Rough Draft: Functions of morality

Rough Draft: Functions of morality
by Joseph Rowlands

The following is a very rough draft of an essay I started on morality. It's in very rough shape, as I wrote it for my own clarity and not a general audience. I submit it here for those who might be interested. It's also incomplete. I only deal with 3 functions here, whereas I intended to write about a fourth. Also, I had intended to gives some very interesting examples highlighting how this methodology would be useful.

3 Functions of morality

Morality is a difficult topic to discuss intelligently. I think a large part of the problem is that the basic assumptions about what morality is and how it works are based on altruistic and religious morality. For instance, these are moralities where the point of the moral code is to achieve some moral status. You do that by following moral rules in the face of hardships. The higher the cost to you, the more definitive is your commitment to being moral. Even many who emphasize a morality of self-interest all too frequently adopt this cost-based perspective. Morality is still viewed as doing what's "right" regardless of the costs, or even in situations where their is no benefit.

With this kind of baggage around, it's difficult to start with enough common ground to achieve any real dialogue on moral issues. To bring some clarity to the topic, I'm going to start with a very basic method of categorizing aspects of morality. My hope is that by analyzing ethical ideas with this method will facilitate clearer communication.

I describe three functions in this essay, each of them distinct from one another. The first function is the standard of value, which provides a basis of evaluating alternatives. This is how you decide which is "better". Without such a standard, you can make factual statements about your alternatives, but you don't have a method of comparison. So this function is about providing the means to compare your alternatives and decide which is more valuable by the standard.

The second function is concerned with foreseeing the results of your choices. Judging your alternatives requires you to understand the consequences of choosing one or the other. To say one is better is to say that the expected result of one is better than the expected result of the other. We need a means of projecting likely consequences from each choice. The more you can foresee, the better the choice you'll make. So this second function does not involve comparing your alternatives. It is a method of analyzing your alternatives to see the likely outcome. This is a not a judgmental function. It is purely concerned with factual statements. It is just a means of using abstract generalizations to attempt to factually describe, without judgment what are the likely results.

A third function is closely associated with epistemology. Specifically, the fact that our minds are limited and can't deal with a countless number of concrete choices. The third function involves reducing the scope of our choices to a manageable level.

Three functions. Judging. Analyzing. Reducing the scope. These are three distinct functions, which this essay will describe in more detail. I say distinct because there is and should not be overlap between them.

Function 1: The Standard of Value

The first function, the one most closely tied to the philosophical branch called ethics, is the standard of value. Ultimately, ethics is a process of choosing amongst alternatives. A standard of value provides the fundamental mechanism for making these choices. It defines what is good and what is bad.

There are many different possible kinds of standards. One method, appropriate in Objectivist ethics, is to evaluate the likely outcomes of your actions. If you decide to skip work when you have an important meeting, your boss may be unhappy and either fire you or not promote you later. If you go, you'll avoid the trouble and have a more promising future. The standard of value tells you how to judge between these two alternatives. Why pick one over the other? Why is keeping your job better than getting fired? Ultimately, there must be some way of assigning values to the alternatives and deciding which is better.

The Objectivist solution to this is to hold your life as the ultimate value. By reflecting on how these two outcomes affect your life, you can decide which of them you prefer. Keeping your job allows you financial security, including food, shelter, and medicine, while opening up many new alternatives to choose from. It improves your life by equipping you with the means of sustaining it. Being fired reduces your opportunities. It makes your grasp on life a little more tenuous. You'd have to work harder just to achieve the same amount. With life as the standard of value, you're able to make this comparison and choose the action that best improves your life.

Objectivism seeks to have a single, unified standard so you can choose between any alternatives. Another possibility is to have many different standards, each of them informing you on which choices are preferable. Intrinsic values are an example of this kind of standard. An intrinsic value holds that something is of value, not because it serves a purpose, but because it just is. The value is said to be inherent in the object itself. You may decide that the environment has intrinsic worth, meaning it should be preserved not because preserving it fulfills some useful or even esthetic purpose, but simply because you feel that it should be preserved. Or you may decide that science, for its own sake, is a noble value to pursue. In that case science is not about understanding the world in order to discover new alternatives or improvements, but is simply a pursuit without any underlying purpose.

