Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Pragmatic Morality

One of the many useful things that religion does is provide a framework for morality. If God has told us what is moral, then the sincere religious person can rest easy knowing that by following his religion’s dictates he is doing what is right.

Without religion it’s more difficult to define morality and to decide whether something is right or wrong. At that, without a divine mandate, the entire enterprise of determining what is moral is called into question. Why does is matter is something is moral? After all, what is considered “good” or “bad” is largely determined by a combination of social norms and biological instincts. Neither of those are important in a written-in-the-sky kind of way, so who cares whether something is moral or not! That the norms of my society or my instincts tell me that I shouldn’t do something is not in itself a reason not to do it.

I think both problems, creating a moral code and a reason to keep it, can be addressed by adopting a pragmatic approach. And I think that a good starting point for a pragmatic morality is the Golden Rule. As Hillel phrased it: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

This is entirely pragmatic. If everyone follows the Rule, then we will all be treated well by everyone else – and that also provides the reason for behaving morally. I must behave morally because if I don’t, the system breaks down. It may be in my best interests at the moment, to, say, steal something from the grocery. If I do, though, then my fellows hano longer have motivation to treat me well – since they are treating me well in order that I treat them well – and the system breaks down. Inevitably, someone will steal from me – something that I don’t want to happen. Therefore I refrain from stealing from the grocery store in order to maintain the universal agreement that we all treat each other well.

The Golden Rule provides a simple, though not easy, basis for judging if an action is moral. If I were the person my action is affecting – not if I was in his place, but if I was him, with his likes and dislikes, his personality, his history, etc. – would I want to be treated that way? If yes the action is moral, if no then the action is immoral.

Of course, as with any moral system, there are gray areas. For example, giving a child a shot. The child certainly doesn’t want to be stuck with a needle, but it is in his best interest. Perhaps we could say that, if he knew that it was in his best interest, he would want it – except that forcing someone against their wish to do what we judge to be in their best interest is a dangerous road to go down. This needs more thought.

There is also the problem of bringing criminals to justice. A criminal who recognizes that what he did is wrong is not much of an issue. We look at it from his perspective, and try to treat him as we would want to be treated if we were caught doing something wrong. If I did something wrong, I would like understanding and compassion, but I recognize that there must be immediate consequences to deter people for whom the long-view of keeping things pleasant for everyone isn’t enough to keep them from breaking the moral code and ruining things for everyone else.

But what about someone who believes that what he did is right? I certainly wouldn’t want to be punished for something that I thought was the right thing to do. Not that I would want to be punished for something that I agree was the wrong thing, but there at least I can recognize the necessity of the punishment and acquiesce.  And what about someone who ascribes to a different moral system? We cannot subject him to the consequences of the Golden Rule moral system – after all, we would not want to subjected to consequences under the rules of his moral system. This also needs more thought.




These are some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for a while. A fully-developed moral system is beyond the scope of a single blog post, and likely beyond my amateur attempts at philosophy. I kind of like this idea, though. Any thoughts on how to make it more coherent?

7 comments:

  1. If one holds beliefs that require him or her to do something offensive or hurtful to another person, one should investigate his beliefs to determine whether they are correct. It's not OK to fall back on "well these are my beliefs" when someone else is being harmed. If a thorough investigation shows that one's beliefs are not based on reality, one is morally obligated to abandon those beliefs.

    But if you want to shake a lulav, be my guest.

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  2. (1) "Without a divine mandate, the entire enterprise of determining what is moral is called into question." The invocation of a divine mandate does not answer any fundamental moral question but merely changes the subject, as Socrates intimated to Euthyphro about 2400 years ago. If there is agreement about what the gods want of us--or, better still, what God wants of us (which avoids the problem of conflicting demands from different deities)--then serving the divine is a sufficient guide to life. The problems of the content and basis of morality are not solved in such a case but simply shrugged off. So abandoning theism does not deprive us of a solution to those problems but only of a way of evading those problems.

    (2) I wonder what you mean by "pragmatic."

    (3) Please replace the tiny, tiny print with a typeface of normal size. I had to change my browser display to read this post. And why the multiple lines of space between paragraphs?

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  3. >If one holds beliefs that require him or her to do something offensive or hurtful to another person, one should investigate his beliefs to determine whether they are correct.

    Why shouldn't the person being offended investigate whether what he is taking as offensive or hurtful truly is offensive and hurtful?

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  4. The pragmatic approach doesn't seem to be more of a motivation than the biological instinct motivation. Of course if everyone disregarded the golden rule then the system would break down, but it is very unlikely that simply because you stole something or lied or killed someone than the system would break down. It is very unlikely that a person would steal from you simply because you stole from others. Also it is very likely that something would be stolen from you even if you never stole a thing in your life.

    To me there are two main motivating factors for me to be moral. The first is my biologically developed instinct to act with empathy towards others. I gain a simple pleasure in seeing other people with whom I can identify experience happiness, comfort and pleasure.

    The other are social rewards and punishments. If I steal and am caught there will be consequences. If I return lost items I am rewarded.

    Now of course there are people who lack or have a lesser sense of empathy and have the ability to act without certain social consequences. In that case, neither appealing to the pragmatic golden rule or a divine being will convince them to act otherwise (unless they believe that God will punish them for acting immorally, in which case it isn't any different than social rewards and benefits that the person irrationally believes will apply to him).

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  5. tesyaa said...
    > If a thorough investigation shows that one's beliefs are not based on reality, one is morally obligated to abandon those beliefs.

    By what moral system? If according to their moral system one is not required to have reality-based beliefs – even if those beliefs cause harm to others – then I should judge them by the standards of their moral system, just as I would want them to judge me by the standards of mine.

    MKR said...
    > The problems of the content and basis of morality are not solved in such a case but simply shrugged off. So abandoning theism does not deprive us of a solution to those problems but only of a way of evading those problems.

    True. But I think the practical day-to-day result is the same. One who is following his religion’s dictates can be sure that he is behaving morally. Why it is moral is irrelevant. Without a religion to dictate what is moral, we need to find another way of establishing a moral code.

    > I wonder what you mean by "pragmatic."

    Practical, as opposed to esoteric. Both of us agreeing to be nice to each other so that we can be sure the other will treat us well is a practical basis for morality. Each of us being nice to the other because we are afraid that the bogey man will get us if we’re bad achieves the same results, but is an esoteric basis for morality.

    > replace the tiny, tiny print with a typeface of normal size. I had to change my browser display to read this post. And why the multiple lines of space between paragraphs?

    Sorry. It wasn’t my doing. It’s a quirk of Blogger that I haven’t seen before. I’m flattered that you went to so much trouble just to read what I have to say!

    Daniel Rosenberg said...
    > It is very unlikely that a person would steal from you simply because you stole from others. Also it is very likely that something would be stolen from you even if you never stole a thing in your life.

    True. I guess along with a pragmatic reason for morality I’m also looking to make it rational.

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  6. >but is an esoteric basis for morality.

    It might be a pragmatic basis when things go counter to your better interests.

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  7. "Why shouldn't the person being offended investigate whether what he is taking as offensive or hurtful truly is offensive and hurtful?"

    This comment makes no sense!

    We are analyzing the validity of our own beliefs...

    Ksil

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