Morality

At its core, any question about morality is asking “what is the right way to live?”.  For millennia, this question has driven our philosophy, our policies, our religions, and our wars.  A culture’s answer informs its entire structure; if there is a right way to live, people should live in that way.  It is an imperative question to answer, and answer correctly.  However, most solutions are based on beliefs and worldviews that crumble under close inspection; we have found no objective way to verify our answer.  But, as an old wizard might say, how we should live is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole of humanity is curious.  Almost every war is inspired by differing moralities; a non-trivial, universal solution would redefine our world and spell the end of these moral fights. A specific morality is typically derived from something else; otherwise it seems arbitrary and disputable.  Many philosophers have tried to establish morality logically—indeed, I attempt a trivial version of this below—but such approaches invariably rely on disputable assumptions.  No basis seems stable.  The morality many search for is a primal division of right and wrong in the universe, one that is important, irrefutable, and unchanging.  Religion is a common source of such morality.  If God really did write down the rules at some point, we should certainly all try to follow them, but unfortunately such a thing is hard to verify.  One would have to start by defining exactly what God (or some equivalent force(s)) is and how they interact with the world, something most religious people disagree on, and then prove that they are the only possible source of a given set of rules—a heavily edited and translated book’s claiming that it happened doesn’t quite seem to prove this.  Even more problematically, since each religion identifies different deities and derives from them different moralities, we aren’t left with a remotely universal solution unless we can differentiate one true religion amongst all of the world’s religions—a difficult process which deserves its own discussion.  However, there’s a cleaner solution: while every religion’s rules are slightly different from the next, there are clear patterns shared between nearly every one.  A morality established from these shared themes, instead of one specific religion, implicitly rejects the religious aspects of religion, relying instead on the instincts of the people creating and accepting the religions in question.  While these methods have recently found popularity, they bring their own problems.
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Without a universe-creating authority to establish morality, we have only ourselves.  The idea is that our most reliable basis for morality is our own consciences.  This makes some sense.  Why don’t atheists commit murder?  One would hope that it’s not merely because its illegal, but because it is intuitively wrong, on some deep, inter-cultural level.  If this is true, it would follow that we could base morality on our consciences, using nature itself as a moral authority (this is motivated differently but similar to evolutionary ethics, which cares more about the system of evolution than some truer “right” and “wrong” driving human instincts).  Philosophers have always trusted this to some degree; intuitions and feelings are often used to justify a priori reasoning in philosophy.  To establish such a basis quantitatively, many philosophers have begun polling large groups of people to better understand the intuitions of the masses.  This methodology has gained traction, inspiring a branch of philosophy called experimental philosophy.  However, while this can be a useful practice—understanding what people believe and how different cultures think relative to one another could inform anything from advertisements to international policy—it does not necessarily provide any reliable basis for morality.  We aren’t asking for the logically deducted moral code of every human, we are sampling the actions and instincts people might have when presented with different situations.  This information differs in degree but not kind from the reasoning of an armchair philosopher: more baseless opinions do not give us authority, they simply give us more opinions.  We only answer the questions we ask.  To get a better answer, then, let’s look to the specific reasonings these systems are built on.

Similar motivations seem to guide most moral systems; they seem engineered to improve the experiences recognized by their creator.  As our civilization has grown, we have come to care about more and more experiences: those of other nations and races, those of women, those of children, and recently, those of animals.  As these understandings have evolved, so too have our moral systems.  However, a single motivation unites these often disparate systems: to improve the experience of life.  Life itself is not holy to us.  Nothing material is.  Most moral systems care only for consciousness.  They aim to fill life with structure, rules and honor that train conscious beings and reward them with experience.  Some moral systems (especially early ones) may still seem unfair on an individual level, and they are, to this individual-based perspective.  These systems are (almost entirely (1)) weighted by perceived experience.  People care nothing for rocks, some for dogs, and most for other people.  This is because we believe each system is experiencing quite differently.  If I kick a rock, it doesn’t have a bad experience, so I shouldn’t worry about kicking the rock (ignoring the nasty experience I might have with my toe).  Abortion arguments constantly run into the baby’s development because people care whether the fetus is experiencing anything when it is killed—whether it is conscious (although there are other legitimate sources of concern).  And consciousness does make some sense as the root of morality.  It is, and has always been, the thing we understand the least about.  While material objects have proven to be reproducible and replaceable, consciousness is something that no one is sure how to build.  We have a lot of theories (again, this is a topic for another post), but none of them by far are airtight.  We aren’t even sure if it’s material or not.  In my opinion, if anything we’ve discovered in our universe hints at the existence of something more, some higher order that could potentially spell out the definitive difference between right and wrong, it’s the existence of experience, a phenomena we struggle to understand at a level high enough even to argue about it.  So it would make sense to build a moral system (indeed, almost all of our moral systems) around consciousness.  Consciousness is what we feel for; it is what we identify as “I”, what we forgive, blame, or love in others.  It is what we see to be the self.  When we talk of individuals and decisions, we are not talking of bodies and lives, but experiences and souls.  Consciousness, whatever it is, represents the thing we are concerned for when we think about morality.

