Ontological ethics

When Christianity no longer held water for me in my mid-twenties, I spent a lot of time trying to dream up alternate systems for ethical decision-making. Not that Christianity provided the greatest system for making tough choices to begin with (in applying the Golden Rule, for example, how do you decide who the most important "other" is to do unto when there are competing interests?), but I had a hard time coming up with something to replace it, and pretty much all my attempts failed.

One of the more promising-seeming attempts to me was something I thought I might term "ontological ethics." That is, when a morally ambivalent situation arose, I could look to a pre-existing statement about my identity, about who I was, to guide me. This is, I think, something of the thinking behind the mission statements or identity statements that some organizations write. They hope to be guided in tough times by a statement of identity. Many have argued that this was what made Johnson and Johnson's highly ethical reaction to the 1982 Tylenol scare so admirable and why the company enjoyed such a good reputation afterwards.

I saw an example from literature I thought might provide a model. Well, only sort of from literature. It was Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, but I was primarily thinking of the Valjean from the musical, not the Hugo novel. That's because the primary ethical test Valjean faces in the musical is one he puts in rather pointed and ontological terms.

I confess. I like musicals 

If you've forgotten, the context is this: Valjean was a criminal who was released on parole. He broke his parole and became a wealthy factory owner and mayor, but the obsessive inspector Javert is determined to find Valjean. He believes he has found him in the mayor, but is unable to coax Valjean to reveal his true identity. Javert lays a trap for Valjean: he lets Valjean think that he has found a man Javert believes to be Valjean, and that Javert intends to send this innocent man to prison for life.

Valjean gives serious thought to letting the man go to prison. He is not without good reasons:

I am the master of hundreds of workers
They all look to me.
Can I abandon them, how would they live,
If I am not free?
If I speak, I am condemned,
If I stay silent, I am damned.

From a utilitarian standpoint, Valjean is probably better off letting the other man take the fall for him. It's a difficult time for working folks, and Valjean is a benevolent factory owner. His arrest and the loss of all he has built will probably mean empty stomachs for many children dependent on the wages his workers earn. From a "greatest good for the greatest number" reckoning, Valjean should shut his damn mouth.

But Valjean has decided before this particular ethical dilemma that he is not ruled by utilitarian choices. He was saved by an idealistic decision made by a priest that was the antithesis of utilitarian thinking. Therefore, Valjean determines that:

My soul belongs to God, I know
I made that bargain long ago
He gave me hope when hope was gone,
He gave me strength to carry on...
Who am I? Who am I?
I'm Jean Valjean.

That's great, but maybe a little too neat

I was very attracted to this resolution Valjean arrived at by applying an ontological solution. It seemed incredibly profound. But maybe a little too profound. This resolution was kind of a contrived and stacked solution. Of course he's able to answer his dilemma by simply answering the question of who he is: that literally is the question. Try to think of a single ethical dilemma you've faced where simply determining who you literally are so easily resolves the problem. I bet you've never faced such a thing.

(Side note: I'm probably misusing the term "ontological." Although ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with being, I think it's more concerned with fundamental questions of existence, like what it means to exist and how we can know if something really exists. Questions like "who am I?" are more personal questions asked in modernity, and are more pop psychology than philosophy. A Google search reveals only a very moderate use of the term "ontological ethics," and if it were a more philosophically valid term, I imagine it would have a lot more currency. I don't see anyone using the term in the way I meant it twenty years ago.)

Three levels of a similar dilemma

Let's say you're a Marine, sworn to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In scenario one, you are a corporal ordered to lead your squad up a hill, and you believe the attempt will fail and you will all die without serving any useful purpose in the defeat. In scenario two, you are a General ordered by the Pentagon to carry out a strategy you believe will be ineffective and lead to many more deaths on both sides of the war than an effective strategy might. In scenario three, you are the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and you are being told to plan and prosecute a war you know the President has rigged evidence in order to start. It's an unjust war, you believe, but one the President feels needs to be fought for larger geo-political ends that justify the means.

The Corporal

As a corporal taking the hill, you aren't being asked to do an ideologically unethical thing (assuming the conflict you are in has passed whatever just war tests you apply to it--you're here, after all, so I assume you believe in the war on some level). You're being asked to do an unethical thing from a utilitarian or practical standpoint. Sacrificing lives for a cause is noble; doing it for nothing is stupid and unethical. Of course, there are possible complications. You might be wrong. Maybe the officers know something you don't know. Maybe they're counting on you to lead your squad so well you accomplish the impossible. Maybe this bad choice is the least bad choice they have.