These intrinsic values act as standards. Each provides you a means of choosing between alternatives. Sometimes these values will conflict, and they'll frequently conflict with your own life, but that doesn't change the fact that they are used as standard. They act as a measuring tool to determine the relative value of your possible choices.

Another kind of standard is less concerned with outcomes and more concerned with methods. Certain moral systems emphasize how you should act, instead of what values you should pursue. An example of this kind of morality is noticeable in the 10 Commandments of the bible. These commandments don't really tell you which values you should pursue. Instead, they tell you what kind of actions are appropriate or inappropriate. You shouldn't murder. You shouldn't steal. You shouldn't covet thy neighbors wife.

Moral systems called virtue ethics emphasize acting in particular ways. You should be honest. You should fulfill your promises. You should shoulder your own burdens. You should be peaceful. You should help others when they need it. You should shower regularly. The kinds of virtues don't really matter. The point is that these also act as standards for choosing between alternatives. Instead of focusing on the end results and comparing them, there is focus on the kinds of actions you are taking, and whether they are deemed morally appropriate.

The thing that all of these have in common is that they are used as the means of weighing alternatives. This needs to be very clear. When you are judging two possible actions, there are various components. Part of it is trying to be sure you have a clear idea of what the outcomes will actually be. You need methods of trying to bring clarity to the two choices, so you know exactly what you are comparing. That's an important function, but it isn't the same as the standard of value. The standard is used once you have clarified your two choices as best you can. You may clearly see the results of both choices, but you still need to method of deciding which choice is superior. That's where the standard is used.

Sometimes this is so simple, its easy to lose sight of the standard or your use of it. Imagine standing on the top of a building looking down. You might think to yourself "I wonder what it'd feel like to jump off". You may quickly dismiss the idea as absurd and instead choose to not jump off. This may seem like an obvious choice, but you still need a standard. You may successfully examine both choices, understanding what the likely outcome of each is. It may be obvious that if you jump you'll die, and if you don't jump you'll live. But without a standard, the two statements are meaningless. To compare them, you have to have a means of evaluating them. If you choose life as your standard, its easy to see why jumping is bad and not jumping is preferable.

It doesn't matter how much clarity you bring to your choices, the choices don't make themselves. Only by having a standard to compare them can one choice become superior to another. The standard is not about bring clarity to the consequences of your options. It takes what clarity you have and allows for a comparison.

Another key distinction needs to be made about standards. It may be at times you use some value as a means of measuring your choices. For instance, you may choose between alternative actions at work that will best get you a promotion. Do you work on project A or project B? The value of getting a promotion is being used as the means of weighing your alternatives. So it's a standard, right? Not really.

Imagine that after spending some time thinking about it, you convince yourself that a promotion would actually make you less happy with your life. It would be too much responsibility, or it would change what you did at work, possibly even limiting your options afterwards as your technical skills get stale. With more clarity on the consequences of getting a promotion, you may decide it isn't really in your interest.

What this example shows is that your real standard of value was something closer to your life or your happiness. You may have pursued getting a promotion on the belief that it would improve your life and happiness, but more clarity convinced you it wasn't.

This doesn't happen with a real standard of value! The standard is the means of judging the alternatives. Clarity can't make you dismiss your standard. Only a higher standard can. Only be referring to some more ultimate value can you decide that a lesser value is not worthy of pursuit. That's because the judgment of worthiness is based on the standard.

So if you're convinced that helping other people is the standard of value, and an Objectivist comes and explains to you how this will hurt your own life and require constant sacrifices, it won't make a difference. By your accepted standard of value, those are acceptable losses. Bringing more clarity to the issue won't change anything because it's not clarity that is the problem. It's the standard.

You could imagine an Objectivist convincing an altruist that in fact their actions are not helping their intended beneficiaries. Perhaps they show that the welfare state produces dependence and that is ultimately more harmful than the meager help it provides. This may convince them to radically change their behavior. But it doesn't change their standard. They accept the same standard, but they now find that different actions are appropriate to achieve their goals. Again, the standard is not affected by clarity of the consequences.

Function 2: Bring clarity to your choices

The Standard of Value is a basic means of weighing alternatives. It provides a standard to measure the possibilities, allowing them to be weighed as preferable or not.

