On Morality by Lowell Kleiman

If by “morality” we mean a code of conduct that is universally valid, then the basic issue in the study of ethics is, is there a universally valid code of conduct? Are there rules of behavior that prescribe how a person should conduct him or herself in all places and all times? For example, when anybody adds 2 + 2 the result should be 4. If any other answer is obtained, the person made a mistake. 2 + 2 does not equal 5, or 3 or anything other than 4. To say otherwise reveals an ignorance of addition, not an alternative but equally valid code of mathematics.

The rules of mathematics are universally valid. The same rule, for example, 12 + 19 = 31, tells us how to add, whether we are living on Long Island or Timbuktoo, in the late 20th century or the 4th century B. C. An Izbekustany peasant who counts 12 goats on this side of the pasture and 19 goats on that side of the pasture, concluding that there are 32 goats in the pasture, makes the same mathematical error as an instructor at in any college in the USA or in Japan who counts 12 students on this side of the room, 19 students on that side of the room, concluding that there are 32 students in the room. That the peasant and instructor live several thousand miles apart, are brought up in different cultures, are of different ethnic backgrounds, subscribe to different religious and political traditions, is irrelevant in determining the rights and wrongs of their behavior. The only relevant considerations are whether they are using the correct rule and whether they are applying that rule in the correct way. For example, if either instructor or peasant thinks that 12 + 19 = 32, then one of them does not know arithmetic, and the other does not know how to count.

The same is true of morality. Just as any proposed rule of addition that is not universally valid cannot be a rule of mathematics, so any proposed rule of conduct that is not universally valid cannot be a rule of morality. For example, cultures that have practiced incest, ritual human sacrifice, matricide, patricide, slavery or female sexual mutilation are immoral since their creeds are not universally valid. Clearly, mutilation, slavery or any of these other modes of conduct are not valid in the USA or Canada or Japan or Peru or Iceland or Turkey or Nicaragua or Mexico, or any part of any country or state that comprises the civilized world. Just as 2 + 2 does not = 5, so sexual mutilation does not = morality.

It may be objected that the argument above makes those of us who agree with it followers and proponents of Western Civilization, arbiters of right and wrong. We are imposing our values on the rest of the world, or at least on those few countries, such as Libya and the Sudan where slavery and mutilation are practiced. We are judging people by standards that are not their own; we are committing the “ethnocentric fallacy.”

Perhaps we are. Perhaps we have no right to condemn killing, maiming, brutalizing and destroying when other people do these things. Perhaps our beliefs about right and wrong are limited, provincial, naive, uninformed. Maybe slavery for others is not so bad after all; perhaps child abuse for other people’s children should be encouraged; murder in other societies condoned, rape in foreign countries commended. Perhaps we must rethink our beliefs about right and wrong. Maybe we don’t know the difference.

But if we don’t know what we think we know, how can we be certain, how can anyone be sure, that aside from mathematics, there is no universally valid code of conduct? If we don’t know that incest was wrong among the ancients, then we don’t know that it is wrong today. Aside from the fact that the Egyptians who practiced incest lived many years ago, the act itself has not changed since then. Nor has rape, enslavement, mutilation or murder. If we cannot condemn the acts of others, then neither can we condemn the same acts when performed by those among us. And if we cannot condemn our own rapists and murderers, then rape and murder, and all the rest, are not just to be condoned for others, but condoned for everyone. So there is a universally valid code of conduct, although it seems very different from what we naively take it to be. The question is, which code is correct, the one that condemns ritual mutilation, or the one that condones it? To answer that question we must turn away from the theories of normative ethics.