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Dr. Condit’s Crackpot Theory of Ethics
Ethics is a philosophical discipline that undertakes to provide guidance for our behavior by exploring
our lives and thinking about how we should live our lives. It also relates to the question of what gives
life meaning? As with most of philosophy, ethics starts with questions.
Why do we do what we do (motivation)?
What counts as a valid justification for violating moral and ethical norms (ethical justification, rules of
argument)?
How can we live more ethical lives?
How can we make decisions that support our values and the values of our culture and profession?
Are there cultural values we should not support?
How can and do we construct professional ethics codes?
Where do values come from?
What are the sources of my values?
Does my behavior reflect my stated values?
Answering these kinds of questions requires reflection and I see that as the difference between ethics
and morals. Everyone has moral values that guide their lives, “oughts” that we have learned from
family, church and society, but not everyone does ethics, namely takes the step of reflecting on their
values to see if they are coherent and consistent? Does my behavior match my values?)
How can I be comfortable with decisions based on my values when the outcome is not what I had
hoped for? This requires not only reflection, but self-awareness.
Through the ages philosophers have come up with theories to explain ethics by examining human
behavior and by trying to create systems of thinking to explain it and to explain what we ought to do,
and how we ought to decide what to do.
We read about Socrates and his method of rigorously exploring what people say they know and value
and pursuing their thoughts to see if they hold up under the law of logic, and we saw that often it does
not. In the end, Euthyphro contradicted himself and never did define “piety” and never did explain
how charging his father with murder was a pious act. Socrates’s method is one of vigorously pursuing
self-knowledge. This method depends on dialogue, talking it out. One of the most famous thinkers of
our time, Jurgen Habermas, has developed a theory called “discourse ethics” which fleshes out the
method implicit in Plato’s writings.
So this gives use two “Cs” of ethics, namely conversation and communication.
Another ethical question is what is our duty? Kant is the main philosopher for this deontological
(duty) view of ethics. This theory says that by using pure reason, we can come to understand our
moral duty. These duties apply to everyone, can be independently discovered by anyone and are nonnegotiable. Do you see Plato’s notion that there are ideal forms that we can discover lurking in Kant’s
thought? Kant’s famous dictum is the categorical imperative, which can be states as “always treat
other people as ends and never as means”, much like the Golden Rule. He also holds that there are
certain duties such as promise keeping and truth telling that we must always obey regardless of the
consequences. But it makes us uncomfortable when we do the right thing and it has horrible
consequences. Must we tell the truth when it means someone will die? Doesn’t it make moral sense to
lie to save a life?
I haven’t yet found a “C” for this theory, but it fits with the experience that we feel obligated to do
certain things, because we know they are the right things to do. It is not right to lie (and if we get
caught, we had better be able to explain why we made the choice to go against a generally agreed
upon duty). Perhaps “correct” action is the C for deontology. This theory often uses rules and
principles.
A contrasting theory is utilitarianism which Hume, and Bentham helped develop, but
John Stuart Mills is the philosophers who finalized utilitarian theory, which says that the most
important ethical consideration is consequences. We should do wherever will create the most
happiness for the most people. Some ethicists talk about “good” rather than “happiness” and there is
much discussion about whether pleasure (happiness) should be the highest moral aim. Of course it is
important to consider consequences, but do they provide enough guidance for ethical decision
making?
First, we cannot predict consequences with much accuracy and second we can’t calculate units of
pleasure and pain in any meaningful way. Of course the “C” here is “consequences”.
So far then we have the ethical categories of communication/conversation, correct action/duty and
consequences. Another important element to consider is the situation or context.
Joseph Fletcher says that the situation matters. He holds that we are required to be loving, to do what
love demands in the situation. One of his examples is a married Jewish woman during WWII, who can
save her family from the death chamber by sleeping with a German official. A duty ethic would say
that adultery is wrong. Fletcher argues that letting your family die is wrong and that love requires
saving one’s family even if that means committing adultery. In a non-war situation, adultery would
not be the right thing to do, but in the situation of war, it is required by love for one’s family. Another
word for “situation” is “context”. Context can change what we might decide to do whether we are
working from a deontological or a utilitarian perspective.
Another key part of ethical theory that shapes or morals is the community (or communities) to which
we belong. Community includes our family, ethnic, cultural, social and religious heritages and has a
profound effect on shaping our values, and thus our ethics.
Community when seen as exclusive is limited to those like us, and everyone else is “them” and is not
worthy of moral consideration. The decimation of the indigenous American populations and their
continued mistreatment (not one treaty that was signed by the US Government with the Native
Americans has been honored!), and our history of slavery in this country show the power of such
exclusive views of community. Turning other human beings into “them” is a necessary step in allowing
people to do horrible things to other people.
An inclusive community, however, shapes our values and our lives in positive ways. We are social
animals and cannot survive in isolation. Our young need others to nurture them during the long period
of development from babyhood to independent functioning. We can define community as wide as “the
human community” as has been done in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, or as
narrowly as a cult does - those who are exactly alike in action and thought. Some have begun to
expand the definition of community to include all living things. Some consider everything to be alive
and part of the living system of the Gaia Earth, and thus everything must be considered when we
make ethical decisions. To leave anything or any being out of consideration is to have an incomplete
ethic.
Ethics also involves imagination. The “ought” and “should” of ethics come from looking at the present
situation and imagining how it could be improved. “What kind of world do I want to live in?” may be
the most profound ethical question. Perhaps the “C’ here is “creativity”.
In summary, ethics involves, at the very least, creativity, community, context, consequences, correct
action or duty, context, conversation and communication. It involves much more, and each of these
concepts needs to be considered in more depth as well as in terms of their complex interactions with
each other.
©Stephen Condit, 2013