Perhaps the fundamental distinction in any study of ethics is that between descriptive and normative ethics. Clearly, ethical evaluations always involve norms. However, a study of ethical evaluations – for example, an ethnographic account of the moral principles affirmed by a particular group – need not take any stand on the “true” value of the acts or conditions being evaluated. For example, when the Pope characterizes abortion as sinful, he is engaging in normative ethics. In contrast, when a historian is surveying the development of Catholic views on abortion, he or she is engaged in descriptive ethics (unless, of course, he or she goes beyond a historical analysis to take a stand on the issue).

This distinction is crucial to any treatment of ethics, and it is important that authors be clear about precisely what project they are engaged in. As I have already explained, the first half of the present volume addresses the descriptive task, while the second half takes up normative ethics. In the course of the first four chapters, then, I hope to identify some key features of ethical thought and feeling in general and, perhaps more importantly, to isolate patterns that differentiate distinct, often opposed, ways of thinking about ethics. Specifically, I hope to clarify, systematize, and explain what I take to be two levels of ethical thought and action. The first level, what I call “fundamental orientation,” is very broadly defined by the setting of a few parameters in individual ethical response.Footnote ¹ That is the focus of the current chapter (with further development and literary illustration in the following chapter). In the third and fourth chapters, I will turn to the greater specification of ethical response in prototype assimilation, specifically attending to the role of story prototypes in construing ethically relevant situations and organizing our ethical motivations and actions in those situations.

In both the case of fundamental orientation and the case of prototype assimilation, I am relying on and extending research and theorization in cognitive science, affective science, and narratology, as well as ethical theory. For the broad division between rules and prototypes, I am drawing on work in categorization, as ethical evaluation centrally involves ethical categorization. In particular, I take up research indicating that we organize categories in three ways (Murphy and Hoffman Reference Murphy, Hoffman, Frankish and Ramsey2012, 166), as follows: (1) by rules with variables (alternatively, principles and parameters), (2) by approximation to weighted averages (prototypes; for an introduction to prototypes, see Rosch Reference Rosch and Hogan2011), and (3) by particular cases (exemplars). In the sciences, we typically try to define categories strictly in terms of rules with variables. For example, a chemical element has a fixed number of protons, but isotopes of the element vary in the number of neutrons. In ordinary speech, we tend to rely more on average cases. To take the standard example, we tend to think of birds as, roughly, things like robins. Thus, some cases of birds are more “bird-like” or prototypical than others. For instance, we would consider a sparrow to be a “better” case of a bird than a chicken or a penguin. The prototype is a weighted average because the psychological processes that produce prototypes enhance the contrast with opposed categories. To take another standard example, lettuce is identified as a highly prototypical diet food (Kahneman and Miller Reference Kahneman and Miller1986, 143). But lettuce’s zero-calorie value clearly enhances the contrast between diet and non-diet foods. Diet foods have fewer calories than comparable non-diet foods, but they almost always have some calories; their average caloric value is not zero. Similarly, our prototypes for male and female tend to be more “masculine” and more “feminine” than average. Categorization by exemplars – similarity to a prominent, specific case – is very important, including for ethical study. As already noted, I will not discuss it as a theoretical topic here. However, all the literary works I consider are particular cases, thus operating as exemplars – or as composed of exemplars – insofar as they, in their specificity, have consequences for ethical response.

The varieties of categorization are crucial to this study because ethical response is, again, inseparable from categorization. I respond to a situation as an ethical dilemma only if I categorize it as such. This does not mean that I have to self-consciously think, “This is an ethical problem” or the like. It merely means that the situation has to activate networks of thought and emotion that are connected via ethical categories, which may be rule-based, prototype-based, or exemplar-based. To take a simple example, suppose Jones is engaged in video piracy. Someone convinces him that he may be caught, so he stops out of fear of unaffordable fines. Smith too is engaged in video piracy. Someone convinces him that this hurts the video artists. Smith feels guilty and stops. It seems clear that Jones’s discontinuation of piracy does not involve categorization of piracy as immoral and is not an ethical response (though we would presumably say that the behavior is the same as would have resulted from an ethical response). In contrast, it seems clear that Smith’s discontinuation is an ethical response. Moreover, I do not believe that this requires Smith to think anything explicitly ethical. The categorization operates as soon as he (tacitly) connects the piracy with its effects on people and feels guilty. In terms of the analysis developed later in this chapter, Smith’s response relies on a fundamental (ethical) orientation toward avoiding harm to others if one has no (nonegocentric) justification for inflicting that harm.