Having a standard of measurement doesn't remove the requirement to actually measure. To weigh your choices, you still need to identify them clearly so that they can be measured. It doesn't matter if you claim life is your standard if you don't go through the work of trying to understand the consequences of your alternatives so you can properly compare them based on life.

Should I do action A or action B? How can you make this choice without knowing what the actions are, or what the likely outcome of choosing one over the other would be? Your standard won't help you unless you bring clarity to your choices. Only by seeing understanding your choices clearly can you make a good decision. And the more clarity you bring, the better your choice.

Imagine choosing between two professions. Let's take a doctor and an engineer as examples. Given life as your standard, which is the best choice? Without more information, any decision would be a mistake. Bring in some details, like that a doctor may get paid more, but spends many more years in school. Or that an engineer needs stronger math skills. Or that a doctor interacts with many people from all parts of society, where an engineer interacts with engineers pretty much exclusively. Or even more relevant, you may realize that the sight of blood makes you pass out, or that you can't stand working on computers. Maybe you want to live in your home town where there are no engineering jobs, or maybe you want to work in different parts of the world and a doctor's license doesn't transfer as well as an engineering degree.

The more clarity you bring to the choices, the better you can weigh them. This is an important function related to morality. If morality is about decision making, then this is a critical part of that method. And so it shouldn't be surprising that many key ideas in ethics are related to this.

A key example is the moral principle. In the wider sense, a principle is an abstract identification. Principles are so generalized and so wide-reaching, they identify significant and fundamental truths. A principle of economics, for instance, is the idea that individuals act to maximize their values. For the same product, they prefer to pay less. For the same price, they prefer more value. A principle like this is used as a foundation for making sense of markets and individual's actions in those markets. Since it is so wide-reaching, dealing with all people and all values, it's a powerful tool of clarity.

A moral principle works the same way. It also makes a wide-reaching identification that can be used as a foundation for deeper knowledge and understanding. A moral principle is just a principle, but the identification it makes is useful for moral decision making. The principle highlights some fundamental truth that can be used to make better decisions.

As an example, one may formulate a moral principle concerning rationality. The principle could be that to act effectively in the world, you need to act based on a correct understanding of the world. In that case, it doesn't benefit you to ignore facts of reality, or to imagine the world is how you'd like it to be instead of how it is. And further, it would help you to get a better understanding of the world by gaining more knowledge of it.

The benefit that moral principles provide is a deeper clarity of your possible actions. Imagine you are concerned that your business partner may be embezzling money. You can choose to examine the facts carefully, possibly doing some checking on your own, and try to determine the truth of it. Or you could decide to have faith in your partner, ignore the evidence against him, and hope for the best. The moral principle of rationality I just described provides an important insight into these choices. It shows that wishful thinking is not a trustworthy method of achieving the results you want. It highlights that while investigating the possible theft may be unpleasant, it will help you to ensure that the rest of your actions are not wasted. Ignoring the problem, and putting a ton of energy into making your company profitable, will ultimately be self-defeating as the profits are stolen as fast as you make them.

This is a controversial point. Many people think of moral principles as some kind of moral guide telling you how you should act. Once you identify that rationality is typically in your best interest, they think of the principle as a kind of moral imperative to be rational. By that understanding, the moral principle tells you that you should act in some manner. It may act as a simple moral rule, where you are commanded to act in some way in all situations, for fear of being immoral. Or it may provide you a reason for acting that way, and so you have to act appropriately whenever the condition holds true.

Let's look at a moral principle dealing with honesty. There are actually numerous principles related to honesty, so let's just take a couple. The first principle we'll look at is the identification that if you try to achieve a value based on a lie, you won't achieve the results you're aiming for. A lie is a distortion of reality. Acting on that distortion won't lead you, or others to success. One possible corollary of this principle is that when others act on your lies, they'll fail to achieve the results they were aiming for, and will be unhappy that you lied to them. Another possible corollary is that because they failed to achieve the value they were pursuing, they're likely to examine the premises they were acting on, and figure out that you lied to them.

