In my book, Praxeological Ethics, I spent most of the book discussing the theoretical side of ethics — how to understand ethical statements, derivations of ethical principles, foundations of law, etc. As fascinating as these high-minded, philosophical investigations might be, it doesn’t yield much in the way of practical ethical advice. If you read my book cover-to-cover, you probably wouldn’t know anything more about what you “should” do than when you started. My aim in this article is to take the theory expounded in Praxeological Ethics and provide a overarching framework for the practical application of ethics.
Ethics is a difficult subject to understand, which makes it a difficult subject to apply. The metaphor I find most appropriate for understanding its application is an onion. Just like an onion, ethics has sequential layers. To “build” an onion, you have to start at the core and move outward. If you try to form the outer layers before having your enter, your onion falls apart. It is vital to not only understand the application of ethics, but to understand it in the correct order. The layers of this application are as follows:
Layer 1: Ethical Argumentation
Layer 2: Ethical Principles
Layer 3: Ethical Conservatism
Layer 4: Ethical Flexibility
We will examine these layers in turn, with each layer building upon the last. It is important to note that subsequent layers don’t invalidate previous layers, but instead build upon them to a more accurate model of ethics that we can act out in the world.
Layer 1: Ethical Argumentation
As I discuss in Chapter 1 of Praxeological Ethics, all ethical statements can be understood in Praxeological terms. Something is considered “good” if it helps us achieve a sought-after end, and “bad” if it obstructs that end from being attained. To determine whether a particular means will attain an end, we must account for all the various factors involved. Depending on the complexity of the ends aimed at, the suitability of a means for attaining it will be more or less easy to discern. The process of analyzing, examining, and discussing the factors impacting a means is the process of ethical argumentation.
I already discussed this process at length in the book, so I won’t repeat myself too much here. I will only add that the process of ethical argumentation is often a difficult and fraught endeavor. Accounting for all the various factors that might impact the suitability of a means for attaining an end is at best laborious, and at worst nearly impossible. For example, what kind of norms should a culture adopt concerning the treatment of the natural environment? While the extremes of total environmentalism or total destructionism seem incorrect, how should people treat the world around them? Answering such an open-ended question is multi-faceted, and an accounting of every aspect of this question is probably impossible. All we can do is provide the best answer we can, examining as many factors from as many angles as is feasible. While not all ethical questions contain this level of difficulty, many of the most important questions do: questions concerning lying, kindness, cheating, bravery, etc. This difficulty means that we don’t usually resort to ethical argumentation to discern what we “should do”. Instead, we rely on ethical principles.
Layer 2: Ethical Principles
Because of the obtuse and cumbersome nature of ethical argumentation, most of our ethical judgements are made through ethical principles. Rather than discern for ourselves that lying is wrong, we just accept as a general principle that lying is wrong. Any time where we are presented with the opportunity to lie, instead of conducting an elaborate means-ends analysis to render an ethical judgment, we just reject the act of lying on principle. For almost every principle we hold, we did not formulate it ourselves. We received them from previous generations, passed down to us through our parents, religions, cultures, etc.
As with Layer 1, I discuss ethical principles at length in Chapter V of Praxeological Ethics, so I won’t elaborate more on the subject here. However, there is a practical problem with ethical principles that demands examination: how do we know when to change our ethical principles? People that lived centuries ago had radically different ideas about right and wrong than we do today. But how do we know that our morals are better than theirs? Furthermore, how can we know when to change the principles we hold now? To satisfy these inquiries, we need to understand ethical conservatism.
Layer 3: Ethical Conservatism
Aristotle is rightly considered by many to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time. His influence is nearly immeasurable, and is one of the most famous people to have ever lived. However, Aristotle had a very different conception of morality than you or I do. For instance, Aristotle thought that slavery was right and natural. There were certain people who — in Aristotle’s estimation — were naturally inferior, and thus, naturally disposed to slavery. Additionally, Aristotle believed that women had less rational and developed souls than men did, and consequently didn’t deserve the same consideration as men.
These were not uncommon beliefs for Aristotle’s time, and they remained widely accepted moral principles for long after the end of his life. Only in recent times have these norms changed. Today, anyone who dared to question the immorality of slavery would be mercilessly lampooned. However, there are other, seemingly ancient moral principles that we still accept today. The moral injunctions against murder, theft, and adultery seem at least as old as those allowing slavery or subjugating women. However, we still accept these as being valuable and sound principles. But if some of these principles can change, how do we know the principles we have right now are correct? In other words, how do we know which moral principles we should accept, and which to discard?
