Chapter 1: Morality and Ethics
I make a bright distinction between morality and ethics. Morality is what we do to promote the
right and the good and create a better world. Ethics is what we say about that. 1
The actions that no one has any reason to wish had been different at the time they were
taken are the most moral actions. When we do the best thing, all circumstances and all other
moral agents considered, there is nothing good left to be done. Sometimes events and perverse
people get in our way. It will not do to bellyache or moralize about that, or to spin theories about
what we might have done in better circumstances. 2 Our job is to do the best we can, here, now,
and even to moving some of the obstacles aside.
Difficult moral choices force our hand. Ethics, by contrast, can be postponed, reframed,
and abstracted, and it tends to drift into reflection about ideals. 3 We can think deeply about
ethical matters, even when we do not actually do anything. Morality works to move us as a group
from where we are to the best we can possibly be. Ethics is often concerned with the part of the
journey that individuals take in their own imaginations.
This is a book about action we can take with others to build moral communities.
Doing the Right Thing and Talking About It
Everyone is for ethics, but we do not keep score the same way. There is a common but suspect
definition of ethics that enjoys great popularity, especially among those who like it. It goes
something like this: “There are absolute, universal standards for judging what is right and wrong.
Some people are confused about this, but I know I am ethical because I act in harmony with the
standards. I am not responsible for making others do what it right. All who act contrary to these
standards are ethically blameworthy. Obviously if we did not know the right thing to do, the very
notion of ethics would lose its meaning.” I try not to be this person. 4
The accepted view is that we begin by considering alternative courses of action and
weighing them against ethical rules. Once we have a justifiable position, we are ready to take
action. This is known as the principles approach to ethics, or normativity. 5 It is even suggested
that norms have a motivational power. 6 If some people do not act ethically that is because they
cannot tell right from wrong. If that is true at all, it is certainly not universally the case.
Politicians lie, companies mislead the public, there are problems in the clergy, and civil
courtesies are abridged – all by folks who know better. Moral incontinence among those who
know what to do but do not do it is widespread -- vast. We need words like shame, sin, hubris,
and cheating to describe the all-too-real gap between ethical theory and moral behavior.
It is not obvious that better theories will fix the problem. There are people who
consistently contribute to a better world for those around them and know practically nothing of
the philosophical foundations of normativity. My maternal grandmother was the very soul of
goodness. She was not good on principle; she was just good. She was unclear whether
nonmaleficence was a pasta dish with sweet cream or a skin condition.
Is it possible to develop a coherent approach to morality that is not based on the
normative principles of ethics? Is agreement with others on ethical concepts a precondition for
moral action? Can I be moral even when others are not? Is it acceptable to do the best possible
without being “perfect?” Can groups and communities act morally? Do we learn morality from
seeing how others react to us? Might it be the case that human nature itself rather than a set of
rules is the ultimate ground for morality? Why should we expect to be treated as moral agents if
we do not extend the same respect to others? Can society be evolving to a higher level of
morality, even while individual human nature improves more slowly? The chapters that follow
are an attempt to address some of these questions.
A study by Eric Schwitzgebel (2009) published in Philosophical Psychology will make
this more concrete (also Schwitzgebel and Rust 2009). Schwitzgebel surveyed thirty-one
libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom to see which kinds of philosophy books
went missing most often. Books about ethics had disappeared at a rate of 50% to 150% more
often than books on logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, and others. It is unlikely that the
people who purloined these texts were mental midgets. The libraries participating in the study
included Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, Cambridge, and the like. It would also be unfair
to throw up the classic complaint that philosophers are absent minded and had just not gotten
around to returning the books yet. The rate for returned overdue books was similar across
disciplines. There have been no studies published demonstrating that physical possession of
ethics books enhances moral behavior. 7
I have taught ethics in business schools and in a dental school. The first year I taught
dental students I assigned a comprehensive end-of-term paper to be based on a set of readings on
reserve in the library. Nothing happened until a week before the end of the term when the student
body president and several class officers asked to see me. I feared a rebellion against an
assignment that might (perhaps reasonably) have been regarded as theoretical and remote from
the practical concerns of professionals. Instead, the students were upset that someone had stolen
all copies of the reserve material in an obvious attempt to disadvantage their classmates. If I had
failed to replace the readings with new copies I certainly would have been able to finger a
student or students who knew a lot about ethics but very little about morality. 8
Perhaps this book will have a chance of remaining on library shelves if it is clear that it
is about what we do together to make the world better and not about normative principles of
ethics.