Some Complications of Descriptive Ethics

Again, this and the following three chapters treat descriptive ethics, focusing on some significant, literature-relevant consequences of categorization processes. However, as noted briefly in the introduction, there are difficulties with entirely segregating descriptive ethics from normative ethics. Specifically, I (like everyone) have my own preferences regarding ethical values, and I am necessarily concerned with the normative issues that are addressed by the ethical responses I am describing. These preferences turn up in two ways. First, and most obviously, they turn up in my explicit, self-conscious statements about, and arguments regarding, moral values that I advocate. These statements are part of the book’s attention to normative ethics. These self-conscious attitudes might in principle distort my descriptive and explanatory account of ethics. But it does not seem terribly hard to segregate my explicit preferences from, say, claims that various sorts of ethical preference (including those I advocate and those I reject) may be understood in terms of narrative prototypes and dominant emotion systems. For example, my obvious leaning toward the ethics associated with romantic emplotment does not appear to inhibit my identification and analysis of other ethical attitudes, such as those associated with heroic emplotment.

The second way in which my own ethical values bear on the present study is more implicit, and thus potentially more troublesome. It concerns the definition of just what counts as ethical. It might seem at first that what counts descriptively as ethical is easy to ascertain – simply include whatever people use the term “ethical” or “unethical” to refer to. Unfortunately, things do not work out that neatly. The most obvious problem is that different languages use different words, and it is often difficult or impossible to find things that we would consider exact equivalents. The less obvious problem is that even people who use the same labels – such as “ethical” – differ in their understanding of the meaning and extension of those labels. (The meaning of a label – or lexical item – is the complex of concepts connected with it; the extension is the set of physical, mental, abstract, or other objects to which it may be used to refer.) It is, then, generally not possible to simply take what everyone refers to as “ethical” or “unethical” and treat the resulting collection as delimiting a unified social or psychological phenomenon.

One result of the preceding points is that writers commonly rely to some extent on their own moral attitudes in deciding even what is to count as ethics. To take a simple example, Jones might use the word “unethical” to cover cases of behavior that are harmless but violate what he admits are changeable social conventions. In contrast, Smith might use different terms – say, “ethical” and “conventional” – for acts that Jones labels “ethical.” There are at least two ways of treating this contradiction. One might assume that for Jones, ethics is in reality much larger than it is for Smith. However, this risks overextending Jones’s view of ethics, which may in practice be more discriminating than his speech indicates, and indeed it may be more discriminating than he is aware. The other way of treating the contradiction is to assume that Smith’s more fine-grained division is shared by Jones, though obscured by the latter’s imprecise terminology. This risks excessively limiting Jones’s view of ethics, if it is in fact more capacious than that of Smith. My suspicion is that in cases of this sort, we are almost all likely to favor interpretations consistent with our own moral preferences.

So, it appears that, in practice, normative ethical preferences are likely to color our selection of what counts as ethics. Thus, such preferences are likely to affect our descriptive and explanatory projects. However, this is not a reason to reject the distinction. The distinction is deeply important. The likely interference of normative inclinations in descriptive programs actually gives us greater reason to try to hold the distinction in mind, making it as clear and explicit as possible at each point in our analysis, in order to limit confusion between the two as much as possible.

Some Distinctions That Complicate Both Projects

There are, of course, other distinctions that are important to keep in mind when treating ethics. One of these is the difference between ethical deliberation and character development. Some ethical theories focus on how one should adjudicate ethical demands in particular cases. For example, how does a physician decide which of two people should receive the one remaining dose of a medication that both need? In connection with cases of this sort, it is usual to distinguish two broad types of moral decision as well – deontological or intrinsic and consequentialist. A deontological evaluation would begin from the premise that the ethically right decision has to do with the nature of the act itself. For example, a deontologist might argue that murder of innocent people is wrong, even if the murder would increase the well-being of many other people, prolonging their lives and increasing their happiness. In contrast, a consequentialist would focus on the likely results of each alternative. (There are also intermediate positions. For example, if I understand her correctly, Martha Nussbaum maintains that there is a core of intrinsic ethical rights, but the majority of ethical issues need to be evaluated in relation to the consequences of actions [see Reference Nussbaum2016, 173–174].)

But, again, our ethical concerns are not solely a matter of specific deliberative choice. Often, our ethical responses to situations are automatic, a matter of responding spontaneously and unreflectively. Robert Sapolsky refers to cases of people risking their life to save someone in an emergency (e.g., a child who has fallen on the subway tracks). When interviewed later, these rescuers regularly say they did not make a self-conscious decision to help but just acted spontaneously (see Sapolsky Reference Sapolsky2017, 566). This sort of behavior presumably results in part from innate propensities (e.g., spontaneous empathy). But it also results in part from more individual dispositions that derive from upbringing; in Sapolsky’s words, an “act of implicit automaticity” is “the product of a childhood in which doing the right thing was ingrained as an automatic, moral imperative” (Reference Sapolsky2017, 593). We often refer to an individual’s interconnected innate and acquired dispositions as “character.” A good deal of what we think of as ethics is a matter of the development of character. For example, among other matters, Foucault sets out to examine the history of responses to questions such as “What are the means by which we can change ourselves in order to become ethical subjects?” (Reference Foucault and Rabinow1997, 265). In doing this, he is not addressing ethical deliberation but character. We see this also in his stress on care of the self (though that may be more prudential than ethical).

