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Ethics Theories

Over the course of history, various authors have proposed some fundamental rules for differentiating between good an evil. These rules are not sufficient by themselves to determine what to do, because societies still need more detailed rules to coordinate behavior (for example, rules of the road, that define what side of the road to drive on, right of way, etc.). However, the fundamental rules serve as useful approximations, to help to differentiate good regulations from bad ones.

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Let's take a brief review of some historical maxims, to see whether they are compatible with the pursuit of mutual happiness, as advocated on this web site as the fundamental purpose of life:

1. Golden Rule

The Golden Rule says to "do unto others as you would wish others to do unto you." Assuming that each person wishes to be happy, they would treat each other in ways that enhance their mutual happiness.

2. Virtue-based ethics

Virtue ethics encourages praiseworthy attributes of people, such as kindness, generosity, honesty, trustworthiness, etc. Often virtues are a moderate condition between extremes. For example, courage falls between cowardice and foolhardiness.

If a person is virtuous and surrounded by virtuous people, it is more likely that he can have a synergistic relationship with them that produces mutual happiness, than if they are selfish, dishonest, etc. Virtue based ethics is a bit more prescriptive than the golden rule, because it provides behavioral characteristics to aspire to.

3. Utility theory

Utility theory arose from the study of economics. Utility is associated with the usefulness of a good or service, from which a person gets satisfaction. The aggregate of a person's satisfactions is happiness. Utility theory prescribes for any given population that they maximize their happiness. So this theory supports the pursuit of happiness.

One difficulty, however, is that one can only optimize happiness for a finite population, for which the average or total happiness can be estimated. This doesn't provide guidance for choices that affect people of the future, people outside the group, or animals.

4. Rights theory

Rights theory assigns rights to people or animals. Rights can include prohibitions of things that cause suffering, and it may also include some obligations for people to help others, such as to provide education to their children. The people or animals don't need to do anything to obtain these rights, but if they violate other people's rights they may lose some of their own. For example, a criminal may lose his right to liberty.

Compared to utility theory, rights have the advantage that they apply not only to people in a group, but also to people and animals outside the group and to future generations. However, it can be difficult to know what rights to assign, particularly for rights of obligation where the capacity to fulfil those rights is uncertain. In general, people prefer having rights to the total lack of them, and they agree upon rights that enable them to have long term mutual happiness.

5. Social contract theory

Social contract theory says that ethics is an agreement that people invent among themselves to govern their behavior. People invent rules because they are happier to have the rules than to have chaos and conflict. The goal of mutual happiness is the guiding force behind the social contract.

6. Deontological theory (duty)

Deontology is defined as "the study of duty and obligation." The idea here is that there are certain duties that one simply accepts as axioms. For example, it may be a duty for each person to be honest and to keep their promises. No rationale needs to be given, as people will accept the duty as being self-evident.

As a generic prescription of duties, it has been proposed that people can define whatever duties they want for others to follow, so long as they are each willing to undertake those same duties themselves. This comes very close to the concept of the golden rule.

If we assume that each person prefers happiness over misery, then we could expect them to agree upon duties that produce mutual happiness.

7. Natural ethics theory

This theory says that people should do whatever comes naturally to them. This might be criticized as being excessively limiting. For example, most people wouldn't accept the claim "if a person was meant to fly, he would be born with wings."

In response to that criticism, an advocate of this theory would argue that it's OK to invent airplanes, as it is within the mental capability of the person to do it, so truly it is in their nature. But their nature is also to be kind and compassionate, so doing cruel things violates that nature and is to be avoided.

If it is true that it is the nature of people to prefer mutual happiness over a desire to fight for dominance without regard to the suffering involved, then this theory would be compatible with mutual happiness as a goal.

If we treat all of these rules as approximations, we can see that they tend to be compatible with the pursuit of mutual happiness as a fundamental goal. However, if one applies a very strict, literal interpretation of each of these fundamental rules, inevitably there will be situations that don't always work out that way.

For example, for the golden rule, what if a person is suicidal? If he wants to die, does that mean he should kill someone else (to treat them as he wishes to be treated)? That would be consistent with the words of the rule, but not the intent of it. There is an unstated assumption that each person seeks his own wellbeing. There are a variety of other situations, too, where the rule by itself requires some further explanation because the rule itself is not sufficiently precise.

In fact, this is true of all the above items. There are plenty of ethics books describing the historical origin of each, along with various "ethical dilemma" situations where the rule produces an unexpected result: a result that most people will object to.

Ethics books often present these as competing but flawed theories, as if you had to pick one of them. That can be frustrating when there is no clear front-runner that is widely agreed upon. However, there is an alternative, which is to adopt a hybrid.

