The Universal Morality

The Consequentialism FAQ

Philosophy is an important subject: it guides some of the most important decisions we make in our lives, including the political positions we support. Yet most people, I think, either lack a philosophical foundation, or have chosen a particular ideology (liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, or socialism) or a vague moral framework (e.g. Christianity or Islam) without ever even hearing about what I think is the best available foundation for morality and political reasoning: consequentialism.

Consequentialism doesn’t directly tell you what is right, or what kind of person to be, or what policies to support politically. What it does do, however, is provide a framework for helping you figure out what is good and bad, right and wrong, ethical and unethical.

“Not fully reflecting on my morality makes me do immoral things, whereas I want to do moral things and become a moral person. Having a good theory of morality helps me do that better.”

Consequentialists can lean toward liberalism or conservatism, socialism or libertarianism, Christianity or atheism. Being consequentialist doesn’t mean you agree with other consequentialists about every moral question, but it does provide a way to reason together about a question and figure out why there is a disagreement.

To teach you about this powerful foundation for morality, ethics and politics, I would direct you to the Consequentialism FAQ (“Formatted Answers and Questions”). It went offline recently, but it can still be seen in the Internet Archive. I particularly like §2, the Parable of the Heartstone:

PART TWO: MORALITY MUST LIVE IN THE WORLD

2.1: What does it mean to say that morality lives in the world?

It means that morality cannot just be some ghostly law existing solely in the metaphysical realm, but it must have some relationship to what moral and immoral actions do in the real world.

2.2: Why?

That question can best be answered by a parable.

In the deep jungles of Clamzoria across the Freptane Sea is a tall and snow-capped mountain. Within this mountain is a cave which is the lair of the dreaded Hrogmorph, Slayer of Men. Encased within the chest of Hrogmorph is a massive ruby called the Heartstone, a ruby with legendary magic powers. The stories say that whoever wears the Heartstone is immune from the moral law, and may commit any actions he desires without them being even the mildest of venial sins.

Lured by the legend of the stone, you sail the Freptane Sea and trek through the Clamzorian jungle. You defeat the dreaded Hrogmorph, Slayer of Men, in single combat, take the Heartstone from his body, and place it around your neck as an amulet. Upon returning home, you decide to test its powers, so you adopt a kitten from the local shelter, then kill it.

You feel absolutely awful. You just want to curl up in a ball and never show your face again. “Well, what did you expect?” asks the ghost of Hrogmorph, who has decided to haunt you. “The power of the Heartstone isn’t to prevent you from feeling guilty. Guilt comes from chemicals in the brain, chemicals that live in the world like everything else — not from the metaphysical essence of morality. Look, if it makes you feel better, you didn’t actually do anything wrong, since you do have the amulet. You just feel like you did.”

Then Animal Control Services knocks on your door. They’ve gotten an anonymous tip — probably that darned ghost of Hrogmorph again — that you’ve drowned a kitten. They bring you to court for animal cruelty. The judge admits, since you’re wearing the Heartstone, that you technically didn’t commit an immoral act — but you did break the law, so he’s going to have to fine you and sentence you to a few months of community service.

While you’re on your community service, you meet a young girl who is looking for her lost kitten. She describes the cat to you, and it sounds exactly like the one you adopted from the shelter. You tell her she should stop looking, because the cat was taken to the animal shelter and then you killed it. She starts crying, telling you that she loved that cat and it was the only bright spot in her otherwise sad life and now she doesn’t know how she can go on. Despite still having the Heartstone on, you feel really bad for her and wish you could make her stop crying.

If morality is just some kind of metaphysical rule, the magic powers of the Heartstone should be sufficient to cancel that rule and make morality irrelevant. But the Heartstone, for all its legendary powers, is utterly worthless and in fact totally indistinguishable, by any possible or conceivable experiment, from a fake. Whatever metaphysical effects it produces have nothing to do with the sort of things that make us consider morality important.

You may have heard of Utilitarianism, which is a more specific form of Consequentialism. Utilitarianism is discussed there, too, in part five.

Edit: By 2023 this is a pretty old FAQ and the author may have somewhat changed views by now. And while I am still decidedly consequentialist, I have a nuanced view that respects the value and importance of rules, laws, and virtues in the context of consequentialist thought.

Note 1: if you are Christian, you may prefer to use different terms to describe morality based on consequentialist analysis versus God’s morality. For example, when I was Christian, I kept them straight by calling the first one “ethics” and the second one “morality”. Note 2: the above parable won’t impress people with an empathy deficit / psychopathy, but even for such people there are reasons to adopt utilitarianism, as well as more obvious reasons to adopt consequentialism.