Why moral education should involve moral philosophy

Ethics are increasingly a part of the school curriculum, and practical introductory classes in applied ethics are part of the training that nurses, scientists and soldiers undergo.

Ethical education is ubiquitous, even though it may not always involve complicated theoretical debates – but should it include a dose of philosophy? There are powerful reasons for looking to moral philosophy to learn about real-world ethical action – and of course, there are risks too.

Why we can’t do without moral philosophy

Moral education draws on the philosophical method. This method requires understanding concepts and distinctions, knowing what makes arguments valid, and attending to counter-arguments. Those skills are vital in the age-old business of moral argument, which involves considering moral principles, appealing to reasons, and comparing analogous cases. Because moral norms are not tangible or scientifically testable, we need conceptual clarity to avoid talking past each other. How can we tell that this is important? Look to the comments section of any article on social or political issues. You will find countless accusations that others cannot argue properly, that they misrepresent what their opponents are saying, or the selectively ignore relevant evidence.

As well, being philosophically consistent can prevent us from making exceptions for ourselves (a common form of hypocrisy).

But why is moral argument itself a good thing? Moral argument allows us to keep engaging with others even when we disagree about values. Values are not simply “given”, but can turn out to be amenable to reasoned discussion.

As well, moral philosophy also helps us question unhelpful assumptions and informs us about the ways our values connect to our descriptive beliefs, such as scientific hypotheses about human psychology.

Finally, notwithstanding all the endless debates – and some debates really have been going on for millennia – advances do occur. Natural rights theories were philosophical systems long before human rights laws protected people’s equal rights. Many would agree human rights constitute genuine moral progress. Moral philosophy stands as an enduring record of what we have learnt so far.

Moral philosophy empowers us through its method and substance to reflect upon and talk about challenging moral issues. Studying ethics can even propel a personal journey, where we learn about ourselves and the way we think. We might even learn that others think in different ways.

The risks

While moral philosophy offers great promise, it also harbors threats we need to be aware of.

Moral philosophy tends to focus on areas of disagreement. Applied ethics classes explore disputed issues such as abortion and euthanasia, rather than discussing the many issues on which we all agree. Furthermore, moral philosophy explores our reasons for being moral. But often we can agree on the right thing to do even when we disagree on the underlying principles. Jacques Maritain captured this theme during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when he summed up the UNESCO philosophy group’s thoughts by saying: “Yes, we agree about the rights, but on condition no-one asks us why”.

The further we follow the trail of breadcrumbs into philosophical rabbit-warrens, the more morality threatens to become the domain of experts. Once we move from basic moral argument to high theory, philosophy becomes hard – an elite domain for those with the mental aptitude and the time to master the extensive knowledge required. When the philosophical going gets tough, those without this acquired expertise can easily feel out of their depth. For them, philosophical argument may seem as much a weapon of intimidation as a tool of mutual exploration.

There is another worry as well. Much moral philosophy involves studying comprehensive moral theories, such as those fashioned by Aristotle (virtue theory), Kant (deontology) and Mill (utilitarianism). Philosophers have good reasons to develop these complex systems. Theories provide systematic ways of explaining, describing and justifying moral action. Simply put, we cannot do moral philosophy without moral theories.

But full-blown philosophical theorizing harbors a darker side. Accepting one theory means rejecting all the others, and the unique insights they can offer. Further, because each theory’s advocates demand they have reason to believe their theory, they can become intolerant. They might demand that their arguments must be answered and (if not demonstrated as false) accepted. They can be tempted to conclude that all non-believers are unreasonable dogmatists. Worse still, sometimes courses can expose students to just one type of moral theory, without learning about other alternatives. Far from expanding those students’ moral horizons, exposure to high theory narrows them.

Where to?

If moral education needs moral philosophy, and moral philosophy needs high theory, how should we proceed? I offer just one suggestion.

Most moral theories build on a core insight. Utilitarianism tells us consequences for others’ wellbeing matter. Deontology stresses that morality requires each person accepting they are duty-bound to act in certain ways towards other people. Virtue theory reminds us that character drives action, and that ethical life carries its own rewards. These insights all provide valuable perspectives on the larger mosaic of human moral life. Moral education is at its best when it introduces students to these different perspectives, and their unique insights.

For ordinary people trying to think through practical moral questions, it is the insights (and not the theories) that matter most.

This blogpost (in a slightly altered form) was originally published in The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/why-moral-education-should-involve-moral-philosophy-31675

There is no political morality

This might seem a strange title for a blogpost written by a political philosopher, especially one that tends to harp on about the importance of human rights. Am I trying to put myself out of business? What on earth could I mean?

What I'm suggesting is that the only real, binding principles (rules, virtues etc) we possess are moral ones, governing how each person should treat each other. I’m suggesting we should resist believing that independent, new moral principles emerge once we start thinking about the domain of political authority and political community. Of course, I agree lots of political principles remain immensely important—the separation of powers, the rule of law, democracy, rights and so on. I doubt, though, that any of these principles enjoy their own independent moral validity. Rather, I think these principles draw their justification from pre-existing moral principles—the same moral principles governing how you and I should treat each other in general, including if we met on a desert island. We wind up with the rule of law, rights, checks and balances, and all the rest because these principles reflect our ordinary moral duties and entitlements writ larger, and shaped out of the capacities and the threats of these political institutions.

What's the big deal?

‘So what?’ you ask. I think denying political morality matters because so many people throughout history believe in it. They hold that political morality exists as an independent entity. It is autonomous. By ‘autonomous’ I mean political morality inhabits a normative realm unto itself. It cannot be derived from ordinary personal morality. Funnily enough, people who believe this still tend to agree about all the ordinary, interpersonal moral principles. They agree we should not lie or cheat, harm or kill; we should not seize more than a fair share of things we have not created; we should help others in need. And so on. But once we come together as a political community, now, they think, entirely new ways of governing our lives should rule! Now we can rethink everything! Now we are empowered to come together as distinct parts of a single organic unit, a magnificent polis or grand nation-state! Or we must all now start following and drawing our law from exactly the same religion or from some community-constructed ‘form of life’! Or (a present fashion) now we can start living by entirely new and deeper principles of equality, seeing every material difference between us as crying out for justification! Or (another present fashion) at last we can cast off our chains and start upholding stringent notions of absolute human freedom!

Practically no-one would advance these principles as ordinary rules of basic morality—as all of them effectively amount to using violence against people who are for the most part minding their own business and may well be upstanding and hardworking members of their local community. No-one would imagine that Alf should convert his neighbour Betty at the point of a sword, or force her to conform to some way of life he and his friends think constitutes objective happiness, or cut her down to his level when she prospers. But once we come together in a state, all this changes, and all these things are now possible: we effortlessly and unthinkingly adopt new political principles justifying all this and more.

So this is what I am arguing against: any autonomous political morality that puts forward new principles of justice that we would not propose as part of ordinary interpersonal morality.

John Locke’s ‘State of Nature’

I think this rejection of independent political morality helps us understand the views of the seventeenth century liberal philosopher John Locke and the way he uses the ‘State of Nature’. Effectively, Locke’s state of nature amounts to nothing more than ordinary people governed by ordinary morality. We all respect each other’s rights; we tolerate their religious practices; we make sure we don’t take up so much of the local resources that others don’t have their own resources to work on; we acknowledge that needy people in tough situations need help; and so on. And we never use violence—unless someone has breached one of these rules against us, in which case we may strike back and defend our rights. Sometimes theorists speak as if Locke’s state of nature must be anti-social, pre-social or pre-institutional. I suspect this view arises not so much from a misreading of Locke as from a failure to read him at all. To the contrary, in Locke’s state of nature we all live in communities, we travel, we trade, we build families and churches. We’re not perfect, of course. But almost all of us share a solid understanding of what the right thing to do is, and more often than not we do it.