In practical terms, focusing on character makes sense. As Sapolsky points out, “It’s great if your frontal cortex lets you avoid temptation, allowing you to do the harder, better thing. But it’s usually more effective if doing that better thing has become so automatic that it isn’t hard” (Reference Sapolsky2017, 671). However, I will be focusing on deliberative ethics. This is principally because, in ethical theorization, deliberation is necessarily more foundational than character. Of course, one’s character develops in tandem with one’s ability to engage in moral deliberation, and it develops prior to theoretical reflection regarding ethics. But that theoretically informed, critical reflection is necessary to determine just what sort of character development is ethical or unethical to begin with.Footnote ² Thus, we need to engage in ethical deliberation, determining what sorts of action are good or bad, before we can engage in a program of training and educating children so that they will be morally good, which is to say, so that they will spontaneously act morally in particular cases. What counts as moral in those cases is defined by, precisely, ethical evaluation.

On the other hand, it is important to recognize that character development is often central to people’s conception of ethics. This may be one reason for some divergences in what people consider to be ethical. In certain cases, the difference may not be precisely a matter of the acts themselves. It may be a matter of whether we trust the broader ethical orientation of the people involved. For example, Haidt tells a fictional story of a man who masturbates with a chicken carcass. He finds that at least some groups of US academics tend to say that the act is disgusting but not immoral, whereas (ordinary or “normal”) people tend to say it is immoral (Haidt Reference Haidt2012, 111–112). Roughly the same point apparently applies to Haidt’s other anecdotes. For example, one concerns a brother and a sister who have consensual sex once. The narrative fiction putatively covers all possible, practical contingencies, stipulating that they took foolproof contraceptive precautions, left no possibility of discovery, and so on. There are many possible reasons for the divergence between academics and nonacademic (normal) people in their responses to these anecdotes. Perhaps academics are more comfortable with the convention of stipulating that particular aspects of the story are certain, even though they would not be certain in real life.Footnote ³ But another possible reason is that US academics are confining their judgment to the specific, deliberative choice, whereas nonacademics are implicitly taking into account whether they would trust the moral character of someone who engaged in such an act (e.g., whether they would implicitly assume that these incestuous siblings would more readily violate other, uncontroversial social norms as well). It may be that the responses of the two groups would be more similar if the research focused on our implicit moral trust of the siblings. (I say “implicit,” as I imagine many of us would recoil from people who did this, even if we were to judge deliberatively that it does not in fact reflect negatively on their moral character.)

I suspect that most people would take the most important distinction in types of ethical response and reflection to be that between foundationalism and relativism. The former is the view that norms have an identifiable, objective basis, whereas the latter is the view that they are merely a matter of convention, stipulation, or preference. Within this general division, two further subcategories may appear particularly significant. Among foundationalists, we may distinguish theological from secular approaches. Theological foundationalists view moral norms as defined by God or some other transcendent, religious principle. Commonly, the issue of moral deliberation in this context is a matter of ascertaining divine will (e.g., through the interpretation of divinely revealed scripture).Footnote ⁴ Secular foundationalists appeal to some nonreligious absolute, such as the laws of reason; for example, in Kant’s view, it is immoral to engage in actions that (roughly speaking) would prove contradictory (Reference Kant and Ellington1981, 32) if their norm were willed as a general law. The most common form of relativism sees moral norms as varying by society or culture. Each of these approaches has some fairly obvious difficulties, which we can leave aside for the present.

For purposes of the current chapter, the key point is that these different methods of ascertaining what is ethical are likely to be consequential for describing ethical deliberation. In connection with this, I should comment on my own normative view here because it bears on the connection between descriptive and normative ethics, which is clearly important for a book that sets out to discuss both. I myself am certainly not a foundationalist. But I also bridle at the label “relativist,” principally as I do not view the ethical customs of a given society as having presumptive validity even within that society. For example, like almost everyone I know, I believe that condemnation of homosexuality is wrong; I do not think that such condemnation is wrong in the United States but right in, say, Iran (see Walsh Reference Walsh2019). Rather, I see myself as holding a third view, different from foundationalism and relativism, a view that I believe is actually fairly widespread, and even defended in different versions, but that is rarely identified and labeled as such.

