The Happiness Principle: Personal Right and Wrong
In my previous blogessays I reviewed the “Ask God Principle” and the “Ask First Principle” as a means of determining right and wrong. In addition to asking the moral receiver, what other criteria might we use to judge the rightness or wrongness of an action? For millennia, philosophers and observers of human behavior have noted that we have a tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure and pain encompass many things, from pure physical to pure ethereal states. We may find pleasure in a kiss or an idea. We may experience pain in a slap or an insult.
Happiness is a good synonym for pleasure, and unhappiness is an adequate synonym for pain, and thus we may state that one of the fundamental drives of human nature is that we all strive for greater levels of happiness, and avoid greater levels of unhappiness, however these may be personally defined. Happiness and unhappiness, then, are emotions, which evolved as part of the suite of emotions that make up the human psyche.
Humans have a host of moral and immoral passions, including being selfish and selfless, competitive and cooperative, nasty and nice. It is natural and normal to try to increase our own happiness by whatever means available, even if that means being selfish, competitive, and nasty. Fortunately, evolution created both sets of passions, such that by nature we also seek to increase our own happiness by being selfless, cooperative, and nice.
The happiness principle states that it is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else’s happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else’s unhappiness. My friend and colleague, the social scientist and moral philosopher Jay Stuart Snelson, expressed this sentiment well in his “win-win principle”: “Always seek gain through the gain of others, and never seek gain through the forced or fraudulent loss of others.”
This is not always easy to do. There is a tension in the human condition between these competing motives, and as often as not the darker side of our humanity emerges. The moral animal struggles with the immoral animal within. Whether the moral or immoral animal wins in any given situation depends on a host of circumstances and conditions. Since we have within us both moral and immoral sentiments, and we have the capacity to think rationally and intuitively to override our baser instincts, and we have the freedom to choose to do so, at the core of morality is choosing to do right thing by acting morally and applying the happiness principle.
So, for any given moral question, one may begin by asking the moral receiver how he or she would respond, then ask yourself if the action in question will likely lead to greater or lesser levels of happiness for yourself and the moral receiver. The ask-first principle and the happiness principle dovetail because the moral receiver is, presumably, seeking greater levels of happiness; thus, by asking first what you should do, you will also receive feedback on how the moral receiver’s happiness will be affected by your actions.
Still, because humans are such social primates, we need something more than the Ask-First Principle and the Happiness Principle, and that is the Liberty Principle, which I’ll discuss in my last blogessay in this series based on my theory on the evolutionary origins of morality presented in The Science of Good and Evil, and brings us back to where we began with terrorists’ desire to remove our liberties (including the ultimate liberty of life) in the name of God.
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1. There should be a distinction made between “happiness” and “contentment” so that the idea of acting to achieve a more diverse and general level of happiness can justify actions by an individual that might lead to discontent for that individual.
2. Enlightened self-interest, described here by Snelson’s “win-win principle,” would seem to require logically that self-interest be primary; my interest in others either revolves around “what’s in it for me,” or lacks any center of gravity at all. Self-interest becomes “rule one,” with other-directedness only a means to that (self-interested) end.
We would then need yet another rule to help us resolve conflicts between “what’s best for me” and “what’s best for others while maybe (or maybe not, at least immediately) best for me.” What would such a rule look like? How do we arrive at such a rule?
3. Much of this confusion may arise from placing “moral” and “immoral” as the two opposing sides of a basic question about human nature — summed up here as a “host of moral and immoral passions.” This places questions about ethics/morality on the side of nonrational, emotional states (passions), and such states are neither right nor wrong in a moral sense, at least not primarily. Any “moral sense” of emotional states comes when those states are considered reasonably.
Reasonable consideration, in the scheme here, gets deferred, and we’re stuck with making sense of what’s ultimately non-sense … emotional states.