Locke’s state of nature differs dramatically from that of his fellow seventeenth century political theorist, Thomas Hobbes. In Hobbes’ state of nature, no-one accepts any moral rules. Trapped in Hobbes’ brutal state of nature, fearful for my own security and unbound by laws, Hobbes recommends I strike at my neighbours before they can strike at me, and his state of nature collapses into the war of all against all. And this collapse renders the life of man, in words that echoed down through the centuries, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’.

In comparison, Locke’s state of nature sounds pretty idyllic, right? 

Wrong. 

In technical philosophical terms, Locke’s state of nature sucks. Why? Because its members acknowledge no settled and known law, they lack an agreed person to adjudicate when violations to the law occur, and they possess no accepted authorities to exact punishment or ensure compensation for wrongs done. Even if most of a community’s members really try to do the right thing most of the time, conflicts routinely erupt and foment further conflicts in turn. Each of us has the power to be judges in our own cases, exacting punishment as we see fit, with predictable enough results. Each person sees themselves as performing just retribution and compensation. Everyone else sees them hell-bent on revenge and theft. We didn’t start where Hobbes thought we did—but, on Locke’s telling, we sure do finish there.

Still, humans often rise to the level of creative, problem-solving creatures. Can’t they fix things? Hobbes and Locke both thought they could. However, because Hobbes thought humans were so selfish and bereft of human virtue, he thought they needed a radical solution to the state of nature. They needed to hand over almost all their rights to a supreme political sovereign, who would wield enough absolute power to keep them all in check. So far as any morality enters into Hobbes’ scheme, it enters here. The violence of the state of nature horrifies the people so much that they create morality to defend against it. So Hobbes’ position turns out to be the exact opposite of Locke’s. For Hobbes, people possess no ordinary everyday morality, only political morality.

Locke’s people in the state of nature suffer the same threat of violence, but here’s the good news: they have more to work with than Hobbes’s warmongers. They don’t need to invent morality—they already possess it. And while things would be improved if there were settled and reliable punishments for doing the wrong thing, they don’t need fear of punishment to do all the work in driving their moral action. They already possess the capacity for virtue and decency. Their problems are alarming, yes, but rather specific for all that. They just need to get together, in a good faith and an amicable way, and work out ways of setting down stable laws, coming up with independent judges to adjudicate on them, and on a police force and army that will execute them. I mean execute the laws, that is. The people must remain vigilant not to make a police and army that executes them, the people. That would just swap the problem of local internecine violence for the problem of systematic slaughter and oppression. That problem may not have worried Hobbes (seriously, what was he thinking?), but it worried Locke; and rightly so.

So what’s the result? The citizens come together and create institutions to fix their problems. They create democracy, the rule of law, rights and the separation of powers. They don’t do this because they came to any profound moral realizations about new ethical principles that must suddenly apply because they have joined together into one political community. To the contrary, they craft these new political principles because given empirical descriptive facts about humans, power and institutions, practices like democracy and the rule of law prove necessary to realise the original moral principles they all held in the state of nature.

So that’s what I mean when I say there exists no political morality independent of ordinary morality. We derive all of our political principles from our pre-existing moral ones. I don’t pretend this will prove an easy or straightforward process. In fact it poses a raft of challenges. Instead of invoking some abstract political theory—some exciting new contract theory from an original position, for example—we have to slowly learn, through trial-and-error as much as theory, about how institutions and practices both protect and threaten the common-sense rights we held in the state of nature.

Why believe it?

But why believe this idea about the non-reality of political morality? Here are four quick reasons. One, we find much less disagreement about what ordinary common-sense morality requires, as compared with political principles. Lots of moral theorists suggest that there are striking similarities across cultures regarding proper treatment of one’s fellows. Now maybe you think this is taking it a bit far, but no-one would even pretend to make the same claim about political morality. For when it comes to what a political regime should do, theories and practices clash violently. If we can get by without provoking all these disagreements by relying on an area of moral thinking where we find more substantial agreement, then that seems a welcome result.

Second, if we want peace and prosperity to reign, then people need to comply with and support the laws and institutions governing them. If the community-members recognize that the coercive institutions governing them ensure that they perform duties they readily acknowledge as morally required, then their own moral emotions, habits-of-life and ways of thinking bulwark those institutions. For example, they contribute to institutions to help the needy because they can all imagine small-scale situations (children drowning in ponds, for example) where they would be duty-bound to help nearby people in desperate need. While people can agree to exacting political principles in the abstract, in my experience this is never accompanied by a revolution in their moral psychology and habits of life. Divesting ourselves of autonomous political morality helps forge a match between our moral emotions and what the institutions around us are trying to do.

Three, this theory accords with many intuitions I think we might share regarding political institutions and their legitimacy. If trying to create ordinary morality on a political scale led to lots of crazy results, then that would be a reason to doubt what I am saying. But instead we can move—as Locke himself described—from the dictates of ordinary morality to show how their institutional implementation gives rise to many of our most prized political institutions and principles, including democracy, rule of law, separation of church and state, toleration, separation of powers and so on. In other words, from a concern with ordinary morality we arrive at a decent picture of political morality, upholding many of the most important institutions of western democracies, and sitting neither to the extreme left or right of the political spectrum.

Four: Ockham’s razor. If we can derive a decent theory of political morality from ordinary morality, then why complicate matters by appealing to something altogether new? The simplest solution appeals to as few elements as possible, using one set of (moral) principles to explain a different set of (political) principles.

Conclusion

Of course, I can’t pretend to have said everything that needs to be said to vindicate my position, or even to fully explain how it works in practice. But I hope I have done enough to open your eyes to the possibility of a distinct way of thinking about political morality—namely, that it doesn’t exist in its own right! If I am correct—and if thinkers like Locke were correct—then we build political morality from the scaffold of ordinary interpersonal morality. 

Meanness: Philosophical reflections

Meanness: Topic No. 92 that philosophers and ethicists never seem to talk about.

Meanness seems to me to be a pretty common occurrence. It forms part of the social backdrop in which we all live, play and work. Most of us, I think, can think of discrete examples of mean behaviour we have witnessed in the not-too-distant past, and many of us would know someone we think of as mean.

Yet meanness has not been subject to much philosophical attention. Out of curiosity, I recently searched a few academic and philosophy databases for works on meanness. Even in the context of psychology there was surprisingly little—and most of it about school-age children. In terms of philosophical or ethical analysis, there was almost nothing. This seems to me to be startling—surely meanness, as much as selfishness, is one of the key drivers of human misery in the modern world. Perhaps it is more visible when performed to and by schoolchildren, but it is hardly an exclusive concern of that age-group.

Defining meanness

What do I mean by meanness? Meanness is not simply selfishness or callousness. The callous person is amoral: they are someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to secure their desired ends: power, money, influence and so on. But the harm the callous person inflicts is not performed for its own sake, as an end in itself. It is done only instrumentally, as a means to some other, distinct value. The mean person, however, performs the harm for its own sake, and not for any further good. He wants to inflict harm, to drag another person down, to wreck her self-belief and undermine her self-esteem. Meanness, then, is low-grade cruelty. Meanness is cruelty for people without a work ethic.

