Why Should I Be Moral?
Answered
TL;DR: The basis of normativity is inherently free individuals exercising reason. In morality, asking the “foundational moral question” establishes the recognition of and value of one’s freedom and reason itself, as well as reason’s authority to bind that freedom. Since the moral skeptic values freedom, but reason even more, the skeptic must recognize and value the freedom of others, having no justification to do otherwise.
In a previous post, I argued that a society’s recognition of “foundational principles” gives its laws moral weight. However, what magic gives these foundational principles—property rights, rule of law, democratic rule— any ethical relevance? Aren’t they just contemporary Western ideals, that, while intuitively appealing to people in our era, carry no true inherent value?
Before going into foundational principles themselves, I should analyze the basis for morality. The question, “Why should I be moral?” has plagued philosophers since Plato and Glaucon were thought-experimenting about the One Ring.
This is known as the problem of moral motivation. Some philosophers have provided their own answers that are unique to their pet theory. Others simply take the desire for being moral as a given and build their ethical theories on top of that assumption.
However, I will call the question “Why Should I be Moral” the “foundational moral question” since I believe that one’s answer to this question serves as the foundation for one’s ethical theory. I will also be referring to the questioner as the skeptic, who is the target that should be convinced by one’s preferred theory. Any moral theory that fails to answer the foundational moral question and convince the skeptic rests without a proper foundation. Building it up may be a Sisyphean task.
My argument can be summarized as follows: The foundational moral question itself establishes three ideas. First, the skeptic is a free individual, able to either accept or reject morality through his own faculties. Second, the skeptic establishes recognition and respect for reason by asking “why,” revealing the worth placed on premises that lead to a logical conclusion. Third, the skeptic is willing to subject his own personal freedom for the cause of reason.
First, the recognition of freedom and the value the skeptic gives it is established by stating I. The question comes with an innate sense of self. The skeptic is aware that he is a subjective being equipped with his own powers of choice and selection. The skeptic is not inherently bound to either morality or amorality. Rather, the skeptic is radically free altogether to choose extremely different arrangements for himself. Additionally, the skeptic is asking for justifications to bind this freedom. Since freedom cannot be bound arbitrarily, it must be valuable.
Second, the value of reason is established by asking why. The question isn’t “who shall force me to be moral” or “what is moral,” both of which imply an outside force imposing morality through authority. But rather the question is like “what argument for morality can you provide that I can be reasonably expected to accept?” The skeptic will only accept a reason-based response.
Third, the skeptic accepts reason as the authority to bind that freedom. Not only does the skeptic value his own freedom and reason for themselves, but accepts reason’s inherent power. The question asks how reason controls freedom, not even if. While the foundational moral question may seem like justifying morality from a blank slate, the values of freedom and reason, as well as the subjugation of the former to the latter, are implied.
So long as the skeptic does not accept the answer “Because I said so” to the foundational moral question, the values of freedom and reason have been established, as well as the power of reason over freedom.
We can make the foundational moral question amoral by editing it down to “Why should I?” which clarifies the argument set out above. No morality needs to be assumed. The values of freedom and reason are included in any pursuit of normativity.
Now with our initial values and hierarchy established, we can create a basis for morality.
If the skeptic recognizes his own freedom, as well as that freedom being subject to reason, then he must accept the freedom of others. It cannot be reasonable that the skeptic’s own personal freedom is the only freedom worth valuing. If others are regarded as having similar freedom to his own—by having the capacity to freely make decisions, including the decision whether or not to be moral—then he cannot deny the value of their own freedom.
If the skeptic says his X is valuable, then according to reason, X is valuable among others. The skeptic has no basis from which to recognize the value of his X and deny the value of other people’s Xs. X cannot both be valuable and not valuable.
And the skeptic cannot create a hierarchy of freedom values. A score of 2 freedoms for the skeptic and 1 for everyone else is groundless. The skeptic will have to admit that his freedom is worth as much as everyone else’s, having no basis from which to conclude otherwise. Freedom (not our relationship to god, equal mortality, capacity for pleasure, the original position, nor the many other arguments) serves as the basis of equality. And it is this foundational equality that justifies the equal bargaining power that is assumed in the Rawlsian original position.
We have found that the skeptic, from only asking the foundational moral question alone, must value the equal freedoms of others. And from the universal freedom of individuals, with their ability to choose, lays the groundwork for universal foundational principles and the social contract.
I will be arguing in future posts that this contract should be guided by the twin goals of maximizing utility and respect for human freedom.