Notice that this explanation of a principle does not tell you how you should act. It doesn't tell you that you should be honest. The principle only provides you with better information about your possible choices. It's just a predictor of future consequences. It's up to you and your standard of value to determine whether those consequences are beneficial, harmful, or better than the alternatives.

Of course, some will attempt to translate this identification into a rule for how to act. They'll notice that the principles of honesty show typically negative results from deceiving, whether yourself or others, and so they'll formulate a moral rule-of-thumb that says never deceive others. They may equate this new rule-of-thumb with the moral principle itself, claiming the moral principles of honesty tell you not to lie. But this is a mistake.

The classic scenario for the bounds of honesty is when a murderer comes to your door asking where your family is hiding. For those who have translated the moral principle into a moral rule, they suddenly find that the rule has harmful side-effects. Some will obey it anyway, misunderstanding the point of morality, and even condemning those who don't follow it as pragmatists. The others will realize that this moral rule was established in a context where the rule was beneficial, but that context is no longer applicable. That allows them to ignore the moral rule in this particular situation. They believe this solves the problem in a satisfactory way. It doesn't.

The first thing we should do is look at how the moral principle, in the form of an identification of possible results instead of as a moral rule, stands up to the scenario. The principle as described above recognizes that acting on a lie will sabotage the success of the action. You won't achieve the value you seek. And since you don't want the murderer to be successful in his actions, this principle provides an important insight. Since acting on a falsehood leads to failure to achieve your goals, you can choose to lie to the murder so that he'll act on the faulty information and fail to kill your family. The principle is still completely valid and useful in this context, because it is an identification of cause and effect. The identification is still perfectly valid and useful.

The principle also informs you that you shouldn't act on a lie. Just because you lie to the murderer doesn't mean you should believe that lie or act upon it. The corollaries also tell you that when the murderer finds out that you lied, which he will when his efforts are thwarted, he'll be angry at you. If this were a normal person in an everyday context, that might be a bad thing. In this situation, it's a perfectly acceptable cost. And since you can anticipate this, you can call the police, get your gun, or whatever you want to avoid the negative consequences.

What happens when the principle is converted into some kind of rule? In the context of the murderer at your door, the rule is said to be taken out of context. You have to discard the rule. But what's the point in formulating it as a rule, especially one that can be broken? What do you gain from it? You don't get the benefit of having a real moral rule, which is that you can apply it in an unthinking way. Because the rule has exceptions, you can't simply follow it. You have to decide whether the rule is beneficial to follow or not. The end result is that you just add an extra level of complexity to your decisions. You formulate a rule, intended to make it easier to act without thinking through the consequences, but you still have to think through the consequences to decide if the rule applies. Formulating a moral rule out of it is a worthless step.

There is more wrong with translating these into moral rules. A moral rule demands you act in a particular way. Yes, you might make exceptions to them when your life is on the line, but in all other cases you have to obey them. This removes your ability to make an optimal choice based on your clearest idea of the costs and benefits involved. There will be cases where it won't kill you to be honest, but there is a significant cost. For instance, a romance in the workplace where being open about it might create friction in the company. Instead of weighing your alternatives with your best information and life as the standard, a moral rule will blind you to some possibilities and demand that you act in a particular way.

Moral rules act as intrinsic values. Intrinsic values aren't integrated in with the rest of your values. Because they're valued for their own sake, and not in relation to your life, there's no rational way to compare them to your other values. You may dismiss them as less important, or you may decide that they're so important you must always avoid disrupting them. But what you can't do is a rational comparison.

A moral rule tells you that you should act in a particular way in all cases. You may create exceptions, but every situation where it applies, it applies with equal strength. If you follow the moral rule that you must always be honest except in emergency situations, then in every other situation your choices are artificially restricted. You can't make a rational judgment about whether any particular lie may be beneficial or not, or to what degree is it harmful. Because it's expressed as a rule, you blind yourself to the possibilities.

This creates a kind of rationalism, where you are unable to handle degrees or differences. For a person with the moral rule to never lie, all lies are equally bad. Telling someone that their first attempt at cooking a meal wasn't too bad is as evil as lying about a romantic affair. The rule must be obeyed, and costs or benefits don't matter.

