Tag: Ethics

Ethics

Ethics, Life, Work

Art

A super article in the New Scientist explains – as artists have intuited down the centuries – that the brain works to a different set of rules than the real world.

We have misread shadows and mirrors from Velazquez Rokeby Venus to Bond’s Scaramanga but most of the time we get it right. I’m going to look up Patrick Cavanagh of Paris Descartes University’s work, but in essence the visual tricks of Dali and Escher and the deeper emotional connection made by a Monet are no accidents.

As the New Scientist summarises ‘You can’t do a proper analysis of all the laws of physics in in the 10th of a second it takes your visual system to form an image so we evolved a simple set of rules that can be computed rapidly without requiring a large proportion of the brain.’ This also means it can be tricked.

I think our visual system may be like our ‘ethical system’. We have evolved a simple, but very powerful set of rules constantly improved by experience through our Bayesian brains. However like an untrained artistic eye if we don’t examine and assess our moral judgements we may not learn and improve and thus fall short of a virtuous and fulfilled life. We can all draw an object but very few can render it perfectly or change the way others see it. Our ‘Ethical eye’ although primarily instinctive is worth training I believe.

I also think the odd checklist helps. I read something a few months back about the astonishing improvements in surgical outcomes achieved by simply running through a checklist – not least checking “have I left any surgical instruments in the person”. Pilots have known it for years, rudders – check, instruments – check, honesty – check, courage – check.

An Aristotelian list is not a bad checklist:

Courage
Temperance
Liberality
Magnificence
Pride
Honour
Good Temper
Friendliness
Truthfulness
Wit
Friendship

11 is a lot to remember, but the good thing of course is I don’t have to. Simply follow my gut (it’s all simplified, instinctive and instantly available in there) and periodically assess and train the Bayesian brain.

Much easier than painting a Monet.

Ethics, Life

Guts

I studied philosophy at Oxford, and in ethics was drawn to John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism.

Human happiness as a basis for morality seemed more attractive than rules and commandments, and all the thought experiments seemed to suggest the ‘right’ thing to do drops neatly out of weighing all the consequences of your actions and choosing the course with the best or least worst consequences. Great.

The problem is, I’ve increasingly realised, for me, it doesn’t work…

Why? In truth I have to admit I first realised I had a problem because utilitarianism simply ‘looks bad’. When people see you weighing ‘secular’ values, like money or resources against ‘sacred’ ones like values or rights or fairness it ‘feels’ wrong to them. And here is the clue I think. Utilitarianism does ‘feel’ wrong.

Listening to a Philosophy Bites podcast, I heard someone say the job of ethics is to accurately describe our innate ‘felt’ sense of what is right.

When I first heard this, I thought it was plumb wrong. I had always thought that the job of ethics was to lay down a rational, internally consistent code of behaviour, and then to win everyone round to living by it.

The trouble is like bills of rights and codified legal systems and indeed utilitarian calculations it’s all too hard; there will always be exceptions and situations and messiness in human affairs are important and don’t always fit.

So I’m coming round to the view that it’s a lot simpler than I thought…

Our minds are Bayesian probability engines. We take the sum total of all we know, have seen and done and form instinctive ‘gut’ judgements on things, which we then test against new data. That’s how we work.

Following your gut on something you’ve never seen, done or know anything about may not be the best approach – get some data or ask someone else.

But on things you know a great deal about, people, what’s right and wrong, what you should do and what you shouldn’t, we all have an amazing storehouse of knowledge and experience accumulated over a life, plus the cultural and biological inheritance of the entire human race since we evolved.

On the great moral questions and the big ethical choices in our lives, the ‘right’ thing to do is follow your gut; ignore utilitarian calculations and rationalism – your gut gives you answers to the big questions.