Institutions and Ethics

Institutions and Ethics Traditional ethics has sought to derive moral theory from the theory of rational action. Rational action should be shown to be the foundation of morality and moral action should be shown to be rational. Theorists seeking to do that have foundered, because they have identified whatever is rational with whatever is systematic, coherent and justified. The major possibilities, which are sometimes combined, are either (1) the society itself incorporates a comprehensive and coherent system of moral rules, (2) morality is based on the rationality of individuals pursuing aims in accord with comprehensive, coherent plans of action, which, according to some theorists, lead to well-functioning social systems, and (3) individuals follow a systematic, justified set of rules which are applicable in any context. The first alternative has been pursued by idealist philosophers such as Bradley and by functionalist sociologists such as Durkheim. Durkheim sought to make ethics scientific by studying its operation, by noting when it functioned well or poorly, and by making proposals about what to do when it was not working well. He found that ethical rules had three central characteristics: authority or discipline, attachment to social groups, and autonomy. The strength of morality is that it gives individuals tasks which they may carry out, which they may be successful at, and which integrates them in society. Giving individuals such tasks furthers the second aspect of morality which is attachment to social groups. But this is not enough, since individuals must not only accept authority and discipline and have an emotional attachment to a group. They must also be autonomous. Autonomy is achieved when one understands the dictates of society so well that one follows them not merely out of respect for authority, but also due to one’s own understanding of them. Morality shows weakness when it fails to adequately control and direct the tasks of individuals, thus leaving them without the proper attachment to society. One prime symptom of such a condition is increased rates of suicide. The prime remedy is to weave the web of moral rules in a better, perhaps a tighter, pattern and to increase the attachment of individuals to them. This is the prime task of education. This ethics is designed to be scientific and to make the central method for improving ethics sociological: Which social rules integrate individuals into society most effectively? There are at least five objections to this program. First, the sociological problems it poses have proved too hard for sociologists to solve, since they require holistic analyses of societies. Popper has shown such theories cannot be tested in such a way as to help us identify which aspects of society are responsible for difficulties. Second, although Durkheim notes that societies change and have to be adjusted to each society, he has no theory of this change outside of

decline under pressure and social planning to reintegrate them. Third, his theory of reform seems too one-sided, since its only goal is the answer to this decline by strengthening the organic unity of society. Fourth, the theory of autonomy offered by Durkheim is not adequate, because on his view real dissent is also lack of autonomy: any rational, autonomous person will not only obey existing rules but see that they are good. Contrary to this view autonomous individuals seek to change rules when they find them poor. And fifth, his theory of the good of individuals is also too one-sided, since it does not see good in independent action, but only in integration in society. When the functionalist program for social science and ethics breaks down, the second alternative, given traditional views of rationality, is to seek the foundations of morality in the rational actions of individuals, where rational action is conceived of as individuals following comprehensive and coherent plans in pursuit of their own (personal) goals. Rationality is thus often deemed nothing but a tool, which can be used for good or evil-Herbert Simon is an example (Simon 1983, pp. 78)—and the determination of good or evil a matter of intuition and/or feelings. Russell and Popper despaired, because they could find no connection between morality and rationality. Others who use this starting point try to move on to morality, but fail, because they seek to derive morality from self-interest. Utilitarianism is the most favored approach. Harsanyi, who is a utilitarian, and Gauthier, who is not, are examples. I have shown above how this approach fails to bridge the gap between self-interest and morality and falls back into holistic views. The third approach is to find as a guide for moral action some rational system which is independent of any social context. Powerful defenders of this view are Spinoza and Kant. It is generally agreed that it has failed, because it can neither identify and justify some set of moral principles nor take account of the consequences of actions, especially those which follow from adherence to some set of principles. Its influence has nevertheless been enormous and especially so on the deductivist views of rationality. Defenders of these views have sought to save the fundamental idea that an increase in rationality is also an increase in morality, because this idea offers the best hope of an ethic which is not based on some arbitrary commitment. Weber saw its power but also its weakness. This led him to a mere dichotomy between an ethic of conscience and one of responsibility. Both were needed, but he could not combine them in some system. The traditional project of deriving a moral theory from a theory of rationality, that is, of identifying moral improvement with improvement of rationality, is a worthy project, from which we have already learned a great deal. But it cannot succeed on the basis of traditional theories. The quest for a rational means of justifying action has to be abandoned in order to avoid (1) holistic theories appealing merely to societal standards, (2) individualistic theories which only appeal to the satisfaction of interests of individuals, or (3) theories such as Gauthier’s which appeal to both. A fallibilist view may avoid this unhappy conundrum by postulating the aim of moral action to be solving both problems of