Meanness, so defined, is everywhere. I submit that it motivates harassment in the workplace, bullying online, vitriol in the twittersphere, spousal abuse in relationships, point-scoring in conversations, road rage and verbal attacks on random strangers in public places. To be sure, all these actions can happen for motivations distinct from meanness. But very often, I think, they are a result of a naked will to harm for its own sake.

Why are people mean? Meanness as will to power

Why are people mean? This seems to me a much more perplexing question than the more general one of, ‘why are people selfish?’ People are selfish because they don’t accept any moral constraints on getting what they want (or maybe they think they have valid reasons to resist applying morality in this instance). Selfish people simply see what they want and they go for it. But this is not meanness. Meanness is not amoral but immoral. Meanness involves enjoying inflicting harm for its own sake—not merely as an instrument to some further, independent wish. As such, it is not only different to selfishness, but can often conflict with the narrow pursuit of one’s other desires. Mean people often undermine their own self-interest when they are mean. Instead of facilitating relationships that might prove massively beneficial for their future, mean people go around unnecessarily making enemies. Soundlessly, invisibly, mean people are cut off from future job opportunities, helpful associations, fun events, positions of authority, wonderful friendships and rewarding relationships, and all because they couldn’t resist the temptation to knock someone down a peg.

But this very fact makes meanness perplexing. If it isn’t performed on the basis of self-interested prudence, then, why are so many of us mean, at least on the odd occasion? To be honest I’m not really sure of the answer here—but here’s one thought. Perhaps meanness is an expression of what Nietzsche called the will to power—the wish to feel and know that one is powerful.  Meanness gives the mean person the thrill of mattering in the world, of being an object of others’ attentions, of having an impact on what others are doing and feeling. It is an action one can perform where one can see the immediate effect one has on the world. A mean action makes a difference, it is a way the world is changed by one’s actions, it is an achievement (albeit one easy to accomplish). If that is right, meanness is a strategy against insignificance; it is a prop for an ego that needs to see its will impact upon the world.

Perhaps we can go further, and speculate on a deeper socio-biological link between meanness and the feeling of power. It is not hard to imagine that, once upon a time, meanness was an accurate indicator of physical, social and political power. Living in smaller communities, if you inflict abuse on another person, someone who is actually physically present and who knows who you are, you demonstrate that they do not have the power to stop you. You show that the victim does not have the power or courage to hit back—to requite, as Nietzsche would put it. Only the powerful and the brave (or, at least, those heedless of the risks of physical or social battle) can be gratuitously mean. If the weak person attempts meanness, he will suffer retribution; he will be put back in his place, through social or physical means. Succeeding in a mean action demonstrates that others do not have that power over you. It impresses this sense of power upon the mean person himself, upon the victim who is forced to endure the ill-treatment, and upon third-parties who can be impressed by the power and confidence of the mean person. In small, tight-knit communities where physical proximity and non-anonymity were the rule, meanness really was a demonstration of personal and social power. It showed clearly that one resided at the top of the pecking order.

Sometimes, this link between meanness and genuine power is still in effect in the modern world. I have been in situations where a physically strong person (usually a man), clearly unafraid of the situation collapsing into a contest of brute force, gratuitously abuses people or otherwise picks fights with them. It is an ugly and in many respects scornful show of strength—but it is a show of strength nonetheless.

But in the modern world, everyone can now get away with being mean. You can abuse or harass people online, with various levels of anonymity, and walk away unscathed. In such situations it is possible to feel the thrill of the genuinely strong person, without actually possessing their power. The anonymity of the internet or the city street lets any one of us feel what it is like to push someone’s buttons knowing they have no capacity to retaliate. It provides us with a feeling of power that was hitherto only possible for the tribal chief, the feudal lord, the aristocratic princess. It lets us pretend for a moment that we are at the top of the pecking order, carelessly exacting our will on those beneath us as we please. Just because we can.

Racism and sexism as organized meanness

If we take meanness seriously as a real and abiding fact of human behaviour, then it might change the way we think about other vices.

So here’s a contentious thought: maybe we don’t—as a world, as a country, as a culture—have a problem with racism and sexism. Maybe at base we really have a problem with meanness.

Sometimes social commentators seem to speak as if racists are otherwise decent, reasonable folk who—if only they could only be disabused of their irrational notions about racial difference—would thereafter be good and worthy citizens. On this view, the problem is fundamentally one about their views and values on race in particular, and not a more general one about their moral psychology.

I accept that there are probably some people who are like this—it’s not hard to imagine an otherwise good-hearted person who grew up in a culture where every child is taught that racial differences are morally relevant, or who lives in a world where all the people with a particular skin colour are poor and uneducated, and who mistakenly concludes that racial difference correlates with differences of character or rationality. But in my own world of twenty-first century Australia, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever actually met anyone like that. Pretty much every person I’ve ever met who espoused genuinely racist or sexist views was not otherwise a nice person. Their character flaws were by no means limited to their particular views on discrete classes of people. They were mean in a much more unqualified and generic sense.  

This point needs to be distinguished from a person being insensitive to racial or sexual issues. Certainly someone can be a decent person who, through lack of awareness about current society or prior history, or entrenched and institutional structures that permeate inequalities, acts without a proper degree of sensitivity to minorities. Education can fix a decent person who is culturally insensitive—they just need to learn that their behaviour hurts others and to understand why it does so. But such a course of consciousness-raising cannot cure meanness. The mean person wants to hurt others. Showing them the effects of their actions just underscores that they are succeeding.

Now I’m not implying that all instances of racism and sexism are just simple products of meanness—as if mean people just use bigoted attitudes when they interact with others who they can target racially or on the basis of gender or sexuality, and then switch to different types of abuse when they encounter others. This view would assert that bigotry is just window-dressing to the actual motivation, which is just to be mean generically, to anyone who they can get away with it.

Instead, I suspect it is in the nature of meanness to organize itself. Mean people want to be effective in their meanness, and being effective requires being organized. If I really want to hurt someone, to impact upon her wellbeing, then what I want to do is to oppress her. Anonymous random abuse is all very well for the mean person, but such occurrences are all too easy for victims to ignore, or even laugh away. And that ruins the fun. The type of abuse that is impossible to ignore is the abuse that is well-organized and pervasive. If a mean person wakes up in the morning and wants to oppress a tall, healthy, well-educated white male in my culture, I submit it is almost impossible for them to do so. This is because oppression requires coordination; it requires the victim to be aware that wherever they turn, they will encounter this same harassment and abuse. You can use pointless cruelty to ruin the day of this white male, but that won’t contribute to ruining his life unless you (the mean person) can rely on other mean people ruining his tomorrows as well. For this reason, salient, visible features are crucial—in an anonymous world the mean person will want to target specific features like gender, ethnicity and visible religiousness (even shortness or slowness) in the expectation that his other comrades-in-meanness can do the same in future, and have done the same in the past.

Now in a non-anonymous community, the mean person can pick and communicate his victims more deliberately. The bullying gang therefore picks a particular target and works on them, rather than dissipating their cruelty randomly and ineffectively. But in an anonymous context, if a mean person wants to coordinate their efforts with other mean people they don’t actually know personally, then salient feature like race, sex, ethnicity or visible religion are helpful markers to direct their abuse.

