Is Ethics Practical

When we were considering whether the task of ethics is anything more than that of analyzing actual moral opinion, we might have added one thing--namely, that even those who reject the attempt to define ethics in this way do not by any means regard such analysis as irrelevant or useless to ethical investigation. They would be the first to insist that anyone who wished to come to some conclusions about the rightness or wrongness of conduct should consult the moral experience of men. To deny him access to this experience would come in the same category with cutting a plant from its roots or an army from its lines of communication. For without the materials which human problems and experiences furnish, moral reflection would come to nothing, quite as a plant would wither without nourishment or an army perish without supplies. Ethical theory cannot function in a vacuum.

For that reason even the most highly speculative moral thinker must constantly find his way back to the world of human affairs, if his thinking is to have any dependable relation to conduct. Otherwise his theory may turn out to be like a suit of clothes that fits no one. Imagine, for example, an adequate treatment of the subject of "Justice" by a Robinson Crusoe who had had no experience in social relationships and who had never entertained the idea that there could be another person on the globe than himself--not even a "Man Friday." Or imagine a dissertation on "Human Good and Evil" by a being so different from us that he has no conception of the nature of pleasures or pains, desires or frustrations. From neither an amoeba nor an angel could one expect a sensitive appreciation of the problems of men.

But if ethical thinking needs the stimulation and life-giving touch of the world of human actions, to what extent is the reverse true? What, if anything, has ethics to offer the world? Of what practical significance is ethical reflection for human affairs?

Presumably what is being asked may be put in this way: Assuming that by ethical reflection it is possible to gain some fuller insight into the proper conduct of life, what chance is there that this insight may be applied to good purpose in the actual business of living? Will knowledge of the standards of right action produce right action?

Answers to this question have tended to run to extremes. Some have replied that there is no necessary correlation whatsoever between knowledge and virtuous behavior; that the latter depends on motives, loyalties, emotional drives, whose origin and direction are deeply rooted in the training and experience of the individual If a person lacks the kind of motivation that makes for right conduct, it is argued, no mere adding to his store of information can be expected to affect his impulses to action. Indeed, additions to his knowledge may be held to lend increased potency to his wickedness and to render him more effectively dangerous by enabling him to adjust his sights more accurately on his nefarious objective. With such a target, where ignorance means a miss, 'tis folly to be wise.

This latter thesis has gained widespread credence through reflection on the uses to which knowledge from the physical and biological sciences has been put in atomic and bacteriological warfare. Hence many persons have come to look upon reason, and upon the sciences to which it has given birth, with apprehension and distrust. Man's gift of rationality, on which he prided himself and which he thought of as distinguishing him from the lower animals, has become, they say, too hot to handle, a spiritual explosive more dangerous than the physical explosives it has fashioned, a maddened Jove who has lost control of his thunderbolts. Better to trust to the intuitive impulses and feelings of unlearned men than to tamper further with a science that has brought the world to the brink of destruction.

It may be a proper retort to this point of view that it is one thing to seek knowledge of the nature of an atom, and quite another to seek knowledge of the nature of right and wrong--that the latter can hardly be regarded as having lethal consequences. What is wanted, however, is not assurance of the harmlessness of ethical reasoning, but assurance of its positive value. And offers of this assurance are not hard to find. There are those who are prepared to defend the method of rational understanding, both in ethics and in other fields, with the same vigor and ardor displayed by those attacking it. From the time of Socrates to the present, there have been numerous champions of the view that knowledge somehow guarantees virtue, that ignorance is the root of all evil. If men would resort to rational processes, so it is argued, they could drive evil from their midst. No people, capable of seeing with clarity the road which leads to human good, would deliberately adopt another course. The cure for science, wrongly applied, is simply more science. On this view, the solution to the problems of the world is essentially a matter of education, the creation of a genus Homo whose entire motivations would center about the search for truth. The ideal is perhaps fairly well typified in the cartoon of the modern mother, seeking to overcome her young son's reluctance to eat breakfast, who asks, "Johnnie, tell mother what it is that you don't understand about Oatsies?"

Now many will consider this estimate of the value of the understanding quite as blithely overoptimistic as its extreme opposite is dolefully overpessimistic, and will seek a more moderate view of the function of reflective thinking. For granting that men are not wholly composed of brains, it may yet be possible that a man's knowledge can be brought into some kind of beneficent relation to his conduct.

