Thou Shalt Not Kill

Having established that I like living, and plan to do quite a lot of it, I think it is important to consider the ethical issues involved in interacting with other beings. To begin with, we will keep things simple. I know I want to live, and I know other beings want to live, but what reason do I have to value the lives of other beings? After all, that other being might have something that I want, or some other situation might arise in which it would be to my benefit to kill them. Is there an ethical issue here?

To examine this I would like to consider the possible outcomes of meeting another sentient being. In this basic view, there are only 4 situations which readily present themselves. I will either be friendly or hostile, and the other being will either be friendly or hostile. I will score the results of each situation by assuming that I give living a relative value of 1. For this situation I will be assuming that it is not necessary for one of us to kill the other for our own survival, and that no issues are at play which involve a cause worth dying for. This is just a neutral situation where two beings meet.

Situation 1: I am friendly and will not harm them, but they are hostile and will kill me. This situation will result in my death. Since I can’t value anything after I am dead, this results in a score of 0. There can’t be any worse case scenario than this! Perhaps I should be more hostile…

Situation 2: I am hostile and the other being is friendly. This situation will result in my continuing to live (+ 1 point) and could possibly result in some additional gain for myself in the form of some gain in resources (+ 0 to + 0.99; I will take 0.5 as an example value). Total score is 1.5. Now I am getting somewhere!

There is a flaw in this situation though. This other being is sentient, and values its own life. Surely it knows that lying down and letting me kill it is not what it should do according to its own values. Indeed, by my own values, I can’t blame this other being for deciding not to let me kill it either. By the universiality of moral laws, if it is right for me to defend myself, as my values require, it must also be right for this other being to defend itself, and I can expect that this is what will happen. This takes us to the next situation.

Situation 3: Fight! (*Bad techno music starts playing somewhere…*) This situation is more interesting. Since I don’t know anything about this being, I can only give myself, on average, a 50/50 chance of surviving a fight to the death (+ 0.5 points). On the upside, if I win I get the additional resources from the last example (50% chance * 0.5 points = 0.25 points). This adds up to a 0.75 point situation. This is better than lying down to die, but I would still be better off avoiding all other beings than going up to one and picking a fight.

It is interesting to note that while we are assuming that there is nothing worth dying over here (resources are worth less than 1 point) then situation 3 will always be less than a 1 point situation. The only exception to the rule is if I am much more powerful than my opponent, and know it and am thus able to give myself more than a 50% chance of winning the fight. I will address this shortly.

Situation 4: the Alliance. In this situation I get to live (+1 point), but there is also the potential to trade, collaborate, and otherwise benefit from the exchange (+ 0 - + 0.99, let’s say 0.5 for example). This has a total score of 1.5! This is a good option, it is better than avoiding others, and assuming this other being is rational enough to come to the same conclusion I have about the situation, it is a stable one which can benefit us both indefinitely since we will both prefer it to the alternatives.

Let’s summarize and take a look at what we have found:

	I try to kill you	I am friendly
You try to kill me	(0.75, 0.75)	(0, 1.5)
You are friendly	(1.5, 0)	(1.5, 1.5)

My score is listed first, followed by your score. Now, since we know that we can react to each other, and that we are both prone to defend our own lives, two of the possibilities are unstable, and we both know they are not possible as final solutions to this confrontation:

	I try to kill you	I am friendly
You try to kill me	(0.75, 0.75)	(0, 1.5)
You are friendly	(1.5, 0)	(1.5, 1.5)

This means that we can always agree that it is better for both of us if we don’t try to kill each other. This has been derived only from our own self interest, with a couple assumptions and caveats. Let’s try to address some of those now.

I have looked at what is best for me, but is what’s best for me always what is morally right? If I happen upon a situation where I can easily kill another with no risk and great gain should I do so if I think it more profitable than collaboration? No, and the reason why is that the rules put forth in ethics must hold universally.

I have established that I consider it morally right to defend myself if attacked. I can also deduce that any other sentient being who values its life will come to the same conclusion. Thus, all sentient beings which value their own lives can agree that self defense is a good thing. This leads us to the reason why wanton murder of the weak is ethically untenable: it would be morally wrong for someone who was capable of it to choose to kill me, all sentient and self valuing beings would come to the same conclusion, therefore it is morally wrong for me to kill someone else if opportunity arises.