That is what this web site is about: to draw on the best of the historical theories and present a practical decision-making method. For example, the goal of maximizing happiness from utility theory can be matched with rights theory, in order to cover decisions both within a group and without. The group doesn't just optimize its own wellbeing; it takes care not to harm anyone within the group or without. Moreover, it draws on its surplus capacity for the expanding wave of generosity, to help people outside the group.

The standards of ethics are much higher in the world today than they were centuries ago. There is progress in improving people's wellbeing. And likewise the ideas presented here will be replaced in the future with even better ones.

Ethics does not have to be reduced to a slogan, nor even to a sentence or a paragraph. There is no limit to how complex you might make your imagined ideal for the kind of world and universe you wish to live in. When other people imagine a similar world, that brings opportunities of cooperation to make it so.

In particular, you know how you wish other people would treat you. You know what benefits you received from your parents and past generations, including the knowledge, inventions, and other things they have passed on to you; likewise you may wish to leave a good or better legacy for the future. Also, you likely care about other animals who are similar to you, who may have joy or suffering according to how they are treated. Many other people have similar wishes.

If you were asked to describe that world in a sentence, probably you could state an approximate summary, but it wouldn't be complete. You probably couldn't explain every detail straight-away, any more than you can recite all the words that you know. The concepts are in your mind, but they only become conscious as situations arise that call on them.

Suppose a bunch of people are each required to pick their favorite of the above rules, and that they don't all make the same choices. Does this mean they can't cooperate, because they can't tell the difference between good and evil? Not necessarily! Because in their subconscious they mostly want the same things, when it comes time to plan practical implementation, they can work toward shared ideals.

There is really only one major historical ethics theory a person might adopt that would create an insurmountable barrier to universal cooperation, and here it is:

8. The Nazi goal - fighting for superiority

According to this theory, humans are superior to animals and it's OK to do anything to them that may be convenient to the humans, no matter how cruel it may be. Likewise there are races that are superior to other races, and it's an obligation to the superior race to dominate or destroy the inferior one. This goal is more important than happiness, even to the superior race. It is their duty to dominate or destroy the inferior races regardless of the hardship they must endure to do it.

This might be appealing to some who consider themselves superior, especially for leaders who can send their citizens to fight for them. To them it justifies a "might makes right" concept of morals. It was common in ancient empires, who believed that the only immoral kind of war is one they couldn't win.

In more recent times, Adolph Hitler also decided this was the path to glory, but he failed to consider that all those "inferior races" in the nations he attacked might have one advantage he hadn't foreseen: to defend themselves they put aside their differences and achieved a level of cooperation that Hitler's forces couldn't overcome. In the end, Hitler ended up putting a bullet through his head.

Suppose, however, that Hitler had won. What would be the next logical step? Surely among the "superior race" there are some who are more superior than others. This necessitates that they should fight among themselves.

We see this over the course of history. Large empires have been pulled together with the use of force, but they always end up collapsing eventually.

With this kind of philosophy, people bring misery upon themselves.

There is a better way to build nations, which is voluntarily.

What is the force that puts nations together, rather than putting them into conflict and self-inflicted disaster? It is the synergy that happens when people cooperate on a goal of mutual happiness!

To conclude, various authors can propose ethics theories, including not only a goal but means of implementation. When any person reads that theory, they will likely consider whether they like the goal, and whether the proposed implementation will actually yield the claimed result. Often the goals of various authors are similar, because to convince the reader to adopt the recommendations, it is more effective to promise happiness rather than misery.

A theory that is easy to understand and memorable has a short, simple goal. But when a complex set of behaviors is summarized into a short prescription, inevitably there will be more than one way to describe it.

It's kind of like having many people describe the sky. One person says it's blue, another says it starts at the ground and goes up high, another says it's filled with air, and yet another says that its the home of clouds. Then they argue about which one has the best description. But really, most of the people knew what the sky was anyway, all along.

So, before assuming that cooperation is impossible among different cultures, with different traditional explanations of what is good vs evil, dig into what they actually have in common. You will typically see a lot in common: they all have rules against theft and murder, they all have rules to ensure children are cared for, they all have methods to determine who has ownership of properties, etc. This is not a lucky accident. It is a predictable evolution.

Of course, some might have progressed further on this evolutionary path than others, and it can vary by topic which culture is furthest advanced. That gives a great opportunity to learn from each other.

This website also has a slogan for ethics, "spread happiness." As a slightly more elaborated version, here are 3 axioms of recommended behavior for Universal Ethics:

• It must produce widespread happiness without arbitrary exclusions.
• It must be survivable across generations forever.
• It must give adherents collective control over their destiny, insofar as possible.

Or to put it another way, we seek happiness across generations forever, without bringing ourselves to extinction by our behavior, and doing so with liberty (not depending on some external entity to force us to be good).

That's what all recommendations on this web site are aimed at delivering. I hope you like it. Maybe there's a better way to say it. I won't debate that.

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