You could refuse if you're sure the plan is bad and will kill people for nothing. But then you'd go to the brig, and someone else more enthusiastic about following bad plans will take your place. You could follow it out fully and hope for the best, but then you'd be the one who has to live with dead Marines and thinking you could have done something to help them.

There are also alternatives that try to avoid the worst effects of either choice, a Captain Kirk-like searching for the choice that avoids the no-win scenario: You could pretend to carry out the orders with alacrity, but find all kinds of procedural reasons to slow-roll the plan. You could hope that if you slow-roll it long enough, it will get cancelled.

Valjean himself ends up with a mixed response. He turns himself in, but when Javert will not give him three days to wrap up his affairs, Valjean clocks him and escapes again.

The General

The General is in an incredibly tough spot. His objection to his orders is in a murky area between ideological objections and practical ones. He could refuse his orders. As a General, he may be able to simply retire, and he could then write an op-ed in retirement about why he thinks the war is being handled wrong. But again, it's likely someone else will take his place who is a lot more gung-ho about carrying out what he thinks is a broken plan.

He has many of the same half-measure options the corporal does. He could carry out his orders according to the letter of the law, but refuse them in spirit. He could find dozens of subtle ways to undermine the strategy. He could use his position on-the-ground to slightly alter his tactical orders from what the Pentagon wanted. If he does it well, he might alleviate some of the worst parts of the Pentagon's plans. If he just quits, his influence will be limited to whatever credence the public gives to his post-service testimony.

The Chairman

The Chairman's position is the most problematic. He has the most evidence of a clear, idealistic moral wrong, but he also has the most leverage to be able to mitigate the effects of the wrong. He could, of course, quit his job, take his case to the public, and hope the court of public opinion vindicated him. But what if the President, in spite of fighting a war against his objections, rather likes the Chairman and takes his opinion seriously? What if the Chairman, by staying at his post, can at least change the kind of war America fights, if not the raw fact that there is a war?  Should he give up his best shot at influencing the situation in order to make a point?

What all three quandaries have in common

None of these moral dilemmas can be solved by applying the Valjean test. You can't say "Who am I?" and come up with an answer that will point you in the direction of a solution.

But maybe there is something similar that could be useful

If you've ever taken a multiple choice test, you're probably familiar with the strategy of answering the same thing to two different questions, because you know it's the right answer to one of them, and you figure it's better to know you're getting one of two right rather than take a chance of missing them both.

While I don't think real life offers us many instances where we can just ask ourselves who we really are and get a useful answer to a moral question, it's possible that we can develop a heuristic that will at least limit our possible errors. It's a different question from "Who am I?" It's "If I have to make a mistake, what kind of mistake would I rather make?" For the corporal, for example, his possible mistakes are: 1) Stand up for the safety of his troops and be wrong that the mission was really doomed, or 2) Err on the side of following orders, and find out that his suspicions were correct, and his Marines died without accomplishing anything discernible.

To use an example more common to many of us, let's say someone is asking us for money. We suspect they're scamming us, but there's maybe a twenty percent chance the story we're getting is real. Is it worse to trust someone and be a sucker or to doubt someone and miss a chance to help?

If we decide for ourselves what kinds of mistakes most suit who we are, and we stick to making those kinds of mistakes, we may not improve our chances of getting it right in any one situation. We might, however, limit the types of mistakes we are likely to make over the long term. Assuming that out of 1,000 truly difficult decisions, one type of action or the other is likely to be the right one in about 500 of them, we can, by being consistent, be right at least 500 times. And we'll find it easier, perhaps, to have failed on our own terms. Changing the kind of mistake we're willing to risk making with each situation, however, makes it possible we will be wrong more than half the time. (It also makes it possible we'll be right more than half the time, but do you want to take those odds?) It can also leave us bitter when we make choices that don't suit our own inner voices.

Still not sure this is satisfying

I don't know if twenty-some years of pontificating on this has led me to a more satisfying solution than I started out with. For one thing, it's possible there are some people with such a developed ability to weigh outcomes, they really can make the correct decision more than half the time. I wouldn't want to preclude people from making decisions differently from one situation to the next if they can really do it well. For me, though, I tend to be so often paralyzed by tough choices I almost just never even make them. At least having some rough algorithm might get me to make the decisions.