In Defense of Rational Ethics

Should we go against our intuition when logic tells us to?

There are two overarching categories of ethics: Intuitional Ethics (IE) and Rational Ethics (RE). 

Intuitional Ethics

IE are moral decisions made without thinking. Only when questioned about why we did an act do we attempt to justify the act with words. These are our “gut feelings”. IE goes by other names like Natural or Commonsense Ethics. Attempting to justify IE actions brings us into the endless debates on how we should act. This makes up much of the history of ethics.

Intuitions change over time. Arguing over what is fundamental in IE is nearly impossible due to people in various cultures at various times with various degrees of well-being having different intuitions. Furthermore, those with different levels of emotional capabilities could have trouble agreeing on axioms. Foundational principles of ethics could vary wildly between a psychopath and an empath, to take an extreme example. 

Rational Ethics

RE is the opposite of IE. They disregard our gut feelings and instead seek goals like maximizing utility (increasing pleasure and decreasing suffering), discovering our duties, or formulating rules of how we all ought to live. These frameworks are methodical, typically requiring logic, pen and paper, sometimes diagrams, and plenty of wild thought experiments. The point of thought experiments in RE is to lay bare our intuitions only to show their failings when rationality is applied.

Rational Ethics Criticism

RE has come under fire since its formation for being unrealistic and often too demanding. In laying out the definitions and purpose of IE and RE, it should be clear why this is so. Since RE has us running against our human nature, RE demands we be super-human or perhaps un-human. RE requires us to abandon our commonsense understanding of right and wrong and instead review formulas and rules. Following the conclusions of RE can suggest we have to radically alter our behavior and the structure of society to a point that could make us uncomfortable.

A perfect example of this criticism of a RE is the paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by the famous practical Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer (PDF). Singer suggests we ought not spend money frivolously on luxuries, and instead donate that money to help alleviate some of the worst ailments in the world such as famine. In particular, it is immoral to spend money on luxuries instead of helping the global poor. He takes several pages to get to this point using thought experiments that first jive with our intuition but then run completely counter to it. After rational analysis, we find the moral thing to do (donate to the famine and poverty relief) goes against our intuitions (buying new clothes, for example, is typically not an ethical issue). The major complaint against this conclusion is that it is too hard to do. Give up all of our extra money to help those less fortunate? Morality is too demanding!

Attacking the core of RE is going for impartiality. Impartiality means a life is a life, and it does not matter whose life it is. If my mother is sick and can be cured for $50,000, should I do it? Being impartial says “no” since that amount of money could save more lives by going after cheaper solutions such as vaccines, deworming pills, and antibiotics for the less fortunate. It is one thing to say we should not fund the local arts in order to help alleviate suffering (“Sell the Vatican, feed the world” says comedian Sarah Silverman) but to suggest we ignore those closest to the center of our moral circle is contrary to our deepest intuitions. This is a perfect example of IE opposing the demands of RE.

Another example that resonates with those of us that allow non-human animals in our moral circle is how to donate and work on behalf of non-human animals. The majority of donations go towards pets even though they are a fraction of the suffering that exists for non-human animals. Not spending money on a cat or dog and instead donating to effective organizations fighting against factory farms nets you more good for your dollar (https://animalcharityevaluators.org/donation-advice/why-farmed-animals/).

In Defense of Rational Ethics

We have to ask ourselves if we want society to run by our intuitional morals where each person potentially has a different reaction to ethical problems, or create a foundation of what we know to be good and strive for that. If we state that the conclusions of RE are moral and we care about morality then it does not matter the difficulty involved with attempting to obtain a moral life. After all, being difficult to do is not a rational argument against rational ethics. It just admits laziness or lack of caring by the accuser. 

This means we are to put faith in our rational thinking which historically has not always yielded ideal results, such as the idea there are inferior genes in some races that made up the eugenics movement in the early 1900s. What if we currently are making such egregious errors today in our rational thinking? Doesn’t that mean we cannot rely on RE either?

I have no doubt we are making similar moral errors in our rational discourse. The conclusions of what actions to take when making moral decisions in 500 years will likely be different from what actions we take today, just as 500 years ago the actions humans took differ from today. This happens because we learn and grow. We study ethics rationally. We create thought experiments to challenge ourselves and our notions of right and wrong.

We have only recently begun to consider future peoples, digital minds, and non-human animals in our ethical thoughts. RE allows us to wade into areas untouchable by IE because we have limited or no intuitions about future populations or non-human animals. We can intuitively say humans of the future matter, but what intuitive actions can we take to ensure their survival? Are these intuitive actions the best possible actions to take? We don’t know, hence needing to analyze these problems and solutions.

The goal of studying RE is not to rationalize our intuitions. We do not need a theory that lets us know our natural instincts are morally correct. Natural instincts exist through adaption to survival under Dwarinian evolution. Instead, the study of ethics should be focused on what is moral regardless of our feelings or the practicality of those findings.