€¦  · Web viewmuch to the chickens.” “It’s not about the chickens, my friend. Many of the peasants in this village own chickens.” Morality is a matter of perspective.

Chapter 2: Moral Engagements

In ancient Greece, high in the Parnassian hills overlooking the Gulf of Corinth, was the sports

complex, spa, and consulting firm known as the Oracle at Delphi. For hundreds of years it turned a

good profit giving advice. This usually took the form of short poems that were notoriously ambiguous.

For example Croesus, king of Lydia, sent to know whether he should attack the nascent Persian

empire. Delphi said “Invade Persia and destroy a mighty empire.” Croesus went for it, but he neglected

to inquire which empire was going to be destroyed and he barely escaped being cooked alive

(Herodotus, 1972).

Arguably the most famous words of wisdom at Delphi were carved in the steps leading to

Apollo’s Temple. It said γνῶθι σεαυτόν – good advice then and now. Socrates was fond of repeating

this and claimed the oracle had declared him the only Greek who understood what it meant. There is

reason to believe that was true as well, since he consistently maintained that he did not know much of

anything. 1

Certainly the translation we favor today is a bit twisted. We say “know yourself” as though that

were a key to fulfillment. It is a multi-billion dollar industry in America, with personal spiritual guides

(sacred and secular), self-help books, television shows, online talisman and outfit shopping, and

personal trainers. I think you can even buy a sweatshirt that proclaims “It’s all about me.” A lot of

people believe that personal enlightenment has something to do with morality. 2

But like so much else that came up with the smoke from the hole in the ground at Delphi, we

need to check our understanding very carefully. A better translation would be “know your place.”

Know where you stand in relation to others. That is a much more demanding requirement than thinking

your own mind is the center of everything important. Where do we fit is a harder question because we

cannot “discover” the answer through deep personal enlightenment. We are part of the pattern, and to

know ourselves, we must find ourselves in the pattern.

For a very long time the ethics project has been to find rules that work for everyone all the

time. There have been so many impressive contenders for that honor, all we can do is catalogue them

in groups. Each seems to have left out something that requires a new theory. They overlap substantially

when put in practice, but most people neither understand any of them completely nor consistently

follow any. The temptation is to fall back on statements such as this: “If you just did things the way I

expect you to, that is if you followed the true rules, we would all be so much happier.” For the most

part we ignore this sort of thing when others say it, unless we happen to be of a similar mind or see an

extrinsic advantage lurking nearby. If we choose to push back, some “ethics experts” just walk away in

a huff and others give very clear reasons why they endorse their rules and why we should as well. But

often we just let it go.

There is a story – most likely made up – about an American journalist embedded with Pancho

Villa in Northern Mexico shortly after the turn of the last century. After raising a ruckus in a particular

village, Villa gave a short speech and the peasants threw their hats in the air, whistled, and cheered

wildly. The American, who spoke very poor Spanish, asked what had happened. A fellow traveler said,

“Villa just promised that after the successful revolution, the land would be taken away from the rich

and distributed justly.” The liberator-bandit spoke a few sentences more and was greeted only a slight

bit less enthusiastically. Translation: “After the revolution, he will take the cattle away from the

wealthy former ranchers and give them to the poor people.” A third speech; but this time there was

grumbling and the peasants kicked the dust and began to move away. “Villa said he would even take

the chickens away and share them equally” “It seems,” the journalist said “that the rules don’t apply so

much to the chickens.” “It’s not about the chickens, my friend. Many of the peasants in this village

own chickens.” Morality is a matter of perspective.

What we need are moral rules that cannot be broken. I believe there are two of them. This book

is based entirely on these two points.

Point A: Everyone only and always acts to bring about his or her version of a better future

world.

Point B: Moral behavior only and always takes place in the context of others who act so as to

bring about their version of a better future world.

These are not norms like “Keep your promises” or “help your neighbors” that are often, but not

always, followed. They describe the way the world works. Both points are ambidextrous because they

are neither entirely descriptive nor normative. There is no “should” hidden in either case: the condition

is “only and always.” As a theoretical justification for ethics, Point A is certainly narrow-mindedly

tautological. As a predictor of how people will behave, including in group settings, it is very practical.

The little quibbles about altruism are sidestepped. Helping others means endorsing a world where that

kind of act is valued. Judging it selfish or selfless is a third-party, retrospective characterization. Of

course I am not saying that “one always does the right thing.” But I do hold that one always does what

he or she believes is right at the moment. We may have hesitations or regrets, but it just makes no

sense to say “I intended to do X but I thought at that very moment that Y might actually have been a

better thing to do based on my then current understanding of the situation.” That is an antinomy. If we

did X it is because we wanted to live in the kind of world X is intended to produce. 3

Humans are social creatures. And we do not have much choice in that matter either. We would

not live long, let alone well, in the absence of continual interactions with others. The widespread

practice throughout most of history of “exposing” unwanted children, and sometimes the elderly, was

nothing more than causing their certain, prompt death by depriving them of human contact. Further, if

we could think of a person living in complete isolation for any meaningful period of time, his or her

morality would not be an issue worth worrying about. We could treat everybody else or just some

people as though they were not moral agents, as though their future did not matter to them. But that

would be moral suicide. Imagine living in a world where everyone treated us that way. We and others

want to live in a world where our actions matter to what is possible for both ourselves and others. 4

Point B simply reflects Point A back into the human world. Point B is also not a norm or appeal for

what somebody thinks folks should but might not do: it describes how the world of human relations

works.

Neither Point A nor Point B stands alone. 5 Their moral power comes from their

interconnectivity. 6 Notice that Point A is nested in an essential way in Point B. Those we must deal

with have exactly the same moral status as agents that we do. They affect whether we can reach our

version of a better future world in the same way that we affect their possibly better worlds. We cannot

claim privilege based on a presumed better understanding of a superior ethical principle (one that suits

our current needs) any more than others can. There can only be a mutual moral better future. This

principle is known as emergence. 7 There is something in reciprocal moral agency that does not exist in

either my solo ethical rule following or in the isolated ethical rule following of others.

It would be difficult indeed to imagine how one could break the rules implied by Points A and

B; together, they form a bond that first-order logic cannot penetrate. I do not intend to “prove” these

points by fashioning a network of abstract concepts in which the parts mutually define each other.

What good would that do? I will just illustrate them over and over again, showing how we can get a lot

of useful things accomplished that way. But is not that exactly the point: together we can bring about a

world that we agree is one we prefer to live in rather than any of the available alternatives. 8

There will be a lot of work needed to show how we can still make moral progress without first

getting everybody to agree on what the rules are in particular situations. We many not even need to

have a majority or a powerful minority that can impose its will on others. It will require tremendous

effort to convince some that they do not have a privileged point of view. It has never been fashionable

to accept that everyone has exactly the same moral status we do. We are also fond of saying that some

people make moral mistakes which we have the duty to correct, but the notion of being correct more

often than being corrected is pure presumption.