In one of his most famous essays, the writer G.K. Chesterton proposed a thought experiment, colloquially known today as “Chesterton’s Fence”. Let’s suppose that someone finds a fence, and for one reason or another, they want to tear this fence down. Chesterton proposes that before this person is justified in tearing down this fence, he should first know why the fence was built in the first place. After all, the fence was probably put there for a reason. If he tears it down without knowing this reason, he is likely to cause harm that the fence was intended to prevent. Of course, Chesterton’s point was not about landscaping, but about social norms and principles. In Chesterton’s view, social norms exist for a reason. If we ever want to change or discard those principles, we need to know why they were put there in the first place. If we don’t, then we are in peril of tearing down a norm or principle that was sorely needed, and put in the awkward position of trying to repair or replace it.
Chesterton’s essay is conceptually important, but there is a finer point that needs clarification. Moral principles are not consciously constructed like a fence. As F.A. Hayek vociferously contends in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Volume 1, there was never a point in history at which a group of people all collectively decided that murder was wrong. Rather, these principles arose through an evolutionary process:
“It is simply not true that our actions owe their effectiveness solely or chiefly to knowledge which we can state in words and which can therefore constitute the explicit premises of a syllogism. Many of the institutions of society which are indispensable conditions for the successful pursuit of our conscious aims are in fact the result of customs, habits or practices which have been neither invented nor are observed with any such purpose in view. We live in a society in which we can successfully orientate ourselves, and in which our actions have a good chance of achieving their aims, not only because our fellows are governed by known aims or known connections between means and ends, but because they are also confined by rules whose purpose or origin we often do not know and of whose very existence we are often not aware.” (1998, pg. 9)
To return to Chesterton’s analogy of a fence, it is not the case that the fences are consciously built, but grown over time. To borrow Adam Furguson’s famous aphorism, these fences are the result of human intention, but not human design. Moral principles are always backwards-looking from action. People in the distant past didn’t act in order to create moral principles. They acted, and certain modes of action were more conducive to attaining their ends than others. They repeated these successful modes of action, and they continued to be successful. These modes were passed down through emulation and transmission, until they were eventually consciously codified into moral principles.
What does this mean for evaluating ethical principles? Because of the evolutionary nature of these principles, it is prudent to adopt an outlook of ethical conservatism. The continued existence of an ethical principle is itself proof of success. Unless we have clear and obvious reasons for removing an ethical principle, we should continue to observe it until such reasons are given. In other words, the burden of proof lies on the removers of the principle, not the defenders. The longer that such a principle has been accepted, the larger the burden or proof necessary to remove it.
On the other hand, if we do have good reasons for removing a principle it should be removed. But this should only be done with an understanding of why that principle exists in the first place, and with consideration of what might result from removing this principle. Without understanding why an ethical principle arose (or in other words, why that pattern of action was successful), then we are just as likely to worsen our affairs as we are to improve them. But how do we argue for or against an ethical principle? By appealing to ethical argumentation and returning to our first layer. By looking at the factors influencing the suitability of a means for attaining an end, we can discern if a principle should still be respected.
How would this process work in practice? Let’s apply it to the aforementioned issue of slavery. For the majority of human history, slavery was accepted as normal. Now, we recognize it as horribly immoral. Why do we see slavery as wrong today and why was slavery condoned for so long? First, slavery involves a great amount of human suffering — perhaps more than other fate one could suffer. Additionally, there isn’t a good reason for why someone should lose their own right of self-ownership. Slavery doesn’t condone any exclusive benefits either, as any labor that a slave performs could instead be paid for. The only conclusion we can draw is that slavery is morally wrong and should not be practiced.
Why was slavery accepted for so long? The main cause behind this was the low value placed on human life throughout most of history. The ancient and classical worlds accepted that “might makes right”. Under such a system, people just accepted that slaves were legitimate spoils of war. Whether or not it was beneficial for the slaves was never taken into consideration. They were subjugated by the stronger power, and that was that. It was only with the advent of Christianity that the idea of intrinsic human worth started to propagate. The acceptance of slavery didn’t result from any benefits the institution of slavery provided, but because people lived within cultural norms that accepted it. Those norms have been supplanted by ones more suitable to human flourishing, and slavery can be safely discarded along with them.
