4s: The summer of morality

Week 1: Morality defined

Note, these are my definitions unless I specifically mention a source. Defining terms is not the job of the dictionary. A dictionary is just a compendium of common usage as determined by those who write dictionaries. A dictionary is not an objective source of meaning. It is a reference of common usage.

It is the job of every individual to define their own terms. If there is a disagreement on a definition, the true definition is the one you carry in your head because that is the representation of what you mean by the term. Your meaning could be wrong in an academic sense, but never in a conversational sense because it represents what is in your mind when you use the word. I am offering you an expansive set of meanings for the term as I see it and use it.

We need to learn to negotiate definitions. I tell you what I mean by certain words so that you can unpack them properly when we communicate. But you also need to tell me what you mean so that we can spot the differences and negotiate a common usage between the two of us. Only then can we have a productive dialog. Here is my attempt to provide clarity with regard to what I mean by morality, and other important ideas:

No such thing as morality

There is no such thing as morality as I understand and define the word. Morality is not a thing anymore than numbers are things. Numbers are useful fictions. They are ideas we hold in our minds as a way of describing particular aspects of reality. Numbers are the most objective and accepted ideas held by humans. Numbers can be taught and learned. Numbers gives us a sense of grounding because, when used the same way to describe certain aspects of reality, numbers are universal and objective. When you understand what I mean by 1, it becomes a universal and objective fact that 2 is the sum of adding another 1 to the existing 1.

Note that we begin with a definition and teach it the same way to everyone. Only then can you get universal agreement about numbers. Also note that you might get a different result if you use base 8 as opposed to base 10. (I’m not a mathmagician.)

The important takeaway is that numbers are not things. They are descriptions of things. Further, they are abstractions that describe the relation of things in a single aspect of reality. The correct use of numbers provides objective facts about reality. There are no exceptions. That is why we love numbers, and why there is nothing quite like numbers in the entire universe. We wish there were other descriptions of reality that are as useful. But there simply aren’t any.

Morality is the same kind of thing as a number, but it never produces an objective fact about the universe. It can only be a marker for how you feel about social events. A social event is anything one person does that affects another person or persons. Morality cannot tell you whether or not a social event was a good thing or a bad thing. It can only be a marker for how you feel about that social event. Again, morality does not describe social events. It only describes your feelings about social events. Because of that, morality can never be a definitive description of the event itself. It can never be objective. It can never be as useful as numbers. That is why we accept numbers but debate morality. By their very nature, numbers describe reality. Morality does not and cannot describe reality, only how we feel about social events.

Objective, subjective, and universality

Numbers are descriptions of certain kinds of relationships between two or more entities. If one inputs the right kind of query, the product of correctly manipulated numbers is the objective truth. To the extent that descriptions of things can be reduced to numbers, they can be objective. All of the properties of colors and brightness can be reduced to numbers. Knowing whether or not the light and color in one place is exactly the same as another, is a contention that can be expressed entirely in numbers. We can be mathematically certain about things like color and brightness. We don’t rely on our senses for that information because at their best, our senses are not calibrated for the problem.

Sound is another aspect of reality that can be objectively known and described. Sound that we can hear is a matter of Newtonian physics. I can precisely reproduce a certain set of sounds given the right instruments of measurement and sound production. What I reproduce would not be similar or close to the original. It would be precise. We can know that I did an exact reproduction, not because of your senses, but because of numbers. Sound is reproducible to a degree of mathematical certainty. It is a fact that resides in the world of the objective.

Feelings are always subjective. Morality is feelings. Therefore, morality is always subjective. Social events are objective Morality is not the language of social events. It is the language of how we feel about social events. Descriptions of social events are always incomplete. How we feel about any given social event is largely mediated by how thorough the description is of that event.

That man shot and killed that other man is a set of facts without context. By themselves, those facts are insufficient to trigger a grounded opinion about how we feel about that event. Context is the details that allow us to personally adjudicate the moral content of our feelings about that event.

No event is moral or immoral. To believe so is to make a category error. Let’s add some context: *That man killed a baby just for the personal entertainment value of the action.” Now, is it immoral? That’s a trick question. The answer is always no. There is no moral content in the action. The action is just a thing that happened in reality. It cannot be moral or immoral. That said, we can feel a certain way about it. We can even universally agree that the action was harmful, and therefore, immoral. We are agreeing about our feelings of the actions. We use the same word to describe our feelings about the action. In that way, it is immoral since morality describes how we feel about a social event.