Specifically, I hold the same view on ethical norms as I do on aesthetic norms (as discussed in Hogan Reference Hogan2016). I do not believe that such norms have any objective existence making them right “in themselves.” However, I do not believe that the crucial question is whether or not we can establish a foundation for norms. Rather, the key issue is whether we can make rational arguments in favor of one or another ethical position. I believe that we can do that. Specifically, we can do it through dialogue in which we seek to isolate common presuppositions and then reason over the implications of those shared presuppositions. The method for doing this is actually widespread in ethical theory. It involves considering specific cases, finding out whether we agree on those specific cases, seeking to draw out general principles, testing agreement on further cases consistent with those general principles, and so on.

For example, suppose Jones and Smith disagree about abortion. Jones asserts that the fetus is a human life and that the life or death of one person always outweighs lesser interests of others. Smith responds, “But I don’t think you believe that. For example, suppose I needed a kidney to live. You have two kidneys. It would certainly be good of you to give one to me. But do you really think that the state would be justified in mandating that you have to give a kidney to me, since – by your principle – my continued existence would trump any interests you have in keeping your kidney, avoiding surgery, and so on?” Jones may in turn respond, “You are right about the kidney case. But that is because virtually anyone could provide a kidney. The state cannot single me out to make that sacrifice. In contrast, the mother is uniquely able to support the life of the fetus. (By the way, I grant that it should be legal for the mother to have the fetus removed and raised in an artificial uterus, if that were to be developed.)” “But it doesn’t really help your case to say that the mother is unique. Suppose I have a vastly rare blood type and need a blood transfusion, and you are the only known person with that blood type. I suspect you still would not believe that the state could reasonably make it illegal for you to refuse to have your blood drawn.” (A dialogue of this sort might continue until the parties come to an agreement or discover a fundamental difference in their ethical beliefs.)

One difference between the way I approach these issues and the way many others do is that I take there to be a set of cross-culturally available moral attitudes that are central to our moral thought and action. I am not alone in this view about cross-cultural moral attitudes. It is shared by, among others, some evolutionary ethicists and a number of writers in cognitive and affective science. For example, Jonathan Haidt (Reference Haidt2012) suggests something along these lines in his “moral bases.” In my account, these cross-cultural attitudes – derived ultimately from emotion systems and bound up with narrative prototypes – provide partial, implicit bases for rational dialogue on moral issues. The general operation of empathy, simulation, and other cognitive and affective processes contributes to the possibility of such dialogue as well. Note that we do not all share equal commitment to all cross-cultural moral attitudes. Thus, there are likely to be some issues – sometimes, many issues – on which two people are unable to find a common ground. For example, I will argue that the bonding of romantic love and the associated narrative prototype favor ethical norms supporting free individual choice and opposing social identity categorization. In contrast, heroic narratives – with their celebration of group pride – tend to purvey norms of in-group loyalty and obedience to social authority. People who particularly stress the former are likely to find it difficult to engage in productive dialogue with people who particularly stress the latter, and vice versa.

As to cultures, they clearly disagree to some extent on the precise norms – thus, the emotion systems and narrative prototypes – they emphasize. On the other hand, there is always some distance between the norms affirmed by a society or any individuals in that society and the norms they actually follow in their daily lives. As Justin Barrett (Reference Barrett1999) has argued, there is often verbal conformity to “theological correctness,” which is belied by actual practice. The point clearly bears on “moral correctness” as well. In consequence, it is not necessarily true that a difference between two societies’ claims about ethics reflects differences in their real ethical attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, even when two cultures genuinely diverge in which moral attitudes they emphasize, the same sorts of ethical attitudes are likely to appear in both societies, even if they do not do so in the same proportions. In short, these recurring moral attitudes enable rational moral dialogue between some people, even in different cultures, while also inhibiting such dialogue between other people, even in the same society.

So, What Is Ethics, Then?

Given the distinctions just outlined – as well as others that we will be taking up later – the first proposal I would make is that we should not consider ethics to be a concept with strict necessary and sufficient conditions. We should, rather, understand it as a prototype concept. There are, in other words, concerns that are more centrally ethical than others. In defining ethics, we want to capture the most central cases. Where we leave off on more peripheral cases seems less important, though there will certainly be differences – personal, cultural, and other – in just how much one is inclined to include.

How, then, do we go about identifying core cases of this or any other prototype concept? It is often valuable to consider what sorts of primary contrast there are with a given idea. In the case of ethical decision, there is one clear and consistent contrast: acting out of self-interest. Moral behavior is difficult precisely because it so frequently conflicts with self-interest of some sort. As Schramme puts it, “Moral demands often oppose our own self-concerned desires,” such that “morality and egoism are opposing forces acting on the agent” (Reference Schramme and Maibom2017, 204). Roughley and Schramme write similarly that “moral action … is at least primarily a kind of action for other-regarding reasons” (Reference Roughley, Schramme, Roughley and Schramme2018, 6). Indeed, the entire point of having a moral code is to establish a norm that can overrule self-interested decisions and behaviors. If ethics converged with self-interest, we would not need ethics. Ethics would simply be what we did when acting selfishly, which we would do automatically. Or, rather, this would be the case if it converged with what we might call “egocentric self-interest.”

