My Ethics

Since becoming an amoralist I have dismissed normative ethics as a fool’s errand. This is because I conceived normative ethics to be in the business of investigating what is morally right and wrong, etc., and my amoralism is premised on the nonexistence of such things. One could certainly engage in anthropological or sociological studies of what people hold to be right or wrong; but this would be no different from studying what beliefs people have about gods or God. But normative ethics would be as silly as theology in investigating something that simply does not exist. 

However I now think I stumbled over my own feet in rushing to rid the world of morality by eliminating normative ethics.[1] Normative ethics need no more be about morality than meta-ethics need be. My meta-ethical view is that there are no categorical imperatives governing our choices, but this still leaves plenty of room for choices. And so normative ethics could be the inquiry into one’s choices. But it is still normative in the ethical sense, as opposed to anthropology and sociology (and for that matter, psychology), which lay out and seek to explain the choices made by different folks. Normative ethics involves the recommendation of various choices, as well as offering reasons for those recommendations. These recommendations could take the form of a collection of maxims and values and so forth, which the recommender finds attractive or compelling and wishes everyone would share with them, but that are not intended to be categorical or exceptionless or objective or expected to be universal or ordered the same by everyone. 

Furthermore, unlike moral normative ethics, with amoral normative ethics there is no presumption that different proposed ethics must be reconciled with one another on pain of one or the other being false. There can be your ethics and my ethics, and that be the end of the story. It will then be left up to anyone else to choose among them, or develop their own. All of us still (according to my meta-ethics) remain free to try to persuade one another of the virtues of our own ethics,[2] since after all we do prefer it, not only for ourself but for everyone; but all the while we recognize that such a project is solely for the purpose of making the world to be more the way we want it to be, as opposed to our view being true or obligatory, even for ourself. 

To illustrate what I mean by normative ethics, here are some preliminary thoughts on my own ethics. I would like us all to be, and to cultivate being, and to promote being, among other things, honest, compassionate, relaxed, alert, curious, creative, conscientious, widely knowledgeable, reflective, analytically critical, kind, courteous, communicative, and of a humorous disposition ... and don’t forget to brush your teeth after every meal! I would also like us all to be free of bigotry, superstition, squeamishness, and no doubt much else. When it comes to making decisions, my recommendation is then simply to reflect on the relevant considerations, including how you and others are likely to be affected by a particular action or course of behavior. Having done so, you will believe certain things and feel or be motivated in a certain way, which will cause you to act in a certain way. And that’s it. 

This could be called “marksism1,” to distinguish it from your general system of values[3] insofar as it diverges significantly from mine.[4] Naturally I am prepared to give reasons for my various choices of how to be and what to do, etc. These reasons could be the factors that persuaded me, but would certainly also be tailored to what I discern might be persuasive to you. Examples are always helpful, and presented with rhetorical force suited to the interlocutor or audience. 

One way to “test” my ethics would be to locate a person who had all of the specified features, and then see if we liked them. Knowing the way of counterexamples, it is easy enough for me to imagine that I might come upon just such a person and find them repulsive. But then I’d just have to keep “refining” the list of features. One way I might do this is to summon up my maxim of yes and no: For everything that is the case, so is its opposite (in some sense or other). For example, my present list contains “relaxed”; but I know that someone who was not also efficient would drive me crazy. So maybe I’ll add “efficient” to the list. However, since the good life is a paradigmatically philosophical matter, I would never expect to be immune to counterexamples no matter how many features or qualifications I added. And even if I did find someone who bore out my hypothesis of living the good life for having just the features I had specified, in the nature of ethics as I have characterized it you might not care for this person at all. 

There is really nothing novel about all of this … except for what it lacks, which is the heavy overlay of superfluous and noxious moralistic assumptions and agendas.

[1] As I also explained in “Normative Ethics Reclaimed.”

[2] Indeed, we remain free to do all the sorts of things people have always done on the basis of our reflective desires, even go to war with one another. But the prediction amoralists make is that there would be fewer wars and the like.

[3] Or for that matter, the Scout Law!

[4] It is furthermore an extension beyond what I have been calling desirism, which recommended only that we rationalize our desires. I coined that concept when I was under the misconception that the only ethics I could propose was a meta-ethics. Now I see desirism as a conflation due to an unnecessary constraint.

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