Morality - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly side of Should/Ought/Musts

Hi Alex, hope you are well. You asked for comments on your latest video, and the easiest approach was to put them up here on my blog for you to peruse and hopefully respond to. Would love to hear your thoughts on this, if only to acknowledge that you have seen it. Just put a comment in the box below. This blog entry addresses about 5 minutes of the video, from 3:30 to 8:30.

First off, it was a great piece, and I am with you all the way. I also saw your discussion with Steven and thought you could have been stronger with him, your points were well-founded. No probs with your analysis though, including why religion can't be objective, that was new to me and well-thought-out. What I did want to do, though, was to address your comments early on in the video about the role of good and bad within moral systems and also the issue of moral positions being instinctively imperative.

I don't know if you warm to analogies, but I find that chess is usually good for this, so I will outline my thoughts in that context, i.e. simply substitute chess for morality and then move on from there. First off, though, we need a working definition for morality. Now, the definition you gave in the video for morality is:

- The intuition that we ought to do that which is good and ought not do that which is bad

As you say, it is broad but more than that, it doesn't give you anything useful to apply it to. Do you really want to bring 'intuition' into the argument as a way of implementing moral principles? Alternatively, I picked up on the one given by Google when you simply type 'morality' into the search engine. It gives you this:

"Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour:

- a particular system of values and principles of conduct

- the extent to which an action is right or wrong"

Using this we notice that no particular form of morality is specified, this is a mental model of how morality can work give a couple of presuppositions, or a framework, if you like. I'll bring this back to human morality a little later. So using our analogy, the principle or context here would be:

- The game of chess, including all its rules.

What is also not specified in the definition but needed nonetheless to make the system workable, is a goal which is of course:

- To win the game

So now that we have a context it is clear that we can identify a number of facts relating to the game, for example a bishop moves diagonally. More importantly, we can also define what a good or a bad move will be:

- A 'Good' move is one that takes you closer to winning the game

- A 'Bad' move is one that takes you away from winning or brings you nearer towards losing the game

The key point to note here is that the quality of particular moves can be assessed as objective facts, or just facts as they are usually known. Of course, it will not also be possible to assess every possible move in this way, at any particular time, the point is however, there will always be an answer even if we don't know what it is. Usually, Chess Masters will know what is a good or bad move almost instantaneously. So back to human morality then and using the well known principle adopted by Sam Harris, a moral principle relating to human behaviour could be about:

- Well being and flourishing of human beings

And the associated goal might be:

- Maximising the state of well-being in the human population

By not defining good or bad as you mentioned earlier and simply saying 'we just know what it is when we see it', will leave your model impoverished, unworkable and vulnerable to criticism by theists and atheists alike. Whereas, using the definition I propose based on the particular principle we wish to adopt, gives us a clear and straightforward path to understanding not only what behaviours are good and bad but more importantly, why they are so. This tells us that a 'good' behaviour is one that takes us closer to our moral goal, and a bad behaviour is one that moves us away from it. Thus, the moral system will be subjectively based, since we choose which principle to utilise as part of the model. This will, of course, work for any principle including the various religious varieties.

___________

So on to the imperatives, then. Another problem looms here, but it is easily rectified by taking them out of the system altogether, i.e. not only are they not needed, but they actually get in the way of building a coherent system of morals. The first point about a statement like 'You should do X', is that there is so much information missing. For example, according to whom should this be done? The problem with should, oughts and musts is that they are not generative. It will normally take the form:

- If X happens or has happened, you should do Y

As you rightly ask in the video, the question is why should you do it? What is it that you want Y to achieve? Most issues are complex and often require a solution that meets many different criteria. Better, I think, to ask what could we do rather than what we should do. By identifying a should, you have immediately cut off the search for other possibilities that may solve the problem in better ways. 'Could' allows you to look at all the options, including creative possibilities. Coupled with this, is the usual scenario whereby one person is telling another what they should do, often without knowing all the relevant facts appropriate to the person's position such as their values, beliefs and desires. Further still, it degenerates into something along the lines of:

- I think you should do X

In other words, your worldview is not adequate, you should follow mine. The only imperative that might be legitimately applicable here is:

- If you want to achieve a goal, you need to do something

but not much else. Generally, people use imperatives like this as high level forms of psychological motivation. There is no problem with doing that per se but as I said, it can be limiting if you apply it without thinking. If the goal is one that is of value to you and fits with your beliefs, then that will normally be all the motivation you need to work at it. If you find that it is not achieving what you expected, then you may want to review the goals you have set. My experience is that our thoughts shape our language, but our language also shapes our thoughts.

Looking forward to seeing Part II. Best.

July 2018