Okay, so last week I raised a lot of questions about moral philosophy and how it can draw on math and science and that sort of thing. Before we start, I'm going to clear up a few things, make some axioms all that jazz. So we'll get started right away.
First I want to clarify that I am drawing on ideas in math and science for moral philosophy. I honestly think that ethics is way too fuzzy, context based and subjective to be readily quantized (the metrical unit of the Hitler notwithstanding). Later on when I start using mathematical jargon, I mean it more figuratively.
Now here's the major axiom which most greatly affects my reasoning: the physical human brain shapes and limits the perceptions of behaviors of human consciousness in logical and observable ways, because consciousness either arises due to activity in the brain, or because a soul (soul: n, consciousness independent of physical reality) uses the brain as a vehicle for physical manifestation. Epidemiologists can hoot and holler like a bunch of baboons about how this could be wrong, but I will ignore that because I am straight up admitting that I have no rational basis for declaring this. That is why it is called an axiom. Deal with it.
Now that we have all that sorted out, let's get into the meat of the question: why is ethics basically always bullshit? It's either wishy-washy and ill defined, or well defined but entirely off the rails of what it was trying to achieve *coughcatigoricalimperativecough.* I think before we can start trying to figure out what ethics should be we should observe how it arose. Now, consider the following: all human culture, no matter how isolated, has some moral structure. Having morals, even if they're kind of stupid, is a universal of human existence. Likewise, we have observed other animals, especially social animals, behaving in ways that humans would consider moral, such as familial altruism and pack/herd/troupe fidelity, (for those keeping score at home, I would ignore eusocial animals like ants and bees, who behave as a superorganism rather than a community of individuals, which results in widely different patterns of behavior). This is especially so in close relatives of humans, such as ape and monkey species. From these two facts, we can conclude that human ethics is intuitive, not inventive, that is, based on instinct, not reason (broadly speaking of course, specific cultural mores are very much based on reason, if not intelligent reason). If ethics was inventive and based on reason, then we would not see ethical behavior in non-human species and likewise there would be an uneven distribution of ethical behavior as a social state of being, based primarily on the access that a culture had to the inventor of ethics.
Now I know some are readying up your typing fingers, about to blast me with detailed responses about how humans obviously can't be intuitively ethical, because look at all the horrible things people do and so obviously you're stupid and wrong and we all hate you. To you all, I say: shut the fuck up, I'm not done yet. Humans are intuitively ethical only to people with whom they have an empathetic connection. You see, humans only have a limited capacity to have a close and nuanced understanding of other people, anywhere from 50 to 300 people. The concept is explained quite succinctly here, (for those incredulous of getting scientific information from a comedy website, here's the Wikipedia article with all them nifty citations I've heard so much about). Now, we can presume that in pre-agricultural times, tribal sizes were probably congruent with Dunbar's number, and that these tribes are the maximal natural unit of human organization. As we can observe with similarly sized communities even today, disputes of justice are generally resolved alegally, and invoking law to settle domestic matters is generally considered a dick move. (except in outstanding situations, such as abusive relationships. I suspect that in pre-legal societies, abusers were dealt with via a highly-mobile pointed rock).
Of course, we don't live in a tribal society anymore (and in fact, even our social "tribes" have become increasingly decentralized because of suburbanism and globalization. Thanks Obama!). This is is largely due to the Agricultural Revolution, which is perhaps the biggest mixed blessing in the entirety of biological history. You see, after the Agricultural Revolution, the tribe translated more or less directly to the village and farming villages went about their lives more or less business as usual. However, due to various reasons that I don't have time to talk about today (specialization of artisanship, land economies, ect), necessities of village security and wealth caused villages to form confederations of mutual protection and trade. As power tends to consolidate, the villages gradually became less independent and turned into cities with a recentralized government. Rinse and repeat this same sort of thing till the 21st century and here we are with our nifty super-national coalitions like the EU and NATO.
