Observations for Ethics

There is a rueful truism in econometrics that says that if you encounter a correlation over 99%, you have discovered a rule of accounting. Solon does not often try to measure correlations, but he does accumulate instances to establish likelihoods. One such likelihood not easily distinguishable from 99% is that if you encounter a competent moral philosopher, you have also encountered a person who is very good at keeping his or her personal taxes to the minimum(1). The Unit is given to such undergraduate activities as debating what moral precept is based upon. While observing one such discussion, Solon concluded that he would be reluctant to ask tax advice from Unit members (everyone is aware that Solon is incompetent to give such advice).

Solon’s own views on where lie the foundations, the compass, the grand attractor, the roots or what you will of ethics are ill-formed (2).  He sees value in the respect of some legal members of the Unit for precedent. In his opinion, the charge by some social scientists that the lawyers cannot distinguish between precedent and revelation is exaggerated. Nevertheless, the Imam is very helpful in making that distinction with rigour. The reverence of many social scientists before John Rawls’ theory of justice also seems to Solon overdone. Rawls’ logic is useful in sorting out inconsistencies; but seems ill-matched to the ethical behaviour that Solon observes and admires. The economists seem to him to lose themselves in the thickets of game theory and sterile formulations of utility functions.

Solon, like others, has observed that many notions of ethical behaviour have been consistent over time and over differences of culture. Maxims such as “Thou shalt do no murder”, “Do not covet what is your neighbour’s.”, “Bear no false testimony.”, “Do unto others as you would be done to.”, and so on crop up time and again in slightly different forms. And quite often they are obeyed. The principal variation is in how widely they are assumed to apply. In some tribal cultures, they apply only to tribal members and accepted guests. A headhunter regards the killing of someone from another tribe in order to acquire a head (the showing of which will enable him to become a respectable married man) as a completely ethical act. Numbers of fiercely ethical nonconformist Protestant ship owners in England, <Holland and America were happy to take part in the Atlantic slave trade; the slaves were not within the ambit of their ethics (3). The Nazis were no more or less moral than usual in their behaviour amongst themselves; they just excluded “inferior races” from the scope of their ethics.

The examples are legion. And always the “practical man’s (and woman’s)” argument seems to be “Its all very well you saying that we ought to treat them as human, but we cannot afford to, can we?” But when they feel that they can afford it, the attitude changes. Solon came across a particularly graphic little incident of that some time after the Second World War. In a French village mostly peopled by elderly peasants, a couple who had retired there from Paris purchased a lamb.

For six months they treated the lamb as a pet, and expected their neighbours to do the same. Then they had it slaughtered, and offered lamb chops to the neighbours. Their neighbours rejected the excellent meat with horror “One does not eat the neighbours!”. Solon was well aware from their stories of the past that, twenty years earlier when times were harder, the same villagers would have treated the six month’s of the lamb taking the part of a pet as an eccentricity. They would have accepted the meat with gratitude. In the interval the elderly villagers’ ethical sensibilities had expanded insensibly to include such cases as the pet lamb.

If times became hard again, Solon is sure that the villagers’ attitudes would change back. Some would have difficulty (as many Germans had difficulty in regarding Jews as not fully human, in spite of the Fuhrer saying so firmly that this was necessary for the survival of Germany), but most of them would come to see things differently once again.

Solon sees insensible but massive analogous gradual widenings of the application of society’s ethical code as a major motive force in the development of the modern world. They were, he thinks, a major part of movement to abolish slavery. (He notes that the poorer countries tended to lag behind in this development.) They affected the growth of awareness of the plight of the working classes, and of the lack of rights for women. They are a major part of the impulse to abolish poverty and improve health in the world. As in the case of the pet lamb, they have spread to concern for the well-being of non-human individuals. (A whale stranded in the <place>Thames is no longer just a bonus for the sellers of dog meat; its attempted rescue was a major news story recently.)