If this is right, then it means that a lot of what looks like racism or sexism may not be actually based upon a belief that the category of victimized people is inferior, or a genuine value-commitment that they are hated. Rather, there is simply a free-floating meanness—a will to feel the power of abusing, harming and oppressing others (any others)—that converges on salient targets.

Even if this was the full story on racism and sexism (which it isn't), it wouldn’t mean that as a society it isn’t worth making the effort to rid the world of such bigotries. It is worth getting rid of these behaviours precisely for the reason that the mean person gravitates towards them. If racist and sexist behaviours were socially expunged, then the mean person would be robbed of that ability to organize their attacks that allowed them to get together collectively to oppress.

But an awareness of meanness would imply that dealing with racism and sexism may not be getting towards the moral root of the matter, which is the underlying desire to be mean. Robbed of an ability to organize targets in an anonymous world, the mean person might just direct their attention to other specific targets they know personally. They will vent their will to power on partners, spouses, children and employees.

Where to from here?

If some of what I have been saying here is along the right track, then why don’t we see a more concerted effort to focus on and rid the world of meanness? Why do we focus instead on particular, discrete manifestations on it—racism, sexism, bullying-at-school, trolling online, harassment at work, spousal abuse, vitriol on twitter? Is it because these more specified problems appear more manageable? Or is it because we don’t have the first idea why people are mean, or how to rid them of the vice?

If a person is simply selfish then it seems to me they are (morally speaking) at least manageable. One can speak in a Hobbesian spirit about the many benefits (security, material prosperity, social approval etc) that arise from moral action. Even more, one can show the person a picture of a world where many of their self-centred desires are met, even though that person accepts moral constraints. It is possible for us all to enjoy prosperity, after all. One person’s pursuit of happiness need not undermine the similar pursuits of others, and to accept moral constraints is not to renounce altogether one’s self-interested ambitions. That, in a nutshell, is why human rights have proven so successful as a moral idea.

But we cannot engage in this way with the mean person. They want to undermine the other person’s happiness, not as a means to something else, but for its own sake. There is no possible world where everyone gets their meanness kicks without everyone also being on the receiving end. This is what makes meanness so frustrating for any social reformer or moral philosopher. There seems to be nothing to work with, nothing that we can build out from towards virtue and duty.

So, in the end, I don’t have any simple answers. Maybe if people lived in a world where they could feel their sense of power in the world in lots of other ways (competitive sports, meaningful employment creating genuinely satisfied customers, direct charity work, relationships that cement their feeling of worthwhileness, artistic and creative pursuits, and so on) then they wouldn’t feel a need for the quick thrill of pushing people’s buttons and upsetting them. The guiding idea here is that the will to power is (as Nietzsche thought) an ineradicable feature of the human character. Since we can’t eradicate it, we need to recognise it and sublimate it—to mould it into a shape where it is no longer socially damaging. 

But this is just one speculation. What I do think, though, is that meanness is real and that it is a powerful source of human misery. If we want to improve the lot of humankind, then we need to think seriously about why people are mean, and what can be done to face this problem.

The Sharp Samaritan: Self Interest and Rescue

In a famous article in 1972, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer put forward an elegant argument for strong duties to contribute to charities. The argument begins by considering the ‘Pond’ situation. In this case, you are walking past a pond and see a drowning child. You can wade into the pond at no risk to yourself, and easily pull out the child. Should you do so? As Singer observes, most people think that you have a powerful duty to do exactly that. (And so, of course, do I.)

Simple yet powerful: Singer's 'pond' argument is a classic
of modern ethical philosophy.

But now add the extra factor that you are wearing expensive clothes, and that dry-cleaning them will cost you a couple of hundred dollars. Is there any change in the nature or importance of the duty in this case? Surely not. Everyone agrees that it is still your moral duty to wade into the pond and rescue the child.

What do we conclude from this? Singer suggests a few different results, but for our purposes we’ll just consider the principle that, when the cost to you is pretty small, and another’s life is at stake, then you morally ought to pay that cost and save their life.

At first glance, this principle can seem innocuous enough. But as Singer points out, it has surprisingly radical implications. For, in a way, the ‘pond’ situation is one that confronts us every day. Overseas, people caught in famines and conflicts do not have access to food, water and basic medical care. If we donated enough money to charities like Oxfam and the Red Cross, then we could save those imperilled lives. And the monetary cost to us is comparative to our losses in the pond case. Taking into account all the difficulties that foreign aid has in getting resources to those who need them, Singer estimates that we can probably save one life for an investment of about $1000.

Now if it is wrong of a passer-by to decide not to wade in to help the child if they are wearing an expensive suit, then – surely – isn’t it equally wrong for each of us every day to decide not to give like amounts to charity? (Of course if we continue to follow this line of thought, eventually we will start giving away so much money we might undermine our own means of existence and capacity to work productively. At that point everyone (including Singer) agrees we should look after ourselves.) Aren’t we being inconsistent in expecting the rescuer to help the child, but not ourselves taking comparable actions to save others?

There is an enormous philosophical literature that has arisen in response to Singer’s argument, and there are lots of different ways it can be critiqued (and, in response, defended). But here I just want to focus on one problem I have with it: The apparent cost to the self-interest of the duty-holder in this case is offset by powerful self-interested gains. First, I’ll argue there are gains. Second, I’ll argue they are important in assessing the pond situation.

The gains

Singer’s description of the pond situation describes the potential costs and gains in very material terms – that is, in terms of the dollar-cost to you of dry-cleaning or replacing your clothes and shoes. But there is much more on offer than this.

First, there is the capacity to feel the power we have in the world. As Nietzsche argued at length, in many different ways a fundamental driver of human behaviour is the will to exert power in the world, and to see the changes we have wrought to the world. The pond situation offers a profound opportunity in this respect. As you wade out of the pond, you are holding in your arms a life that would have ended were it not for you. You can apprehend in no uncertain terms the profound effect of your action. And for the rest of the rescued child’s life, every thing they do will only happen because of what you did. Now giving money to international charities simply does not provide this feeling of power in the same, direct way as rescuing the child. Our charitable giving is mediated through the actions of countless other people – like the humanitarian actors themselves. We might be unsure whether our money really had the desired effect in this case or not. And we don’t know exactly who we have saved. It is only in an abstract, indirect sense that we can feel the significance of what we have done, not in the immediate, determinate way we create change in the world by rescuing the child. Rescue shows us in the most visceral, overt way the power we have in the world. And every human being, for good or for ill, likes to feel that power. We want to know we matter.

Second, there is heroism. Most cultures tell stories about heroes. They are objects of our admiration. By rescuing the child, we fit ourselves into these stories, casting ourselves into the role of hero. From the first moment a child picks up a comic book or ‘Famous Five’ story, they will fantasize about being the hero in tales such as these. Rescuing the child offers the priceless opportunity to make those fantasies come true. Giving to charity does not. Indeed, sometimes when I teach Singer’s argument to undergraduates, students come up to me afterward saying how it would be a dream come true for them to be able to rescue a child in such a pond-like situation. It wouldn't just make their day; it would make their year!