In this first chapter I will introduce and lightly illustrate the main themes that will follow.
These ideas are summarized in 24 claims about morality. By the end of the book I will illustrate
and explain each of these claims in detail.
1.
Morality is about mutual actions that neither agent would wish to change – the best
common way forward. Ethics is the theoretical consideration of ideal behavior, usually
for individuals considered one at a time, to justify the various actions. [Chapter 1:
Morality and Ethics]
A Rich Example: Pepper Spray
The Occupy Movement in 2011 spilled over to some of California’s universities. Students and a
few faculty members briefly established make-shift tent communities in public spaces on several
campuses to protest proposed tuition increases. One such encampment existed for a single day on
a grassy public area at the administrative center at UC Davis, an hour north of San Francisco.
The protest ended on 18 November, with the arrest of 20 individuals and the pepper spraying of
several dozen protesters. Video of the event was seen by millions on the Internet, and there was
wide-spread outrage. The matter has been investigated by the Office of the President of the state
university system and local law enforcement officials, amid calls that the chancellor of UC Davis
and the chief of the campus police step down, be fired, or disciplined. In September 2012, courts
awarded over $1 million in civil damages to those who were sprayed. This incident demonstrates
how morality can be mangled while still keeping at least one foot on ethically defensible ground.
The Facts of the Matter
The account that follows is based on a formerly confidential report of the Kelso Group, a
risk management consulting firm hired by the university system, and the report of a task force
chaired by Dr. Cruz Reynoso, an emeritus UC Davis Law School professor and former Justice of
the California Supreme Court. These reports are available online. A third investigation remained
ongoing many months later involving the roles of Campus Police Chief Annette Spicuzza and the
other officers. Because of the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights existing in California, such
investigations are confidential, so the story from the perspective of the security staff is not
complete. There are no consistent accounts from the students’ point of view.
During the week of 14 November, increasing numbers of students assembled for
demonstrations in public spaces at UC Davis, expressing opposition to the possibility of tuition
increases. Part of an administrative building, Mrak Hall, was occupied overnight that
Wednesday. Student leadership announced intentions to create a tent city in the style of the
Occupy Movement on the Quad beginning on Thursday afternoon, 17 November. The leadership
team of the university monitored these developments, principally via conferenced calls, and then
planned their approach, including giving directions to the campus police in order to guide their
response.
The chancellor’s office informed both the students and the campus police that any tents
erected were to be removed by Friday afternoon, 18 November. Previous communication with
the campus police force and with students had conveyed the chancellor’s expectation that no
force would be used and that peaceful assembly would be permitted. Each of these principles is
ethically sound. Officer P of the campus police force, under the direction of Campus Police
Chief Spicuzza, had already developed a tactical plan for operations and conduced an officer
briefing on Tuesday of that week. It was determined then that officers would wear riot gear,
carry batons, make arrests in the face of resistance, and use force, including MK-4 pepper spray,
if indicated. These plans were not communicated to the chancellor’s office.
Interviews by investigators following the incident revealed that there was little
coordination among the groups, including students, regarding their conflicting impressions of
what was expected and almost no attempts to gather accurate information regarding the situation.
Although Chancellor Katehi’s approach and her guiding principles were announced, there was
no effort to understand the issue from the perspective of students or campus police. She assumed
that others would implement her ethical vision because it was reasonable and right. 9
A focus of decision making by the leadership team was its perception that most of the
protesters were from outside the campus community. The office in charge of the operation
estimated that “non-affiliates” comprised 80% of those in the Mrak Hall incident on Wednesday.
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Giselda Castro had been negotiating with student leaders on
her own and believed in contrast that “virtually all” those present were students, faculty
members, or sympathetic citizens groups providing food. This inconsistency in the alternative
framing of the situation was recognized by the leadership team, but no effort was made to
resolve the discrepancy. In the end, the administration’s having had the facts wrong contributed
to their solving the wrong problem.
The chancellor’s office issued an order that the tents should be removed at 3 o’clock in
the afternoon on Friday and expressed hope that this could be accomplished peacefully. This left
the protesters the option of continuing their demonstration as a tentless, but lawful assembly or
defying the order. It was publicly stated that “all members of the campus community are
expected to respect each other and act in a civilized manner.” Chancellor Katehi said she did not
provide direction on how to achieve her goals because she believed everyone knew what should
be done. The university leadership announced a solution that was reasonable in their own view
and expected that it would also be reasonable to others.