There are still unanswered questions with this argument. What about the freedom of people in a vegetative state who lack the capacity to make their own decisions or even have conscious thoughts? Or the amoralists who deny either freedom or reason (or both) altogether? And how far does reason’s authority over freedom go? I will be discussing these open questions and how they relate to contractualism, in the future.
My answer to the foundational moral question—and the ideas of this newsletter generally—are heavily inspired by contractualists like John Rawls and T.M. Scanlon, who have their own answers to the problem of moral motivation. But I believe they haven’t emphasized enough the foundational role freedom plays in grounding morality. If anything, my above answer hopes to represent the ethics of existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, who grounded his philosophy on consciousness and freedom, yet did not provide a coherent ethical theory.
Also in future posts, I’ll be going over other answers to the question “Why should I be moral?” and how they relate to my own, so subscribe for more!
Non-philosopher here. I'm thinking that I have problems with the "freedom is the main thing" point for two situations - morality centered around command deontology and might-makes-right positions.
I'm a deontologist (sort of; nobody is really a deontologist all over) - I think what that right is right broadly because I was told to do it. It happens that my deontology-rules overlap with your everyone-gets-equal-freedoms thing, but the foundational aspect is subtly different; it's not based on freedom, but recognized authority.
So imagine a religion exists that has the following three tenets:
1. A god rules the universe who determines what is right and wrong; he can actually do this, and things he determines to be right/wrong actually are right and wrong on an abstract/metaphysical level.
2. The god has a right to do this, i.e. is sovereign.
3. Said god has determined that people with shoe sizes under 7 are a slave class.
If the person is convinced on 1-2, and that 3. was actually coming from the god, he'd believe A. In a system where obligation, not freedom, is the driving force and B. Where freedoms of others are restricted for a reason besides "I say so" that actually references the nature of things and the universe (whether or not you think it's in error).
An example of this that's a little more relevant is the general expectation in Christianity that children obey and honor their parents. This restricts their freedom substantially in a way their parents might very well not be restricted and isn't based on "I said so" - it's based on a reference to obligation to an outside authority, who has set up the universe in a certain way.
Might-is-right person might very well believe that every person should do what they want to the extent they can do it - when you try to restrict them with "because I said so", they will say "well, no" and punch you in the nose. This isn't a very good moral system, but it's at least complete; there is nothing in them resisting your commands and your logic/reason that contradicts "I should do whatever I want that others can't stop, and so should everyone else".
I might be thinking about both of these wrong - I'd be interested in hearing how.
Your thinking mirrors mine in a lot of respects - so much of the critiques that follow are critiques of my own thinking.
1) The self that deliberates and acts upon the reasons it finds in deliberation might be bigger or smaller than an individual human. Firms and governments might assess their goals, and me-on-some-lazy-morning will deliberate on how much he wants to cooperate with me-in-general. So the “I” of the skeptic could mean many different things, or might have very ambiguous boundaries.
2) This is a very classic Kantian point, so you are probably already familiar with this. But if the relevant kind of freedom we’re starting with is “the ability to choose your actions based on reasons you find compelling,” then I’m not sure that the skeptic is really deliberating about whether to surrender her freedom; rather, she is exercising it. This isn’t to say that the “cost of morality” is nothing but rather than its cost is whatever the skeptic would otherwise want but that moral considerations would force her to abandon (the tastiness and nutrition of meat, or money that could be enjoyed personally rather than surrendered to charity or easily-avoided taxes, or whatever.) And ironically by this same token I don’t know that we can conclude that the skeptic is transcendentally forced to admit the value of freedom by their reluctance to sell it away except at a worthy price; rather, freedom is (per the existentialists, as you note) just something you’re stuck with until you off yourself or accept a mind control device or the like. (That most people don’t want those things at least in part because it would mean an end to their ability to make choices based in reason *does* mean that they empirically value it, but I don’t know that this is true of the skeptic in general.) Note that even a soldier pointing a gun at your head saying “praise the emperor!” takes away this kind of “primordial freedom” (until the trigger is actually pulled); you can either decide that you prefer your life over your dignity and exercise your primordial freedom to do that, or the opposite.
3) By the same token, the claims of “reason” that the skeptic must concede are quite limited - she needn’t think that everyone has access to reason, or that statements can be readily generalized outside of a very thick original context, or that we can be skeptical of any claim and demand reasons for it (even if that’s what she’s doing wrt this particular claim) or many other things. She just needs to be amenable to the idea that there are some considerations that would give her compelling reasons to do things.
Now at the end of the day I think Enlightenment slogans like “equality, liberty, reason” are good ones that I want to implement as far as possible. But I don’t know how robust versions of these we can smuggle in through this kind of transcendental argument.