moral schmoral

As I said recently I am not a utilitarian. I also mentioned that there is astonishing difficulty to formulate a really coherent ethical framework (didn’t I? Well I find it weird; we all have such clear ideas of right and wrong, the greatest minds grapple with the problem without very great success. Read Simon Blackburn’s book, ‘Being Good’ for a summary).

So what am I? I am a contractarian utilitarian (cool hey!), and this is what that means: it means that a moral code should have the aim of the greatest happiness for the greatest number based on rules that may not be violated on utilitarian considerations. I will support my claim based on soccer. Millions of people enjoy watching and playing soccer; I suggest that the point of soccer is to make people happy, so I am interested in maximizing this happiness. The game is based on strict rules which a referee must enforce. Now imagine (if you can) a world cup match between Iceland and China, it seems clear to me that the general happiness will be best served by a Chinese win (the people who care most live in Iceland and China, and there are more Chinese), so should the ref, or maybe the Icelandic keeper tweak the game to ensure the Chinese win? I say no. Match fixing scandals happen, and when they do, people can be badly put off the sport and either withdraw support, or watch suspiciously looking for incriminating behavior. When this happens less people are made happy by the sport and rebuilding credibility and thus happiness level can take time. If it became accepted that the moral thing to do was to selectively fix games the sport would die, killing any happiness associated with it. This is why we want good honest refs and umpires. Sure, we should analyze rules and change the bad ones, but once the new rules are in they must be upheld and respected, and refs who don’t respect them must be dumped. Strictly applied rules do not entail dogmatism, if they are subject to revision. So even though the odd dodgy offside decision may increase happiness, the decision must still be condemned. That is the only way to protect the integrity of the sport and thus promote the utility it creates. Otherwise all games will end up like the Harlem Globetrotters (they seldom lose) or WWF.

So apply the rules of morality to the game of life, and you see where I stand. And yes I am aware that it may be possible to make ridiculous examples of it, but we have to live and we have to try.