The envisioned best outcome, however, is not what happened. The field police officer in
charge on Friday afternoon declared the assembly unlawful and issued the required order to
disperse, which the students verbally declined. Following protocol, a number of students were
identified as being under arrest and were detained for transport to custody. Apparently, it was not
anticipated that students would refuse the request to disband, and an edgy confrontation emerged
because the police had not made arrangements for moving those arrested. About 50 active
protesters were present, but the crowd of sympathetic spectators quickly grew to hundreds and
the cell phone videos were rolling. Eventually, some police cars were brought to the back of the
Quad and some of those arrested were escorted to them. When additional transportation arrived,
it parked directly behind the largest group of protesters who were seated with arms locked.
Instead of going around the students in order to open a path as the previous officers had done, the
seated protesters were pepper sprayed at close range with MK-9. 10 Fourteen individuals were
arrested (including two non-affiliates), but all charges have since been dropped. About a dozen
protesters sought medical attention from firefighters on the scene as a result of the pepper spray
and two were admitted to Sutter-Davis Hospital. Millions of people have seen video clips of the
incident. Police Lieutenant John Pike, one of the two officers who actually used the spray, is the
only individual involved who has been disciplined. He was relieved of his duties.
The administrative team’s ethical framing of the situation may or may not have been
theoretically correct; the real issue is that the framing based on a single party’s principles was
inadequate and led to a regrettable outcome.
2.
Any course of action other than the one that maximizes the joint future worlds of those
involved is immoral, even if it is “justifiable” based on ethical theory. [Chapter 2: Moral
Engagements]
3.
The morally best way forward cannot always be determined by one agent acting on
behalf of others. Those affected must be granted mutual moral agency – each
acknowledges that moral claims on others are the same in both directions. [Chapter 2:
Moral Engagements]
4.
In every possible moral engagement there will be a best joint action, one that neither
party has any reason to wish were different. This will be referred to as the Reciprocal
Moral Agent solution (RMA). [Chapters 3 and 4: Simple and Complex Moral Choice]
The Moral Perspective
The approach taken by the administration in the UC Davis pepper spray incident was
flawed because it mistook the nature of its responsibility. The understanding of the problem was
theoretical and idealized and based entirely on a private point of view. The administration
assumed that it had privileged or at least sufficient ethical insight for both itself and for others.
Even if theoretically defensible, there were obvious holes in the moral behavior that resulted.
Let’s consider the matter from the moral perspective rather than the point of view of one
party’s ethical principles. At about 4 o’clock on Friday, November 18, a “moral engagement”
was unavoidable. This simply means that two parties had at least two options, and the best
strategies were interlocked so that neither party could independently control the outcome.
The students had a choice between abandoning their tented protest and risking possibly
violent arrest by defying authority. The administration had the options of withdrawing while
seeking other alternatives and making arrests in the face of resistance. Considering the two
party’s two options together, any of four outcomes were possible.
The administration had a rank preference over these options that probably looked
something like this. Best outcome: students abandon their concerns and administration continue
as usual. Second best outcome: students remain in place, but police use restraint with
negotiations to follow. Third best outcome: student mount resistance that is met with force.
Worst outcome: students demonstrate peacefully or indicate willingness to disband but force is
used by the campus police. In the events leading up to the confrontation and in previous similar
incidents the administration signaled a strong desire to avoid using force. We know from the
testimony of the commissioned reports that only a single outcome was countenanced by
Chancellor Katehi – students would abandon their cause because she thought they should. Had
the matter be entirely in the hands of Chancellor Katehi and had matters gone as she expected,
there would have been a peaceful resolution. The problem is, of course, that wishing something
does not make it so, and seeing the right does not make the right.
From the student perspective, a slightly different ordering of the four outcomes would
have been preferred. Sitting tight and making some noise while the administration backed off
would have been the best future. Resisting and getting a rise out of the campus authorities with
the publicity that would bring would have been the second choice. While the administration was
favoring no reaction, the students were favoring resistance. Of the remaining outcomes, students
would have unwillingly accepted the martyr role of showing no resistance by having force used
on them. Worst of all would have been to just go away. That is what the chancellor thought most
reasonable; but the students ranked this as very undesirable.