The project will take up Point A beginning in Chapter 7, starting with an analysis of what it

means to want a better future world and how we structure the moral choices we make. The wisdom of

choosing well together is the substance of Chapters 3 through 6. The final two chapters revisit the

futility of pinning our hopes on abstract ethical principles and show how a common better future world

is in fact emerging. The current chapter will sketch how this program works in basic form and provide

a few simple illustrations.

The Structure of Moral Engagements

I want to move morality away from the theoretical, away from the individual, and to mutually

interdependent action intended to maximize common human thriving. The unit of analysis in

traditional ethics is the individual and the norm. The moral engagement will be my unit of analysis. 9

These are situations where individuals have the potential to influence both their own future and the

future of others based on the action they choose and they recognize that the others in the engagement

also have the same sort of potential. Engagements entail interlocking moral futures.

Moral engagements have a different quality or “feel” than ethical norms. We can wrestle with

our conscience in personal anguish, weigh tenets with sophisticated rational precision, and consider

possibilities that are mutually inconsistent or may never actually exist. We can resort to private

interpretations of abstract principles as the final word until something else more final appears, and

even rerun our ethical reflection after the fact until we get it comfortable in our own mind. Not so for

moral behavior. Opportunities drift out of reach on their schedule not ours, we cannot unring the bell.

And regardless of the simultaneous merits of various alternatives, we can only have one at a time. It

also is essential to the nature of morality that others are involved. We might be awash in opportunity to

build better communities, but we cannot have all of them; we must pick the one we think is best and

live with that.

In moral engagements we come together, we consider alternatives based on the circumstances

nature has arranged. We consult what we want the world to be like and which alternatives seem

plausible. We weigh our values, including what it would mean to conform to or skimp on various

(possibly conflicting) values. We look, as well, at the situation from the perspective of others who are

involved. We appreciate that they are moral agents with the same capacity we have to take moral

action, and that appreciation becomes part of our moral choice. We also realize that others’ moral

agency extends to the possibility that their better world might bring ours closer or make it more

remote. We are interlocked with others in moral engagements. 10 In the end, the joint pair of actions we

and others take determines the futures we both enjoy and each enjoy. Our lives are a fabric of more or

less continuous moral engagements, many of them semi-conscious or governed by habit. They live

through them on a constant basis. They are many times more numerous than are formal ethical

analyses.

The General Idea

Consider the case of Alexander Selkirk. He was a Scot born in 1676, who after a rambunctious

youth went to sea as a buccaneer. He did not play well with others, and preferring his own company,

asked to be put ashore on an uninhabited bit of land in the Juan Fernández Islands about 400 miles

west of Chile. He survived there for four years and four months from 1704 through early 1709.

Selkirk eventually rejoined another privateer and returned to England. His adventure was

popularized in a widely read interview in The Englishman, where he was mentioned in a travelogue by

the captain who rescued him, Woodes Rogers, and romanticized in a poem by William Cowper.

Selkirk was certainly part of the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, although the location

was moved to Brazil and an executive assistant named Friday was fabricated to get around 52 months

of solitude that would have made for boring narrative.

Selkirk said he regularly read the Bible in his absolute solitude. But it is not obvious that he

ever acted morally. No one has any direct evidence either way. Lying, cheating, and stealing were

certainly out of the question. Undoubtedly he broke promises to himself. He might have had some

socially unacceptable personal habits. Recently a Japanese archeologist claims to have found an old

nautical instrument on one of the Juan Fernández islands, but Selkirk probably did not pollute in any

material fashion. In fact, if it were not for Defoe and other rhapsodists, no one would even be giving

him a thought today. He would have been a moral zero. We know nothing of what happened on the

Juan Fernández islands between 1704 and 1709; it is all made up in our minds.

As it is, the ideal of Alexander Selkirk played a critical role in the western intellectual tradition.

He was one of the first symbols of the individual as rational ethical creature. The period from the latter

half of the seventeenth century through the middle of the twentieth century is known as Modernism. 11

The grip of religion and tradition was pried open by scientific discoveries and the cast or serf system

lost its hold, and it began to appear that enlightened individuals controlled their own destinies. The

image of the world as constrained gave way to the prospect of inevitable progress, and a driving force

for making the world better was Immanuel Kant’s rational individual. Jean-Jacque Rousseau invented

the citizen as a free-willed person attached to a society where before there was only the peasant,

merchant, priest, and so forth as “social types.” German Romanticism elevated the idealized individual

to the status of hero. The novel was created at this time as a narrative of personal development. Each of

us could become, at least in our imaginations, an autonomous standard of ethical virtue. Thomas

Paine’s Common Sense bolstered the American Revolution and led to the Rights of Man, the mighty

document that gave the theoretical justification to the French Revolution. 12 Each man is entitled to the

maximum liberty consistent with the liberty of others said John Stuart Mill. Crusoe the image (not

Selkirk the man) became the embodiment of a new understanding of our relationships with each other.

But all along Crusoe was a fiction – someone who existed only in the minds of authors, readers,

and those who talk about him and what he stood for. Selkirk is the reality we all must live. After his

rescue he had a dalliance, a marriage, further adventures as a privateer, and a death by yellow fever in

1721 (in addition to very brief and minor celebrity). His life on Juan Fernández was a moral void; his

life after that was morally uninteresting. Our imagining of what he represented for us has been

fantastic. We have to be careful not to confuse the ethical Crusoe with the morally unremarkable

Selkirk.

The Formal Idea

As a general method, I work back and forth between intuitive and narrative presentations of

ideas and formal and operational analyses of the same ideas. Most readers will prefer the former, but

the technical expositions are there for clarification and to provide assurance that the stories are all

academically grounded. The Selkirk story can be converted to testable detail.

There is a simple and distinct structure discernible across all moral actions. To illustrate this,

consider the example below. We can connect Selkirk’s decision about whether he wants to leave the

island and Captain Rogers’s decision about extending an opportunity to join his ship. What Selkirk

does affects Rogers and the other way around. Each agent has two or more alternative courses of

action. Selkirk’s world would be different if he stays or goes. The world for Rogers would be different

depending on whether he took this strange man as a crew member. Choice means commitment to one

course of action to the exclusion of all others. This structure captures Point A (Selkirk and Rogers act

to make their worlds better) and Point B (the actions of each affect the futures of the other). What

Selkirk thought about truth telling on the 1087th day on Juan Fernández as he sat alone on the beach

does not count. Whether he accepted Rogers’s offer to rejoin a privateering ship on the 1581st day did.

A standard way of displaying the elements of moral choice situations is depicted in Figure 2.1.

Rogers’s Alternatives

“Accept Selkirk” “Reject Selkirk”

“Leave” [10 5] [1 3]

Selkirk’s Alternatives

“Stay” [ 6 2] [4 3]

Figure 2.1: Should Silkirk join Captain Rogers’s ship; should Rogers extend an invitation?

