Thoughts on Moral Reasoning

 Relativism is reviled as an abrogation of a reliable standard against which to measure "goodness" or "badness". I agree that without a standard, we gradually lose all that is distinct, and devolve into an undifferentiated mush that is powerless to prevent the encroachment of the law of the jungle because it cannot bring itself to condemn evil on the off chance that it may actually be "good".

I will say that I dislike and avoid the terms "good" and "bad". But my dislike of those terms is not an acquiescence to rank relativism or malignant multiculturalism. I have no wish to abolish a standard of excellence. I dislike those words because they inhibit digging deeper. They stop thought. They curtail inquiry. They are the parenting equivalent of "because I said so."

The questions we often fail to ask are ones like this:

• Good for whom?
• Bad in what way?
• Is this a short-term good at the expense of a long-term bad?
• Is a "necessary evil" really just necessary to our ends, and results in evil only to others?
• When we find ourselves thinking "the end justifies the means," do we stop to think that We always seem to get the reward while They always pay the price?

These are the important kinds of questions that it's too easy to forget about when we invoke "good" or "bad". Personally, I like discussions framed in terms of costs and benefits, scope, and horizon because these help us get to the root of things. But is even that sufficient?

Oceans of ink have been expended on the question of what constitutes good. The idea that "good is whatever God says" suffers from the awesome potential for abuse by people who manage to persuade others to believe that God wants this or that thing that mainly benefits the persuader. Usually this takes the form of paying the persuader now in exchange for blessings that happen after you're dead. The future benefits are often described as "infinite" or "eternal", and they make the immediate price seem small in comparison. These promises may be valid; we cannot actually prove otherwise. But it should not be lost on us that their fulfilment can never be observed "in this life", and their non-fulfillment can never be brought home to the promisor.

Also, what we call time-tested reliability may be nothing more than a thin veneer of respectability accrued over time. We are too prone to venerate an illusion of reliability that conceals centuries of harm and hypocrisy, of one-sided or short-term "good". The mere age of an idea should not confer any immunity to examination or criticism.

We shake our heads in bemusement at people of other religions who are taken in by what appears to us to be transparently obvious tomfoolery. But we are blind to the fact that they think the same thing about us and our religion.

From a secular perspective, the utilitarian calculus of the "greatest good for the greatest number" suffers from the superficiality of leaving open the question of what, really, constitutes good. Many interpret it as something like well-being, pleasure, happiness, or contentment. But these are all inextricably linked with brain states that can be externally manipulated through psychological, electrical or pharmacological means. Also, this quantitative perspective of good, while sometimes useful in discussions of public policy, leads to difficult or even unanswerable questions involving trolleys, acceptable rates of casualties, actuarial tables, and the like.

Immanuel Kant gets closer to the heart of the matter by acknowledging that scope and horizons are important facts in deciding questions of "good" and "bad". He calls it the categorical imperative:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

But even here, we are confronted with sometimes insuperable practical barriers. Our day-to-day lives would grind to a halt in an infinite morass of analysis paralysis if our every decision had to conform to this standard. And a perfectly unbending devotion to any ideal whether it be to truth, or abstaining from harming another being, is ultimately limiting. Not to be flippant, but is any "good" likely to arise from an exchange like this:

-- "Does this make be look fat?"
-- "Yes."

To project this on a larger screen, if a bit of diplomatic finesse prevents a war and saves 10 million lives, is the price of deviating from the truth worth it? A categorical imperative that says "no deviation from the truth, however slight, is ever allowed under any circumstances" doesn't even let us ask the question. That is what absolute morality looks like.

My point is that the power of universal or categorical imperatives derives from their inflexibility, but that same inflexibility is also their Achilles' Heel. they are good for painting the big flat parts of the wall, but cannot get into the corners, and so tend to either avoid the edges or to make a mess.

So, to sum up to this point, moral reasoning is hard. A world where everything is totally relative leads to a breaking down of all the barriers that we erect in the name of civilization to keep at bay the law of the jungle, and thus allows "might makes right" to flourish. A truly absolute morality that allows for no flexibility, no nuance, is at best impractical, and at worst civilization killing, thus leading, though by a different route, to the law of the jungle.

A morality that we portray as absolute, based on the pronouncements of an unseen but omni-powerful source, is easily subverted by the unscrupulous to impose upon the good faith of the unquestioningly loyal, the unwary, or the ignorant. This is the most relative of all the moralities.  Everywhere we look, we see evidence of this. God says "do not kill" and then makes a list of exceptions. God allows his leaders to do one thing, but forbids that same behavior in the followers. God changes his mind so that yesterday's doctrine becomes today's heresy, and yesterday's sin is today's commandment. How often, and how many times must we learn this lesson? To all my friends who would disown me for trying to undermine your faith, rest assured I'm talking about all those other religions, not yours.

And we cannot wholly rely on a utilitarian morality based on a formula that churns out ready-made answers based on some vague notion of "good". Like other brands of morality, this leads to some good outcomes and some bad. The point is, it is not reliable.

Some might say it is impertinent or presumptuous of me to step into the same arena as the world's most renowned philosophers and religious figures. But we are all free to grapple with these important questions as best we can. And -- who knows -- perhaps by dint of standing on the shoulders of giants, even an amateur may see a little further than before than before and stumble across something previously unnoticed. It's happened many times in every field of human endeavor.

I don't claim to have a silver bullet. Far from it. But perhaps there are some practical ideas that can help us navigate this tangled thicket.

1. Nobody thinks he is the bad guy. Start by assuming everybody is doing their best, under the circumstances.
2. Trust in any authority must be earned, and can be lost.
3. Our worldview is not the world. Problems and solutions can look very different from other perspectives.
4. "Good" and "Evil" are lazy labels that are often misused. Don't let them scare us away from digging deeper. There's almost always something underneath worth considering.
5. Our brains are optimized to save energy. Whenever possible, they try to bypass the hard work of thought and inquiry, and leap straight to a judgment of good or evil, us or them.
6. Allegiance to our Team or our Tribe often seems more important than truth or fairness. This is the basis of all religion and all politics. Community is vital for human thriving, but when it's too isolated or unmoored from demonstrable reality, it can drift into very bad places.