‘ises’. We eventually end up with ‘oughts’ based on how our bodies/brains work. We ought to be thirsty because our bodies trigger a thirst response when they require water to keep working. Conversely, we ought to fight this addiction (if it is one) because our brains — through gradual understanding about how the world works — informs us that even though our bodies desire and reward us for caffeine we are suffering in other ways. We ought to avoid suffering because our bodies use suffering in order to stop us harming ourselves. Our bodies ought to provide these responses if we are to survive and spread our genes. Our genes are configured in this way because if they weren’t we wouldn’t be here. At the very foundation it’s simply a matter of patterns that survive.
At some stage our ethical oughts fade into non-ethical oughts when the ‘ought’ no longer pertains to the well being of others. Even if you believe in the existence of a God who is either a punisher and rewarder (you ought to simply because God says you ought to) or a trustworthy advisor (we ought to because God knows more about how the universe works and his advice can be trusted to bring us happiness) we eventually end up with ethical oughts based on our own personal well being which, as I have shown, fade into non-ethical oughts because they don’t involve the well being of others. If you believe in a God of some kind ask yourself “why oughtn’t I murder?” and follow those meta-oughts as far as you can. I guarantee you’ll end up dealing with a non-ethical ought based on your own well being which, in turn, will end up disappointingly as a mere surviving genetic pattern. (I personally don’t find it disappointing; I think it’s one of the most wonderful things ever. I used to though.)
It shouldn’t really surprise us that complexity arises from simplicity. We have first-hand experience of gradually arising from a single sperm and an egg. We know that the amazing diversity of life evolved from simple chemical reactions billions of years ago. We suspect that the universe itself came about from deep simplicity. When we examine oughts and meta-oughts it certainly feels as though the ought of “you ought not steal” should have come from on high but as with the case of the coffee-making we can see that even this arises from something as simple as looking after our own interests.
At their very foundation, ‘oughts’ (even ethical ‘oughts’) are ‘ises’. It’s the layers of meta-oughts that trick us into thinking otherwise. It’s also the fact that some people are happy to speak the implicit “if you want to make a cup of tea then…” in common oughts but have difficulty speaking the implicit “if you want to avoid causing suffering then…” in what we term ‘ethical oughts’.
(This was originally posted as a comment over at FruitfulFaith and it was only after seeing how monstrously huge it was that I realised it was suitable as a post in itself. I’ve had a lot of different thoughts on morality and the issues that surround it and this is a good distillation of my latest thinking. And like all my previous thoughts this will likely change too — but right now I can’t see any gaping holes and it seems a fairly robust hypothesis capable of explaining a lot.)
Yes, and yes again. I very much agree.
I am almost exhausted out of wanting to talk about this topic at the moment, mostly because this revolves around my area of study and I do too much thinking on this issue… BUT this is such a worthy post it deserves a comment.
I tend to see ‘ought’ issues as imperatives in light of a goal-seeking behaviour. I think that we can also say that usually an “immoral” action that is exploitative in some way is preferential and not impartial, and it therefore irrational (i.e. i give person X special treatment A, except they are ostensibly no different to person Y who I give lesser treatment B, which is not rational i.e. based on no good reason).
There is one issue which I think is currently unanswerable to me, being, “Why should we live / value life?” This is because I think that “moral” imperatives are the set of rules that people “ought” to use in order to flourish. Flourishing, of course, requires life and existence. I think if a person doesn’t wish to live then there isn’t anything I can say to them, moral oughts don’t apply to the dead.
However, IF a person wants to live, and IF a person wishes to flourish, THEN…
Iain, thanks for your comment. It’s always nice to come across someone who shares a common understanding!
I’m interested in the inverse of your “preferential and not impartial” concept of morality. How do you see this working for, say, where I will go out of my way to make my wife happy but I might not do so for someone starving in Africa? Do you see this preferential treatment as immoral? Or does this only apply to issues of exploitation?
The question of “Why should we live / value life?” is a good one. I think that the question of survival is on the very cusp of where ‘oughts’ and ‘ises’ meet. Ought a heart muscle pulse? Invalid question because heart muscles don’t choose or have goals. Ought a person breathe? Semi-valid question because, whilst your body won’t allow you to kill yourself by holding your breath, you can asphyxiate yourself in other ways by way of your own choice.
As an aside, the ethical issue I see with suicide is that you cause so much suffering to other people. If I were alone and nobody knew of my existence and I were to desire to kill myself above all my desire to live then I don’t think it would be an ethical issue to do so (this assumes that no one gets to know I’ve done it either).
If, as I claim, oughts are all tied to goals then it makes no sense to ask whether a heart muscle ought to pulse but it makes sense to ask whether a person (with goals to live or die) ought to kill themselves. And if, as I claim, ethical oughts are just ordinary oughts that specifically pertain to the well-being of others then it makes no sense to ask whether a person ethically ought to kill themselves if no one else can be affected whereas it does become an ethical question otherwise (and how many people are able to kill themselves without impacting on the well-being of others?).
