Ethics As Vexatious Truths
For some time now I have believed that the basic understanding of right and wrong is, at this point in evolutionary time, an innate part of human nature. Practically everyone knows right from wrong anywhere on the globe. The problem is being willing to do right rather than wrong. It is the same conflict throughout human history: self-interest vs ethics.
I also have come to believe that all ethical decisions should be based on reason and logic and consequences. I have lost a lot of interest in ancient dogmas, written by humans, as being some sort of official Word from God. This does not detract at all from any of the wisdom found in the various scriptures.
It does seem, without any careful analysis on my part, that the most contented people seem to be the most ethical. And the most ethical are certainly not the religious right in any religion. Their notions are rarely generated from logic and reason, but from highly selective faith based religious dogma. And I have yet to see any groups of the religious right in any religion who come across as happy contented campers. Whatever it is their faith generates, it is not tolerance or understanding or cooperation, or any form of live and let live. They seem to always be angry and forever on some sort of crusade, always of course in God's name. I tend to see the religious right ranting against others of different hues with a Bible of some sort in one hand and some sort of patriotic flag in the other. It is almost like in the name of God they are free to make the lives of so many others difficult and miserable. And their faith based notions, in their own mind, are always right. I guess when logic and reason are absent, there is little left to justify their behavior except in God's name. And whatever the burning issue of the moment, they seldom want to talk about it---in fact they feel there is nothing to talk about. God has spoken and the matter is closed. If they ever accept change it takes decades or centuries, and other segments of society will have to bring the change about---they, at best, just ever so slowly sort of live with the change. Any acceptance of the change mostly comes from their offspring who are born into the changed environment. This is true whether it be slavery, women's rights, segregation, sexual freedoms, reproductive rights, living wages, gay rights, and dissension or diversity in general.
My favorite ethics philosopher is PETER SINGER. His conclusions are arrived at logically and rather clearly. He makes one think, and the thinking is unsettling. Ethics is not an all or none sort of thing. Singer has nudged me closer to an ethical mindset, but like most others, I operate ethically only to the point of my own comfort level. I think it is impossible to be very ethical in your life if short term goals are the focus. I think it is impossible to be considerably ethical if just your own life span is the focus. In fact I think truly ethical behavior is risky and in terms of material things, you could lose most everything you worked hard to gain. Ethics is not only wrapped up with logic and reason but the whole of God's evolutionary process. So many people talk about getting in tune with their inner self. I think the real challenge is to get in tune with the evolutionary process itself. The answer, my friend, is in Mother Nature. That, to me, is where you find yourself a part, however miniscule, of God's created evolutionary process. . At any rate below are some of Singer's quoted discourses on ethics.
Peter Singer:
One cannot, for instance, forget the difference between right and wrong. One can only cease to care about it.
Ethics is not something intelligible only in the context of religion. I treat ethics as entirely independent of religion.
If I am to defend my conduct on ethical grounds, I cannot point only to the benefits it brings me, I must address myself to a larger audience.
In accepting that ethical judgments must be made from a universal point of view, I am accepting that my own interests cannot, simply because they are my interests, count more than the interests of anyone else.
The claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact. Equality is a moral idea, not an assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to their needs and interests. The principle of equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.
Our concern for others and our readiness to consider their interest ought not to depend on what they are like or on what abilities they may possess. Concern for the well-being of children growing up in America would require that we teach them to read; concern for the well-being of pigs may require no more than that we leave them with other pigs in a place where there is adequate food and room to run freely. But the basic element---the taking into account of the interests of the being, whatever those interests may be---must, according to the principle of equality, be extended to all beings, black or white, masculine or feminine, human or nonhuman.
If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration.
It is not necessary to insist that all animal experiments stop immediately. All we need say is that experiments serving no direct purpose should stop immediately, and in the remaining fields of research, we should, wherever possible, seek to replace experiments that involve animals with alternative methods that do not.
It is important to realize that the major health problems of the world largely continue to exist, not because we do not know how to prevent disease and keep people healthy, but because no one is putting enough effort and money into doing what we already know how to do. The diseases that ravage Asia, Africa, Latin America, and pockets of poverty in the industrialized West are diseases that, by and large, we know how to cure. They have been eliminated in communities that have adequate nutrition sanitation, and health care. It has been estimated that 250,000 children die each week around the world, and that one quarter of these deaths are by dehydration caused by diarrhea. A simple treatment, already known, and needing no animal experimentation, could prevent the deaths of these children.
