I used to think that the majority of actions were morally neutral, and that only those things that caused harm or suffering could be classified as 'bad'. In and of itself I wouldn't have said that lying was wrong, or sleeping good. Only when coupled with contingencies such as the lie being malicious, or the sleep necessary to rejuvenate the mind and body, could these things be considered in any way moral. My practical ethics are still largely consequentialist, but I've been reconsidering how I classify things within that framework.
A body.
When it comes to practical, applied ethics (certainly the most important kind of ethics), we need to look at everything in context. Whether an action is good or bad, whether it causes harm, will depend on so many contingent factors that it is extremely difficult to make accurate ethical judgments in advance. The best we can hope for is to establish guiding heuristics that will help us to make moral decisions in the future. With that in mind, let's return to the classic example of lying.
As I mentioned above, I used to say that lying was only immoral if it caused harm. That's still basically what I think, only now I'd be tempted to expand harm to include more subtle effects like the degradation of the liar's moral character, and the long-term instability of a relationship build on deception. So whilst in the abstract lying might be morally neutral, in practice it could almost always wrong. Of course there are going to be exceptions, such as if you're sheltering a refugee from a murderous band of thugs, but my moral compass is beginning to swing distinctly towards the "lying is usually wrong" side of things.
We could call this kind of approach "embodied ethics", in that it emphasises the "in the world" nature of moral judgments. Another sense in which ethics should be considered embodied is that it is very much a product of our evolved and biological nature. To a large extent, things are essentially right or wrong to the degree that they facilitate a way of life that is guided by our evolution. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that everything we've evolved to do is inherently right, but only that evolution has guided the way in which we make ethical considerations, as well as defining the things that matter to us. So ethical discourse must be underwritten by an understanding of our biological, embodied nature.
Finally, ethics is embodied because the mind and the self are embodied. As I've written about elsewhere, the potential for the extension of the mind and perhaps even the self has serious ethical implications. More generally, an understanding of morality demands an understanding of the mechanics behind the human mind, and an understanding of how it interacts with the world. Otherwise our ethics will be too abstract to be meaningful - this is why the ethical debates that philosophers sometimes have can seem so odd and out of touch. I'm still working on the full details, but from now on I'm going to try and make sure that my ethical theorising is firmly embodied, in all three of the ways that I've outlined here.
Finally, ethics is embodied because the mind and the self are embodied. As I've written about elsewhere, the potential for the extension of the mind and perhaps even the self has serious ethical implications. More generally, an understanding of morality demands an understanding of the mechanics behind the human mind, and an understanding of how it interacts with the world. Otherwise our ethics will be too abstract to be meaningful - this is why the ethical debates that philosophers sometimes have can seem so odd and out of touch. I'm still working on the full details, but from now on I'm going to try and make sure that my ethical theorising is firmly embodied, in all three of the ways that I've outlined here.
It is interesting from the conclusions we reached, some of which you have very nicely sketched out hear, the unity between 'actions' and 'states' in the moral realm. Morality, from what I have read about it, has always been primarily concerned about actions. But granting that "ethical discourse must be underwritten by an understanding of our biological, embodied nature" we may promote 'states' to the same moral scrutiny as 'actions', a thought provoking and, I think, a valid conjecture. Whether it is sound is another matter. There is definitely room for more investigation in the area of biological and "embodied ethics", particularly from an understanding of the mechanics behind the human mind, as you point out, and from that of the mechanics of language as I would add. Further discussion will suffice.
ReplyDelete(Joe)
ReplyDeleteThanks Marc! Weirdly enough I was just talking to Professor Andy Clark about this at my graduation reception today. He certainly agrees that there's important work to be done on investigating the impact of biology, and more specifically cognitive science, on ethics. As you say, the mechanics of language are certainly a part of this. The relationship between states and actions is an interesting topic - off the top of my head I'm inclined to say that, to at least some degree, they're kind of the same thing. An action or an event is necessarily embodied in a physical state. Of course there's conceptual differences, and the distinction may well still be a useful one to make.