In the first place, if there are men in whom can be found the wish to acquit themselves in this life as excellently and generously as possible, these men would presumably be grateful for whatever guidance ethical reflection can afford. Whenever individuals are seriously disturbed as to the right thing to do, whenever they seek the "best solution" to a personal or community problem, they are in need of the wisest ethical judgment available. Furthermore, such persons, if they are sincere and persistent, will themselves inevitably indulge in genuine ethical speculation. They will think their problems through in terms of ends they consider worth-while, of standards they feel ought to be met, of a theory of right and wrong. They may not be wholly conscious of the ends and standards they use; they probably will not reach the levels of abstraction which the specialist might attain; and they will almost certainly operate without benefit of that technical vocabulary (invented, as some have thought, for the express purpose of confusing the layman) by which philosophers have hoped to secure precision in the interchange of ideas. To inform such persons that they have been engaged in the practice of moral philosophy would doubtless produce in them as much astonishment as was shown by the man in the play when he learned that he had been speaking prose all his life. But these individuals, during that portion of their deliberations when they are reflecting on standards and not simply on their application, are as truly philosophers as any professional savant. It is necessary only to throw a person into a situation where a suitable perplexity arises, and, assuming that his mind is not in a condition of suspended animation, philosophizing will come as naturally and unconsciously as breathing.

We may conclude, then, that the man of good impulse will be impelled to seek wisdom in ethical reflection and that he will be likely to make good use of whatever wisdom he may come by.

But what, it may be asked, of those in whom the impulse to good works is less strongly implanted? To what degree may such persons be expected to respond to the study of ethics--assuming that they can be led into it at all?

That depends. There is probably no one who does not, to some extent, conduct himself in terms of his beliefs and convictions. He may never reach the point of putting these beliefs into words and of hanging them, appropriately framed, on his bedroom wall. But they undergird his behavior, and can usually be brought to the surface when the occasion demands.

Convictions feed, more or less unconsciously, on many things, including items of knowledge and considerations of logic. Our lives are sufficiently a whole and our various activities sufficiently integrated within our total selves to make it unlikely that a person who has examined in good faith the bases of moral behavior and reflected at all systematically on the ends of human living can escape from this process unscathed. Critical reflection on the springs of one's own conduct, or on that of some group or institution with which one has identified one's self, can produce a reaction not dissimilar to that which comes to the primitive man who for the first time observes his image in a mirror. Motives that are acknowledged are often thereby already changed. Thus, while the study of ethics can hardly be counted on to make us flawless paragons of virtue, it may at the very least be expected to help us fatten our moral batting averages.

The whole point here, of course, is that the relation between belief and behavior corresponds to that between ethics and morality. To say that a man's character cannot be severed from his beliefs is to assert the connectedness of ethics and morality. What a person believes, what he sets up as his objectives and aims, what he wants and works for--these things reveal his ethical convictions as much as they express his moral qualities. To the extent that morality is important, ethics is important, since ethics is, in a good sense, only morality become self-conscious, beginning to think about itself and to take itself somewhat seriously.

But it may be said that nothing is more important for man than morality, since morality is itself nothing more than man's own opinion, translated into behavior, of what he himself regards as important. To be sure, he may be quite unconscious both of the opinion and of the behavior, but it is valuations, preferences, loyalties, as appearing in his behavior--in his selection of a job, of companions, of books and hobbies, of political and religious affiliations, and the like--that are the stuff of morality. By such choices the very course of civilization is determined. Men's wants and valuations elect congresses, support or oppose wars and strikes and Community Chest campaigns, determine the decisions of juries and the violence of the lynching mob, make laws and defy laws, denude the hills of their forests and clothe them again, regulate (through their effect on supply and demand) the functioning of the economic system. The sciences of economics, political theory, and jurisprudence presuppose the existence of those human behavior patterns that are so closely linked to and so much the consequence of human ethical evaluations.

If we may conclude, then, that the range of influence which must be assigned to ethics is hardly less than the whole of human life, we can turn to our examination of the grounds of conduct with a sense both of the immensity and of the dignity of our task.

Ethics and Science

It would be a breach of good reporting, however, not to mention that there are some who object seriously to this contrast, even in the form in which it has just been stated. For implying as it does a clear separation between ethics and science, it arouses the sharp criticism of those who wish to show that ethics is itself a science.

Now the desire to identify ethics with science must not be confused with the desire to make ethics "scientific." This latter desire is well-nigh universal, if by it we mean the wish to avoid, in the treatment of ethical questions, the introduction of personal bias, guesswork, or wishful thinking. In ethics, as in any search after knowledge, the investigator wants the facts to speak for themselves and he goes about the pursuit of facts in the most businesslike and self-critical way attainable. To make ethics as scientific as possible in method is a hope cherished by all who regard this study as something more than an entertaining pastime. Carelessness and arbitrariness are no more to be recommended in ethics than in cooking; the results are likely to prove equally unpalatable.