In this case there are two agents: Rogers and Selkirk. The situation has been further simplified

to consider only two courses of action for each: Rogers can “accept” Selkirk or “reject” him as joining

his crew, and Selkirk can either “leave” or “stay.” Selkirk cannot get back to England just because he

alone thinks that would be attractive to him. The interaction between Selkirk’s and Rogers’s courses of

action, technically called strategies, create four outcomes. Each outcome has a value for each agent,

and these very likely are not the same. Looking at the values in the upper left-hand corner, for

example, I imagine that Selkirk was overjoyed and Rogers dubiously pleased with what actually

happened. Selkirk’s values are shown on an arbitrary ten-point scale and are the left-hand numbers in

each of the four cells. Rogers also uses a ten-point scale, but has an independent way of valuing

outcomes. These are shown on the right in each cell.

We could assume that Selkirk was a bit mixed about getting off the island and could think of a

few advantages to his staying. This reflected in the [6] and [4] values. The way the moral engagement

matrix has been set up, Selkirk would be devastated if he wanted to leave and Rogers turned him

down. All positive and all negative considerations taken into account, Selkirk would most prefer to

leave with Rogers. Although there are numbers going from [10] to [1] in this example to suggest that

Selkirk made some nuanced distinctions among the outcomes, all that is necessary is that we get clear

on the rank order from most to least desirable outcome. From now on, I will only use [4] best through

[1] worst rank.

The same sort of analysis can be performed for Captain Rogers. But he consults his own values,

not Selkirk’s. Does Rogers need another hand, how much food is there, what about the effect on the

crew’s morale, is his reputation at stake should the story get out in England, what is this guy doing out

here alone, is he crazy or perhaps dangerous? This formal approach does not preclude what are usually

thought of as normative values. For example, Rogers might place high value on the altruism of helping

a fellow in need. To the extent that such traditional ethical considerations figured in Rogers’s life they

would boost the attractiveness of the strategic alternative of offering Selkirk a place aboard his ship. I

have imagined what it would have been like to be in the captain’s position and assigned values

between [10] and [1] to the four outcomes. I have given Rogers a tighter and less attractive range. In

the end, the range makes no difference if we collapse these arbitrary values to ranks, and the most

preferred outcome for Rogers is the one that Selkirk preferred and that both men agreed.

No one knows for certain what the values were that Selkirk and Rogers assigned to the four

possible outcomes. We can make the assumption that both men chose in ways intended to maximize

what they were looking for under the circumstances. All we do know for certain is that the intersection

of strategies on Rogers offering and Selkirk accepting were higher in rank order preference than the

other possible combinations. You or I might rank the outcomes differently, but that would not prove

that we were ethically better. It would only mean that we might have ended up alone on Juan

Fernández or short one hand rather than an ethical spectator.

I will consistently refer to such interactions as “moral engagements” and formal layout as a

“moral engagement matrix.” Other terms have been used such as “opportunity,” “event,” “interaction,”

and most commonly “game.” 13 Using “engagement” for the critical feature of moral behavior in

communities is meant to emphasize the coming together and mutually interacting part about joint

choice – the engaging. It is part of the formal operationalization of Point B. Moral engagements are

encounters that have the potential for changing history. Both parties care about what happens after they

have recognized the potential each has to change the other’s future. 14

It would be possible to make very large matrixes depicting complex moral engagements, with

numerous parties and multiple alternatives. This is an unnecessary complication and it will be

explained in later chapters how the simple two-agent, two-strategy model can be used to understand

more complex configurations up to nation states and historical cultural movements. Also by way of

anticipation, I will make the claim here that this basic model of the 2 x 2 moral engagement will fit

every possible moral situation. That claim, and the claim that this structure, when nested, explains how

moral communities emerge, will unfold in the following pages.

Components of Moral Engagements

At this point it is valuable to look at each of the three components of a moral engagement: the moral

agents, the alternatives, and the choices. But first a case to make things concrete. This is another

example from Enlightenment individualism that is really about how people only reach their moral

potential by interacting with others.

Jean Valjean as Moral Hero?

Here is a story that is both poignant and uncomfortable. It is told in Victor Hugo’s (1863) book

Les Misérables, but only gets an oblique reference in the musical. The novel begins by describing how

Jean Valjean committed a petty crime of stealing bread to feed his sister’s starving family, was caught,

and served 19 years in the galleys, and how, upon his release, he stole again from the household of a

bishop. But the bishop recognized Valjean’s inherent goodness and refused to press charges when the

thief was apprehended. There was one other minor incident of highway robbery and then the repentant

Valjean devoted seven years to reforming himself. Under an assumed name, Monsieur Madeleine, he

established a successful manufacturing business, became the mayor of his town, and embraced public

causes. The bishop’s faith had redeemed Valjean.

In a cruel twist of fate, a vagabond was apprehended in the nearby town of Arras in

northeastern France for stealing some apples and mistakenly identified as Valjean. Valjean was still

technically a fugitive from the law for the single minor highway robbery after the bishop covered for

him. What an opportunity for the mayor: a person of no account will be sent to the galleys for what

remained of his life as the penalty for a second offense, and the real Valjean’s new identity will be

secure forever.

But that way forward does not suit Hugo’s purposes. Les Misérables and most of this mid-

nineteenth century author’s works are about the noble individual who transforms the rule-driven and

insensitive social order through personal heroism. Valjean is a new and improved model on the Crusoe

plan. He is made to anguish between sacrificing himself and letting an innocent man suffer in his

place. The struggle in the mayor’s soul is violent. The arguments line up fairly clearly along the major

lines in ethical theory. 15 The utilitarian perspective of the greatest good for the greatest number pulls

Valjean toward ensuring his continued contribution to the community. Sacrificing himself on principle

would impoverish the town and destroy a poor factory worker called Fantine and her daughter Cosette,

the heroine of the novel. In contrast, the deontological perspective of doing one’s duty before God or

ethical reason would require that Valjean go to the nearby town where the trial is in progress and offer

himself as the rightful substitute for the vagabond. This is the right thing to do regardless of who else

must suffer to clear Valjean’s conscience.

The conflict is perfectly balanced, and Valjean is unable to select a path. In page after page of

powerfully written prose, Hugo weaves Valjean’s obsession in overcoming physical barriers blocking

his getting to the trial – missed connections, broken carriage axils -- with his equally driven struggles

of conscience. Still Valjean does not know what he will do. Hugo leaves us with the impression, which

he later confirms, that Valjean is suffering from too much ethics. “He now recoiled with equal terror

from each of the resolutions.”

The story as Hugo tells it and as I have summarized it is framed entirely in terms of ethics. The

battle is taking place in a fictionalized and abstracted character’s mind. No one else knows; no one

else’s life trajectory will be altered by what Valjean thinks. If anyone else matters, Valjean will speak

for him or her. He has denied moral agency to all others. Fontine and Cosette are wards of Valjean’s

paternalistic charity and have no independent moral standing. The vagabond is mindless and unable to

participate in either his own defense or his deliverance. Only Valjean is allowed to speak in his own

voice. But he cannot get a resolution that works. Valjean is Hugo’s paralyzed, free-floating, and failed

ethical ego.