Of course, I'm not trying to argue that lying is perfectly fine or that you should do it frequently. It's probably true that honesty is the best policy nearly all the time. But blinding yourself to possibilities is never a good idea. If you feel that a policy of blinding yourself is the only way to get people to be moral, then you're really expressing doubt that rational self-interest leads to good results.

Let's take another example of a moral principle. You may formulate a principle of independence. To live your life the way you want to requires that you being able to act on your choices. Having the personal means of being able to act on your choices provides you more control over how you live your life. Or to act on your own best judgment, you need the personal means of doing so.

Again, this is stated as a cause and effect identification. Without the means to act on your judgment, you won't be able to. This doesn't tell you that you should act on your own judgment, or that you should always have the means to, or anything else. It only provides you information about your choices. It provides you facts, not judgments. The judgments are for you to make with your standard of value.

Those who would turn it into a moral rule would have the usual problems. They'd demand that you're independent in every possible respect. They might even want you to grow your own food and practice your own medicine. It's difficult to find a middle ground once you formulate a rule. How much independence is enough? How much do you rely on others to provide you goods or services?

There's no need to try to formulate a rule. You can simply recognize the principle, and refer back to it. You can recognize that where you don't have independence, you have to rely on others. You can then ask whether you can count on those people. You can ask whether there is one person you have to deal with or many people you can choose between. You can decide whether you have value that you can offer to them for the services you need.

So now we can see that making a choice between two alternatives requires two distinct functions. One is a method of judging the two choices. That's the standard of value. It provides the means of comparing them and determining which is the better choice given that value.

The second needed function is to be able to identify your choices with enough clarity to make a reasonable choice. If we could foresee the consequences more clearly, we could choose which course of action would be better. You can imagine having a magical crystal ball that showed you the future, based on the choices you intend to make. Having exact information about the consequences would make the decision be much easier as you'd be able to compare things more clearly.

We don't have crystal balls or any other form of magic. What we do have is moral principles. By taking these powerful identifications, we can make rough predictions about the possible benefits or costs. We can anticipate some of the side-effects of our choices. We can estimate the risks involved with one plan or the other. We can get a pretty reasonable idea of what to expect from our actions. We still have to judge those likely outcomes, but the clearer we are the better our decisions can be.

These two functions, comparing alternatives and foreseeing likely consequences, are two of the most significant functions in ethics. Significant confusion occurs when the two are mixed up or combined. We saw what happens when moral principles are treated as moral rules. They not only stop providing their primary function, foreseeing likely consequences, but they interfere with the other function, a rational comparison and evaluation of the choices.

Function 3: Unit Economy

So far we've discussed how a standard of value can be used to compare alternatives to evaluate which is better by that standard. We've also seen that to make reasonable comparisons, we need to anticipate the consequences of those actions so that we can compare the likely outcomes. These are the tools we need for making a decision.

Another issue that we need to be concerned about is narrowing down the number of choices. We don't usually have only two or three choices in front of us. Typically, we have countless possibilities. You don't choose between reading a book and watching television. You have every channel to choose from, as well as many books. You could also choose to play a game, have a conversation, write a book, have a snack, walk the dog, and countless others, not to mention countless variation of each of these. With the tools we've discussed so far, and the understanding of how to use them, we can make comparisons, but we'd die before we finished making every comparison. We need a more efficient mechanism.

Epistemology has the same problem. How do you deal with a countless number of concretes in the world? Do you try to remember each car you've ever seen? Do you treat each new car as an entirely new thing that you've never seen before? Do you try to remember facts about each one individually? No. You lump them into a larger category, the concept "car", and you retain information about how car's in general work. If you need to remember a particular car, you recognize it as a part of the larger concept of car, with all of the general features, and then only remember the elements that are unique to it.

This is the principle of unit-economy. Instead of dealing with the countless number of concretes, you can reduce the scope by focusing on a small number of units. It's through the process of conceptualization or abstraction that this can be done. You combine countless concretes into a single abstraction.

Since the same issue exists in moral decision making, the same solution occurs as well. Instead of dealing with an infinite number of choices, we can reduce the scope by referring to a few abstract values. For example, instead of thinking of making a roast beef sandwich, or getting a bowl of cereal, or making a pot roast, or going for fast-food tacos, you can deal with all of these possibilities by simply referring to the abstract value of food. That allows you to do a comparison of getting some food and doing something else like finding entertainment. Entertainment, career, food, romance, and chores are all examples of abstractions you can use to make coarse-grained decisions.