Third, there is excitement. Rescuing the child is exciting stuff. Will you get there in time? Will you have to do CPR, and will you remember how to do it? And there is a story here. How did the child get into this position? Where are its parents? People spend thousands of dollars and travel the world in the hopes of having exciting adventures, and having great tales to tell of their adventures. It may sound grim to say it, but the fact is that charity is just not exciting in the same way rescue is.

Fourth, and building on all of the former points, there is glory. As Adam Smith observed in his work on the moral sentiments, many people want to get the acclaim and admiration of others for doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean they want to ‘fake it’. They don’t want only the admiration without the reality (this is merely a love of fame, rather than a desire for true glory, as Smith puts it). Rather, they want to actually do the right thing, and to be known and admired for doing so. The pond situation offers a fantastic opportunity for this. Because it is an interesting, exciting story, people will want to hear it – and because you are the hero in the story, you will be the centre of attention and the object of admiration. Newspapers often carry reports of good Samaritans who saved others, and in so doing provide a motivation to future Samaritans. The pond situation offers the opportunity for glory in a way that charity simply does not.

Fifth, as well as social appreciation, there is the appreciation of specific people. In the pond case, this is the appreciation of the parent or parents of the child. Imagine you yourself are the parent in question. You have lost your child for a moment. You look around in sudden concern, realising the dangers surrounding you. You are near a road, near a pond, there are strangers around. Where is your child? Are they okay? Suddenly you see a complete stranger wading out of the pond, carrying your just-breathing child. What is your reaction? 

My overwhelming feeling, I think, would be one of profound gratitude. How can I ever replay them? This isn’t to say I would open up my wallet to them, as I would worry that could cheapen the importance and nature of what they have done. But I certainly would seriously consider if I can somehow show my immense appreciation for their action. Being an object of such gratitude is a wonderful social experience – even if there are no further social and material consequences that might flow from it.

Sixth, building on all the prior factors, in cases where costs have been incurred, there may be real opportunities for others to deal with them. As a parent of a rescued child, I at least would insist on paying for the dry-cleaning of the rescuer’s suit. And imagine that you missed or were late to an important meeting or interview because of the rescuing. Is there any better excuse imaginable than that you stopped to save a drowning child’s life? What manner of person would not go out of their way to reschedule the meeting or interview? And if it was a job interview, how could the interviewers fail to be impressed by the quality of the potential applicant?

Now, of course, it could be argued that all of these personal, social and potentially material benefits (or at least, reductions of costs) are in some sense irrational, and that in all consistency we really should personally and socially apply them to charitable giving as well. But even if this is so (and I doubt it), the fact remains that rescue has all these advantages, and charity does not. Saying it is irrational or inconsistent does not alter the social reality that rescue has these benefits and that charity does not.

So what?

Suppose we grant that acts of rescue do have all these of these real and potential benefits. Why does it matter?

My point is not that these benefits are so great that, in any given case, it will always be in one’s self-interest to rescue the child. This is not an ‘egoist’ argument for being a Good Samaritan. Rather, my point is that if we are to take Singer’s argument seriously, then we need to accurately tally the costs and benefits in each case. Because of all of these sorts of benefits, the real, sum-total cost (the decrease in our ‘expected utility’) of rescuing the child is much smaller than Singer estimates. Because it is smaller, the sacrifice expected of the person is not as great. As such, when we apply the same moral arithmetic to cases of international charity, we will get very different answers to the ones Singer puts forward.

But perhaps this misses the point. So consider the following objection.

When we are standing on the bank of the pond, it is hardly as if any of us will really calculate all of these benefits. Rather, we simply see the drowning child and realise we can help. With no further consideration, we wade in and save the child. The benefits may subsequently occur but – it may rightly be objected – it is unlikely they formed any part of our reasoning at the moment of action.

I agree this point is a valid one. But I still think the benefits matter. They just matter in a more indirect way. The benefits mean that whenever we hear stories of rescues, we get used to them ending happily – indeed, we think they should end happily, and we act to make this happen. We shake the hand of the person who rescued the child and buy them a beer. We reschedule the appointment they missed. We listen in admiration to their story. And because of all this there is never any caution or qualification applied to the norm of rescuing. We don’t hear innumerable stories about how the rescuer lived to regret their action, or failed to live up to their other responsibilities because of the costs they incurred. For most people, I agree it is true that the above-noted benefits are not their primary reason for rescuing the child. But the benefits still play a role in empowering the person not to need to have any second-thoughts about this situation. The benefits don’t motivate the principle, but they remove obstacles that might otherwise weaken our responsiveness to it.

If this is right, then one of the reasons we are horrified by the person who walks by without saving the child is simply because there are no countervailing considerations that could justify their doing so. Our society has created, as it might be put, a well-functioning norm of rescue, with myriad rewards and cost-mitigation factors set up to ensure its consistent functioning. And this is important in the context of rescue, because we cannot afford for people to have to weigh up costs and benefits in such a case. We need them to be willing to jump into the pond, and to trust that society has got their back. A well-functioning norm achieves this. If a person cannot be relied on to act on a norm in a situation like the pond one, then it is hard to believe they are capable of acting on a norm in any situation. The amount they are willing to respect and care for others is almost zero.

And this means that if we are interested in improving the lot of those suffering from famine and the ravages of conflict, then we are better served trying to create social and personal rewards that can flow to the people who help them. The more we can make real the benefits for doing such important moral actions, the more we smooth the way for such action, and allow it to feed into a life-well-lived. 

Ooops. Ethics and the Psychology of Error

Can we learn about moral decision-making from the psychological literature on human error – that is, the study of how and in what ways human beings are prone to mistakes, slips and lapses? In this blogpost I offer some brief – but I hope enticing – speculations on this possibility.

At the outset it is worth emphasizing that there are some real difficulties with linking error psychology with moral decision-making. One obvious point of dis-analogy between ethics and error is that one cannot deliberately make mistakes. Not real mistakes. One can fake it, of course, but the very practice of faking it implies that – from the point of view of the actor – what is happening is not at all a mistake, but something deliberately chosen. But it seems to be a part of everyday experience that one can deliberately choose to do the wrong thing.

However, the most significant dis-analogy between moral psychology and error psychology is that in most studies of the psychology of error, there is no question whatever about what counts as an error. In laboratory studies the test-subjects are asked questions where there are plainly right and wrong answers – or rational and irrational responses. Equally, in studies of major accidents, the presence of errors is pretty much unequivocal – if there is a meltdown at a nuclear reactor, or if the ferry sinks after crashing – then it is clear that something has gone wrong somewhere.

In ethical decision-making, on the other hand, whether a judgement or an action is ‘in error’ – if this is supposed to mean ‘morally wrongful’ – is often very much in dispute. So someone who judges that euthanasia is wrong, say, cannot be subject to the same error analysis as some who contributes to a nuclear disaster. At least, not without begging some very serious questions.

The way I aim to proceed is to think about those cases where the person themselves comes to believe they made a moral mistake. The rough idea is that a person can behave in a particular way, perhaps thoughtlessly or perhaps after much consideration, but later decide that they got it wrong. Maybe this later judgement occurs when they are lying in bed at night and their conscience starts to bite. Maybe it happens when they see the fallout of their action and the harm it caused others. Maybe it happens when someone does the same act back to them, and they suddenly realise what it looks like from the receiving end. Or maybe their local society and peers react against what they have done, and the person comes to accept their society’s judgement as the better one.