An interesting effect of this conclusion is that, all beings coming to the same conclusion, this will result in a social environment which is best for me on average. If I were to have concluded that it was ok to kill someone if I was reasonably sure I could manage it, other rational beings would come to the same conclusion, and since I cannot assume I am the most powerful being around, I would end up someone else’s victim at some point. If I can kill someone I may benefit in the short term by acquiring some new resource, but in the long term I am more likely to die in this environment of kill and be killed.

Conclusions:

• ·         Murder, initiating an attack on the life of another, is morally wrong.
• ·         Self defense is a morally good thing. I should (ethically speaking) try to live at peace and in cooperation with my fellow beings, but if that is not possible, I must defend myself by any means necessary, including killing my attacker.

Assumptions / Scope of Applicability:

• ·         Nothing is at stake which is worth dying for, including that the situation does not require the death of one party for the survival of the other.
• ·         There is no large imbalance of power in the average situation, or if there is, it is unknown to those involved.
• ·         All involved parties value their own life, and know that the other parties value theirs.
• ·         Choices are made with knowledge of the choices of others, and all parties can change their minds based on the actions of others.

Basic Values

There are four basic values which underlie Conditional Ethics. They are Value of Sentience, Value of Free Will, Value of Life, and Value of Well-being. These are the four conditions which the rest of the system depends on, and if we disagree on these four values then we will necessarily disagree about the whole of ethics. The first two values are intrinsic to ethics, and the second two are so practical and so widely held that they merit acceptance on their own terms.

All sentient beings value their own sentience, whether consciously or not. For the same reasons that a thing must affect experience to merit ethical consideration, a thing must affect experience to be of value. If a being is sentient, and values anything at all, they inherently value their ability to value that thing, and therefore their ability to experience. They must also value their ability to reason, because without reason they could not assimilate their experiences. Finally, a being must have some self awareness to value anything at all. If a being is not self-aware, they cannot make the connection between an idea and their value of it. These statements of requisite value, value of being experiencial, value of possessing reason, and value of self-awareness, form the basis for the first value, the Value of Sentience.

A being must also value their free will, for without free will a being could not pursue any other thing they valued. By the definition we have established for free will, this breaks down into value of volition and value of power. A being must value their volition or they cannot be said to value anything. Without volition no value can be selected. Volition is inherent in the ability to value things in much the same way that light is inherent in color; they are inseparable concepts. A being must also value power. Without any power, no value could be pursued. Whether a being values peace on earth, breathing, or the destruction of the universe, the very existence of that value implies that the being values the power required to achieve that end.

The value of power is a very interesting topic, and will be examined at great length. To say that all beings must value power is not to say that the pursuit of power is always ethically justified, but certainly the pursuit of power must be justified to some extent for all beings. There are also many things to be discussed about the ethics of power imbalances between beings. Is there an ethical limit to the power which one being should wield over others? Is it ethical for a being to relinquish power to another being, or remove power from another being? These are all topics for later. Here I only intent to show that power is valued to some degree by all beings.

The Value of Life is not provable, and is certainly not universal as many suicidal people can attest. It is, however an extremely common value. After all, beings who truly do not value their own life tend not to be around for very long. Life, by definition, requires the consumption and use of energy. Without motivation to do the things required to sustain life a being will perish and no longer be of ethical consideration. Ethical questions exist which will require that we question this value, such as the ethics of euthanasia, but they are a small subset of the ethical issues we will need to explore. For almost all ethical considerations it can be safely assumed that all parties involved value their own life. It is for this practical reason that the Value of Life is accepted as a condition of our ethical system.

Similar to the Value of Life, Value of Well-being is, for all practical purposes, universal. While it is possible to imagine a being which did not want to thrive, experience joy, or be fulfilled in any way, it is so counter-intuitive as to seem impossible. Even the clinically depressed, if asked, would respond that they would like to be healthy and happy. Since this value is so prevalent in sentient beings we will accept it as our fourth value.

To pull these concepts a little tighter, I would like to specify that human beings are the primary focus of Conditional Ethics. I have left things non-specific during the formation of the basis of the system so that concepts can easily be adapted to changing situations and understandings. For instance, as we come to understand the mental lives of animals we will already be equipped to evaluate the ethics involved in our relationships with them. Briefly, the degree to which a being has sentience is the degree to which it is of ethical consideration, and humans are the most sentient beings I am aware of, and are thus of the utmost importance in all of my ethical decisions.