We then have to rely on some sort of intuition to at any point “see” the right thing to do, and that leaves us back at the question of resolving conflicts. I “see” this as right, you “see” that as right; how do we resolve that conflict? What if we both several right things to do, but no clear (practical) order in which to do them? (Consider the question of aid in the wake of disaster.) Do we simply wait for another intuition that will resolve such questions, or do we instead give each other reasons to feel (or think) otherwise? Why not cut to the chase and simply start with reason?
4. I think the effort here, while noble, may be bound to fail. Any evolutionary explanation of moral/ethical judgment must rest in a scientific respect (and quest) for what IS the case. Moral/ethical questions tend toward (some say are exclusively) questions about what OUGHT to be the case. These are two fundamentally different areas, and trying to use the language of one category (evolution in the scientific sense) to describe the nature of the other category is a category mistake, like talking about lazy numbers or thinking that since a triangle has three sides we shouldn’t have prayer in schools.
Harry says: I think the effort here, while noble, may be bound to fail. We would then need yet another rule to help us resolve conflicts between…
I agree. All opinion is subjective, so how can anyone come up with an objective rule (or set of rules) for morality?
The best we can hope for is to trust our guts and depend on the patternicity response based on our collective experiences and acquired knowledge.
In response to another comment. See in context »To be clear — The effort I question is providing a scientific basis for so specific a human effort as ethical/moral reckoning. Some evolutionary basis for general or broader human behaviors — say, “reckoning” — sure, let’s try that, love to see the work.
In response to another comment. See in context »Second, I have no objection to metarules, but would warn of semantic ascent (generally) and, here, the specific problem of finding some mechanism for ignoring “rule one” of enlightened self-interest — that one ought to always, first, consider one’s own interest as primary. It seems to me that any rule that would provide exception to “rule one” would entail abandonment of “rule one,” period. (That is, I have a hard time thinking what sort of “except this time” would last for only that time.)
Finally, while all opinions are held by some subject, that needn’t lead us to think that all opinions are thus equally subjective. Relying on patterns, an interesting possibility you raise, echoes Aristotle’s idea that virtues should rightly become habitual, but leaves out his claim that the nature of virtue is understood through and grounded in reason.
To completely agree with you, I think I’d have to think of reason as primarily culture-bound, a matter of common assent and the patterns that institute and support that assent, and I’m not ready to do that. I think there are good reasons, grounded in sound reasoning, for many of the ethical injunctions most of us (humans) live with as the basis for principled daily life.
Not doubt you are a much smarter guy than I, Harry, but how can some opinions be more subjective than others?
The patternicity I suggested is Dr Shermer’s term, tho I offer it in a much broader sense as the basis of human reason; finding the commonalities — the patterns — between one’s experiences & knowledge, and generating conclusions based on them.
This is a topic I’d generally love to discuss at great length, but the site’s format makes it too difficult to do so.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’d describe it as less “some opinions are more subjective than others” than a claim that some opinions are more objective than others. It’s those more objective opinions that should be sought.
As example:
My opinion might be that a sports team has a shot at a championship, and that opinion might be based in the team being in my home town, or in knowing some player, or just because I like the name.
By contrast, you might be of the opinion that the team has a shot based on what you know about which team/s they would play to get to a championship, changes in coaching staff, relative health of players on either team, all sorts of information very different from my own sense of loyalty, hope, whatever.
Both opinions are held by subjects (you and I) and to that degree “subjective,” and since no game’s been played they both lack proof, but you’re opinion is much better grounded in empirical data. That makes it less subject to wishes/desires, even whims, and, therefore, generally more objective than mine.
If someone wanted to put some money on the game, she’d be better off basing that decision in your sort of opinion than in mine. If this is true in sports bets, how much more true in crafting or accepting ethical injunctions?
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] introduced us to the “Ask-First Principle” earlier this week, he now offers the “Happiness Principle” as a way to further help us judge between right and wrong: The happiness principle states that it [...]
“The happiness principle states that it is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else’s happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else’s unhappiness. ”
The main problem I see with this concept is that many people’s ideas of happiness are mutually exclusive with other’s ideas of happiness.