The ranks across outcomes for the administration and for the students are displayed
formally in Figure 1.1. This is called a moral engagement matrix. Each pair of numbers in the
[square brackets] represents the relative desirability of one of the four possible outcomes. Larger
numbers signify more desirable future worlds. The number on the left in each bracketed pair is
the rank of the outcome as the students viewed the situation and the number on the right in each
bracketed pair representing the relative desirability of the outcome from the administration’s
perspective. These matrices are not a third-party view based on ethical theory; they are the
preferences of the actual participants involved at the moment of the decision. I will use these
moral matrices throughout the book to systematically display the preferences of two moral
agents whose potential actions are interconnected. They will become second nature.
Administrative Perspective
“Resist”
“No force”
“Force”
[4 3]
[3 2]
[1 4]
[2 1]
Student Perspective
“Disband”
Figure 1.1: Moral engagement matrix for police disruption of UC Davis student protest.
The details of moral engagement matrices will be unfolded in the coming pages, but no
deep understanding of decision theory is required to understand the picture in Figure 1.1.
Everyone I have shown this to, even without explaining the background, immediately says that
the best thing that could happen under the circumstances would be for the university to stand
back and allow the protest. Almost everyone who has looked at this also adds without prompting
that applying force to peaceful demonstrators would be the worst of all choices.
The chancellor considered only a single outcome: the students would disband and no
force would be used. But when we grant moral agency to the students and imagine what they felt
was appropriate, the picture becomes more complex. Their giving up without making their point
probably would have been the worst of possible worlds (as reflected by the [1] value in Figure
1.1). Chancellor Katehi did not have it in her power to force the kind of resolution she would
have preferred. Let’s take it off the table as being a solution to a hypothetical situation. Of the
four realistic possibilities, which would the administration have preferred? With “disband” / “no
force” out of play, the best future would have been to permit the protest and follow up with
negotiations. It happens that this is exactly the same joint strategy the students would have
preferred. No other combination of outcomes would have resulted in an outcome they would
rank higher. Thus we have found the moral solution, the one that would have brought about the
best future world that neither party would have had a reason to change under the circumstances.
The actual outcome was use of force on slightly resisting students. This was acceptable
to the protesters who were seeking publicity for their cause. For them, this was the [3] or next to
highest ranking in the [3 2] set of outcomes in Figure 1.1. This would have received a lower
preference ordering of [2] by the administration. If, as many do, the passive blocking of the most
direct route to the waiting police vehicles is seen as non-resistance, the actual outcome was the
worst one possible [2 1] not so good for the students and terrible for the university.
On any plausible reading of the moral engagement matrix, what happened was less
desirable than what could have happened. Both of the independently commissioned reports
reviewing the incident have laid the blame for the poor outcome on the leadership team. These
reviews faulted the fashion in which the chancellor’s office framed the issue and concluded that
unrealistic expectations were the cause of the unfortunate incident. The Reynoso Report begins
with these words: “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper
spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”
The leadership team was judged to have failed to act consistently with the standards of clear lines
of communication, accurate assessment of the situation, blurring strategic and tactical decisions,
and failure to ensure that commonly accepted procedures for managing such situations were
followed. The overarching principle that was breached was leadership responsibility for
managing public safety.
5.
All cases with moral dimensions can be framed as engagements between two or more
parties, each having two or more alternative actions and a desire to bring about the best
possible future given the circumstances. Such moral engagements can be expressed as 2 x
2 tables and the rank preferences across the four outcomes then used to pick the best
joint strategy. [Chapter 2: Moral Engagements]
6.
Moral choice is a two-step use of common sense. First, the engagement is framed to make
sense based on the realistic alternative future worlds available. Second, a common
action is taken that neither agent has reason to wish were different. [Chapters 7, 8, and
9: Framings, Common Sense, and Bargaining and Reframing; Chapters 5 and 6: Simple
Moral Engagements and Complex Moral Engagements]
The central moral failure was basing administrative action on ethical principles held only
by the administration. There were additional moral failings that contributed to or resulted from
the primary leadership stumble. If we think of the incident evolving over a longer time frame, it
is possible to identify a series of moral engagements flowing into and compounding each other.