We now have some definitions, rules, and concepts central to our ethical system. We also have a set of values which we can base our ethical judgments on. Equipped with these we are now prepared to create a set of rules for ethical behavior, a system of ethics, which depends on these conditions we have established. The foundation of Conditional Ethics has been laid. 

Hume's Guillotine and Conditional Ethics

The philosopher David Hume wrote a now famous paragraph discussing an idea which has come to be known as ‘Hume’s Guillotine’. This idea, more or less, is that ethics cannot be founded on facts alone, but that a value judgment must be made at some point, and that this value judgment is essentially arbitrary. This is not to say that facts do not relate to ethics and vice versa, only to say that facts alone are not sufficient to say what is good and what is bad. This idea is also known as the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ in ethics, as there is no way to infer what ‘ought-to-be’ from ‘what-is’.

In Hume’s own words:
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Source)

Some claim that this paragraph is being taken out of context, and that Hume meant something different than what most philosophers interpret it to mean, usually coinciding with the viewpoint they themselves espouse. Thus do weaker minds attempt to embellish their own works with a supposed affiliation with greatness. Nevertheless, whether it was Hume’s idea, or a misunderstanding which has been attributed to him, the idea should be judged on its own merits, and bears further consideration.

To illustrate this concept let us consider a common ethical judgment; for instance, we can say that it is morally wrong to kill the neighbors when they irritate us. This statement requires that, within the framework of the ethical system being used to make this determination, life is given some value. If life has no value, then it cannot be relevant what is done with it. The issue then becomes a question of what to value, with some going full circle upon themselves by trying to figure out if it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to value a certain thing.

This problem has been a thorn in many philosophers’ sides as they try to create a system of universal ethics, and several common strategies have been developed for coping with the issue. Some people have attempted to circumvent the problem by considering what is ‘good-for’ X or Y, and making ethical statements based on that. For instance, it is generally ‘bad-for’ a human being to have their head removed, so it must be ethically wrong to rip off people’s heads. Many prominent thinkers of our age, Sam Harris for one, have used this idea in an attempt to reduce ethics to a subset of science; that is, the science of what is good for people and what is bad for people.

Unfortunately, this merely sidesteps the real problem. Who is to say that what is good for people is important? Perhaps there is a goal worth sacrificing the good of humanity for? Perhaps we should make our ethical choices based on what is good for mosquitoes. How can we know that we have chosen the correct thing to value? While I agree with the conclusion that, in general, what is good for people is the right thing, I cannot abide the lapse in logic. There must be a way to determine that it is right to promote the welfare of humanity, or I cannot assert it.

Moral relativists have concluded that the value judgments being made are truly arbitrary, and that when a person says a thing is right or wrong any other person can merely claim to have different values with equal validity. This creates a scenario where 'Good' and 'Evil' are merely opinions, and there is no true ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’, only one person’s preferences or another’s. In this line of thinking no person’s moral judgment may have any effect on any other person.

I agree that ethical statements are statements of value rather than statements of fact. I disagree, however, in the belief that the choice of values is arbitrary. As my work progresses I will be making the argument that some values are intrinsic to ethics, and that certain others are so widely held as to preclude any practical contention regarding their acceptance. I think I can then integrate these values into a cohesive value-system and proceed from that point to create a rational system of ethics. This system may not be a statement of fact, a description of the universe, or a divine command, but if we can find a way to agree on basic values we should be able to extrapolate from those values to a common set of ethical rules.

This idea will play a key role in the development of the overarching scheme of this system, and is why I call it ‘Conditional Ethics’. The system is conditional upon the acceptance of particular values, without which it is impotent. For instance, I might take it as a condition that human life has value. Under this condition I could then make the statement ‘murder is wrong’. I will try to take the most generic and unassuming conditions I can find, and will state them clearly and explicitly. I will try to only take conditions which have strong arguments in their support. Not all people will agree with my chosen values, but the people who do will find Conditional Ethics to be a solid basis for a rational morality which is right and just, and internally consistent. This is my goal; this is my work.