I will use the term “self-interest” to refer to any motivation to pursue one’s own well-being. I take it that all our behavior is in fact self-interested in this broad sense – though, of course, the “well-being” at issue may be short term, misguided in various ways, or even simply wrong about one’s preferences. (To take a trivial example, for years I thought I liked jalfrezi and would order it in restaurants, only to recall upon its arrival that jalfrezi is something completely different from what I remembered; nonetheless, on each of these occasions, I was pursuing self-interest with my order.) I would call self-interest “egocentric” insofar as it is not contingent on the well-being of others. I may act out of largely – perhaps even entirely – “allocentric” self-interest if I am distressed by someone else’s suffering and am myself relieved when that person’s suffering is alleviated. Many authors refer to this as “altruism.” That seems to me reasonable only if by “altruism” they mean behavior that provides one with no benefits beyond relief at the ending of another person’s suffering (or, in other cases, satisfaction with his or her joy).Footnote ⁵ However, if one is using “altruism” in the strict, motivational sense – where the agent receives no benefit whatsoever – then this characterization seems to me clearly wrong.Footnote ⁶ If I help a suffering person, I do so because I care that he or she is suffering. Thus, I am gratified when his or her pain is allayed. I am not indifferent. It is only if I am indifferent to his or her misery that I could be said not to benefit from the action in any way. (I leave aside cases where I help the suffering person because I want to be rewarded by God or the like, since these are clearly not altruistic.) When we speak of a conflict or an opposition between ethics and self-interest, we are not generally speaking of allocentric self-interest, but of egocentric self-interest.

With this in mind, I give the following preliminary and partial characterization of ethics, or rather of ethical evaluation and related behaviors: A value judgment and associated action are more prototypically ethical to the extent that they oppose egocentric self-interest. If I am correct that all action is in fact self-interested, then an ethical judgment can have motivational force, and therefore can lead to action, only insofar as it is allocentrically self-interested. Thus, judgment and action are more prototypically ethical insofar as one’s (self-interested) well-being is contingent on the well-being of others (thus, is allocentric).Footnote ⁷ We have the highest degree of ethical prototypicality when egocentric well-being is fully contradicted by the ethical alternative, as when it leads one to sacrifice one’s life.

Though my precise formulation is necessarily specific to my analysis and larger project, this definition is broadly in keeping with the observations of many other writers. For example, Haidt’s definition reads as follows: “Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible” (Reference Haidt2012, 314). Durkheim similarly writes, “What is moral is everything … that forces man to … regulate his actions by something other than … his own egoism” (quoted in Haidt Reference Haidt2012, 314). Howard Brinton makes the related claim that “in all religions self-centeredness is the chief sin from which all other sins are derived” (1973, 71). The Golden Rule – the paradigmatic ethical principle in Christianity – adjures reversing egocentrism into allocentrism: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7: 12, King James version).Footnote ⁸ The Confucian stress on shù (恕) or empathy involves the same idea. In a famous passage of the Analects, one of Kǒngzĭ’s followers asks, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” Kǒngzĭ replies with the word “shù” (恕), explaining, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others” (15.24, altered from Legge’s translation; see also 4.15). The same idea is repeated in “The Great Learning” (Dà Xué, 大學, 13).Footnote ⁹ The general idea is consistent with Kant’s assertion that one should “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means” (Reference Kant and Ellington1981, 36; treating someone simply as a means would presumably be a matter of using them to satisfy one’s egocentric self-interests). It is also consistent with utilitarian consequentialism, which displaces egocentric self-interest with a calculus of general happiness (in which one’s own well-being does count, but only as much as that of any other individual).

Note that this definition or characterization does not bias ethics toward any particular outcome. It is consistent with supporting the free choice of lovers, including choice that violates racial or other forms of segregation. But it is also consistent with supporting the self-sacrifice of soldiers, or the killing of unknown enemies, or the decision of lovers to separate in conformity with dominant racist prejudice. Personally, I favor universalism in ethics and find in-group preference highly immoral. As Patricia Greenspan writes, “The universal element of morality lies … in its application to everyone, regardless of culture or some narrower set of personal affiliations” (Reference Greenspan and Goldie2010, 244). But clearly many other people disagree. As Marilynn Brewer explains, “Research indicates that laypersons … view ingroup favoritism as normative … and that they reveal implicit preference for an ingroup member who discriminated in favor of fellow ingroup members over one who behaved in a fair, egalitarian way” (Reference Brewer, Sibley and Barlow2017, 102).Footnote ¹⁰ Both the in-group favoritism and the universalism count as descriptively ethical by this definition, as neither is simply egocentric.