Now, those of you paying attention may have noticed a problem, since humans were already at maximum empathetic capacities with villages. This is where rational ethics comes in. You see, empathetic ethics are kind of a mixed bag: on one hand it's excellent for resolving internal disputes, because you understand that the other person is a 3 dimensional human being like yourself. On the other, anyone outside of the tribe is basically a free target for murder as soon as they start to get annoying. I mean, why would you feel bad? It's not like they're a real person like you are (it is interesting to note that many ethnic designations are derived from the culture's word for the people, not really clarifying what everyone else is supposed to be if they're not people). Even worse, if you're constantly living with people who you can't intuitively recognize as being more or less the same as you, it starts to confuse matters quite a bit, making people more individualistic as they begin to question exactly how human people in their own tribe actually are. Aeschylus' Oriestia trilogy deals with the fallout of this confusion (spoiler alert: it involves a lot of murder).
Of course, this is where law comes in. Law, fundamentally, is a rational replication of intuitive ethics. Law, in theory, codifies moral behavior in a political unit. Because we can't comprehend it entirely like we can tribal ethics, it is written down, as writing is humanity's memory proxy. It provides a way to negotiate disputes via a justice system (though the justice system's effectiveness varies wildly) and punishes misbehavior (as shame and guilt do intuitively).
Now laws have some pretty major problems. First off, they only replicate ethics well if they are written for the benefit of everyone in the society, rather than the individuals who are writing them, (which is to say, laws never replicate ethics well). In addition, laws are pretty slow to change. As societies get bigger, the sort of violent confusion that i mentioned two paragraphs ago starts to get more common and usually codification of the reorganization of society comes after major periods of violence. Examples of this can be found in the Oriestia (yes I know its fictional, but the shift from households to city states in Greece did occur fairly recently before it was written), The Twelve Tables of Rome, the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, and The Treaty of Rome (I apologize for being Eurocentric, but it's the area of the world I'm most familiar with).
Now, for those of you who have completely lost track of what we were supposed to be talking about in all the political theory, I am going to circle back to ethics now. Basically, from an ethical standpoint, the legal system sucks ass. It honestly is entirely useless, because 1. Laws are composed by people who are biologically stuck in a "my tribe comes first" mindset (see: partisan politics, corporate corruption) 2. No matter how well composed they are, people physically cannot internalize law. Everyone, whether they're writing the law or not still only care for others as much as Dunbar's number will allow them. For example, I am sure that the computer that I am writing on right now was created using highly illegal and morally reprehensible wage slavery. I know for a fact that some sorry bastard in the Congo was forced at gunpoint to mine the cobalt in this computer and another sorry bastard in China is working 18 hours a day in toxic conditions put that same cobalt in my hard drive. I am also certain that if that Congolese guy got shot right now, or that Chinese guy died of cancer right there at his seat, I wouldn't care. Not intellectually, mind. I find such practices to be abhorrent, but at the same time, I would be more emotionally affected if one of my dogs died than if both of them did. Also, at the end of the day, even though I find that their working conditions are unacceptable, I am still using the fruits of their miserable labor.
This is our major problem: not that we don't understand that ethics are fundamentally about optimizing human happiness (which itself is too complex to quantize) regardless of the size of society, nor that we don't understand that the best way to do this is to have a strong empathetic connection with our fellow man which would allow us to intuitively be altruistic, loving and trustworthy, but rather it is that our stupid monkey brains are about 8000 years obsolete and are overclocked on a daily basis just to not be a huge dick to the guy who's making your coffee SO GODDAMN SLOWLY (seriously, how could he not realize that you're running late for a very important class for very understandable reasons? If only he'd understand, he'd surely go out of the way to make sure he got your order exactly as you wanted it).
Of course, if present trends continue (which they rarely ever do, by the way), we could actually legitimately fix this problem, thanks to trans-humanism and the Singularity. Now of course, it'll be a lucky fucking break if we do, because I honestly have to say that the Singularity will start out looking something like this, at least at first, because humanity has always proven to be best at ruining things for everyone.
Sincere Regards,
Michael Coffey
(PS: Holy shit that took a hugely different direction than I was expecting.)
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