British liberty is supposed to have broadened down from precedent to precedent. However, this broadening out of ethical sensibility is a process of another kind. It moves forward not by means of cases being made upon the basis of what had gone before, but by the changes in viewpoint that individuals and groups accept without noticing the change. (4) Solon’s old rough sketch of the process at work was that the impulse to care what happens to others is always present, but its expression is inhibited by the primordial drive to preserve oneself and one’s group. As that primordial drive is more and more fully satisfied in a world of increasing riches, the impulse is less restrained.

Reality is never as simple as a rough sketch (though it may more comprehensible than a rough sketch drawn by Solon). Solon acknowledged when first formulating this idea that there were many shades of grey to be seen from the white sheep seen as fully in the ambit of ethics to the black goats completely outside the fold. Athenians were brought up to regard barbarians as beyond the pale (except when they were guests or Athenians were guests in their lands). Spartans were bad enough, but at least they were Greeks. More was to be expected from fellow Ionians than from such uncouth Dorians. Athenian slaves were at least Athenian. And people from Athenian colonies were quite near to being like proper citizens.

Like all societies that Solon has seen since, Athenian citizens recognised degrees of expected reciprocal ethical obligation from different groups of those aground them. We recognise the closest of these groups as nearly fully within the fold, and the more distant as less so. And the argument is always the same “We can’t afford to accept them more fully.”

Solon has been fascinated over recent decades by the accumulation of evidence from anthropology, from psychology and lately from the neurologists (neurobiologists? Solon has caused offence for millennia through his inability to keep track of the proliferation of sub-tribes). These various sciences are all pointing to a very deep seated and basic impulse or impulses of human empathy with other individuals. And zoologists have been throwing up hints that they are on the track of something analogous in other species. Solon wonders if his impulse to care for others is both more important and more of a truly basic impulse than even he supposed (5).

Solon had often noted over the centuries that people who behave ethically often fare surprisingly well in life (6). He thought that he had found the theoretical justification for this, at last, when the games playing economists demonstrated that cooperation and trust is often a superior strategy. The work of the various scientific disciplines (Solon admits that economics is a discipline, and a dismal one; but cannot class it as a science.) appears to have dug below this finding; explaining something of why trust and co-operation come naturally, are intrinsically satisfying for us, and can be expected to work in this world.

The experimental economists have gone a step further. They have established that we expect reciprocity is some degree; and that we expect failing to reciprocate to carry penalties. Solon looks forward nowadays to the scientists demonstrating how these expectations are also “hard-wired” into the way animals like us work. He has a hunch that when we want to cry “Unfair!”, this impulse will be found to be associated with another set of nerve connections active in the brain coupled with the expression of distinctive proteins. The basis for this hunch is that he thinks that he has noticed something of an “Unfair!” reaction in some domestic animals.

As to what types of penalties are appropriate, Solon turns again to observation. He sees the playground cry of “If you won’t keep to the rules, you can’t play with us!” as one fundamental type. Such banishment he sees as the root of outlawry, commitment to prison and of lesser restrictions on the activities of the person chastised, such as withdrawal of a driving license. Fines are a refinement of these. “Allright, you can play with us if you give us a marble” is the childish equivalent of everything from blood money to a traffic fine. If you pay up, you can continue in our pattern of cooperation.

Dissuasive punishments such as beatings, or chopping off of hands are intended to teach the potential offender (and potential re-offender) that failure to cooperate as society expects has unpleasant consequences.  Again, it seems to Solon that dissuasion is also a type of reinforcement to the impulse to co-operate that is in harmony with that impulse, even if it clashes with empathy for the penalised.

