Ethics

It seems to me that the best way of thinking about right and wrong is to think in terms of the rational assignment of credit and blame. People can assign these in various ways, but some will work better than others. A good system of moral and ethical values will give you some idea about when to make such an assignment. For example, the offenses under such a system must be such that you can detect them. Next, because the assignment of credit and blame is inherently social, it will work better if others share in your assessment. Ideally they should do so because it is rational to do so.

The rationality that I am talking about need not be self-interested or materialistic. A system of moral and ethical values can protect those that you care about from harm, and motivate people to do things that benefit those that you care about. This is true regardless of the size of your circle of concern. The assumptions that I will make tend to be ones that are fairly plausible, such as that people tend to seek credit and avoid blame, and that they tend to care more about people that are closer to themselves.

Some might object to my apprroach on the basis that the circle of one's concern is morally relevant. Perhaps this is so. However, we have no way of directly measuring another individual's circle of concern. For this reason I believe that the best approach would be to evaluate action.

In general a principled approach to casting blame and assigning credit works better. If you blame someone for something that harms you or some people you care about simply because you care about them, then others might not share your opinion if they have a different circle of concern. In addition, it is possible that the person in question is engaging in activity that is harmful to others and might harm someone you care about in the future. In fact all that you know is that you haven't detected any such offense as of yet. Principle makes detection of a harmful patern of behavior much easier.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of my approach is that I don't think that it is generally useful to blame people for not helping others. This is because as a patern of behavior non-assistance to others would be difficult to detect. You would have to place such a person under continuous observation. People might help others when you are not looking. Second, people will naturally be interested in influencing the behavior of people around themselves. The only way to convince people to do something they would not otherwise be inclined to do is to convince them that it is in their best interest. There are roughly three ways of doing this. There is deception, which is harmful. Next there is a threat, which is also harmful. Lastly there is an honest promise to help someone in return. So generally, by enforcing rules against harming others we make it so that people are likely to help each other.

If we carry it to its logical conclusion, an obligation to help others means that failure to help others is worthy of blame. This position is an initiation of harm against another individual. It is incompatible with the idea that we should only blame people as part of a strategy to prevent them from harming others. In fact as long as we are trying to benefit others, this is the only reason why we would want to harm others in any way. In addition to this, when we blame others we will want to mitigate the harm that we do by blaming others. This comes with forgiving others when it is appropriate to do so.