individuals and institutional problems about how problems may be better solved by individuals. New developments in the theory of rationality enable us to re-establish the connection between rationality and morality. This theory enables us to avoid the holist-individualist dichotomy. Instead of deriving morality from rationality, we may show how an increase in the latter is also an increase in the former. We view all moral problems in their institutional contexts, as does Durkheim, but refrain from judging such contexts on the basis of the one-sided standard of how organic a society is. The preservation of good institutions and the improvement of any institution are pre-eminent moral-cum-sociological problems, but ones whose only purpose is to serve the interests of individuals. We may reformulate our ethical problems. Instead of seeking inviolable, societal principles or employing mere consideration of society as a whole or merely the interests of individuals, we may ask which problems individuals wish to solve and which methods they may most effectively employ in their efforts to solve them. On this view individuals set for themselves problems which they wish to solve, while both, on the one hand, avoiding all-or-nothing, right or wrong judgments and, on the other hand, still pursuing the aim of determining which actions are better or worse, which actions further and which actions reduce the welfare of mankind. We may then show how the pursuit of ethical improvement goes hand in hand with the improvement of rationality. We either use institutions to further the well-being of individuals or we improve institutions by rendering them more effective in helping individuals solve problems. In order to develop and to explain this point of view, let us first look at how we may integrate Popper’s theory of rationality with Russell’s problem oriented ethic to pose a new central problem of morality: how we can choose problems well? Second, we may explain the nature of good institutions as institutions which enable individuals to solve problems easily and well. Third, we may explain autonomy as the capacity to pose and solve problems in specific institutional contexts. Fourth, we see how this ethical theory is Spinozistic in that it recommends the pursuit of broad perspectives to make moral progress, thus uniting the quest for understanding with the quest to be moral. Fifth, we may explain how the question, Why should we be moral? can be reformulated as the problem, Why should one seek to raise the level of each persons ability to solve problems rather than just one’s own? and show how this problem may be solved. Sixth, we may explain why we increase morality when we increase rationality. Seventh, we suggest five criteria for evaluating the quality of problems. Eighth, we may explain how the dichotomy between using principles and consequences to judge the morality of actions may be overcome by viewing morality as a critical activity of posing and solving problems in institutional contexts. Ninth, we may note that a fallibilist ethic cannot entirely overcome Puritanism, that is, the use of exhortation and force rather than reason to produce moral behavior, but it sets the project of using reason to lessen the former and increase the latter wherever possible. Tenth, we may