One reason moral psychology might be able to learn from error psychology is in the way that error psychology draws on different modes of action and decision-making and welds them all into one unified process. Interestingly, the different modes error psychology uses parallel the distinctions made in moral psychology between virtue, rule-following (deontology) and consequentialism (utilitarianism).

GEMS

I’ll use here the account relayed in James Reason’s 1990 excellent book, Human Error. Drawing on almost a century of psychological study on the subject, Reason puts forward what he calls the ‘Generic error-modelling system’ or GEMS. GEMS is divided into three modes of human action, in which different sorts of errors can arise. (What follows is my understanding of GEMS, perhaps infected by some of my own thoughts – keep in mind I am surveying a theory that is rather outside my realm of expertise, so I make no great claims to getting it exactly right.)

Skill-based action

The first mode of action is ‘skill-based’. This is the ordinary way human beings spend most of their time operating. It is largely run below the level of conscious thought, on ingrained and habitual processes. We decide to make a coffee, or drive to the store, but we do not make executive decisions about each and every one of the little actions we perform in doing these tasks. Rather than micro-managing every tiny action, we allow our unconscious skills to take over and do the job. This mode of action draws heavily on psychological ‘schemas’ – these are roughly speaking processes of thought or models of action that we apply to (what we take to be) a stereotypical situation in order to navigate it appropriately. The context triggers the schema in our minds, or we deliberately invoke a schema to manage some task, and then our conscious minds sit back (daydream, plan something else, think about football, etc) as we proceed through the schema on automatic pilot. Schemas are created by prior practice and habituation, and the more expert we become on a particular area, the more of it we can do without thinking about every part. To give an example: when a person is first trained in martial arts, they need to consciously keep in mind a fair few things just to throw a single punch correctly. After a while, getting the punch right is entirely automatic, and the person moves to concentrate on combinations, then katas, and so on. More and more of the actions become rapid and instinctual, leaving the conscious mind to focus on more sophisticated things – gaps in an opponent’s defences, their errors of footwork, and so on.

Errors usually occur at this skill-based level when, (a) the situation is not a stereotypical one, and faithfully following the schema does not create the desired result, or (b) we need to depart from the schema at some point (‘make sure you turn off the highway to the library, and don’t continue driving to work like a normal day’) but fail to do so.

Rule-based thinking

The second mode of action is ‘rule-based’. This arises when the schema and the automatic pilot have come unstuck. When operating at the ‘skill-based’ level described above we were unaware of any major problem; the context was ‘business as usual’. Rule-based action emerges when something has come unglued and a response is required to rectify a situation or deflect a looming problem. In such cases, GEMS holds, we do not immediately proceed to reason from first-principles. Rather, we employ very basic rules that have served us well in the past; mainly ‘if-then’ rules like: ‘If the car doesn’t start, check the battery terminals are on tight’; ‘if the computer isn’t working, try turning it off and on again’.

Mistakes occur at this level if we apply a bad rule (one that we erroneously think is a good rule) or we apply a good rule, but not in its proper context. We can also forget which rules we have already applied, and so replicate or omit actions as we work through the available strategies for resolving the issue.

Knowledge-based thinking

The third and final mode of action is ‘knowledge-based’. Knowledge-based thinking requires returning to first-principles and working from the ground up to find a solution. At this level an actor might have to try and calculate the rational response to the risks and rewards the situation presents, and come up with solutions ‘outside the box’. It is at this level where a person’s reasoning begins to parallel ‘rational’ thinking in decision-theoretic or economic senses. That is, it is in this mode where a person really tries to ‘maximise utility’ (or wealth).

GEMS says that human beings do not like operating at the knowledge-based level; it takes not only concentration but also real mental effort. For the most part, effort is not enjoyable, and we only move to knowledge-based decision-making when we have reluctantly accepted that rule-based action has no more to offer us – we have tried every rule which might be workable in the situation, and have failed to resolve it appropriately. We are dragged kicking and screaming to the point where we have to think it out for ourselves.

James Reason argues in his presentation of GEMS that human beings are not particularly good at this type of knowledge-based thinking. Now my first thought on reading this was: ‘not good compared to who?’ It’s not like monkeys or dolphins excel at locating Nash equilibriums to game theory situations. Compared to every other animal on this planet, human beings are nothing short of brilliant at knowledge-based thinking. But Reason was not comparing humans to other animals, but rather knowledge-based thinking to rule-based thinking. He argues that, comparatively, human beings are far more likely to get it right when operating on the basis of rules. Once the rules render up no viable solutions, we are in trouble. We can think the issue through for ourselves from the ground up, but we are likely to make real errors in doing so.

The opportunity for error at this stage, therefore, is widespread. Human beings can read the situation wrongly, be mistaken about the causal mechanisms at work, make poor predictions about likely consequences of actions, and be unaware of side-effects and unwanted ramifications. This isn’t to say knowledge-based decision-making is impossible, of course, just that the scope for unnoticed errors is very large.

A full-blown theory of human action

Ultimately, in aiming to give a comprehensive theory of how human beings make errors, this realm of psychology has developed a full-blown account of human action in general. Most of the time we cruise through life operating on the basis of schemas and skills. When a problem arises, we reach for a toolbox of rules we carry around – rules that have worked in previous situations. We find the rule that looks most applicable to the current context, and act on its basis. If it fails to resolve the situation, we turn to another likely-looking rule. Only after we despair of all our handy rules-of-thumb resolving the situation are we forced to do the hard thinking ourselves, and engage in knowledge-based decision-making – which is effortful and fraught with risk.

(Now one can have worries about this picture. In particular, psychologists of error seem to me to work from a highly selective sample of contexts. Their interest focuses on cases where errors are easily recognizable, such as in artificial laboratory situations and slips of tongue, or where the errors cry out for attention, such as in piloting mishaps and nuclear meltdowns.)

What’s interesting about GEMS, from a moral theory perspective, is how it aligns with the three main theories of moral action: virtue, duty-based theories and consequentialist theories. In what follows, I’m going to insert these three theories of moral reasoning into the three categories of human action put forward by the GEMS process, and see what the result looks like.

Virtue and skill-based action

Virtue theory has deep parallels with the schemas of skill-based reasoning. Virtues are emotional dispositions like courage and truthfulness. When operating on the basis of the virtues, one isn’t focusing on particular rules, or on getting the best consequences. Instead, the point is to have the correct emotional response to each situation. These steadfast emotional dispositions – the virtues – will then guide the appropriate behaviour.

Now, to be sure, it is mistaken to view Aristotle (the first and greatest virtue-theorist) or contemporary virtue-ethicists as basing all moral behaviour on habit and habituation, especially if this is taken to imply not actively engaging one’s mind (Aristotle’s over-arching virtue was practical wisdom). But the formation of appropriate habits, and learning through practice and experience to observe and respond to the appropriate features of a particular situation is a hallmark of this way of thinking about morality. (Indeed, it is reflected in the roots of the words themselves: our English word ‘ethics’ comes from the Greek term meaning ‘custom’ or ‘habit’ – and ‘morality’ comes from the Roman word for the same thing.)

Paralleling the psychology of error, we might say that the primary and most usual way of being moral is to be correctly habituated to have the right emotions and on their basis to do certain actions in particular contexts. We need to be exposed to those contexts, and practice doing the virtuous thing in that type of situation until we develop a schema for it – until the proper response is so engrained as to become second nature to us. Operating on this mode, we don’t consciously think about the rules at all, much less have temptations to breach them. Most good-hearted people don’t even think about stealing from their friends, for instance. It isn’t that an opportunity for theft crosses their mind, and then they bring to bear the rule on not stealing. Rather, they don’t even notice the opportunity at all.