The abstract values are just another kind of concept. Every concept has a conceptual common denominator, which is the quality they have in common and is the basis of the abstraction. For abstract values, the conceptual common denominator is the human need that is fulfilled by the value. For instance, food is the category of values that satisfy the human need for sustenance. Career addresses the human need to produce material wealth for survival. Romance addresses the human needs for intimacy, sex, and visibility. Education addresses the human need to keep our minds working, to understand the world better, and to increase our understanding of available choices in our lives.

These abstract values are concepts that refer to every possible value that satisfies those needs. Instead of comparing the countless possible values we could pursue, we are able to think about the kinds of needs we have in our lives. We can decide which of these needs is more important, and address it. If you're starving to death, you need sustenance. By recognizing this is your most important need, you can quickly reduce the scope of your alternatives. From there, you can break down the larger category of food into subsets. Food that you can readily access. Food that's within your budget. Food that tastes good. You may decide that you do need food, but that you need to limit the amount of money you spend because you have other needs as well.

Picking need as the conceptual common denominator is more than simply convenient. By using need as the method of integration, these abstract values are organized by how they impact your life. That's exactly how you want to evaluate them. You want to understand which needs they're addressing, and which of those needs is most important at any particular time.

The other advantage to having need as the method of integration is that all of the values the concept refers to are similar in how they improve your life. They all satisfy the same need. There is still a range of effectiveness, but the measurements can be omitted and you can just deal with the type of need that is fulfilled.

It's also true that some values may satisfy more than one need. Going out to dinner on a date satisfies your need for sustenance as well as romance (if you're lucky). So these abstract values are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You may find some that satisfy many needs, as well as finding some that satisfy one need but hurt another. Nonetheless, by organizing based on your most important needs, it greatly increases your effectiveness at decision making by reducing the scope of the problem.

When you select an abstract value, you don't just dismiss the other abstract values. Those are still needs that you have. You are just deciding which requires the more immediate focus. So at the end of your judgment on which abstract values to pursue, you should have a weighting of the various values, instead of picking one and ignoring all the others. This is important when you decide to select a more specific value within that category of values. You have to keep in mind your other needs because some value possibilities will possibly make those other needs more difficult to satisfy.

For instance, you might decide it's time to eat. But it might not be a good idea to go and buy lobster and caviar. While food is important, and you may really like the taste of that food in particular, you're reducing the amount of money you have to satisfy others needs by a significant amount. Is the improved taste of the meal worth not being able to pay rent or the electric bill? So even when you decide on an abstract value, you keep your other needs in mind so you can still do a reasonable comparison.

The purpose of the abstract values is simply to reduce the scope of your decision making. By formulating these integrated abstractions, you can deal with what the values accomplish, the needs that are addressed, instead of the countless possible ways for addressing them. Similarly, when you select an abstract value to pursue, you can select between less abstract groups. So you might choose to pursue entertainment, but there are many types of entertainment. Do you want physical activities like sports? Do you want an intellectual diversion, like a conversation with friends? Do you want something leisurely, like watching a television program?

These lower-level abstractions are still integrated based on your needs, but they focus on more specific needs. You may want entertainment, but you might also want relaxation, physical activity, intellectual stimulus, or other possibilities. In this way, you can imagine narrowing your scope with each decisions, allowing you to deal with a huge number of possibilities overall, but only a few choices at each level of the decision tree.

This is the power of unit-economy, and it's a necessary function in our decision making. While comparing every possible action with every other may produce a more optimal choice, it's unworkable. Instead, by using value abstractions, you narrow down the problem by dealing with commonalities.

This function, unit-economy, is different from the previous two functions. Abstract values are not standards of value. They don't provide the basis of comparison. They just reduce the scope by focusing on abstractions. To compare the abstract values, you still need a standard of value. This is also different from the clarification mechanisms, like moral principles. The abstract values don't give you enhanced insight into the likely consequences of your actions. You still need to do that kind of analysis get clarity of these values. So this really is a distinct and necessary function of morality.

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