Singer on human creation: "Many writers have described in detail how the Western tradition has put human beings on a pinnacle and separated them from the nonhuman animals. It was to humans that God gave dominion over the other animals; it was humans who were made in the image of God; and it was humans, and only humans, who had an immortal soul. Then, in 1838, a young scientist wrote in his notebook: 'Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and, I believe, true to consider him descendent from animals'." (Charles Darwin)
Singer on the environment: "According to Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless by this destruction we harm human beings.
I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts, yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that I experience when I walk in a a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking forested valley, or sit by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set among tall green tree-ferns. For many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation; even nonreligious people tend to describe it in terms of spiritual experience. If we feel that a walk in the forest, with senses attuned to the appreciation of such an experience, is a more deeply rewarding way to spend a day than playing computer games, or if we feel that to carry one's food and shelter in a backpack for a week while hiking through an unspoiled natural environment will do more to develop character than watching television for an equivalent period, then we ought to encourage future generations to have feeling for nature; if they end up preferring computer games, we shall have failed.
Our own happiness, for example, is of intrinsic value, at least to most of us, in that we desire it for its own sake. Money, on the other hand, is only of instrumental value to us. We want it because of the things we can by with it, but if we were marooned on a desert island, we would not want it (whereas happiness would be just as important to us on a desert island as anywhere else).
Every living thing is pursuing its own good in its own unique way. Once we see this, we can see all living things 'as we see ourselves' and therefore 'we are ready to place the same value on their existence as we do our own.
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant significant, we ought, morally, to do it. The uncontroversial appearance of the principle just stated is deceptive. If it were acted upon, even in its qualified form, our lives, our society, and our world would be fundamentally changed. For the principle takes, first, no account of proximity or distance. It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away. Second, the principle makes no distinction between cases in which I am the only person who could possibly do anything and cases in which I am just one among millions in the same position. I admit one feels less guilty about doing nothing if one can point to others, similarly placed, who have also done nothing. Yet this can make no real difference to our moral obligations.
I like Singer because he maximizes the use of logic to form moral principles. Here is an example:
Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In additon to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. On a day when Bob is out for a drive he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train with no one aboard , is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugattti is parked. Then nobody will be killed---but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it respresents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and financial security it represents. Bob's conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. But then it reminds us that we, too, have opportunities to save the lives of children. We can give to organizations like Unicef or Oxgfan America. $200 in donations would help transform a sickly 2 year old into a healthy 6 year old---offering safe passage through childhood's most dangerous years. How should you judge yourself if you don't do it? If you still think it is wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child's life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to an organization that saves the lives of children. Unless, that is, there is some morally important difference between the two situations that I have overlooked. And what is one month's dining out, compared with a child's life? are you therefore obliged to keep giving until you have nothing left? At what point can you stop? Consider for yourself the level of sacrifice that you would demand of Bob, and then think about how much money you would have to give away in order to make a sacrifice that is roughly equal to that. It's almost certainly much, much more than $200. For most middle class Americans, it could easily be more like $200,000. When it comes to praising or blaming people for what they do, we tend to use a standard that is relative to some conception of normal behavior. Comfortably off Americans who give, say, 10 percent of their income to overseas aid organizations are so far ahead of most of their equally comfortable fellow citizens that I wouldn't go out of my way to chastise them for not doing more. Nevertheless, they should be doing much more, and they are in not position to criticize Bob for failing to make the much greater sacrifice of his Bugatti.
The United States government never meets even the modest target, recommended by the United Nations, of a .7 percent of gross national product; at the moment it lags far below that, at 0.09 percent, not even half of Japan's 0.22 percent or a tenth of Denmark's 0.97 percent.
The formula is simple: whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away. When Bob first grasped the dilemma that faced him as he stood by that railway switch, he must have thought how extraordinarily unlucky he was to be placed in a situation in which he must choose between the life of an innocent child and the sacrifice of most of his savings. But he was not unlucky at all. We are all in that situation.
People often say that life is sacred. They almost never mean what they say. They do not mean, as their words imply, that life itself is sacred. If they did, killing a pig or pulling up a cabbage would be as abhorrent to them as the murder of a human being. We may take the doctrine of the sanctity of human life to be no more than a way of saying that human life has some special value, a value quite distinct from the value of the lives of other living things.
It is possible to give 'human being' a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to 'a member of the species homo sapiens. This can easily be determined by genetic make-up. Thus, defined in this way there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being. Another way to define 'human being' is arrived at by compiling the 'indicators of humanhood' that include self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future, a sense of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concern for others, communication, and curiosity. This is the sense of the term that we have in mind when we praise someone by saying that he/she is a real human being. (Person is not the same as human being. No one confuses a comatose genetic human being with the person they love or know).
