I’ve put together a somewhat unique analytical perspective which asks certain questions that classical philosophers appear not to have had any particular interest in. The foundational assumptions that I embrace and defend would—if they were taken seriously by established academic philosophers—threaten to eclipse the contributions of Descartes, Hume, Mill, Kant, Nietzsche, and Sartre. (Did I miss anyone?)
There are some key epistemological assumptions/observations that underlie my analysis of the Mind/Body problem, but I’ll save that for another time. What I wanted to focus on in this posting is the very different basis upon which I constructed my ethical theory.
Like Aristotle, Kant, and most other ethical philosophers, I begin with my understanding of what “most people” (non-philosophers) really mean when they say, “That behavior is just so wrong”, or “That’s immoral!” What they are actually doing (whether they realize it or not) when they make these judgments is ask themselves a very basic question about the behavior they are witnessing/judging. It is this:
“Would this action (or decision to not act) make everyone better off if everyone were to act (or choose not to act) in the same way?”
If so, then the action (or choice to not act) is moral. If everyone would be worse off if everyone were to act (or choose not to act) in the same way, then the action (choice to not act) would be immoral. If everyone would be neither better off nor worse off if everyone were to act (or not act) in the same way, then the action, or choice to not act, would be neither moral nor immoral (though it may be prudential).
I articulate this question as a ‘test’ which can be used to establish whether any act is moral or immoral or neither. It is a question which directly addresses the individual’s concerns about justice/fairness. “I can see how/why you might benefit from this kind of behavior, but what if everybody did that?” Morality, from this POV, is a concern about which kinds of behavior merit the approval of all the other members of the tribe (because all would benefit if all emulated the same kinds of moral behavior, or if all eschewed the same kinds of immoral behavior).
Yes, there are many questions to answer regarding this ‘test’, but I’ll wait for them to be mentioned before addressing them. But let me go ahead and acknowledge that this ‘foundational principle’ for ethics does echo Kant’s Categorical Imperative in that it ultimately stresses the necessary universalizability of a moral code. But also notice that my formulation makes my POV purely consequentialist. There is no reference to duty, for those ‘duties’ that are moral are those which would make everyone better off if everyone were to execute them.
For reasons that I’ll not go into just yet (it gets quite involved) my ethical theory fully accepts and embraces self-interest as the ultimate basis for acting morally. A ‘Good Will’ is something we embrace because everyone is intuitively aware that we would all be better off if we were all to develop a Good Will.
Also notice how this solves some of Utilitarianism’s biggest problems. I make no mention of ‘utility’, although the word does correspond in a way to the phrase I prefer which is “better off.” One cannot imagine my Ethics as recommending the sacrifice of any individual or minority in order to achieve the ‘higher end’ of more ‘total’ happiness for those who are not asked to make the sacrifice. Cuz if everyone were required to accept enslavement, we would not all be better off, but would indeed be worse off. In my formulation, actions are not moral if only one person, or a smaller number of people (e.g., an elite) would be better off at the expense of others (who are part of ‘everybody’).
Yes, because mine is a consequentialist conceptualization of The Moral, the calculus of “better off” can sometimes get complicated, depending upon the variables that are involved. But the problem we have with moral dilemmas is that they are complicated, and that cannot be avoided under any Ethical theory that tries to be relevant in our complicated modern world. It’s just complicated, that’s all. The more info we have about all relevant variables, the better our judgment will be re: which course of action is indeed the moral one we should embrace.
That should be enough to get this started off. Let me know what you think so far…