We can reframe the story as a moral engagement. And the matter begins to look a little clearer

as soon as we allow others to participate. Valjean is one moral agent. Another is society, represented

by police Inspector Javert, who is described as a “savage in the service of civilization.” Valjean can

confess or remain silent. Javert can prosecute a confession or forgive it by looking the other way. Hugo

has contrived the story to perfectly balance Valjean’s ethical indecision. But Javert stands firmly for

exercising the rule of law. Sentimental altruists would hope for a confession and a pardon. We can

certainly imagine that sort of happy ending; we can even work up reasons why that might be what

ought to happen.

In following chapters it will be demonstrated that in moral engagements of this type the optimal

solution is for Valjean to confess and for Javert to arrest him. That is, in fact, pretty much the direction

Hugo takes. For no reason that the hero is aware of or that Hugo explains, Monsieur Madeleine

interrupts the trial to reveal his true identity and is arrested. It is not a rational choice based on any

ethical principle; it is an impulse. And as we shall see, Valjean soon treacherously disavows this

choice. Hugo’s masterpiece on conscience wrestling with itself allows some untidy edges to show

through.

The Grammar of Morality

There is a grammar of morality just as there is a grammar of speech. 16 These conventions tell others, in

a continuous fashion that is difficult to conceal, about our relationships with each other and whether

we are “playing by the speech rules of our community.” Just as we cannot speak without proper or

improper grammar, neither can we act without assuming a moral posture, or an immoral one.

The diagram in Figure 2.2 helped me immensely in high school French. 17 It works for virtually

all languages. The structure of ordinary sentences carries information about who we are talking with

and what we believe our relationships are. Not only must we choose pronouns according to this

diagram, but the verbs and sometimes the nouns are modified to be consistent with this schema. We

literally cannot communicate without signaling where we stand (morally) in the community.

Singular Plural

First person I, me We, us

Second person High status, informal Low status, Formal

Third person He, she , it They

Figure 2.2: The grammar of morality.

The singular and plural columns are about whether the speaker is addressing or speaking on

behalf of one person or many. But the second-person position, the middle row, is anomalous. It is not

about “number” at all; it is about relationship. We signal formality and status by our use of second-

person pronouns. In linguistics this is known as the T-V phenomenon, from the fact that Latin-root

“singular” second-person pronouns begin with T and “plural” ones begin with V. 18 We use the T- or

singular-form when addressing someone who has lower status or someone with whom we are familiar.

This is for relatives, good friends, and the family pet. The king speaks this way to everyone. The T-

form says “I need not be on my guard with you.” We use the V-form in formal situations and when we

want to recognize others as being strangers or having higher status. Good salesmen are always more

deferential than their clients. The status-formality distinction permeates language and other forms of

communication. Speaking first, interrupting, having the privilege of telling jokes (and having them

laughed at), and dressing casually are the equivalent of using the T-form or informal, high status form

of expression.

It is not as though we can communicate with or without disclosing relationship; all

communication takes place in a moral context. We have to choose between T and V whenever we

speak; we have to signal whether we consider our relationship with other to be “safe.” Morality is the

framework of our relationships with others. We naturally shy away from those, or watch them more

closely, who fail to observe the community rules of speech and interaction. The Greek word

“barbarian” literally meant one who cannot speak correctly. We do not welcome individuals into our

community when they appear to play fast and loose with the rules we hold in common or seem to be

unaware of what is expected.

The normative imperative of ethics, “You should . . . ,” is always a T-form statement, an

assumption of high enough status to issue commands without having to give explanations. We think

nothing of a parent telling a child what to do, but when those we consider to have no relationship with

us use that tone of voice, it rankles. Few of us will surrender, even temporarily, our privilege of being

an independent moral agent without either a strong inducement, a fight, or a glance around to see how

to get out of the situation. There is no way to communicate with others about moral matters without

revealing some hint about how much moral freedom the other has or even whether we regard them as

moral agents at all. Point A is not negotiable. And Point B is inescapable.

A good place to begin moral analysis is the upper left-hand corner of Figure 2.2, with the

individual and personal perspective. There is a primitive authenticity in saying “I am appalled by

stories of child molestation” or “I promise to be a loving and faithful husband as long as we both shall

live.” 19 The value judgment and the act of promising are self-warranting – they are intrinsically real.

Subsequent situations may call for reconsideration, but they do not cancel the first-person singular

perspective. Another could challenge, “I don’t believe you,” but that is their first-person singular

position. We could say “I changed my mind,” but that is my present view of a previous situation.

The first-person singular may be the right starting point, but it is a dead end unless it connects

to others and creates some form of moral community. The dividing line between ethics and morality is

whether one completes the connection by turning south in Figure 2.2 to “it” language or goes right to

“we” language. (It is that Platonic first wrong step business that appeared in Chapter 1 all over again.)

Ethics hopes to cloak the personal perspective in the impersonal “it” on the bottom left. There

is a difference between saying “I believe that . . .” (in the sense that my view of the world is such that I

am prepared to act in a particular manner) and “It is true that . . .” (in the sense that something is so

regardless of what anyone might think). Naturally, we prefer to defend our personal preferences by

hooking them to unchallengeable verities. It is comforting to say “I am right” – not just “I believe my

behavior is the most appropriate for me under the circumstances.” The ancient formula “It is written”

reflects what is going on when we speak from the perspective of disembodied ethical universals.

Appeal to the authority of “it” is an attempt to get a one-up position in the ethical business. We

scrub off our own perspective and attribute our values to a higher position from which there is no

appeal. If we can get away with substituting the universal for the personal we can claim control over

other’s behavior. They are wrong, whether they realize it or not.

The antidote to this gambit is obvious: I counter by taking refuge in my own “it” and claim the

right to be treated as an autonomous moral agent. We fight it out with dueling generalities, all the time

realizing that this is futile since, per definition, universally true ethical principles cannot be in conflict.

Now we have three options: (a) drop the matter, (b) enjoy the exchange to see who is most clever at

argumentation, or (c) harmonize our actions by seeking a pair of moral actions that neither of us would

regret. 20

Option (c) is the same thing as moving to the upper right in Figure 2.2. We are taking the moral

first-person plural or “we” perspective. Only one person is speaking, unless it is a committee report,

but the statement is based on having taken into account both one’s own and the relevant others’ points

of view. “We” statement cover you and me and our relationship. A comprehensive perspective is being

suggested. Even the announcement, “We disagree on whether capital punishment is appropriate” is a

positive statement of a mutually recognized disagreement that honors the views of both agents.

We can skip the disembodied “they.” It is quite possible that “they” are cited more often as the

ultimate authority than are Shakespeare or the Bible. It is also true that “they” are a convenient excuse

for the ambient evil in the world. But “they” are too remote for us to deal with.

The Golden Rule comes very close to capturing the search of the first-person plural joint view

on morality. The part about parity or equality among moral agents is very useful. The part that does not

work so well is the egocentric standard. Doing unto others as you would be done by makes you the

moral standard. Everyone should play equally by the same rules, but why should they be your rules?