A further benefit of this formulation is that it both distinguishes and relates ethics and prudence, which is, I believe, appropriate. There is something almost moral about being prudent. Doing what is best for me in the future is clearly not the same sort of thing as doing what is best for someone else. However, “me in the future” is different from me now. To choose the prudent option, I must in a sense choose the well-being of someone who is, so to speak, “less me” than I am right now. Indeed, when I imagine myself in the future, I have to take up empathic processes to try to determine what I will feel in the future, much as I have to do with others (see Soutschek and colleagues Reference Soutschek, Ruff, Strombach, Kalenscher and Tobler2016; Yong Reference Yong2016). Of course, the difference is that if something harms me in the future, I will directly feel the harm; it will not merely be empathic at that future time. Thus, prudent decisions remain egocentric, but they are egocentric in a somewhat attenuated sense.

A possible objection to this characterization is that it to some extent excludes forms of behavior that many people would consider ethical, specifically conformity to precepts due to fear of punishment or desire for reward. It makes such behavior prudential, rather than ethical as such. But that seems right to me. At the very least, it seems relatively clear that it is more ethically praiseworthy to help one’s neighbor out of fellow feeling than out of fear of postmortem torment. In the latter case, the judgment and action involve a form of egocentric self-interest, even if one that is (again) attenuated.

Specifying a Fundamental Ethical Orientation

Up to this point, I have only set out a broad characterization of ethics and pointed to a few general parameters (e.g., deontological versus consequentialist) that, when set differently, may lead to different ethical orientations (which in turn will need to be further specified into more particular ethical ideas and attitudes, which I refer to as “prototypes”). Rephrasing the preceding conclusions, I might say that ethical norms are principles that one acts on for nonegocentric reasons, thus reasons other than direct benefit to oneself; more precisely, the actions benefit oneself only as a function of benefiting someone else. This definition is intended to mark a broad area constituting ethical thought in general. Thus, it encompasses a range of contradictory systems, including the entire spectrum of political attitudes. For example, it includes the Fascist morality of absolute devotion to the state, articulated by Mussolini and Gentile as a “conception of life” that is “ethical” (Reference Mussolini and Gentile2012, 6; “etica” [Reference Mussolini and Gentile1935, 2]) “in a world sustained by moral forces” (Reference Mussolini and Gentile2012, 6; “forze morali” [Reference Mussolini and Gentile1935, 2]); more exactly, “anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State” (Reference Mussolini and Gentile2012, 7).

Clearly, then, this broad definition of ethics is too broad to lead to any particular ethical decisions, either spontaneously and intuitively (when we feel a particular action is moral or immoral) or through self-conscious deliberation (as in ethical theory). To get any sort of concrete ethical response, we need to specify the values of some key ethical concerns that vary across moral agents. I have referred to this as establishing a fundamental ethical orientation. It is probably the case that, for each of us, these variables are initially set through developmental experiences in childhood. Those developmental settings are probably enduring and are likely to be crucial to our spontaneous ethical response. However, we may also come to self-conscious conclusions about which settings are valid, as when we engage in ethical philosophy. The unselfconscious and self-conscious settings may be consistent or inconsistent with one another. In addition, both types of setting may vary with context. For example, we might spontaneously evaluate acts in terms of intrinsic morality but adopt an ethical theory that is consequentialist; in addition, our spontaneous evaluation might change in contexts where the harmful results of an action are unusually salient. Thus, there is considerable complexity in the actual operation of these principles and parameters. In this section, I will consider some of the more consequential variables that differentiate kinds of ethical orientation, conceptualizing these in terms of the parametric specification of ethical principles. However, to make clear the basic operation of such parameter setting, I will largely leave aside the complexities just mentioned.

I take three ethical parameters to be particularly consequential for defining types of ethical orientation. Again, ethical issues enter when there is a conflict between our individual well-being and that of others. However, an ethical preference for others’ well-being does not tell us how to resolve several difficulties. The first is that other people’s conditions of well-being will come into conflict with one another. Our ethical orientation must be able to determine which people should be the object of our ethical concern. Put differently, we need to set a parameter defining who receives our ethical consideration. I refer to this as the scope parameter. For example, nationalists confine ethical preference to the nation (and, within that group, Fascists confine it to the state). (There may be scope subvariables that hierarchize nonnational groups as well.) In contrast, ethical universalists set the scope parameter at humanity (or, in some cases, all sentient beings).