To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race. (Morality cannot be built on genetic blueprints). I have argued that the life of a fetus or embryo is of no greater value than the life of a non human animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc., and that since no fetus is a person no fetus has the same claim to life as a person.
Some of the conclusions I draw are very different from the ethical views most people hold today. That, however, is not a ground for dismissing them. If every proposal for reform in ethics that differed from accepted moral views has been rejected for that reason alone, we would still be torturing heretics, enslaving members of conquered races, and treating women as the property of their husbands. The views I put forward should be judged, not by the extent to which they clash with accepted moral views but on the basis of the arguments by which they are defended.
What we really care about---and ought to care about----is the person rather than the body.
It is an essential feature of a right that one can waive one's right if one so chooses. I may have a right to privacy; but I can, if I wish, film every detail of my daily life and invite the neighbors to my home movies. Similarly, to say that I have a right to life is not to say that it would be wrong for my doctor to end my life, if the doctor does so at my request. In making this request I waive my right to life. Last, the principle of respect for autonomy tells us to allow rational agents to live their own lives according to their own autonomous decisions, free from coercion or interference; but if rational agents should autonomously choose to die, then respect for autonomy will lead us to assist them to do as they choose. The case for voluntary euthanasia is stronger than the case for non voluntary euthanasia.
Against a very small number of unnecessary deaths that might occur if euthanasia is legalized, we must place the very large amount of pain and distress that will be suffered if euthanasia is not legalized, by patients who really are terminally ill. Longer life is not such a supreme good that it outweighs all other considerations. (If it were, there would be many more effective ways of saving life---such as a ban on smoking, or a reduction of speed limits to 25 mph---than prohibiting voluntary euthanasia.) One morning Betty Rolling described what her mother, dying from cancer said to her: 'I've had a wonderful life, but now it's over, or it should be. I'm not afraid to die, but I am afraid of this illness, what it's doing to me.....There's never any relief from it now. Nothing but nausea and this pain.....There won't be any more chemotherapy. There's no treatment anymore. So what happens to me now? I now what happens. I'll die slowly...I don't want that....Who does it benefit if I die slowly? If it benefits my children I'd be willing. But it's not going to do you any good....There's no point in a slow death, none. I've never liked doing things with no point. I've got to end this.' The strength of the case for voluntary euthanasia lies in this combination of respect for the preferences, or autonomy, of those who decide for euthanasia, and in the clear rational basis of the decision itself.
We usually value life because it is the basis for everything else that we value, whether it be happiness, appreciation of beauty, creativity, love, or the exercise of our rational faculties. But there comes a time in the lives of many people when life can no longer support these things we value, or else is so racked by pain, discomfort, nausea, or other forms of suffering that it has more negative value than positive value. An individual who is adult and of sound mind is the best judge of when his or her life has lost what is positive about it.
Like cosmology before Copernicus, the traditional doctrine of the sanctity of human life is today in deep trouble. Its defenders have responded, naturally enough, by trying to patch up the holes that keep appearing in it. They have redefined death so that they can remove beating hearts from warm, breathing bodies, and give them to others with better prospects, while telling themselves that they are only taking organs from a corpse. They have drawn a distinction between 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' means of treatment, which allows them to persuade themselves that their decision to withdraw a respirator from a person in an irreversible coma has nothing to do with the patient's poor quality of life. They give terminally ill patients huge doses of morphine that they know will shorten their lives, but say that this is not euthanasia, because their declared intention is to relive pain. They select severely disable infants for 'nontreatment' and make sure that they die, without thinking of themselves as killing them....This patching could go on, but it is hard to see a long and beneficial future for an ethic as paradoxical, incoherent, and dependent on pretense as our conventional ethic of life and death has become.
Singer on killing 'persons': "If we are responsible for what we fail to do as we are for what we do, is it wrong to buy fashionable clothes, or to dine at expensive restaurants, when the money could have saved the life of a stranger dying for want of enough to eat? Is failing to give to aid organizations really a form of killing, or as bad as killing? In every day there are good grounds for having stricter prohibition on killing than on allowing to die. Killing a 'person' against her or his will is a much more serious wrong than killing a being that is not a 'person'. If we want to put this in the language of rights, then it is reasonable to say that only a 'person' has a right to life.
If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication, and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant. We like to think of ourselves as the darlings of the universe. We do not like to think of ourselves as a species of animal. But the truth is that there is no unbridgeable gulf between us and other animals. Instead there is an overlap. The more intellectually sophisticated non human animals have a mental and emotional life that in every significant respect equals or surpasses that of some of the most profoundly intellectually disabled human beings. This is a statement of fact that can be tested and verified over and over again.