Just because you prefer rough treatment in sexual play and irregular liaisons, that is insufficient

justification for treating everyone else as if they did. We may sincerely believe that the only

determinant of success in life is personal initiative. However, you will be surprised that others who

have been less fortunate in their opportunities find that political philosophy harsh and unworkable. The

mirror image of the Golden Rule, the pure altruism of doing unto others as they would like to be done

by, is equally inadequate but less likely to be encountered.

The proper angle of attack is the mutual “we.” Virtually everything in the book from this point

on assumes the primacy of the first-person plural perspective as the moral point of view. It is not

necessary to make, fake, or force agreement on principle before we can move forward together. It

would be worse to have nothing to do with those with whom we differ. But we should take into

account the better world others envision and what they are prepared to do about that vision as we plan

our own better world.

Thinking of right and wrong exclusively from our personal point of view (especially when we

dress it up as universal truth) is a common launch pad point for ethical considerations. The alternative

is to regard the point of view of relevant agents as the foundation for moral action. That does not mean

we subordinate others’ views to ours or ours to others’; it means we work hard to understand where

both of us are coming from before we take our action. Chapter 4 will introduce this concept in a more

formal sense and it will get a special name – RECIPROCAL MORAL AGENCY. This will appropriately

honor Point B, that we affect other’s futures just as they affect ours. 21

Principles and Actions

An individual may simultaneously entertain multiple and conflicting principles, but no one can

engage in simultaneously contradictory actions. We can think of many reasons for and against

abortions, but the pregnant woman either has one or she does not. I am commenting on something

beyond the fact that ethical theorizing should eventually show up in the real world. (Actually, of

course, there is no necessary reason why all our good ethical conclusions should be acted on.) The

point is that ethical reasoning is a cluttered field of hypotheticals where alternative rules continue to

live regardless of what we do about it. Moral life is a different kind of world where any action we take

destroys all other possibilities at that moment.

Think of moral engagements as turning points in history. The choices have consequences.

Valjean’s life was changed the moment the bishop forgave him. So was the life of the unnamed

individual who was mistaken for Valjean once Valjean revealed his own identity. The economy of the

small town in northeastern France where Monsieur Madeleine had been mayor crumbled. Cosette, the

illegitimate daughter of the factory worker that Valjean befriended, was condemned to domestic

slavery. Fantine, the mother died. Javert, the bloodhound inspector, eventually committed suicide.

Most moral engagements are not so monumental. Some, such as Truman’s decision to use the atomic

bomb, are so enormous groups of individuals cannot comfortably comprehend them. But all moral

engagements are places where the path of history is bent, even if just a little and only at that spot.

How Are Moral Outcomes Evaluated?

We have looked at the agents and the alternatives in a moral engagement. How can we

understand the outcomes? There will be several chapters coming soon to fill out this concept. But we

can begin by illustrating one simple way to place values on each of the different outcomes in particular

moral engagements.

Consider an everyday situation where two individuals are arranging a meeting time for one of

two possible dates to discuss a mutual concern. Perhaps it is a professor and a student who wants to get

feedback on a term paper, a small working group for a community program, a social date, or a real

estate agent trying to show a property. We work out these sorts of situations all the time. These are all

engagements of one particular class or type. We solve them so naturally in most cases that it almost

seems pedantic to look into their formal structure.

Let’s say that the two available times for meeting are Monday afternoon and Friday afternoon.

We will call the agents Ms. Row and Mr. Column. Let’s say further that Ms. Row is strongly

motivated to protect her Fridays and Mr. Column is very keen on getting the business done regardless

of the day, but has a slight preference for Friday to allow more time for preparation.

Ms. Row would rank any outcome on Monday ahead of any on Friday. If she can have Friday

free so much the better. Friday would be a concession if it worked for Mr. Column, but Ms. Row

coming in on Friday and missing Mr. Column would be awful. Let’s assign rank orders to these

outcomes as Ms. Row might see them in order from [4] for meeting on Monday to [1] for not meeting

on Friday.

Mr. Column goes through the same calculations, but puts the emphasis on getting together

regardless of the timing. The best outcome for Mr. Column is to meet on Friday because that would

give him a bit more time to prepare. But meeting on Monday would be only slightly less desirable.

What would be frustrating would be to show up on Friday and miss Ms. Row, but even worse would

be to rush and be stood up on Monday. We can assign the rank preferences for Mr. Column in the same

fashion, with [4] for meeting on Friday down through [1] for missing a meeting on Monday.

The rank preferences are not the same for each agent. There is no Win-Win. This is

Engagement #24 in the Appendix. There are two compromises, each pairing a first-place rank

preference for one agent with a second-place ranking for the other. But whose preference should take

precedent? Power politics has an answer: the person with the lower status must give way, or if

someone wants it badly enough they will sweeten the deal. Traditional ethics either has no answer or

would have to stage a debate where each agent argued that she or he had a principle that should

dominate. We could imagine cases where that is done, but not as a general rule. It comes down to

tussling over personal preferences.

But there is a solution in the sense of moral action. The person in the weaker position needs to

give a little, and this is a very stable solution. In coming chapters we will see how to diagnose such

resolutions, including this particular case. It actually has to do with the ordering of the less desirable

outcomes, a fact that is often overlooked in ethical theory where the battle rages for top spot, often

considering only a single justification at a time. Over and over, in such circumstances, entirely

subconsciously, pairs of reasonable people make these adjustments because it is better for both parties

to work that way. We just “know” that the meeting will take place Monday afternoon. Think of that the

next time you are merging in traffic on the freeway, requesting help, or trying to get a teenager to do

something. Sometimes the moral way forward is not based on first principles but on values in the

second and third rank that combine to form an overall picture. This point will be demonstrated in detail

in Chapter 5.

This example is intentionally very thin on what might be considered moral content. The

structure of the problem is being highlighted. A small additional amount of moral substance could be

introduced by imagining that this example is about a faculty member in a university who is lax about

meeting office hour obligations (playing “hooky” on Friday) or about an executive who boosts his or

her status by cultivating an image of being “unavailable.” Divorces, teenage suicide, and medical

malpractice lawsuits have a common core of breakdown in meetings to discuss differences. Modern

China emerged as part of the process where Chairman Mao agreed to meet with President Nixon.

People are starving in North Korea and killing each other in the Middle East because each side is

adding preconditions for talking. In reality these preconditions that appear minor with respect to setting

a meeting are major issues disguised to make others look bad in quibbling over something as obvious

as agreeing to meet. In the example above, if Ms. Row and Mr. Column both insist that their primary

goal be met, there would be no meeting. Sometimes ethical principle stands in the way of moral

progress.

The Ethical May Not Be Moral

We left the story in Les Misérables where Valjean confessed and Javert clamped him in jail. Under a

variety of analyses, that was the right thing to do. Such was the resolution Hugo wrote into his

masterpiece. Well, almost. Valjean did go to jail, but then made a break, collecting a fortune in buried

treasure and evading justice as a fugitive for the rest of the novel. Valjean said, in effect, “let me see if

I can be noble and get Javert to look the other way; if not I’ll reset the game and try it the other way.”

He played a double game. Reneging is one of about a dozen moral choice rules to be taken up in the

next two chapters. Specifically, it is part of a set of “cheating” rules, along with deception and

coercion, all of which turn out to be losers.