examine how religion both furthers and hinders moral progress by helping and/or hindering individuals to solve problems. Fallibilist advances in the theory of rationality and Russell’s moral practice The most important breakthroughs in the theories of science and of rationality in the 20th century were made by Karl Popper. These breakthroughs consisted in his theory that we could gain knowledge without proving theories, that rationality was problem solving, that it required criticism and was, therefore, social. One of the most important moral thinkers of the 20th century was Bertrand Russell. Although he was an empiricist, he held Spinoza to be the proper model for ethics, because Spinoza unified rational action with moral action. Russell tried to use this model by showing how reason could be used to solve practical problems, presuming that men would do good, if they only understood how. Granting that increased understanding could not solve all problems or remove all pain, he traced action which led to suffering and which was immoral to intellectual mistakes, wherever he could. He sought, for example, to explain how ignorance and prejudice led to problems in sexual relationships, love and marriage, to reform education to make it more humane, to overcome the damages done by Puritan attitudes, and to identify cause of unhappiness based in intellectual mistakes (Russell 1929, 1930, 1954, 1976, 1988). He saw that the most pressing moral problems were the choice of problems one chose to solve. He saw, for example, that preventing nuclear war had to have priority over all else. Popper offers a complementary picture of rationality and ethics by failing where Russell made progress and by making progress where Russell failed. Popper failed to use the advances he made in the theory of rationality in his ethics, which he hardly developed at all. He adopted a Puritan ethic, which presumed that rationality requires a personal decision to be self-critical and that individuals are not inclined to be self-critical, because it threatens them. They feel secure in a closed society in which no one has to take responsibility for their individual thoughts and decisions. Individuals are not, then, inclined to be rational and, therefore, also not inclined to be good. They need to be implored and reminded of their responsibility to keep them on the right track, to keep them from falling back into dogmatism and to remind them to have sympathy for others. He encouraged people to be intellectually honest. Making intellectual mistakes and learning from them is no sin but rather the core of the pursuit of truth. In contrast to this humane and wise advice, he also said that individuals should work harder and do better. It is only by an act of will that we can be good. Curiously enough, Popper has no good theory of how we know what is good outside of feelings of sympathy for others. And these cannot depend on our will to be critical or do good. Russell made progress in his moral theory, but he could not integrate his ethics, which he called popular, with his view of rationality, which by his own admission broke down (Wettersten 1985a). This breakdown was due to his inability to find a

way to justify theories. He erroneously thought that, if one could not justify theories, one could not develop an adequate ethic. One would not be able to show that any course of action was better than another. This failure led him to despair, but it did not stop him from proceeding to do ethics well. On the one hand, he identified problems about how to live well and how institutions could be improved. On the other hand, he explained how one could approach them rationally, that is, with examined plans for solving them even without justification. What we need today is a Spinozistic ethic, that is, one which presumes that rationality is natural and that men will do good when they understand how. This theory presumes that men will do good, when they understand how, but not that they as individuals can always attain such knowledge, or even that such knowledge is always possible. In cases of ignorance other methods such as laws which are enforced will still be needed. But such cases are always an opportunity to pose moral problems about how these may be avoided. Such a theory needs to solve practical problems, but cannot be merely utilitarian. It has to take into account how established moral standards can be applied and improved. And it needs to do this by looking at moral standards as socially established solutions to problems of how to live well. In order to find such a theory we need to integrate the theory of rationality and moral theory. But this view must be, in contrast to Spinoza and Russell and nearly all traditional views, fallibilist. In accord with both it must view any increase in the degree of rationality to be the same as some increase in the degree of morality. This integration is possible if, on the one hand, we adopt Russell’s idea that the most important problem of ethical theory is to identify the most important problems and to examine solutions to them critically, and, on the other hand, adopt the idea that rationality is problem-solving plus criticism in institutional contexts. The latter gives us the methodological theory of how to go about the former. (In fact we find Russell already doing in practice what he rejected in theory.) When we deem rationality problem-solving plus criticism in institutional contexts, the major problems of ethics are changed. Instead of seeking either to follow closely the right principles or to devise plans for achieving the most desirable consequences of our actions, we seek ways of choosing problems well and the means of solving them, as Russell did (Wettersten and Agassi 1978d, 1987b). We need to begin with problems, because no rational appraisal of any alternative course of action is possible if we do not begin with the problem(s) it is supposed to solve. The first task anyone faces who seeks to act morally, then, is how to choose his problems well. The basis for this choice cannot be either certain principles or the consequences of actions alone. Rather, one analyzes how the problems of individuals may be formulated well and solved adequately, given the aims which individuals hope to pursue on the one hand and the institutional setting with its given theoretical framework in which they find themselves on the other. One asks how problems may be formulated and solved in specific institutional contexts.