The scope parameter alone is insufficient to specify ethical response. Another concern is just what constitutes the “well-being” at issue. We tend to evaluate well-being relatively, not absolutely. This is indicated by the association between well-being and “downward comparison” (see Wills Reference Wills1981), a feeling of (in this case) in-group dominance in status, wealth, or some other property or condition. It is also indicated by the preference of individuals for establishing in-group superiority over out-groups, even when the absolute level of concrete benefit to the in-group would be higher if the groups were equal (see Duckitt Reference Duckitt1992, 68–69). Moreover, except in the case of universalism, the scope parameter identifies preferred and dispreferred groups – for example, the home nation and other nations, respectively, for a nationalistic scope. Once we have a particular set of targets for ethical preference, along with a set of targets defined as falling outside this preferred group, we may be supportive of the well-being of the preferred group or critical of the well-being of the dispreferred group. Specifically, our particular ethical judgments, and the encompassing systems of interlocking principles that they form, tend to stress either pleasure or pain, commonly seeking to confine one or the other to putatively “merited” cases. I refer to this as the valence parameter.

As just indicated, ethical preference is defined by reference to group membership – for example, national or racial group membership in the case of fascism. But that is not the same as merit. Whatever scope governs one’s ethical orientation, there are some cases of unmerited pleasure and some cases of unmerited pain for members of all groups (though one is likely to be concerned with only some of these cases, depending on how one’s valence parameter is set). One needs to determine precisely what constitutes merit. Merit is a function of conforming to a moral precept. Unmerited pain occurs when the target did conform to the relevant moral precept or when his or her violation is considered to be less severe than the punishment. Unmerited pleasure occurs when the target did not conform to the relevant moral precept (e.g., did not get married before having sexual relations) or did not engage in the more morally elevated, benevolent activities (e.g., religious practice or charitable giving) that would ethically justify reward. Thus, one needs a means of isolating what constitutes merit in these cases. I refer to this as the method parameter. As already suggested, methods are generally seen as falling into two broad groups: consequentialist (e.g., utilitarian), which evaluates ethical alternatives on the basis of (predicted) outcomes, and intrinsic or deontological (e.g., Kantian), which grades actions on (inferred) intrinsic worth.

In short, I will be stressing three parameters of allocentric judgment and behavior: first, the scope of the targets; second, the valence of the targets’ experience; and third, the method for adjudicating among evaluative and behavioral alternatives. There may well be other important parameters. However, it seems clear that these three are highly consequential, even if they turn out to be three items on a longer list. I will consider them in turn.

Before going on to these, however, I should say something about the next level of ethical categorization – prototypes. Though we will not turn to prototypes until Chapter 3, it is important to briefly consider their place in ethical response. As work by Eleanor Rosch and others has demonstrated (see Rosch Reference Rosch and Hogan2011 and references therein), human beings tend to categorize things and events, concrete and abstract, not by applying strict, rule-based, necessary, and sufficient conditions. Rather, in ordinary life, we tend to categorize by evaluating a target’s similarity to some (roughly) average case of a category. Thus, scientists judge something to be a bird by reference to strict criteria, but in ordinary life, we basically judge things to be birds based on their similarity to robins. Likewise, when doing ethical theory, we may evaluate the morality of an act by reference to strict criteria, beginning from the self-conscious version of our ethical orientation. However, when reacting ethically to situations in real life, we are likely to rely on their assimilation to standard cases. In ethical response, the situations and responses at issue are not static things. They are, rather, dynamic sequences of events and (human) actions. The trajectories of such sequences are given in stories, and thus the prototypes that guide our ethical understanding, evaluation, and response in such cases are, most importantly, narrative prototypes.

This is not to say that fundamental orientations do not play a key role in our ethical response. Rather, they play precisely an orienting role, guiding our attention to certain aspects of a situation, tilting our emotions one way or the other, affecting just what narrative prototypes are activated (thus likely to further organize and specify our response), and so on. Indeed, the use of prototypes in ordinary categorization has been overstated in the psychological literature. Prototypes are crucial, but they interact with necessary and sufficient conditions. For example, in ordinary activity, being organic is a necessary condition for being a bird, as opposed to a bird toy or a painting of a bird. (We may speak loosely of these as being “birds,” but obviously, if asked, we would all say that a painting of a bird is a painting, not an actual bird.) This sort of interaction between strict conditions and prototypes occurs in ethics as well.

Conclusion

There is a fundamental distinction between a descriptive study of ethics and a normative study of ethics. Descriptive ethical study investigates what ethical beliefs and attitudes may be found in or across different societies, historical periods, or individual people. It may stress the particularity of some local system, as would be the case with ethnography. However, it may also stress recurring patterns (as in Chapter 4 of the present volume). In contrast, normative ethical study treats what genuinely is ethical or unethical, rather than what people think is such. Ethical differences – for example, that between a focus on moral character and a focus on ethical deliberation – complicate both forms of study. Nonetheless, it is possible to isolate a coherent basic characterization of ethics that will allow discussion of both descriptive and normative topics.