It feels like an objective fact that it is wrong to torture and kill babies for fun. But that feeling is always subjective and never an objective fact about the social event. If everyone we encounter feels the same way about that event, then the feeling is mutual and even universal. But universality does not equal, or ever point to objectivity. The fact that we all agree that the sky is blue has nothing to do with whether or not the sky is actually blue. We might all be correct. But the fact that we are all correct still doesn’t make it objective. What makes it an objective fact is that it is true regardless of what we think about it. The color of the sky is exactly what it is even when there is no one to describe or observe it.

A social event is exactly what it is even when there is no one to describe or observe it. It has no inherent moral context. We add the moral context as a way to explain our feelings about that event. The moral content is not in the event, but in the eye of the observer.

A thing is not beautiful because of mathematical parsimony. Things have no aesthetic context. Beauty is a description of how we feel about that thing. A person can never be wrong about their emotional description of a thing. That is why there will always be disagreement about whether or not something is beautiful. Nothing can be beautiful or ugly because things don’t possess those traits. We assign those values based on our subjective aesthetic values.

Morality is the same as beauty. We all agree that killing babies for fun is horrible. That doesn’t make the event horrible. The event is just the event. And for the record, I believe that a social creature is fundamentally broken if they don’t find such an event repulsive every time.

Universality can be gained via negotiation if we do not already have it by some other means. Negotiation is the attempt to agree on a mutually good outcome. I might have one idea about how to achieve a goal. Another person sharing the same goal might prefer a different course of action. Where only one action can be done, negotiation is required.

We also negotiate feelings. There was a time when not everyone believed in the humane treatment of noncombatants in war. At some point, we realized that good outcomes were not being achieved by letting everyone do whatever they felt like at the time. As a group, we decided to codify feelings of disgust over the inhumane treatment of noncombatants. Not everyone agreed at first. Such things take time and negotiation. But now, most civilized people around the world believe we should codify war crimes as a category. Enough negotiation has been achieved such that in large enough numbers, we can agree.

Inhumane treatment of noncombatants is not immoral or moral. It is merely a social event that happens in reality. We don’t tend to like the outcome of such treatment. Enough of us now feel the same way about it such that we agree on the label of immoral, and now, illegal. That is the product of subjectivity and negotiation. It is not a fact about any event. It is a fact about what we think of such events.

Good, bad, righteousness, and sin/evil

Secularly, we can describe events as good or bad. These words describe how we feel about the events and their outcomes. In subjectivity, outcomes are always a consideration. Was giving out $600 stimulus checks good or bad? Without context, we can only speak philosophically. Even with a lot of context, the event can never be good or bad. It is only a matter of how we feel about it.

On a personal and selfish level, it was very good. However, I am not an economist. It could be that the event will prove to be the downfall of western civilization. In that case, it would be bad, very bad. Right now, none of us can say for sure. We need the perspective of history.

Definitionally, good and bad are descriptions of how we feel about social events. We are either describing the outcome of an event or predicting the outcome of an event. Should we do another round of stimulus checks? We can describe the outcome of the last one and try to predict the outcome of the next one. Even if we predict that it would bring about the downfall of western civilization, some might believe that to be a good thing. Therefore, it would be a good thing from their perspective. If the feelings on the subject are sufficiently unclear, we come together to make our case and negotiate. That is how society works. Social creatures cannot remain social creatures without negotiation.

Righteousness and evil are not the same as good and bad. They have a metaphysical connotation. It is the language of someone who believes that events have some inherent moral content the way electro-magnetism contain the nature of color. There is no “moralion" that infuses a thing with morality. But if you think that there is in some metaphysical way, you are likely a religionist or spiritualist who believes that events, in and of themselves, are morally one way or the other.

I don’t believe in good/righteousness and evil. I believe that things can have good and bad outcomes. When Christians and atheists talk about such things, this is one place where imprecision in language creates confusion. Atheists generally mean only one thing when assessing an outcome as good or bad. Christians have a dual meaning. They are sometimes using righteousness and evil the same way we mean good and bad. And other times, they have a second meaning of metaphysical, inherent goodness and badness.

