Chapter 3: The Moral Criterion

Speculative thought comes late in the history of mankind. Men act before they philosophize about their actions. They learned to talk, and developed language, ages before they developed any interest in grammar or linguistics. They worked and saved, planted crops, fashioned tools, built homes, owned, bartered, bought and sold, and developed money, long before they formulated any explicit theories of economics. They developed forms of government and law, and even judges and courts, before they formulated theories of politics or jurisprudence. And they acted implicitly in accordance with a code of morals, rewarded or punished, approved or disapproved of the actions of their fellows in adhering to or violating that code of morals, long before it even occurred to them to inquire into the rationale of what they were doing.

It would seem at first glance both natural and logical, therefore, to begin the study of ethics with an inquiry into the history or evolution of ethical practice and judgments. Certainly we should engage in such an inquiry at some time in the course of our study. Yet ethics is perhaps the one discipline where it seems more profitable to begin at the other end. For ethics is a "normative" science. It is not a science of description, but of prescription. It is not a science of what is or was, but of what ought to be.

True, it would have no claim to scientific validity, or even any claim to be a useful field of inquiry, unless it were based in some convincing way on what was or what is. But here we have stepped into the very center of an age-old controversy. Many ethical writers have contended during the last two centuries that "no accumulation of observed sequences, no experience of what is, no predictions of what will be, can possibly prove what ought to be." (1) And others have even gone on to assert that there is no way of getting from an is to an ought.

If the latter statement were true, there would be no possibility of framing a rational theory of ethics. Unless our oughts are to be purely arbitrary, purely dogmatic, they must somehow grow out of what is.

Now the connection between what is and what ought to be is always a desire of some kind. We recognize this in our daily decisions. When we are trying to decide on a course of action, and are asking advice, we are told, for example: "If you desire to become a doctor, you must go to medical school. If you desire to get ahead, you must be diligent in your business. If you don't want to get fat, you must watch your diet. If you want to avoid lung cancer, you must cut down on cigarettes," etc. The generalized form of such advice may be reduced to this:. If you desire to attain a certain end, you ought to use a certain means, because this is the means most likely to achieve it. The is the desire; the ought is the means of gratifying it.

So far, so good. But how far does this get us toward a theory of ethics? For if a man does not desire an end, there seems no way of convincing him that he ought to pursue the means to that end. If a man prefers the certainty of getting fat, or the risk of a heart attack, to curbing his appetite or giving up his favorite delicacies; if he prefers the risks of lung cancer to giving up smoking, any ought based on the assumption of a contrary preference loses its force.

A story so old that it is told as an old one even by Bentham (2) is that of the oculist and the sot: A countryman who had hurt his eyes by drinking went to a celebrated oculist for advice. He found him at table, with a glass of wine before him. "You must leave off drinking," said the oculist. "How so?" says the countryman. "You don't, and yet methinks your own eyes are none of the best." -- "That's very true, friend," replied the oculist: "but you are to know, I love my bottle better than my eyes."

How, then, do we move from any basis of desire to any theory of ethics?

We find the solution when we take a longer and broader view. All our desires may be generalized as desires to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory state. It is true that an individual, under the immediate influence of impulse or passion, of a moment of anger or rage, malice, vindictiveness, or the desire for revenge, or gluttony, or an overwhelming craving for a release of sexual tension, or for a smoke or a drink or a drug, may in the long run only reduce a more satisfactory state to a less satisfactory state, may make himself less happy rather than more happy. But this less satisfactory state was not his real conscious intention even at the moment of acting. He realizes, in retrospect, that his action was folly; he did not improve his condition, but made it worse; he did not act in accordance with his long-run interests, but against them. He is always willing to recognize, in his calmer moments, that he should choose the action that best promotes his own interests and maximizes his own happiness (or minimizes his own unhappiness) in the long run. Wise and disciplined men refuse to indulge in immediate pleasures when the indulgence seems only too likely to lead in the long run to an overbalance of misery or pain.

To repeat and to sum up: It is not true that "no amount of is can make an ought." The ought rests, in fact, and must rest, either upon an is or upon a will be. The sequence is simple: Every man, in his cool and rational moments, seeks his own long-run happiness. This is a fact; this is an is. Mankind has found, over the centuries that certain rules of action best tend to promote the long-run happiness of both the individual and society. These rules of action have come to be called moral rules. Therefore, assuming that one seeks one's long-run happiness, these are the rules one ought to follow.

Certainly this is the whole basis of what is called prudential ethics. In fact, wisdom, or the art of living wisely, is perhaps only another name for prudential ethics.

Prudential ethics constitutes a very large part of all ethics. But the whole of ethics rests upon the same foundation. For men find that they best promote their own interests in the long run not merely by refraining from injury to their fellows, but by cooperating with them. Social cooperation is the foremost means by which the majority of us attain most of our ends. It is on the implicit if not the explicit recognition of this that our codes of morals, our rules of conduct, are ultimately based. "Justice" itself (as we shall later see more clearly) consists in observance of the rules or principles that do most, in the long run, to preserve and promote social cooperation.

We shall find also, when we have explored the subject further, that there are no irreconcilable conflicts between egoism and altruism, between selfishness and benevolence, between the long-run interests of the individual and those of society. In most cases in which such conflicts appear to exist, the appearance exists because only short-run consequences, and not consequences over the long run, are being taken into consideration.

Social cooperation is, of course, itself a means. It is a means to the never completely attainable goal of maximizing the happiness and well-being of mankind. But the great difficulty of making the latter our direct goal is the lack of unanimity in the tastes, ends, and value judgments of individuals. An activity that gives one man pleasure may be a great bore to another. "One man's meat is another man's poison." But social cooperation is the great means by which we all help each other to attain our individual ends, and so to attain the ends of "society." Moreover, we do share a great number of basic ends in common; and social cooperation is the principal means of attaining these also.

In brief, the aim of each of us to satisfy his own desires, to achieve as far as possible his own highest happiness and well-being, is best forwarded by a common means, Social Cooperation, and cannot be achieved without that means.

Here, then, is the foundation on which we may build a rational system of ethics.

Notes

1. Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), I, 53.

2. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1823), p. 319n.

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