Sometimes, though, problems arise. Even if we have been habituated and socialized to respond in a particular way, we might find a case where our emotionally fitting response doesn’t seem to provide us with what we think (perhaps in retrospect) are good answers. This may be because the habit was a wrongful one. Schemas are built around stereotypes – and it is easy to acquire views and responses based on stereotypes that wind up harming others, or having bad consequences. Equally, if we are not paying attention to the situation, we may be on emotional autopilot, and not pay heed to the ways in which we need to modify our instinctual or habitual response in response to the differences between this situation and a more stereotypical one.

Deontology and Rule-based thinking

At the points where our instinctive emotional responses lead us awry, (if we follow the analogy to the GEMS psychology of error) we will look to rules that have served us well in the past. In ethics these rule-based systems are called deontological theories. Deontology says that the point is not to have the right emotions, or achieve the best consequences, but to follow the proper rule in the circumstances. So when we are jerked out of habitual response by some moral challenge (unexpected harm to someone else, etc), the first thing we do is to scout around for rules to resolve the situation – rules that have previously served us well in the past. These might be very general rules: ‘What would happen if everyone did what I am thinking of doing?’ or ‘What would everyone think of me if they knew I was doing this?’

Or the rules we appeal to might be quite specific. In the GEMS system, we have a variety of options for rules to select, and we try and gauge the most appropriate one for the situation we are in. In ordinary moral thought, this process in fact happens in all the time. In fact there is a technical word for it (and a long history behind it): casuistry. When one reasons casuistically, one analogizes to other, closely related situations, and uses the rule from that situation. For instance, if we are unsure if first-term abortion is morally acceptable, we might first true analogizing to murder of a child, which has a clear rule of ‘thou shalt not kill’. But as we think about it, we might decide that the dis-analogies here are very strong, and perhaps a closer analogy is one of contraception, with which (let us suppose) we accept a rule that contraception is legitimate. Or we might analogize to self-defence, especially in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. In attending to the relevant features of the situation, we select what seems to be the most appropriate rule to use. Sometimes we use multiple rules to develop highly sophisticated and qualified rules for a specific situation.

Utilitarianism and knowledge-based thinking

But what happens when this doesn’t seem to resolve the issue, or we feel torn between two very different rules (as might have occurred in the above abortion scenario)? At this point the third, knowledge-based reasoning would come online. We must return all the way to first principles. In GEMS one way this can occur is through means-end rationality, where we take into account how much we want each outcome, and what the chances of each outcome are – given a particular action of ours. We then choose the action that has the best mix of likelihood and good consequences; we ‘maximise expected utility', as the point is put technically.

And of course there is a moral theory that requires exactly this of us, except that rather than maximizing our own personal happiness, we are directed to maximise the happiness of everybody, summed together. This is the ethical theory of utilitarianism which requires (roughly speaking) that we create the greatest good for the greatest number of people (or sentient creatures more widely). It is here that we have really hard thinking to do about the likely costs and benefits to others of our action. We weigh them up and then act accordingly.

Large-scale pluralist theory of moral action

Is this a plausible over-arching model of what moral thinking looks like? I think it has some merits. It is true that most of what we do, we do without a lot of conscious thought, on the basis of engrained habits and customs. We don’t go through life forever applying rules or calculating consequences; we hope that our habits of action, thought and emotion will generally push us in the right direction more often than not. And this might be particularly true when we are interacting with friends and lovers and family, where following ‘rules’ or coolly calculating risks and rewards might seem quite inapt.

But sometimes we are confronted with ethical ‘issues’ or ‘challenges’. We encounter a situation where habit is no longer an appropriate guide. It sounds right to me that in these situations we do cast about for rules-of-thumb to resolve the problem. We think about what worked before in similar situations, and go with that.

In some cases, though, there can seem no ‘right’ rule; no rule that will work fine if everyone does it, or no rule that does not clash with what looks to be an equally fitting rule. These will often happen in novel situations, rather than everyday encounters. And if they are worth thinking about, then it may be that the stakes in them are rather high – they might be the decisions of leaders, generals, or diplomats. In such cases, really weighing up the possible pros and cons – and trying to quantify the merits and demerits – of each approach seems appropriate.

Note also that some of the major objections to each theory might be managed by this pluralist, sequential account, where we proceed from virtue, to duty, to utilitarianism. For instance, utilitarianism can be philosophically disputed because the pursuit of sum-total happiness may lead us to sacrifice the rules of justice – or even to force us to give up on our deepest personal commitments. But on the approach here this wouldn’t happen. On everyday matters of personal commitment, we operate on the basis of our emotional dispositions and mental schemas and habits. When there is a clear rule of justice at stake, we accept its rule-based authority. But in cases where neither works – and only in those cases – we look to the ultimate consequences of our actions as a guide to behaviour. And even at this level we still have constraints based on our emotional habits and rules-of-thumb. The utilitarian decision-making operates within the psychological space carved out by these two prior modes of judgement.

Of course, like any such speculations, I am sure I raise more questions than I have answered. But it is striking the way that the three modes of decision-making that occur in the psychology of error map onto the three ways of theorizing about ethics, and that the process developed whereby a decision-maker moves from one mode to another does have prima facie plausibility in the way we go about making moral decision-making.

Zombie Apocalypses, Lasertag and Ethics

But does she count as a person for the purposes of
applying Kant's Categorical Imperative?

How would people behave in the world of a zombie apocalypse, and what, if anything, does it tell us about ordinary morality?

One theory is that we would all fall upon each other, tearing ourselves to pieces in a ‘Lord of the Flies’ type frenzy. Life in the zombie aftermath would be – in the words the Seventeenth Century political theorist Thomas Hobbes used to describe the ‘State of Nature’ – ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. And this is so not because of the dangers from zombies, but rather because of the dangers presented by other humans in a lawless world.

Is this really what would happen?

A recent post on The Conversation suggests – in a light-hearted fashion – that there is some evidence that it is. The author describes the player-to-player carnage of the videogame DayZ, where players struggle to survive in a post-Zombie-apocalyptic world. The costs and payoffs to players in the game are structured so that rational self-interested players benefit greatly from killing others and stealing their stuff. And that, for the most part, is exactly what the players do. Of course, some stalwart do-gooders can be found – healers of the wasteland – but they are all the more remarkable because of the cutthroat and solitary world they inhabit.

Better hope that Z-Plan is tight.

But it seems to me that all this shows is how warped the DayZ game-mechanics must be. A game that has people avoiding teaming up for survival is unrealistic. (Just to clarify that – a zombie apocalypse is of course altogether realistic. But a world where survival is not improved by being in at least small teams, preferably with cordial relations with other nearby teams, is utterly divorced from the irremovable realities of the human situation.) Some level of decency, trustworthiness and sociability is a core part of rational survival.

Now if we were to take the less fun path, this point could be argued through the theories of the great philosophers since Epicurus in the Greek Hellenistic period, and we could use the philosophies of Rousseau and Hume to refute the grim picture relayed by Hobbes. Similarly, we could make the point in terms of contemporary game theory, arguing that the dog-eat-dog ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ model of human interaction is a misrepresentation of ordinary reality, and that the more sociable ‘stag hunt’ game is a better picture of what is going on.