On the question of the relationship between ‘oughts’ and ‘ises’ I believe we can say that “ethical oughts” are to the well-being of others as “nutritional oughts” are to our eating habits. The words “ethical” and “nutritional” simply describe the category of “ought” we are talking about. If we have no problem with nutritional oughts being derived from empirical observations then why do people have such an issue with ethical oughts? Perhaps it is because no one has based their beliefs on a presupposition that “nutritional oughts” are some ethereal law of the universe created by the Almighty. Then why would some people presuppose that “ethical oughts” come from an external being?
And what kind of ethics do people have who believe they are only not murdering because a God told them not to?
Okay, a lot to comment on there!
First thing: special relationships. Even though I am largely utilitarian and rationalistic in my thinking, there is one thing aspect that utilitarian morals need which some consider to be a bit of a cheat and is at least very difficult to parse.
(Note: I will use utilitarianism as an example sympathetic to my own preferences, but this same issue could easily apply in other ethical systems)
Usually, a rational line of thinking would go something like this:
HOW SHOULD I TREAT PERSON ‘B’?
(1) Due to the nature of A, I ought to give them treatment X.
(2) A and B are both ostensibly equal people.
Therefore, (3) I ought to give B the treatment X.
Irrational impartiality comes into the picture when, despite the above realisation, I choose to instead give B the treatment Y. This might be either good or bad for B depending on what that different treatment is.
HOWEVER, utilitarianism still accepts the possibility that you might have a ‘special relationship’ (SR) with B. You might need to think carefully before deciding who deserves the SR, one what this SR is founded, when and where you act impartially based on this SR, and so forth. A great many ethical philosophers debate this as a major issue in itself.
A fact that can quite easily be established is that SRs are actually required for the smooth functioning of families, societies, and in relationship with frequent associates. This shows that SRs can actually have great utility and in many cases be the source of ‘moral’ imperatives. For example, from a utilitarian perspective, a Mother who felt no more burden to feed, shelter, and clothe her baby than her neighbour (or a stranger she saw on the bus) would probably lead to a fairly unhappy baby.
I attended a PhD presentation on SRs, and an example he gave was walking down a wharf and seeing two people drowning. You can only jump in and save one. Who do you save?
Now, imagine one of them is your wife. Who do you save?
Even amongst hardened, rational philosophers of ethics, SRs play an inescapable role in our thinking. I’m not saying this is good, merely that it is. More importantly, while you may not have an ethical burden to save you wife in the above example (both people require saving), you won’t (socially) incur any moral blameworthyness for choosing your wife over the stranger.
On a different note, I quite like your approach to suicide. It makes a lot of sense when you frame it with respect to how embedded we are in society. That is one great tragedy of suicide after all, the people left behind to mourn.
I agree that we have a ‘nutritional ought’ to feed ourselves but, yes, our actual body has no choice on what role it plays. This is only because of our own conscious mastery over our actions. You might argue that our bodies, via our gene pool, has gone through its own line of ‘biological oughts’ at the level of the Intentional Stance (Dennett) as it has fought for its own evolutionary goals down through the centuries.
One big reason why I believe people people get so caught up on absolutist ethical oughts is because, in my opinion, people mis-attribute the psychological force of their own ‘moral oughts’ as rooted in an external agency. “After all,” they might think, “if my conscience is telling me to do something that *I* don’t want to do… then the source of morality must be external!”
As for the last question, when people profess this to me (it has happened a few times) I actually don’t believe them. I remember saying once, “I have more faith in your character than you do; I think you would still be the good person that you are even if you didn’t believe in God.”
I mean, really, one minute they’re a Nurse and the next minute they’re an atheist sociopath? I hardly think so. It’s a false rationalisation and a meme.
Well said Iain.
I’d never encountered the term ‘SR’ before but have read about a possible genetic explanation for what sounds like Special Relationships (in The Selfish Gene IIRC).
I quite like the explanatory power where genes form the base on which societal SRs emerge and in which ideological and even misattributed SRs may also emerge.
i.e. All living things of a certain complexity have incredibly strong urges to protect their offspring. And this urge tapers off in proportion to the percentage of genes you share or have invested. The underlying mechanisms of this allow us to extend our SRs to people we are familiar with (our society, other animals) as well as to form ideologies which allow us to extend it even further. ‘Misattributed’ SRs can also crop up (imagine the lion raised with the sheep who will care for it and protect it). All of these SRs are generally beneficial but can occasionally be detrimental (again, imagine the person who runs into their burning house to save their favourite painting; a SR with an inanimate object with potential to cause death).
Do they deal with the possible genetic basis for SRs in the material you study?
Interesting topic.