They and I might describe a social event as good or evil. But when I say it, I am speaking of my feelings about the event with a full view of outcomes. I never mean that it is some inherent nature of goodness or badness. Almost always, the Christian means that a thing is inherently good or bad. We both might decide that a thing is bad/evil. We both might use those words. But there is always a difference in meaning because the Christian has metaphysical baggage attached to the words that can never be ignored.

Moral goals

My moral goal is the outcome I wish to achieve by social events. It is aspirational more than predictive. It is a statement of what we want to happen rather than what we think will happen. Sometimes, there is no way to know for sure what will happen. In the case of stimulus checks, some of the goals might have been short-term predictions. But since we need the perspective of history to really know the outcome, the goals were mostly aspirational. Morality generally lives in the aspirational zone.

Based on our goals and the nature of humans, some moral decisions are trivially easy. We want all people in a society to be as free as possible to pursue their own happiness when that happiness does not conflict with the common good. That is always aspirational because we can never be too sure of an outcome. Slavery around the world lasted for a very long time because enough people benefited from it that we could not clearly see the advantage of abolishing it. From the slaves perspective, it is better to be regarded as a good mule than to be regarded as nothing at all.

However, as a society, we eventually determined that the usefulness of slavery was outweighed by the benefit of a society where everyone is free. The maximum possible freedom produces better outcomes. Also, if some could be slaves, then anyone (including you) could be a slave. Since powerful people don’t want to be slaves, it is better to kill the system than to risk ending up on the wrong side of it. Even if your nation is overthrown, your risk of becoming a slave is much lower since everyone has abolished it.

Distress signals at sea are interesting to me because there is no direct benefit of one crew risking their lives to save another crew who fell upon bad circumstances. But mirror neurons are a bitch. The sea is a rough place that can overturn any set of fortunes. We would cry out for help, even to the enemy, because on the high seas, there is no one to see you pee your pants with terror. So when we encounter a distress signal, we stop what we are doing and help the helpless.

This all has to do with moral goals. What are we aspirationally trying to achieve? Social creatures are also practical creatures. The greater good might be expressed in metaphysical terms, but is usually practical. We want a system of safety nets sufficient to get us out of a jam if we find ourselves on the wrong side of a distress call. We have to be a part of that safety system if we want it to be in place when we need it. See how this is not so much noble as it is a practical goal that we can dress up as metaphysical? We don’t save sailers because of the universal dignity of mankind. We save them because all sailors are equally vulnerable, including us. Wrap whatever metaphysical BS around that fact as you like. You are not being moral as much as you are achieving a practical goal.

I suspect war crimes are the same way. Get rid of the spiritual bullshit and recognize that you, who are safe right now, could fall to a savvy enemy before this paragraph is completed. You don’t want your family to be treated the way your soldiers sometimes treat other families. We have all lost enough war to recognize the universal appeal of better treatment of people in war. It is not righteous. It is the meeting of a practical goal.

We hire referees to adjudicate the moment by moment happenings of a game. This is not for the morality of fairness. It is to make sure that the other team can’t get away with stuff that our team can’t get away with. The reason playgrounds are full of team play without referees is that both sides want to play the game with a sense of fairness. They self-regulate and call their own fouls. They are not being moral; they are meeting a goal to ensure gameplay is fun and repeatable. People who routinely violate the rules are not invited back to play. Even assholes will follow some rules because they are also social creatures who want to play the game.

There can be no morality without an underlying set of goals as a way of adjudicating whether or not the aspirational outcomes are being met. Any morality not based on a set of clearly-defined, human-centric goals will be a liability rather than a benefit. When morality comes up, always determine the goals. When moral goals are aligned, it is possible for people to agree on the means to reach those goals, and a way to self-regulate and recalibrate the methods.

Moral values

A value is the description of a moral aspiration. We want to be good employees. There are many things necessary for being a good employee. Being on time is one of those necessary things. We notice that few people who are routinely late for work get to remain as an employee. So we decide that punctuality is a value worth having. We value punctuality.

Note that there is nothing inherently good about punctuality because nothing contains inherent goodness or badness. There are practical reasons why we deem some things values and others not. When arriving at a certain kind of party, there is an even greater value of being unpunctual. Concerts never start on time on purpose. Punctuality is not inherently good. We can value somethings in some situations and discard those values in other situations. That is how it should work.