By way of reviewing how moral engagements work and to preview the approach for resolving

those that involve deception, one last example will be worked here. Monsieur the Mayor Madeleine

(the disguise Valjean had assumed) had taken Fantine, the morally fallen factory worker he befriended,

into his house because her health was failing. The Mayor had arranged with a nun to look after her.

The nun’s name was Sister Simplicity, and her singular character trait was that she had never told a lie

-- ever. In her feverish state of mind Fantine asked her when Monsieur Madeleine would make his

daily visit. Sister Simplicity, who knew that the mayor had left town for the trial of the vagabond in

Arras, only smiled and said nothing. Perhaps that was not really a lie, although it was clearly intended

to deflect Fantine from panic caused by not expecting to see the mayor.

Hugo’s depiction of Inspector Javert strongly outlines his character as well. He was not

personally ambitious and was in many ways the most honorable of the characters in the novel. He

personified law and order – the principles of abstract justice -- and “his element, the medium in which

he breathed, was veneration for all authority.” Javert was exquisitely ethical. Earlier in the episode

Javert had offered to resign from the police force because he had made implications that he suspected

the major was really Valjean (whom he had seen years before in the galleys). He was embarrassed

when the trial in Arras started because that seemed to mean Javert had suggested false accusations. The

honorable thing to do was to apologize and offer to resign. The mayor had duplicitously accepted the

apology but not the resignation. Any engagement between Javert and Sister Simplicity would certainly

be based on a clash between major ethical principles (honesty and respect for authority) and likely to

damage one or both.

After his escape from jail, Valjean was hastily gathering important items at his house and

giving last minute instructions to Sister Simplicity about the care of Fantine. They heard Javert

entering the house and Valjean hid. Javert confronted the nun and asked whether Valjean was there,

and Sister Simplicity responded “no.” He then asked whether the nun had seen Valjean and again she

said “no.” Javert left. The nun violated her principle of truth telling and the police officer violated his

duty for careful investigation. The reader, of course rejoices, thinking that is exactly the morally

correct behavior – even if neither was very ethical. Had it been otherwise, the novel would have been

600 pages shorter. The hero, Valjean, reneges; the nun lies; and the evil inspector does the honorable

thing. Where is the ethics in that?

In Chapter 5, I will work out in formal detail, under the heading Balanced Compromise, how

we can get to the position that the most moral outcome in this situation is for both the nun and the

inspector to bend a little. This is Engagement #37 in Appendix B. But we can see here the wisdom of

temporizing the application of ethical ideals. Context matters, and sometimes following a single sound

ethical principle is not the answer.

What kind of world did Sister Simplicity want to live in? Certainly one where truth prevailed,

and especially one where her reputation for veracity was paramount. I read her as having a super-

developed conscience, so there would be no difference to her whether she lied and was found out, or

lied and only had to face her own conscience. Despite the fact that truth-telling was a powerful

dimension in her life, it was not the entirety. She also had opinions about a good world including

people such as Valjean and Fantine and the town representing a valued moral community. The sister

could not have it both ways without making an assumption about Javert that she knew was unrealistic.

Chance had placed her in a compromised condition, and she could see immediately that one of the

controlling factors was what another person wanted as his version of the best possible future world.

Hugo’s character development of Javert is masterful. In one person he embodies the conflict of

law and order and respect for human dignity. Javert was also a sloth who played by the book and

showed great reverence for authority, including religious authority. The world had placed him in a

position where he could not make deference to authority and catching a malefactor simultaneously top

priority. He recognized that his chances of getting the future world he wanted depended, at least in

part, on what Sister Simplicity did to bring about the kind of future she wanted.

It is easy enough to poke at this type of analysis. Some would say Sister Simplicity or Javert or

both had their values tangled. There are people who maintain, in theory, that telling the truth is an

inviolable ethical obligation – period. But I have never met anyone who acted that way. Law-and-order

advocates might be quick to criticize Javert for being too trusting. Some would even argue that the

situation that Hugo set up is unrealistic and we should isolate these ethical issues and manage them

separately. That, of course, only happens in academic settings or political clubs. I accept all of these

arguments, but only as being what ethical spectators would do in their imaginations.

What Is Special About the Structure of Moral Engagements?

All of the examples discussed so far, and in fact all that will appear in subsequent chapters, involve

engagements with two agents, each of which has two available strategies. Naturally it is possible to

make these cases a little more complex. Each of the agents could play multiple roles. Who are the

relevant agents when a youth soccer coach has a daughter on the team? Any smart person can find

more than two options in most situations, and the number of alternative interpretations is theoretically

unlimited, especially if looked at from the outside.

While every moral engagement can be complixified well beyond 2 x 2, there are easier ways of

meeting the requirements of the real world than going large. When there are additional parties we can

treat them as a group agent and enter their impact in the cells of the framing matrix as having a

common effect. When there are more than two actions, we look at the best and the next best. Chapters

7, 8, and 9 will take up these topics in greater detail, including how the moral engagement matrix is

modified based on new information and how agents can negotiate the engagement that is the most

reasonable one to take up. Chapter 10 will explicitly address the matter of groups acting as moral

agents.

There is a deeper reason than simplicity and ease of understanding for reducing moral

considerations to 2 x 2 engagements instead of larger ones. This way of framing engagements has been

carefully studied for about 70 years. Twelve Nobel Prizes have been awarded to individuals who have

worked on parts of this problem. Two of the prizes are important when considering the size of the

engagement matrix. In 1994 John Nash, about whom the movie A Beautiful Mind was made, was

awarded the prize in part for a 1951 paper in which he proved that all such 2 x 2 engagements have

optimal solutions, either one or three of them. Every moral engagement has a best mutual pair of

strategies for making a better world. In 1972 Kenneth Arrow (1951) was awarded a Nobel Prize for

proving that conceptualizations of ethical issues with more than two principles or theoretical

perspectives and more than three agents cannot be guaranteed to have solutions that all will accept.

That means it will never be possible to develop universal solutions for a better world that everyone will

agree to unless we constrain ethical norms to a manageable number. But if we get the size right, we can

always do it.

Point of View: The Usual Ways of Looking at Ethics

In Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government, John Stuart Mill took the pragmatic view

that “Government must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are capable of speedily

becoming” (Mill 1910, 253). Others advocate for stretching us over the rack of ethical principles. The

professional discussion of ethics is solidly normative. 22 Norms are standards for what people “should”

do. Normativists say, “I am guided in the most important things in life by an abstraction, or by a

handful of them, (such as fellow feeling, the will of God, political equality, or not hurting others), and

you should be too.” Obviously people behave in patterns that can be characterized as though norms

were involved, even when they have not been. Norms can be professed as cover – “I am doing this as a

social concern” – even when the driving motive was something else. Perhaps the same pattern of

actions could be characterized as expressing personal greed. Normative theories come in many flavors;

there is no canonical list of norms. And the book is still open about what we can say regarding how

norms affect behavior. We could, for example, probably get a good argument going over whether

norms should be universal or whether they just are thought by some to be universal. There is also

trouble over who should be vetting these norms and what to do with the ones that work very well, but

only in special circumstances. The more we lean to the right and imagine that norms are all-explaining

“givens,” grounded in the unquestionable authority of reason, reality, or religion, the larger gap we

open on the left. Now there is more work to be done explaining why some people almost all the time

and most of us most of the time are so picky about our norms and so incontinent in observing the

norms we publicly endorse.

