For quite a while now, I have been asking myself and those close to me questions about morality, how we can know what is right and what is wrong, and even whether there was such a thing as a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ action. These questions seemed very important to me, because for as long as I can remember I’ve tried to do the right thing, but there has never been a consistent way for me to find out what that was. One of the biggest problems I’ve had was that I couldn’t figure out what ‘morality’ even means.
So, since ‘morality’ is one of those words for which almost everyone has a different definition, I decided to try and start from scratch and define it myself. The word ‘morality’ could literally mean anything. For example the following could be what the word means;
- “The study of red things” or
- “Large fatty seeds of the avocado tree” or
- “Motor vehicles.”
But these words don’t align at all either with my intuition or with common usage, and so wouldn’t be very useful. More likely candidates can be gotten by starting with my gut reaction, which is that;
- “Morality is the things that people shoulddo.”
This seems to be a fairly good place to start, since when people are talking about morality they always seem to be telling me I should or shouldn’t be doing something. The following feel to me like statements relating to morality.
- “You shouldn’t lie.”
- “you should forgive people.”
- “you should pay your taxes.”
- “you should love your family.”
- “you should kill the nonbelievers.” :)
While obviously better than “avocado seeds” I still think there is a problem with this definition; the word ’should’ still feels like a problem. You could say “you should eat healthy and exercise,” but that doesn’t seem like a statement about morality, but rather a statement about health. ‘Should’ always seems to be accompanied by some specific value or goal;
- “You should eat healthy and exercise if you want to be healthy”
- “You should take marijuana ifyou want to get high.”
- “You should practice regularly if you want to be a master pianist.”
You ’should’ do A if you want the things A will get you. But the ‘moral’ statements above seem to be lacking any specific value or goal attached to them;
- “You shouldn’t lie if…”
- “You should love your family if…”
Does this mean that they have no specific goal? Are they the goal themselves? I think this can be resolved by remembering that my intuitive definition sounds fairly universal, like it applies to everyone. Maybe a better way to word it would be;
- “Morality is the things that all people should do.”
This doesen’t really change the definition, only makes it more clear. Now, remember that If you should do something, it means that you want whatever that will give you. Thus if there is something everyone should‘ do then everyone wants the things that action will get them. So the question now becomes, what are the things that everyone wants? I think I can be fairly confident in saying that the only thing that absolutely every human being wants is happiness. All the other things people want, they want because they hope those things will make them happier.
So, lets say there is some action - let’s call it B - that every human being should take. If that is true, then B must be an action that will make every human being happy, And ‘morality’ is the collections of all such actions. So;
- “Morality is the things that will make anyone happier.”
This wouldn’t include things that only make some people happy, such as playing basketball, owning a dozen cats, or flying to Mars. It only includes those things that make everyone happy. I will discuss my thoughts about what those things are in a later post.
I am happy with this definition, it feels like it has helped me to clarify many of my other thoughts. You may disagree with me about what ‘morality’ means. But as I said before, it is one of those words that has as many meanings as there are people, so I figure I might as well define it in a way that makes sense to me. I welcome anyone who reads this to correct any errors you may see, and would love to discuss other possible definitions. But I have a feeling you’re going to have a hard time convincing me I should do something that isn’t going to make me happy.