However, while this basis is almost never questioned, it cannot stand inquiry.  It has no why.  This is simply more of what we had before—either basing morality on nothing or whatever mysterious thing we are yet to understand.  Even if we don’t understand consciousness or cannot explain its origin, that does not make it holy.  That does not make it something we must preserve.  We have to have a better explanation.  It matters not—just like experimental ethics—if everyone inexplicably cares about consciousness; if no one has a good reason to do so, it cannot be trusted as a basis for morality.  We have no guarantee that someone might not come up with a more rigorous set of moral rules that completely disregard our consciousnesses.  Or perhaps we live in a simulation and experience is our only link to the outer “real” world.  We simply are not sure.  We have not found a reliable way to logically derive a truly non-trivial, universal morality.  We are left with no universal rules.

This is the point that many philosophers might end on, and it is a tempting one.  In Ishmael, Daniel Quinn aims to convince the reader that “there is no one right way to live” (248).  It is a tempting thesis.  If we have no authoritative basis for morality, then morality cannot have a universal solution.  Therefore, the reasoning goes, any morality should be equally right.  This is often the viewpoint of villains and dictators—it is a viewpoint without a true right and wrong, one without justification because no justification exists.  In Harry Potter, Voldemort’s Ministry of Magic carries the slogan “Magic Is Might,” tossing aside the morality of controlling all non-magical people because it is possible and preferable for those in power.  In Matthew Stover’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Darth Sideous (the Emperor-to-be) explains, “good is a point of view… and the Jedi concept of good is not the only valid one” (224).  Such theories are scary because they are so difficult to challenge.  Without any higher authority to refer to, one is left with little to base an argument on.  Why was Hitler’s plan wrong?  Because God said so?  Because it’s illegal?  Because it feels wrong?  These are unsatisfying—but even scarier is the thought that it’s only untenable because of the world it would create (2), that the ends could potentially justify any means were such a plan to create a “better” world.  But what else are we left with?

While we have failed to construct a universally true set of rules, we can try to derive some constraints for the sets of rules we would consider moral.  Thus, while there won’t be a hard-and-fast set of instructions to follow to live life correctly, we can bound potential rule sets with an intentionally weak definition of morals.  If morals are the “right” or “good” set of rules, that must mean that they lead to a better situation than the alternative.  In other words, morals are a set of rules which bring success.

This designation will guide the rest of my post, so I’d like to note a few of its features.  It is not a strong definition of morals; it does not define what our morals are precisely, it defines the type of thing morals are.   Morals will be the rules for success, no matter what they are or where you find them.  Note, however, that these determinations are system-specific.  There are many possible systems in which life thrives—many possible successful setups; this qualification does not bind morality, it simply restricts it based on the (hopefully reasonable) definition of morality I have supplied.  An action is moral if it will lead to success, and amoral if it will not.  (And if you disagree with this classification at least you know the set of actions I’m referring to in the rest of this post.) Despite possible appearances, this is not an extremely restrictive qualification: many actions do nothing with regard to this metric, and one specific action may have myriad effects depending on the context in which it is done. This guide therefore fits quite well with the perspective of Daniel Quinn, who states repeatedly in My Ishmael that “there is no one right way for people to live, any more than there is one right way for people to live, any more than there is one right way for birds to build nests or for spiders to spin webs” (188).  However, he is also emphatic that the way most people are currently living is wrong, because it will not lead to success.  His qualification for morality lies, as one might expect, in eventual success.  However, he does not offer his universal solution.  His eventual goal is not for humanity to be part of a single, improved culture, but many separate, functioning ones.  Similarly, there is never going to be one correct set of morals for all.  Each one must, at the very least, provide some opportunity for success.  Many cultures, depending on the planet, species, or population, may find a different working set of morals, often striving for many different ideas of success.  Additionally, this definition applies to many different systems’ rules; on an individual level, any number of goals (inspired by religion, honor, or achievement) might help one derive their own morals.  On a societal level, morals would be rules which contribute to the success of that culture as a whole.  From these perspectives, it becomes clear why morality is so closely tied to the rest of one’s philosophy; defining morality requires defining success for the system in question.  From the logic in Define Success, morality is for me intimately linked to survival.  A moral civilization is one which actively works towards its own survival.