The market for norms in ethics has been large. 23 Utilitarianism, deontology, casuistry, Ayn

Rand’s objectivist ethics, virtue ethics, feminism, bioethics, contractarianism, care ethics, and religious

approaches are all normative. They are about what one ought, in principle, to do (Wedgwood 2007).

There is also a good business in metaethics, which is about the proper subject matter of ethics.

The most serious recent alternative to normative ethics has been expressivism (Ayre 1936;

Stevenson 1962). Beginning in the 1930s, some English and American philosophers proposed that

statements such as “I should not vote for a tax that unfairly advantaged large corporations” was

equivalent to “I dislike such laws.” This was a happy coincidence with the “linguistic turn” in

philosophy happening at that time. The claim was no longer about announcing or pointing to an

abstract principle (the norm) and making a claim that it is generally bad form to permit behavior

inconsistent with such a principle. Expressivists said ethical statements were entirely personal

reflections of an individual’s feelings about the situation. They were face-valid and supposed to

motivate others to have similar emotional responses. Emotivism has lost almost all of its steam now.

Occasionally, naturalism is suggested as an alternative to normative ethics. 24 Much of the time

it is the normativists who bring this up as a straw man argument in the “is” versus “ought” debates.

Naturalism is about what is. And the normativists maintain, rightly so, that one cannot get an “ought”

from an “is.” I will leave discussion of Moore’s (2004/1903) Naturalistic Fallacy as an open question

until the end of Chapter 11. Here I will just raise the question whether we have a compelling need for

“oughts” at all. Might we just as well get on with saying that “oughts” are supernatural fabrications of

people telling others how they would prefer they behaved? Or maybe the “oughts” are reified

abstractions or names for patterns of behaviors some would prefer naturally.

Consider a woman who speaks out or takes firmer action about unwanted sexual advances in

the workplace. Ethicists who hold any of the various normative theories would say there is a principle

involved here, such as respect for autonomy, that has been violated, and thus the woman is within her

rights to speak out. Ethical realists who believe in a world of ethical ideals are discovered rather than

consented to, would say the woman is right even if she and everyone else is unaware that anything is

wrong. An expressivist would frame it slightly differently. The woman is letting others know that she

believes the behavior is inappropriate and she has an expectation that others will feel the same way. A

naturalist would say she has a strong physiological reaction that interferes with her normal functioning

(which is actually the legal definition of hostile workplace environment), that she may engage others in

rectifying the problem under suitable circumstances, and that she will expect the moral community to

express sympathy and take corrective action. The naturalistic view is firm on the facts of the problem

and on what will happen next, but it skips over the middle part about normative principles.

There is a slightly unsettling aspect about going beyond norms when talking about morality.

The natural and social sciences are fundamentally grounded in a hard view of the world. There is a

suspicion of anything that cannot be dropped on one’s toe, except, of course, for those things that are

convenient ways of talking about what can otherwise be observed by looking. If we are open to

listening to naturalistic voices, philosophical claims will have to square in some way with

physiological and psychological claims about behavior. Maybe thoughts can be operationalized in

fMRI images, on public opinion surveys, or in patterns of behavior. We certainly can know a lot about

emotions by measuring hormone levels or pupil dilation. Perhaps, after we have given a full

description of which future actions an individual will take and which will be avoided, there is little

additional to say about what is valued.

That is a much larger challenge than it may seem at first. As just one example, consider the

classic study of morality in Hartshorne and May’s (1928) multi-year work with children summarized in

Studies in the Nature of Character. The take-home message is that Plato was wrong: the individual is a

lousy unit of analysis for moral action. Children will steal pencils but not books, and they will cheat on

a test but not in a game. Others will show different patterns, and the patterns will drift over time.

Individuals are morally inconsistent and in ways that are independent of ethical principles. We can

only be somewhat confident in saying things about moral encounters, but we are on much thinner ice

trying to say anything about the general ethical character of individuals. And there appears to be no

place to stand when considering universal principles. The norms seem to have come detached from the

places we like to put them. Statements such as “She is ethical” are not specific enough for serious

work. The kinds of behaviors we are interested in are conditional on natural contexts.

As the title for this chapter signals, the unit of analysis for morality is not the person or the

principle. It is the relationship, the moral engagement. This book is openly naturalistic. I will not argue

that we should reduce normative ethics of naturalistic states. That is a red herring. My position will be

that states of knowing as well as states of feeling inherently carry value dimensions. We were wrong to

take them apart in the first place, so we can earn no glory by trying to put them back together. Being

disgusted by unwanted sexual advances is not a theoretical construct: it is an experience. Wanting to

take appropriate action when threatened or reaching to hold your grandchild is not a decision arrived at

by rational consideration of norms: it is what humans naturally do. It is something we can see by

looking. Our behavior in the world is inescapably value laden, and values are as natural as anything.

1 Hannah Arendt (2003) develops a morality, which she draws from comments Socrates made in the

Gorgias, that what keeps us on the right path is our unwillingness to live in intimate relationship

with a bad person – ourselves if we realizing we are doing immoral things.

2 Mary Ann Glendon (1991), in her Rights Talk, has pointed out how Americans have transformed

“I am sure of what I want” into “therefore I am entitle to have it,” complete with a political and

legal system whose principal function is to make sure we get it.

3 Incontinence is the gap between what we think we should do and what we actually do. Few

philosophers take up this question, and among those who do, some such as Hubbs (2015) seem to

want to explain it away as an illusion.

4 Jürgan Habermas (1993) proposes a general rule that moral actions are those agreed to by all

concerned. David Gauthier (1986), in Morals by Agreement, follows a similar line of reasoning.

5 The brilliant Cambridge logician Frank Ramsey (1964) was one of the first to articulate the view

that all action is undertaken to bring about a world we value, thus fusing the concepts of action and

truth.

6 Consider possible strategies to dislodge Points A and B logically. The straightforward argument

against Point A is to claim “I prefer to live in a world where it is not the case that everyone acts to

bring about a world they would prefer” is self-defeating. Similarly for Point B: “Moral agents prefer

to live in worlds that they and others prefer, but I deny, as a moral agent, that your preference is

acceptable if it includes any inconvenient claim on my preference” is equally self-defeating. Taken

together, the claim that “At some level of analysis I can unilaterally truncate the emergent

interaction between our mutually defining moral behaviors” is also self-defeating. Every argument

that begins “I believe . . .” nests the logical analysis one level deeper and thus strips it of its

objective status. Every argument that begins “It is true but I don’t believe it . . .” falls on its face.

Lewis Carroll’s (1895) dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise proved that point.

