The Basics of Morality

A friend was recently asked to defend his account of morality in 15 statements or less.

I thought of it as an interesting challenge.

So, there's the view of morality that I defend:

(1) All intentional action is grounded on beliefs and desires.

(2) Some desires are malleable - they are altered through interaction with the environment.

(3) A mechanism through which desires are modified is through reward and punishment where reward reinforces behavior that generates the reward and punishment creates aversions to those act-types that resulted in punishment.

(NOTE: "Reward" and "Punishment" here are being used in their biological and psychological sense, not their moral or legal sense, though the concepts overlap.)

(4) Praise effects the brain as a type of reward and condemnation effects the brain as a type of punishment.

(5) Each of us is a part of each other's environment.

(6) Consequently, each of us has the capacity (the means, the ability) to use rewards such as praise and punishments such as condemnation to alter the desires of others.

(7) Intentional actions (grounded on beliefs and desires as described in (1)) can fulfill or thwart other desires.

(8) This capacity to fulfill or thwart other desires gives others desire-based motives or reasons to promote desires (through reward/praise) and aversions (through punishment/condemnation) that tend to fulfill other desires or, at least, prevent the thwarting of other desires.

(9) If we designed a social institution for the efficient use of reward/praise and punishment/condemnation to mold desires, it would contain the elements we find in moral institutions. Such as:

(a) The institution, like morality, would focus heavily on where to direct rewards such as praise and punishments such as condemnation.

(b) It would identify some actions as those that people generally have reason to praise and to condemn their absence (moral obligation).

(c) It would identify some actions as those that people generally have reason to condemn and to praise their absence (moral prohibition).

(d) It would identify some actions as those that people generally have little reason to praise or to condemn (non-obligatory permission).

(e) It would identify some actions as those that people have reason to praise – but not to condemn their absence (supererogatory).

(f) It would recognize a set of statements that would block an inference from an action to the desires of the agent to deny that people generally have reason to condemn the agent (excuses).

(10) A system that can make sense of so many of the elements of morality can legitimately claim itself to be a moral system.

The idea in Step 10 is to apply the principle that if something walks like a duck, has feathers like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.

In step 9, I listed only six of the ways in which this perspective on morality deals with the elements that we find in the institution called morality. There are more, but I was limited to 15 statements, if you recall. So, I listed, "walks like a duck", "flies like a duck", "has feathers like a duck", "lays eggs like a duck", "quacks like a duck", and "swims like a duck", but these are not the only features that are relevant. 

We have to take Step 9 as a promise of things to come. One cannot fit the whole defense into 15 statements - and it is not an objection against the theory that it cannot. Just as it is no objection against evolution or human-caused climate change that their full defense requires multiple volumes of material. However, this does identify where one would look for evidence, and, I hope, gives at least a hint as to what the evidence will look like and how it might succeed.

This promise to defend the items listed in number (9), and many items excluded because of limitations in space, is one of the main subjects for the rest of this blog.

One of . . . . because I also hold that morality must be practical and applicable to the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.