When discussing morality with a friend, I introduced this metric as a loose guide for morality.  We explored its ability to handle potential concerns.  One major problem for us was that it seems to imply a very ends-concerned morality.  It provides no argument against destroying thousands of lives or even consciousnesses.  Perhaps that is truly the route that would lead to future stability.  We attempted to strengthen the constraints by considering potential results (as discussed in an earlier footnote), but in the end that is not the point.  Success is just a guideline.  It is a limit on morality; a requirement on its ends.  Nothing unsuccessful can be moral.  However, many different approaches can succeed.  Even systems of changing rules or inconsistent rules (as many of our cultures employ today) can be stable and successful.  Success cannot be used to deductively create a specific morality.  Consider this through the eyes of a constructor of morality: they have free rein to make life as fair, enjoyable, or exploratory as possible, but his system must lead to success, or he would not have created moral rules; his system would be immoral.  This is how success functions to bound potential moralities.

With this in mind, I would like to consider a situation my friend suggested which gave me pause.  This situation involves a single person, with two important rules:  1, they will die, and 2, they cannot have an effect on others in any way, even after death.  In such a situation, success (in the sense of survival) is quite explicitly banned.  (Interestingly, by my definition of reality, theirs is a distinct reality from our own, since nothing in their reality affects our own, and vice versa.)  Our subject will never have an effect on others’ survival.  Nothing they discuss, no idea nor place, will ever be of use to anyone else.  Nothing they create will have any purpose for someone beyond themselves—even creating other individuals is technically banned by the second rule.  They cannot matter.  This lack of effect is difficult to embrace, and for good reason: it demonstrates a situation in which logic cannot develop morality.  They could do anything: scream profanities, cut themselves, burn the planet, try to summon the devil, shout lies to the heavens.  None of it matters.  None of it affects the ultimate outcome.  Since they are fated to die, no rule brings survival.  Clearly, our subject could define their own success based on something else, and create their own morals.  But, on a larger level, their “society” (composed of only one individual) will die out, as its possible success is immediately and significantly limited.  Thus this mini-society cannot be moral; it has no means of finding success within the constraints of the situation.  Again, personal morals are possible in such a situation, but, by my definition, societal morals are not.  This is an immediate consequence of the extremes of this situation; the hopelessness one might feel in such a position is exactly why I declare that this example provides no possibility of morality, on a higher level.  They are the last being to inhabit their reality.  That is a situation to avoid.  It is the end game.  There is no escape.

Many people reasonably see our own civilization in such a light.  Because of our sun’s eventual death and the seemingly unavoidable end of the universe an immense amount of time beyond our own, life has no apparent chance of indefinite success into the future.  It will have an end.  Our lonely race seems to be a large and drawn out reenactment of the above situation.  While this nihilistic view is tempting, I believe there are several key differences between our situation and our former forlorn friend.  Firstly, despite our current innocence, we need not stay as lonely as our subject.  There is a decent chance that humanity could find and interact with an independent society, if it manages to survive long enough.  Other life arising (or life leaving Earth and developing elsewhere) seems quite plausible, given the large time scales that we could potentially wait.  Next, note that this duration is relatively undefined; unlike the strictly rule-bound situation above, our end is not etched in stone.  Many things could mean the end of humanity and its projects, but most are avoidable in principle.  While the scientist-foretold end-of-the-universe does seem like an unavoidable stop, there are a great many things involved in such a prediction that we still do not fundamentally understand.  Many different theories are still within the realm of plausibility, and a greater understanding of the systems at play is necessary to discern between them.  We might even learn that our best understanding of reality is fundamentally flawed—that there is something beyond our universe, potentially even something reachable from within our own.  Many people believe such things already.  Finally, it is possible that, with an advanced enough society, we could not only learn something dramatically new about the game, we could actually change the rules.  With enough energy, one could theoretically alter the physics of the universe around us at a quantum level.  Large civilizations may be a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.  But this is all still theoretical.  And unnecessary.

Even if success is just our trying to make the best of our short dance before the void, regardless of all the reasons it might not be, morals still lay out our best way of doing so.  I have already admitted that we currently have no reliable way to derive morals from something beyond ourselves, because no greater power nor larger significance than ourselves has been verifiably discovered.  That makes all of this semantics (still valid, by definition, but without greater meaning).  However, in such a world—one taken entirely at face value—we would be left with little else.  To me, morals are much more than semantics.  They are a beacon of stability as we build a civilization capable of understanding our true place in the world around us.  Morals allow us to live.  An amoral action is not bad, it is the very thing moral actions are done to support.  Without the effort we put into survival, we would not have the freedom to create as we do.  We would not be able to live satisfying lives if we were struggling just to live.  Moral actions are not satisfying, they are what allow us to find satisfaction in our true pursuits—athletic, academic, and artistic.  Morality paves the way for the rest of humanity.   Morals are nothing more or less than the pathway to success.