7 The principle of emergence is woven throughout this book. It is discussed formally in the Point of

View sections at the end of Chapters 8 and 10. Some useful entry points into the literature include

Blitz (1992), Prigogine and Stengers (1995), and Clayton and Davies (2008).

8 The argument from design is a criticism of evolutionary theory that resembles an argument

normativists might make against Points A and B. In its briefest form, the argument for design works

like this: “How could we explain the beauty and purpose manifest in this particular world without

assuming a ‘designer’?” The weak point in the argument is that there is no way of knowing that this

world is special – others might have been better. There is a natural confusion between saying the

odds of one person winning the lottery are one in a million, but the odds of someone winning it are

a million in a million. Evolution did not pick it out from among other possibilities, nor need we

assume that any other power did. Neither does acting to bring about worlds we would prefer require

a supernatural perspective that determines what we “should” prefer.

9 Which came first: ethics or morality? This is not a “chicken or egg” question, and the answer is

compellingly simple. Patterns of exchange for joint benefit governed by mutual expectations

predate even the use of spoken language by hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. The

codification of the rules is perhaps 15,000 years old and the isolation of these rules for intellectual

consideration in general or outside the context of specific transactions is even more recent. See Will

Durant (1954), Cristina Bicchieri (1993), and Daniel Dennett (1995).

10 My definition of a moral agent is similar to the one proposed by David Wong in his (2006, 143)

Natural Moralities. Wong says: “I define moral agency as the ability to formulate reasonably clear

principles among one’s moral ends, and to plan and carry out courses of action that have a

reasonable chance of realizing those ends.”

11 Virtually all of ethical theory assumes the perspective of modernism, including its Newtonian

linear rule-based view of a clock-work deterministic world. The strengths and limitations of

modernism are sensitively handled in Passmore (1968) and Gay (1969). In the Point of View

section at the end of Chapter 5, I show explicitly that we cannot escape the churning of one

theoretical ethical system after another using the intellectual tools that were available before the

mid-nineteenth century.

12 The French National Constitutional Assembly got the Revolution off to a start on 26 August 1789

with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The basic idea was that all men are equal

moral agents, limited in their freedom only by the freedom of others. Laws (actionable moral

principles) are created by men in community. Among the articles are: (a) Men are born and remain

free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. (b) The

aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.

(c) These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. (d) Liberty consists in

the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of

each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment

of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law. (e) Law can only prohibit such

actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no

one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

13 Although I have gone to great lengths to avoid the technical language and natural prejudice

associated with the unfortunate proper name of the field, it is obvious that my approach is entirely

and fundamentally built on game theory. An “engagement” is a game. Nash equilibrium will be

called RECIPROCAL MORAL AGENCY or RMA. While altering terminology, I have preserved every

concept in the theory as faithfully as possible. Good introductions to the formal discipline can be

found in the following: Luce and Raiffa (1957), Davis (1970), Maynard Smith (1982), Ordeshook

(1986), Myerson (1991), Poundstone (1992), Osborne and Rubinstein (1994), and Binmore (2007).

Binmore and Poundstone the most readable places to start. The initial efforts to ground ethics in

game theory were made Richard Bevan Braithwaite (1995) and arguably the most successful has

been David Gauthier’s (1986) Morals by Agreement.

14 John Stuart Mill (1859/1974, 128), in On Liberty, had this to say about moral engagements:

“What more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs than that it brings human beings

themselves nearer to the best thing they can be?”

15 Utilitarianism, or more broadly, consequentialism, evaluates moral behavior by the standard of its

total impact in the world. A calculation is performed, weighing all benefits and burdens of each, in

Jeremy Bentham’s (1907/1832) version, allowing every person the same weight. The course of

action that has the greatest net positive impact ought to be followed. The pocket version of this

approach to ethics is “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Valjean’s clean conscience in Les

Misérables would count for little compared with the misery of the town without him. Deontology,

the other horn of Valjean’s ethical dilemma, cleaves directly to rational or revealed ethical verities.

Principled action, regardless of its outcomes, is the standard. Valjean’s “just do the right thing”

approach is what matters most. The motto of deontology is given by Kant (1949/1788), the

professor of astronomy who lectured in philosophy: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and

increasing admiration and awe: . . . the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

More recently, some try to split the difference. On Brad Hooker’s (1999) account, rules like “be

honest” and “do not harm others” bring about a good future for most people most of the time.

16 One might regard ethics as the grammar of the moral life much as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958)

proposed that language games were the grammar of truth.

17 The T-V distinction is explained in Roger Brown’s (1965) Social Psychology. For a contemporary

philosophical working out of the implications of T and V in the moral context see Stephen Darwall

(2006). Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1970) turns on this distinction.

18 English appears to be an exception to this world-wide phenomenon; we say “you” for both

singular and plural. A few hundred years ago, the distinction was still present in “thee” and “thou.”

We retain the distinction, but mark it with more subtle signs such as the use of title, modes of dress,

and rules of turn taking in speech.

19 J. L. Austin (1965) pointed out that sometimes words do things and sometimes they describe

doing things. “The jury finds the defendant guilt” works differently from “the foreman of the jury

said that the jury found the defendant guilty.” Or “strike” and “the umpire made an awful call.” I am

proposing something like this with regard to the distinction between ethics and morality. “This is a

stick-up” and “An armed robbery took place this afternoon in Piedmont. We should talk about the

rising crime rate.”

20 Jaakko Hintikka (1962) , no doubt influenced by Wittgenstein’s visit to Cornell in 1949, argued

that there is no difference between saying that X is true and saying that one believes that X is true.

Of course there is a difference between your saying you believe X is true and my saying I believe X

is true. There is also a difference between “I believe X is true” and “I once believed that X is true.”

21 The question of moral progress will be developed in detail in Chapter 12. The point I want to

touch here is that the possibility of moral progress depends in a fundamental way on granting moral

agency to others. It also depends on abandoning the ideal of a fixed ethical structure. Progress can

come both from increasing the proportion of a community guided by good norms or from a roughly

similar proportion of the community following better rules. In the case of fixity through the

assumption that norms had been perfected, situations arise that seem strange to our sensibilities. A

famous example is Kant’s argument that women should not participate in civil discourse. He

thought women lack status to participate in the development of the public good because they are not

independent beings and, presumably, he thought they never would evolve to possess that capacity:

“All women . . . lack civil personality and their existence is, as it were, only inherence.” Kant

(1797/1996) The Metaphysics of Morals.

22 According to the 2009 PhilPapers online survey of philosophers, half of them said they were

naturalists, but 56% also claimed to believe that ethical norms exist as real entities, independent of

what anyone may think of them.

23 Alasdair MacIntyre (1967) provides an overview of the evolving history of ethics in his A Short

History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century.

24 Full-throated argument against norms as “real” entities can be found in J. L. Mackie’s (1977)

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Richard Joyce’s (2002) The Myth of Morality, and Johnathan

Dancy’s (2004) Ethics without Principles. More nuanced positions are found in the quasi-realism of

Simon Blackburn (1993) and Allan Gibbard (1990).