Descriptive ethics proceeds by way of the usual methods of empirical study, conceptual analysis, and explanation through cognitive, affective, historical, or other relevant structures and processes. (The following chapters will stress cognitive and affective science.) Normative ethics cannot be established by empirical study. However, it is possible to rationally debate normative ethics, thus avoiding the apparent arbitrariness of relativism, without assuming some absolute foundation for morality. Such rational debate involves isolating shared ethical responses and then identifying and testing principles relative to those responses. There are, however, problems with this method. They include, among others, the artificial and unrealistic nature of the moral cases that ethicists typically consider, as well as the limited overlap in people’s fundamental moral orientations even in a single society.

But just how might we define ethics as an area of study? Our actions require motivation and thus emotion. These motivations are always self-interested in that they bear on our achievement of goals defined by emotion systems. Those goals, however, may be either egocentric or allocentric. In other words, they may be contingent upon one’s own condition or someone else’s condition. Ethics is fundamentally an attempt to limit egocentric motivation and action. Thus, ethical evaluation and action are prototypically allocentric. In other words, they are responses to the emotion-defined goals of other people and thus, broadly speaking, their happiness. This leads to my views, developed in subsequent chapters, concerning the ethical centrality of empathy.Footnote ¹⁵ This basic characterization of ethics has the salutary consequence that it relates prudence to ethics. Specifically, prudence is closely related to ethics as it involves a form of empathy with a person who is between self and Other – oneself in the future (as opposed to oneself right now).

In considering people’s ethical attitudes, three parameters appear to be particularly important. The first is the scope parameter. This governs just what set of targets (e.g., people) are viewed as the proper objects of ethical deference. There seem to be two widespread tendencies here. Some people are inclined to see ethical obligation as strongest regarding groups that are closer to oneself. For example, in this view, one’s obligations to one’s family are greater than those to one’s nation, which are in turn greater than those to humanity. The other tendency goes in the opposite direction, with one’s obligations to humanity being greatest. However, in practice these groups often differ less than one might expect since social arrangements assign obligations in ways that do not necessarily track general obligations (e.g., even the most ardent universalist is likely to recognize that social practices commit him or her to providing special care for his or her own children). Theoretically, we may refer to these more specific qualifications on the general ethical orientations as subparametric variables.

A second parameter is valence. We tend to focus our ethical attention on either pleasure or pain and on the degree to which people merit or do not merit their experiences of pleasure or pain. While it is in principle possible to attend to both, as a matter of fact it appears that most people are particularly concerned with one or the other. Thus, we find two broad types of ethical orientation – ethics of hedonic restriction (in which one condemns unmerited pleasure) and ethics of relief (in which one condemns unmerited pain).

The third parameter is that of method.Footnote ¹⁶ This concerns the manner in which one determines what is ethical or unethical. The two main alternatives here are intrinsic (or deontological) and consequentialist. The former evaluates acts as intrinsically ethical or unethical, whereas the latter relies on a calculus of consequences. In fact, it seems that both are in some ways intrinsic and in some degree consequentialist. On one hand, the deontological view that Jones does not treat Doe as an end if he plunges a knife into Doe relies on the fact that doing so will cause Doe pain and very likely lead to his death. On the other hand, a consequentialist calculation of an act’s consequences for producing or curtailing happiness clearly presumes that happiness has intrinsic value (as it is not a means to something else). The difference between the two methods is in part a matter of which consequences one takes into account. In the deontological case, the consequences are not confined to the case at hand but are generalized to the behavior of all moral agents in an ethically ideal society. In a pure deontological ethics, the important consequences are hypothetical, bearing on what would happen if everyone behaved ethically. In other words, they concern an ethical ideal. Pure consequentialism, in contrast, concerns what is likely to occur in actual, often very nonideal circumstances. A reasonable alternative for this parameter might be that we should generally set it to the “intrinsic” value of an act. But (as a subparametric variable) we may override that intrinsic value in cases where the intrinsic immorality of the act is low, the relevant consequences of all alternatives appear clear, and the likely consequences of the intrinsically ethical act are highly morally objectionable (e.g., when telling the truth would lead to the death of an innocent person.)

A further, important orientational difference is that between agent focus and action focus. An agent-focused ethical orientation concentrates moral evaluation on the person. An action-focused orientation, in contrast, concentrates on the behavior. This is as fundamental and consequential a parametric division as the others. However, it seems likely to derive from explanatory preferences, favoring personal dispositions or circumstances. Thus, I have not counted it as an ethical parameter per se.

Finally, it is important to add that the setting of parameters is not fixed immutably. It certainly appears as if we all have inclinations toward one or another valence, scope, method, and evaluative target. However, it also appears to be the case that we may change these orientations in different circumstances, with some of us being more or less likely to change than others. One important context for change is self-conscious ethical deliberation. When we reflect on our ethical orientation, we may change it significantly.