Instead though, I propose to take the fun path, and to compare the DayZ situation that which arises in zombie lasertag.

Stuck for a gift idea for the person who has it all?
Go with zombie apocalypse erotic romance!

But before we turn to violence; sex.

After all, the normal social motivations that pull people together will be just as relevant post-apocalypse. Indeed, this very day marks the book release of what I suspect is the first ever novel-length erotic romance set in a zombified world: Flesh by Kylie Scott.(No, the zombies themselves aren’t getting it on, so get that mental image out of your heads. Ew. No. It’s about a ménage forming amongst three survivors as they band together against the infected hordes.) And the idea here is a pretty plausible one. People are still going to have the same desires for companionship, love and lust in the new world. Probably more. Heck, you may as well live like there’s no tomorrow when there’s every chance there really is no tomorrow. Indeed, a considerable number of writers have written on this premise; it turns out there is in fact a website for the Romance Writers of the Apocalypse.

And there is a deeper point at issue here. There are basic survival gains in simply having a good time. This is the major problem I have with the TV series The Walking Dead. There’s a point at which grimness becomes pathological. Every character in that show seems just a nudge away from committing suicide. Lighten up people! In order to survive, you need to want to survive. You need something to get you through the day – and that might well be whatever gets you through the night. Ultimately, one of the best survival rules offered in Zombieland is not Rule #1 ‘cardio’, or Rule #2 ‘Double-Tap’, but rather Rule #32: ‘Enjoy the little things’. 

Or, in the case of Flesh, the not-so-little things. And all at the same time. Stag-hunt games indeed.

But to return from sex and zombie erotica to violence and zombie lasertag, last week I was fortunate enough to play in a test-run of the new Laserforce Zombie game.

For those who don’t know much about lasertag, the basic principle is pretty simple. You wear a vest-pack with flashing lights and sensors on it, and it attaches to a gun that shoots a laser. When your shot hits the sensors on the vest-pack of an enemy player, their suit registers that it has been hit, and it ‘goes down’ for a period of time – meaning that their lights go out and their gun won’t work. They can still be shot again, so usually they will have to run away and hide somewhere until their suit reactivates and they can start shooting people again. A central computer keeps track of everyone’s score – basically the amount of times they have shot the enemy and been shot by the enemy.

Social Science Experiments: Lasertag vs. DayZ

That’s the simple story. But most games of lasertag – such as the one I play at Laserforce league – are more complicated. A lot more complicated. In ‘Space Marines 5’ (the game that the international competition is held in) you have limited lives and shots and need to get resupplied by team-members – your ‘Ammo’ and ‘Medic’ – in order to stay in the game and keep fighting. Plus there are nukes, rapid-fire, missiles, ‘generator targets’, power-boosts and more. The goal in that game isn’t merely to outscore your opponents, but to eliminate their team altogether. Kill their medic out of the game, and then remove the other players one by one.

On the last League night, league players were used as the test subjects for Laserforce’s new Zombie game. The game is pretty much how you’d imagine it. Everyone but one player starts as a human ‘survivor’, with flashing red lights on their vest. One player starts as a zombie. The zombie (with flashing green lights) wants to infect the survivors, which it can do by shooting them with a ‘missile’. Using a missile is just like shooting them normally, but it takes a little longer. You have to ‘lock on’ to them with your gun pointed at their vest-sensors, which takes a little over a second. The zombie is also hard to kill. He has to be shot multiple times before he goes down, and it doesn’t take him long to get back up again. Once a survivor is infected, they have 30 seconds to get the ‘cure’, which pops up periodically at one of the in-game targets. If you can’t get the cure in time (and you can only ever use one cure per game), then the infection takes hold. Your lights turn green and you turn on your buddies, trying to infect them.

The game is an ‘individual’ game. That is, the score and player rankings are not built around team victory, but solely on individual performance. Your aim is to win personally, not to play a part in getting your team to victory.

So how did the survivors act in this situation, in order to maximise their own individual score?

Exactly how you would imagine. They teamed up.

Of course they teamed up. It took barely seconds for players to realise that there was safety in numbers. To be found on your own was to be infected. You needed players around you to communicate where the zombies are, to check in every direction the zombies might attack your position, and to create enough firepower to shoot the zombie down before he could infect anyone in your group. As well, the less zombies that were out there on the playfield, the more manageable the task was. Keeping track of and defending against one or two zombies was straightforward. But once you have five or six zombies, coming at you en masse and from different directions, the end is nigh.

In fact, so successful was the teaming up and communication amongst the dozen or so survivors that in the first test game the starting zombie wasn’t even able to infect anyone. Spreading out across the upstairs levels, players gravitated towards vantage points that allowed each group to patrol and defend one of the four routes the zombie could take to get upstairs. Equally, being upstairs allowed each group to keep track of an area of the lower playfield; with good communication every player on the field knew exactly where the zombie was at pretty much every moment of the game.

This might have happened in the second game as well, if some morons hadn’t ruined the important social science experiment by deliberately allowing themselves to be infected just so they could stagger about the playfield, infecting survivors and mumbling, ‘Brains, brains’. (I totally deny any involvement in such silliness.)

There was even enlightened self-sacrifice when it came to the cure. After some frenetic in-game arguments, some players were willing to forego getting the cure themselves, in order to let infected players use it. Better to not have the resource yourself than to have an ally turn into an enemy, and to let the zombies get a foothold in the survivor population.

The point is that a basic level of teamwork is a fundamental part of any real-world scenario. Human beings are in many respects, if not a pack animal, then at least a social animal. Throughout history they survive, or perish, in groups. They cannot see every direction at once. They need time to sleep, recuperate and reload. Their capacity to fight off threats increases in their greater numbers. And their natural specializations can lead to a useful division of labour in groups.  In a word, society pays off.

Thus I conclude that the zombie lasertag social science experiment supports the view that some level of moral behaviour – trust, teamwork and so on – arises amongst self-interested rational actors.

What is the result here for moral theory? Well, some might say that morality is entirely divorced from self-interested rational behaviour. Prudence has nothing to do with genuine respect for others. Others might say morality just is enlightened self-interested rational behaviour. The truth, though, is perhaps somewhere in between, and that the sociable teamwork required by the human condition – both in ordinary life and during zombie apocalypses – sets us on a path to morality proper.

A final observation. One interesting facet of the zombie evening was the question of rules. All the players on the night were Laserforce league players – and the League requires players abide by various rules, such as not chasing fleeing opponents with their lights out and not ‘blind-shooting’ opponents (sticking your gun around corners without looking and shooting). These rules are standardly applied in non-league games as well; while there are no referees in these games, others will chastise you (that is, they will abuse the heck out of you) if you clearly breach these rules. But no-one expected the zombie to follow the rules. Of course zombies chase their prey. The rules cannot apply to them. The ease with which everyone instinctually accepted this departure from the rules that accompany every other game was fascinating.

But then the further question arose as to whether the survivors should be rule-bound to the zombies. How could it be wrong to cheat against the undead, by blindshooting them for instance? They weren’t human; they weren’t really persons anymore.

Rational self-interest may lead us on the path to morality proper. But even morality proper has its limits – and they seem to stop about the time you dig yourself out of that shallow grave and start feasting on people’s brains.

There will be morality amongst humans in the post-apocalyptic world – but it probably won’t extend to the post-human. Sorry.