Frequently, to be sure, scientific method has been given a much more specific connotation than that of rigorousness and distinterestedness of procedure. It has sometimes been construed as involving the application of those special techniques that typify the natural sciences. Among the most famous of these characterizations of the method of science is that which describes every scientific investigation as involving--once the problem to be solved has been posed-a sequence of four successive steps, as follows: (1) the collection and observation of materials or data; (2) the formulation of a theory or hypothesis in explanation of these data; (3) the drawing of deductions or of consequences that would follow from the truth of the hypothesis; and (4) the testing of the hypothesis by seeking verification of its predicted consequences in experience.

When scientific method has been so understood, the question of its applicability to ethics has raised a storm of controversy; this issue remains one of the most lively in technical ethical discussions.

Let us look briefly at the sort of proposals made by those who would like ethics to be scientific, not only in temper but also in its approximation to the methods of natural science. First of all, they insist, moral science must be empirical. That is, it must depend ultimately on experience as its source and criterion of knowledge. But the only data, relevant to ethics, that may be observed and precisely described, so it is held, are the moral judgments of human beings. People's reactions with respect to lying and stealing, keeping and breaking promises, and so on, may be assembled and analyzed. Step 1, then, is the securing of as much information as possible about men's beliefs as expressed in their judgments of right, wrong, good, and bad. Following the collection and sorting of these beliefs, the next step is to examine them with a view to generalizing about the types of behavior that men do prevailingly regard as right or as wrong.

For example, if it is found that all the acts that are considered wrong are also acts likely to injure the community, it may be concluded that "wrong" means "tending to injure the community." Such a conclusion will be an ethical hypothesis or theory. From it one may deduce (step 3) that certain other acts, hitherto unexamined, will, if they tend to injure the community, also be held by men to be wrong. The testing of the theory (step 4) will then be a matter of making observations of men's judgments about these acts, verification consisting in the discovery that men do in fact hold such acts to be wrong. If, on the other hand, public opinion is found, in certain cases at least, to be enthusiastic in its approval of acts which are undeniably injurious to the community, some revisions in the theory would of course be indicated.

The question has been raised, in connection with this procedure, whether precise quantitative tests should be required in ethics as they are in the more exact of the natural sciences. It seems obvious that excessive demands along this line would make rather hard sledding for a field whose data do not easily lend themselves to measurement by yardsticks and differential equations. However, the proponents of a scientific ethics have rarely gone--if a pun may be excused--to such extreme "measures." They have nevertheless contended that if ethics is to fill the shoes of science, its theories must be so stated that they give rise to consequences that are publicly testable and verifiable. To approach ethics with expectations less than these, they maintain, is simply to abandon it to the arbitrary caprices of unscientific romanticists.

Those who object to this conception of ethical investigation, however, do not ordinarily regard themselves as formulating their protest in the name either of caprice or of romanticism. Their criticism of "scientific ethics" is more likely to take the following form: The sort of undertaking, which the scientifically minded moralist has delineated and which he supposes to be an enterprise in ethics, is really not such at all. What he describes is not ethics, but sociology or anthropology. It is a process of inquiring what men believe, how they react in certain situations, and of formulating theories enabling one to predict how these same men will react later in similar situations. What this method provides, then, is an accumulation of folklore. Instead of arriving at knowledge of what is right and wrong, it arrives at knowledge of what men think is right and wrong. Public opinion polls are all right in their place, but what one expects and gets from, say, a pre-election poll, is some indication of who will be elected--not of who ought to be elected. Ethics cannot properly be regarded as a glorified, spiritualized Gallup Poll. It does not seek to learn what standards men use in judging conduct, but what standards they should use. And to this end, other methods of inquiry than that of sociology are required, methods whose nature will be discussed and debated in later chapters.

The scientific technique in ethics is held to breed further difficulties. Suppose, for example, investigation of the moral judgments of human beings should reveal considerable disagreement as to whether certain acts were right or wrong. In such a case no single theory explaining what lay underneath these conflicting opinions could be given. For the theory is supposed to explain agreements: in the face of disagreements, it bogs down. But given such disagreements and supposing that they prove adamant even when confronted by the theory that is supposed to dissolve them, the only course open appears to be that of setting up a variety of theories, each one providing its own special explanation of the special opinions of a special group of moral judges. Since the method under consideration provides no way of comparing these several theories, we are left with something which might be called ethical Relativity. To this view, as we shall see in the chapters devoted especially to its consideration, a number of moralists are resolutely committed.

It may be worth noticing that the definition of ethics with which we originally began was stated without prejudice to the issue of "scientific ethics." The phrase which occurs in that definition, "standards for judging," is neutral, allowing either for the interpretation, "standards which ought to be used for judging," or for the interpretation, "standards which are used for judging,"-- or, for that matter, for several other interpretations, including, "standards which might be used for judging." It is left to the student to decide, after he has more fully considered the problem, which of these meanings he wishes to insert.

