Truth Reconciled

In a previous post, I asked the question, What defines good and evil? In other words, what defines morality? This question has been studied by philosophers for millennia, but, if you read my previous post, then you know that I’m not satisfied with any of the answers that have been given in the past. None of them have a foundation firm enough to withstand logical assault. None of them have managed to prove rigorously that objective morality really exists.

My goal is to put objective morality on a firm foundation. I don’t want to leave any room to doubt its existence. After years of thinking about it, I believe I have finally discovered the foundation I was looking for. In this post, I will take you through the concepts that lead to the existence and definition of universal objective morality.

Main Idea

Let’s start by thinking about how we judge moral questions in our everyday lives. How is it that we usually determine whether an action is good or bad? Usually, we judge actions by the consequences of those actions. If an action leads to good consequences, then we claim that it is a good action, and if it leads to bad consequences then it is a bad action. It seems simple, right? So why don’t we just define morality as the actions that lead to good consequences?

The problem is that a “good consequence” is meaningless because the word “good” has not been defined. Morality is what defines goodness, so if we don’t have a definition of morality, then how can we judge the goodness of anything? It is tempting to make some arbitrary assumption here about what could define a good consequence. We could say a good consequence is increased happiness, or increased probability of survival. But that would put us on the same shaky foundation that everyone else is on. 

We don’t want to assume anything, and we don’t have to. There is still a logical way forward without requiring a clear definition of goodness. We don’t know what defines morality, but we do know that morality defines goodness. So, even without knowing the proper definitions, we know that an action that leads to more morality is definitely a good action. It follows that morality is a certain set of actions that tends to lead to more of itself.

The moral philosopher Kant took issue with any theory based on consequences. He claimed that basing the rightness of an act on its consequences denies the objective nature of morality because it makes the rightness of the act depend on something besides the act itself. This issue certainly discredits other consequence-based theories, but not this one. Apparently Kant never considered the possibility that a consequence could be morality itself, in which case it retains its independence and objectivity.

Kant’s second objection is that grounding the morality of an act in its consequences deprives it of its a priori nature, because we can never know with absolute certainty the consequences of an act before the act is done. This means that moral decisions become based on probability rather than knowledge. He is mostly right about this, but it does not invalidate this theory. Our lack of knowledge about a concept does not invalidate the truthfulness of the concept. His argument is therefore against the practicability of the theory rather than the logical foundation of it. However, we will see that just as probabilities tend to be described by well-defined functions in certain limits, several moral rules can be derived from this theory a priori which are valid in almost all cases.

Eternal Perspective

There are many actions that are considered bad that tend to propagate themselves, such as violence and sexual immorality. However, these types of actions tend not to do so eternally, but over some finite amount of time they tend to destroy the very societies that practice them and thus eliminate themselves. In the end, we can’t honestly say that these actions led to more of themselves.

True morality should not eliminate itself over any finite amount of time, but should preserve itself indefinitely. If it doesn’t last forever, then it brought about its own destruction, and therefore it didn’t lead to more of itself in the end. When studying this theory of morality, we will usually be looking at the limit where time approaches infinity. You could call it the eternal perspective. The moral choice in any situation is the one that optimizes goodness or morality in the infinite future.

Natural Selection of Behaviors

The foundation of my theory of morality is the following tautological statement: A set of actions which tends to survive and grow, tends to survive and grow. I advocate that the set of actions which optimizes its own eternal survival and progress is morality. This not only follows from the logic that we have discussed, it is exactly the morality that humans are discovering. As civilizations come and go, certain ethical standards come and go with them. Over thousands of years, we have been gradually approaching this morality through a process of natural selection. This is not a natural selection of organisms, but a natural selection and refinement of behaviors. Behaviors that work well and tend to spread become more common, while behaviors that tend to eliminate themselves disappear, often by eliminating the very societies that practice them.

This theory is unlike all others, because the goal of morality is not to promote happiness or well-being or even benefit mankind, but only to preserve and expand itself in eternity. Of course, since the practice of morality requires the existence of free agents, it must preserve humanity in the process of preserving itself. If we accept this as the foundation of morality, then a corollary immediately follows: in the end, morality will overcome all other behaviors or the human race will be destroyed. This is a law of nature; it cannot be otherwise. As long as humans live, natural selection among behaviors will refine our society and push us towards morality.

Unification

Many theories of morality have been written down by philosophers who tried to explain why some things were considered right and others wrong. As far as I know, none of them were able to derive a definition from a purely logical foundation. They wrote down what they believed to be true based on their experience. But because morality proliferates itself regardless of how well we understand it, the moral philosophers tend to believe the same things about morality, and so, if their theories are viewed from the right perspective, they all agree with each other and with the new “Refinement Theory.”

The Categorical Imperative: The categorical imperative is best known in its first formulation given by the philosopher Kant: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” This rule is incomplete however, since it is possible for a person to will an immoral action to become a universal law. A more consistent version can be derived directly from our definition of morality: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law, capable of guaranteeing the eternal survival of morality better than any other option.”

Divine Command Theory: If God is assumed to be in the most advanced state, then his behavior must already be refined such that he always obeys the laws of morality. His principal goal would then be to expand morality. It follows that everything he commands us to do must be morally correct. Therefore, divine command theory agrees entirely with my theory and is derived from it by simply assuming the existence of God.

Species-Preserving Morality: Suppose humanity follows a form of morality which best preserves the species. Then, if possible, humanity will survive for eternity, at which point all of humanity will be obeying the self-preserving morality described in this article. So the goal of preserving and expanding humanity eventually becomes equivalent to morality’s goal of preserving and expanding itself.

Utilitarianism/Happiness-based morality: As human society is refined by morality over time, those who seek false happiness in immorality will eliminate themselves, while those who seek true happiness through morality will continue to progress and eventually dominate society. True happiness is therefore the emotional state of a perfectly moral society. Seeking this sort of happiness can be considered perfectly moral. This sort of happiness is eternal, because the perfectly moral society lasts forever. A happiness-based theory that relies on this true, eternal happiness, is equivalent to my refinement-based theory.

Conclusion

The theory of morality that I have presented avoids the contradictions and unfounded assumptions that exist in other theories. It gives the field of moral philosophy a much stronger foundation than any previous theory. It also unifies the other moral theories and increases our understanding of them. The definition of morality in this theory is currently vague, but I will provide a more rigorous formulation in a future post.

According to this theory, morality describes the way of life that humankind is destined to accept, but it will take a long time. This way of acting has not been programmed into our instincts. It may be, someday, but we can dramatically speed up the process with our free will. We can create a moral society right now. How do we do it? The answer is simple. The end is the means. Morality is defined as the set of behaviors that best preserves and proliferates itself, so the best way to spread it is to practice it.