Topics Ethics

Question Are all non-self-contradicting ethics systems equal? Say I don't physically discipline a child because I believe it is unethical to intentionally harm another human. Do I have any reason to say that another person ought not to physically discipline their child if they believe that there is nothing unethical about harming another?

Accepted:
January 26, 2012

Comments

Good question. You ask if all self-consistent ethical systems are equal, by which I take it you mean "equally plausible," "equally likely to be true," or "equally defensible." The crude sample principles you gave might suggest an affirmative answer to that question, but only because they seem about equally implausible. The first principle implies that I can't justifiably harm another even to protect myself or an innocent third party from harm. The second principle implies that I can justifiably harm another for any reason, or no reason, at all. Both conflict with widely and deeply held moral intuitions that are more plausible than the principles themselves. Adherents of each principle could simply reject those intuitions, but we don't have to regard that as a successful defense of those principles.

More generally we might ask, "Are all self-consistent descriptions of reality true?" Logic gives us a straightforward answer: No. Two self-consistent descriptions of reality can be inconsistent with each other, and in that case they can't both be true. The Matrix description of reality and the commonsense description can't both be true, even if we could never find out which, if either, is true. A self-consistent description of reality doesn't become true simply because we can't tell that it's false. Nor must it be just as true as any other self-consistent description. I'd say the same thing about an ethical system, a description of ethical reality. It's a different and harder question how we know when one description of reality in general, or of ethical reality in particular, is true or more true than another.