In the light of the disagreement among philosophers as to the nature of ethical inquiry, it is pertinent to raise the question: How can any definitive results be achieved in an area where there is not even agreement on the task to be accomplished?

If every moralist could accept the view that ethics is a branch of descriptive science, recording and generalizing on certain aspects of human behavior, the pursuit of ethics might become science and henceforth be carried on in the cooperative spirit of a big, happy, academic family. But it is hardly to be expected that those who regard ethical investigations as something very different from this will resign themselves, for the sake of philosophic harmony and "definitive results," to a method which in their opinion could only produce results, however definitive, in which they were not really interested.

In the face of this not surprising recalcitrance, the sensible procedure is perhaps to cease sighing for a unanimity that is not to be expected in this stage of man's reflection on moral issues, and turn to an examination of what the various attacks on these issues are.

If moralists insist on arguing even over the nature of those questions which they become moralists by asking, we are at any rate not prevented from distinguishing and sorting out the various questions they ask or from examining and evaluating the answers they give. Whatever conclusions we may reach as a result of this examination will at least have run the gauntlet of the best in historical and contemporary opinion on these matters. This includes even the opinions of those who are convinced that there are no meaningful ethical questions to be asked at all and that the whole of what has passed for morality rests on a huge illusion.

Before leaving the subject of the nature of ethical inquiry, a brief comment on our own procedure may seem desirable.

This book is not written as ethical propaganda--and we hope that it will not be so construed. We hope that the student will feel, as the various ethical views are unrolled before his mind, that he is examining them for himself, under guidance to be sure, but under guidance which is not to be thought of as in any sense authoritative or importunate. As in all conducted tours, your guide can be expected to intersperse his designation and description of objects of interest with his own critical comments about them. You may, in fact, come to regard him as a very opinionated person and feel like requesting him to confine himself to the business of pointing out -- which, in the last analysis, is all that guides are paid for. Since, however, there is no chance in this instance, to suppress your guide's enthusiasm for declaring his own convictions, other courses of action must be considered. One is to ignore him, that is, to skip those passages that carry the odor of intellectual autobiography. (As you proceed you will doubtless learn to recognize these passages even from a distance.) The other alternative--the one that your "guide" would naturally prefer to think of as the more intelligent course--is to pay a modicum of attention to his views, according them what seems their due, but no more than their due, in terms of the strength of the evidence offered in their support--and remembering that the discriminating student will wish to gird his critical loins by consulting at first hand the arguments of those who hold beliefs differing from the ones here defended.

Astrology: Magic or Science?

Can astrology be disproved? Literally thousands of volumes have been written on the subject over the ages, attacks and defenses, apologies and interpretations. Proponents have claimed astrology as a "science" and an "art," a true interpretation of the inner workings of the universe. Opponents have mostly attacked astrology on physical grounds, citing the old classical arguments: the question of twins, the time of birth versus time of conception, the immense distances to the planets and stars, and so on.

But very few writers have come to the nub of the matter: astrology is false because it is a system of magic, based on the magical "principle of correspondences." In fact, astrology--or at least its prehistoric predecessor--probably arose concurrently with the magical world view of early civilized man, astrology and magic adding to each other and being developed and used by the priests to lend "cohesiveness" to the evolving city-states. By the time cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing had been developed, astrology in some form or other was already a part of man's culture.

Thus, several thousand years have gone into the development of astrology, into its theory and practice. Astrology proper began in Babylonia as a system of omen-reading to foretell the fate of kings and realms. More or less simultaneously, the Egyptians developed their system of Places, based on "planetary aspects." Then the Greeks took over both the Babylonian and Egyptian systems, combining them into a complex mathematical cosmology. Under the Greeks, astrology became available to the common man; astrologers today use virtually the same system as the Greeks, or endless variations thereof.

As a result of astrology's long history, confused development, and obscured theoretical bases, it is common for writers and astrologers to state that the ancient "art" cannot be disproved, that modern man lacks the necessary "cosmic insights" to grasp its truths. Even the great humanist Petrarch attacked astrology only by making fun of astrologers, leaving the cosmological arguments relatively untouched. Very few writers indeed have associated astrology with its magical bases; a reasonable search reveals that only Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, and Richard Cavendish, in The Black Arts ( 1967), have properly identified astrology as magic.

This confused state of affairs is precisely the astrologers' aim: as long as they can obscure the fact that astrology is nothing more nor less than magic and totally unrelated to physical science, they can continue to find customers willing to part with hard-earned funds. For, after all, astrology is a practical "art"; it has provided many an astrologer with a lifelong living.