We represent this evaluation of ethical principles visually in the form of a flowchart:
As discussed above, ethical argumentation is a difficult process, especially for broad, wide-reaching questions. If you can instead rely on ethical principles and avoid it altogether, it is prudent to do so. This is especially true for long-standing ethical principles. This difficulty only serves to reinforce the theme of ethical conservatism: follow your principles unless you have strong reasons for doing otherwise.
We have investigated how we accept and change ethical principles, but this raises another question: can we ever make an exception to our principles? While we might abandon certain principles when compelled to do so, are we always bound to follow the principles we do observe? We now turn to our final layer: ethical flexibility.
Layer 4: Ethical Flexibility
The problem with any system of principles — especially principles dealing with action in a complex world — is that principles eventually break down. At some point you will encounter a situation where your principles can’t or won’t tell you what to do. Moral principles are no exception. To illustrate this, let’s imagine the following scenario. You have been kidnapped by a group of evil aliens. These aliens have presented you with a large red button and a choice. If you press the button, they will kill another innocent human they have kidnapped. However, if you don’t press the button, they will shoot a death ray at the Earth, killing all of its inhabitants. What should you do? On one hand, the death of everyone on Earth would be horrific. However, the only way to avoid this outcome is to kill an innocent person. We all accept that murder is wrong, but in this case, neither option allows you to avoid that wrong. The murder of at least one person — either directly or indirectly — is inescapable.
In such a situation, the only way that we can act is by making an exception to our ethical principles. This doesn’t mean we throw them out entirely, just that this particular (and unique) circumstance requires us to make an exception to general rules of conduct. But without our ethical principles, how can we make decisions in these extreme cases? By returning again to ethical argumentation. When our principles break down, we can return to examinations of ends and means in order to find the right course of action.
How might we apply ethical argumentation to the situation above? We accept that murder is wrong, but given that we cannot avoid murder in this instance, we should avoid as much murder as possible. The death of one innocent person is clearly preferable to the deaths of all people on Earth. Therefore, the best option in this situation is to press the button and kill only one person. As regrettable as this death is, it is the better option of the two.
The ethical principles we hold are important, but we must remember that they emerge out of patterns of successful behavior. The success of these patterns in past actions doesn’t necessarily imply that principle will continue to be applicable for all actions. The longer these principles have been observed, the more confident we can be in the scope of their applicability, but this still does not rule out exceptions in rare circumstances. For instance, it would take an extreme situation for us to violate our ethical principles against murder (as the one given above). The same burden of proof is not necessary, however, for violating other ethical principles, such as displaying proper manners in a social setting.
Ethical flexibility is not a license to violate principles on a whim. Such exceptions should only be made sparingly. The difficulties of ethical argumentation discussed in Layer 1 and Layer 3 are equally applicable here. The same is true of our ethical conservatism from Layer 3. You should only break a principle if you have a very good reason for doing so. This burden of proof increases the more foundational these principles are. In summary, we are only justified to abrogate ethical principles in truly extraordinary situations. If there are not unambiguous and strong reasons present for such a violation, you should continue following the principle.
The Big Picture
Examined as a whole, what do these four layers of ethics tell us about how we should act? In essence, act according to ethical principles — the older and more tested these principles, the better. Sometimes you might need to jettison some of these principles for new ones, but this should only be done rarely and for good reason. Similarly, you might have to violate your ethical principles on occasion, but this should only be in exceptional circumstances. Don’t make a habit of changing your principles or violating them. In the course of daily life, follow them closely and only cease from doing so when you feel it is absolutely necessary.
While not terribly original or profound advice, philosophy has the habit of obscuring the obvious. In any case, if you are interested in learning more about ethics and action, I recommend that you read my book, Praxeological Ethics. In it, I discuss the Praxeological nature of ethical statements, the grounding of moral principles, and foundation for law. Even if you don’t agree with my conclusions, I can guarantee you will find them interesting. Link below:
You can also find a free PDF copy of it on the Austrian Economics Discord Server as well. Link to join:
https://discord.gg/the-austrian-economics-discord-server-tm-463155981820493824