Vengeance appears different to Solon. He will not be surprised if the neurowhateverists eventually discover a pattern of cerebral activity associated with desire for vengeance that is very different from that associated with desire for reinforcement of others’ wishes to co-operate. As has often been demonstrated in vendettas and similar feuds, vengeance is thoroughly destructive of co-operation and trust in larger groups. Solon suspects that the wish for vengeance, which is very generally found amongst humans, is associated with the primordial drive to preserve oneself and one’s group, not with any framework of ethics and justice. The Jewish and Christian saying “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” appears to Solon a recognition of the grand division between vengeance and justice. But Solon must admit that humans do not keep banishment and its refinements, dissuasion and vengeance separate in their minds when considering sanctions.

Whatever the neurobioethicists (?) eventually find, Solon’s working ethical rule of thumb is “Co-operate, trust; and verify.” Verification once in a while should be sufficient to deter cheating in most circumstances (7). Regular verification is generally needed for other reasons. “Humanum est errare” is, in Solon’s estimation, an understatement. The possibility of mistakes and misunderstandings arising increases as a power of the numbers trying to co-operate.  These errors discourage both co-operation and trust. Regular verification minimises the damage.

Rather oddly, “Do as you would be done to” appears to be a logical consequence of accepting “Co-operate and trust”. It may be a second order ethical statement rather than a primary principle. The rest of the ethics that Solon accepts as representing the common meaning of the concept (8) appear to follow, with more than a high likelihood, from these two statements.

One commonplace idea that is not generally seen as ethical also seems to follow from Solon’s rule, to his considerable pleasure. “Live, and let live.” is the principle of passive co-operation and trust. Active co-operation is limited at any one time. “Live, and let live” sets it in the whole background texture of human relationships.

Solon has no wish to deny that ethics may have a basis in divine will. Indeed, Solon’s ethical impulse could be taken as a metaphor for man’s wish for salvation, and the perpetual failure to follow the impulse through in full as a metaphor for original sin. He thinks it perfectly valid to approach the observation of actual ethics in the mood of one marvelling at the infinite subtlety, variety and effectiveness of the working out of a divine design (9).  He feels emphatically that he has gained in understanding of the ethics he observes through reading sacred texts. Prophets and others have certainly produced inspired statements of ethical truths; but the shortcut hypothesis that these reveal a complete account of real ethics seems to him nearly blasphemous. He will go on doing without it.

The best secular writing on ethics is less inspired, but can go deep. (10) Solon hopes that his inadequate scratchings at the surface may lead some tax-avoiding (but never evading) future academic to make a proper job of them.

Other members of the Unit suspect that Solon’s approach is not ethics as such nor moral philosophy at all; but they agree that they have not yet demonstrated that point.

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(1)     Solon regards this as evidence that there are likely to be rules of psychology to be discovered.

(2)     Not all of Solon’s views are necessarily ill-formed. Some are so ill-drafted or ill-remembered that the question remains moot. Janitor.

(3)     In adapting his ethical argument to the existence of slavery, Aristotle argued at a level he would have been ashamed of in other contexts.

(4)     Not all such insensible changes in attitudes are matters of ethics, of course. Solon was in Spain a few years ago, when many attitudes were changing. He guessed that it was about time for Spanish motorists to begin stopping at zebra crossings. Sure enough, they did; without any police pressure or public campaign. Stopping is now the assumed norm.

(5)     If it was less of an impulse, maybe the campaigns to aid the world’s poor and afflicted would be less erratic in their impact; and maybe we would not have such pathological symptoms as the Animal Liberation Movement.  But maybe the drive of impulse is more essential here than the reins of rationality.

(6)     Three centuries of the Quakers’ notorious tendencies towards prosperity and evident relative happiness are a case in point.

(7)     How much verification in what circumstances is considered most thoroughly in the theory of quality control.

(8)     Solon declines to define the common meaning of the concept of ethics. He sees that question as best tackled through anthropological description.

(9)     Which is also a good and reverent religious way to view our gradually increasing understanding of biological evolution.

(10)  Solon has a desire to fully understand Spinoza, but doubts if even his extended existence will suffice.

Should you wish to comment, an email to solon@usesolon.org may draw a response.