People approaching the end of their lives fear suffering more than death.
There is some common view that reason and argument play no role in our ethics, and therefore we have no need to defend our ethical views when they are challenged. Some people are more ready to reason about the merits of football players or chocolate cake recipes than they are about their belief in the sanctity of human life. It allows people to listen to a criticism of their own views and then say, 'Oh, yes, well that is your opinion, but I think differently'---as if that is the end of the discussion.
We have to choose between different possible ways of living: the way of living in which self-interest is paramount, or that in which ethics is paramount, or some trade--of between the two.
Whatever profit injustice may seem to bring, only those who act rightly are really happy.
We live in an age which conveys the idea that human aspirations for liberty, pleasure, accomplishment, and status can be fulfilled in the realm of consumption.
The ancients knew of the 'paradox of hedonism' according to which the more explicitly we pursue our desire for pleasure, the more elusive we will find its satisfaction. There is no reason to believe that human nature has changed so dramatically as to render this ancient wisdom inapplicable.
When we are in long standing relationships with people, it is less easy to see clearly whether we do what we do because it is right, or because we want, for all sorts of reasons, to preserve the relationship. We may also know that the other person will have opportunities to pay us back---to assist us, or to make life difficult for us--according to how we behave toward him or her. IN such relationships, ethics and self-interest are inextricably mingled, along with love, affection, gratitude, and many other central human feelings.
The possibility of taking the point of view of the universe overcomes the problem of finding meaning in our lives, despite the ephemeral nature of human existence when measured against all the eons of eternity. The ethical efforts and changes we make today could snowball and, over a long period of time, lead to much more far-reaching changes (this is called history). Or they could come to nothing. We simply cannot tell. We can make this four dimensional world a better place by causing there to be less pointless suffering in one particular place, at one particular time, than there would otherwise have been. As long as we do not thereby increase suffering at some other place or time, or cause any other comparable loss of value, we will have had a positive effect on the universe.
In a society in which the narrow pursuit of material self-interest is the norm, the shift to an ethical stance is more radical than many people realize. In comparison with the needs of people starving in Somalia, the desire to sample the wines of the leading French vineyards pales into insignificance. Judged against the suffering of immobilized rabbits having shampoos dripped into their eyes, a better shampoo becomes an unworthy goal. The preservation of old growth forests should override our desire to use disposable paper towels. An ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine, but it changes our sense of priorities.
We cannot wait for government to bring about the change that is needed. It is not in the interests of politicians to challenge the fundamental assumptions of the society they have been elected to lead. If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government. We have to take a first step. We must reinstate the idea of living an ethical life as a realistic and viable alternative to the present dominance of materialist self-interest.
To be ethical you are on the side of the weak, not the powerful, of the oppressed, not the oppressor, of the ridden, not the rider.
It is often said that money cannot buy happiness. This may be trite, but it implies that it is more in our interests to be happy than to be rich.
The evolutionary process embraces both competition and cooperation. The far political and religious right understand competition, but seldom cooperation.
If you leave a group of people so far outside the social commonwealth that they have nothing to contribute to it, you alienate them from the social practices and institutions of which they are a part; and they will almost certainly become adversaries who pose a threat to those institutions.
Singer on what distinguishes his ethical philosophy: "First it would not deny the existence of human nature or insist that human nature is inherently good or infinitely malleable. Second, it would not expect to end all conflict and strife between human beings. Third, it would not assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression, or social conditioning. Some will be, but not all".
Singer on what his ethical philosophy supports: "First, it would recognize that there is such a thing as human nature. It would seek to find out more about it so that it can be grounded on the best available evidence of what human beings are. Second, it would expect that, under many different social and economic systems, many people will act competitively in order to enhance their own status, gain power, and advance their interests and those of their kin. Third, it would expect that irrespective of the social and economic system in which they live, most people will respond positively to invitations to enter into mutually beneficial forms of cooperation, as long as the invitations are genuine. Fourth, it would promote structures that foster cooperation rather than competition, and it would attempt to channel competition into socially desirable ends. Fifth, it would recognize that the way in which we exploit nonhuman animals is a legacy of a pre-Darwinian past which exaggerated the gulf between humans and other animals, and therefore work toward a higher moral status for nonhuman animals. Sixth, it would stand by the traditional values of the left by being on the side of the weak, poor, and oppressed, but think it very carefully about what will really work to benefit them.
One mark of living well is to live so that you can accept death and feel satisfied with what you have done with your life.