Religion tries to shortcut the work of moral calculus by simply declaring that some things are good and other things are bad — that some values are good and others are bad. But trying to apply values in this universal manner creates more problems than it could ever solve.

Lying is bad and honesty is good, except when it isn’t. It is good to lie to save a life if your goal, at any given moment, is to save lives. Honest game play is good so that the game can be enjoyed by all, unless you are playing poker or liar’s dice where dishonesty, deception, and deceit is the order of the day. In many cases, telling the truth leads to horrible outcomes. It can never be universally good. It is merely an option that can result in positive or negative results. Things do not have inherent moral values. A moral value is just the way we describe our moral aspirations and nothing more.

Moral oughts

If a value is an expression of aspiration, then an ought is the necessary procedure for achieving that aspiration. If we want to be a punctual employee, then getting out of bed on time becomes a moral ought. If we want a system of rescue by strangers on the high seas, then answering a distress call is a moral ought. All moral oughts are tied to moral goals and moral values. A moral value is simply the codification of a moral goal.

There is no ought without a goal. We cannot be good for goodness sake. We are good for the sake of achieving a moral goal. The goal might be to make sure we are seen as being a good person by others. To achieve that, we must do good things in the most visible way possible. If the goal is to be seen as good by ourselves, then it is not necessary to do good that others can see. But it is still necessary to do acts we deem as good.

No one has a moral ought to save a drowning kid in a pool apart from a moral goal. We might have a legal ought. But there is nothing metaphysical about it. Most of us will save a drowning kid, especially if we have kids. We want the distress calls of our kids to be answered, even by opposing tribes. So we all engage in rescuing drowning kids. That is why we pay for lifeguards at public pools. Even without kids, rescuing a drowning kid makes us a hero in the public eye and also in our own eye. No one ought to save a drowning kid. But there are plenty of moral goals aligned with doing so.

Conclusion: Because of the kind of creature we are

At bottom, our expressions of morality, values, and oughts come down to the kind of creature we are. A lion does not hold all values common with humans because of the kind of creature it is. Our values differ due to the kinds of creatures we are. Monkeys are social creatures that were here before us. We are closely related to them. We share many moral instincts. But where different, it is due to the kind of creatures we are. There is nothing metaphysical about it.

If kissing was necessary for a particular lifeform, you can be assured that there would be many moral values and oughts about kissing. They would do it all the time. Kissing a stranger would not be illegal. You might even be rewarded for kissing people against their will because you were helping them live. Those rules would not be wrong. They would be right because of the kind of creature such people would be.

What if humans had developed differently? Then we would most certainly have different moral insights. We know that because as we have matured via social evolution, we have become different kinds of people, so much so that our ancestors would probably not recognize us as being the same as them. Our morals change even as individuals. Moral values as a child are different than the ones we have as young adults, middle-aged, established adults, and mature adults nearer to the end of our lives. Our morals shift as a result of the kind of creatures we are at any given stage of our development.

Constitutions are largely based on negotiated moral instincts. Constitutions change. They must change to reflect the kind of creature we are right now, and aspirationally, what kind of creature we wish to become. Are there creatures who view rape as okay? Absolutely! That could have been us. So what? Those creatures are acting out what they are. We have what seems like the unique ability to desire to be different from what we are. That is a powerful evolutionary achievement that is not always an advantage.

We can imagine being better than we are — a different kind of creature. Religionists live in this space. They want to be other than what they perceive themselves to be. In some ways, that cannot be achieved without reshaping everyone into that better kind of person. They are always correcting for what they want to be and failing to recognize what they really are. Their mores are largely based on their aspirational fantasies.

It is hard for two people to agree on anything concerning morals when one acts on the basis of the kind of creature we are while the other acts on the basis of the kind of creature they fantasize we can be. In one reality, homosexuality is just human nature with no particular harm to what we are as human societies. The other sees it as a manifestation of what is wrong and an impediment to achieving the aspirational goal of what we want to be. This bifurcation is how we get wars.

There is much more to be defined. This will have to do for now. Coming up in week 2, the moral argument unpacked. See you then.

David Johnson