Although there was only one physical reality on the ground when the action began at 3:35
on Friday afternoon, there were numerous interpretations of the situation and all of the
interpretations were infused with individual values. For example, over the previous six months
there had been several student protests on the UC Davis campus, and a regular procedure had
been developed to manage them. Students were generally allowed one night for occupation of
public space followed by a negotiated withdrawal. The occupation of Mrak Hall just two days
prior to the pepper spraying incident had been resolved that way. Students plausibly were
working under that assumption about the tents. It has already been mentioned that the leadership
team greatly exaggerated the proportion of non-student members in the group. There is a widely
used protocol, called the National Incident Management System, for managing non-violent
protests in public spaces such as campuses. But it was not consulted or used. Very heavy
criticism was made of the fact that the leadership team had a responsibility which it did not fulfill
for taking full advantage of all means of communication to get to a common understanding of the
situation. The administration framed the moral engagement differently from the way students did
and differently from generally accepted protocol for managing such situations. And they failed to
take advantage of opportunities to get a common framing.
To illustrate this point consider the following examples of other engagements that were
part of the overall pepper spray incident.

On Wednesday, Officer P conducted a briefing on potential field operations for his team
should there be a decision to demand dismantling of a tent village. The university
administration did not attend or provide input to this meeting. After the fact, the campus
police were informed that “whatever action was [to be] taken, it would have to be
directed by the administration and coordinated with their expected outcomes.” What the
leadership team had done was to remove the option of using force consistent with the
National Incident Management System guidelines while still holding campus security
officers accountable for an outcome they had said was not achievable otherwise. In moral
terms, the administrative team had COERCED the campus police by preempting an
appropriate response on their part.

Giselda Castro, Assistant Vice President for Student Life, met several times during the
run up to the encounter with demonstrators on the Quad. She was frustrated to some
extent by the protester’s ambiguity in articulating their concerns, but she reassured them
that it was the chancellor’s intention that no recourse would be made to force and the
right of peaceful assembly would be preserved. She painted a picture of the situation that
did not include violence. Because previous engagements had been resolved through facesaving negotiations rather than force, one could say that the students had been DECEIVED
into imaginings that they were facing one situation, when another was really in play.

In conference calls on Thursday, the leadership team was fixated on the proportion of
“non-affiliate” protesters and the fear of a permanent environment that attracted offcampus activists and created unsafe conditions. They received estimates ranging from a
large majority of outsiders to almost none. The leadership team chose not to get accurate
information but to act on the belief that outside control was a significant threat. They
deceived themselves by misinterpreting the facts to prejustify a course of action they
favored.

A fourth example was the actual use of pepper spray by two officers of the campus police
on protesters who presented no direct threat to officer or public safety. The two officers
told the investigation commissions that they judged the situation to be out of control.
They used a particularly virulent form of pepper spray, MK-9, in some cases as close as
two to three feet from the seated protesters. In the situation briefing three days earlier,
only the use of the standard and less potent MK-4 was discussed, and protocol for that
involves a distance of at least six feet.
Student Perspective
“No spray”
“Passive”
“Dangerous”
[4 4]
[1 2]
[2 1]
[3 3]
Police Perspective
“MK-9”
Figure 1.2: Moral engagement matrix for use of MK-9 pepper spray.
The engagement matrix for the actual pepper spraying is shown in Figure 1.2. Protesters
could disperse in the face of eminent use of spray or not and police could choose whether
or not to use the spray. Again, by convention, [4] is the outcome ranked best and [1] is
the least favorable outcome. The left-hand number in each pair is the preference from the
perspective of the police officers and the right-hand number is the preference ranks for
students.
This is an even more clear-cut moral engagement than the overall
university/student encounter. There is a Win-Win solution here. Students maintain nonviolent resistance and police move detained protestors around the seated students.
Instead, the [2 1] outcome of spraying protesters who did not represent an immediate
threat was chosen. This represents an approach to moral engagements known as
CONTEMPT.
Later I will show why any action that forces others to accept their worst
possible ordering of outcomes, any cell with a [1] in it, is per definition immoral. The
general point is that any joint action that leads to an outcome less desirable than the best
resolution possible fails to satisfy the standards for moral action.
7.
We cannot force our interpretation of a moral engagement on others; nor do we need to
do so in order to optimize moral outcomes. [Chapters 5 and 6: Simple Moral
Engagements and Complex Moral Engagements]
8.
There are multiple ways of handling each moral engagement. Among the possible
decision rules are EGO-CENTRISM, ALTRUISM, AVOIDING THE WORST, DISENGAGEMENT,
DECEPTION, COERCION, RENEGING, and CONTEMPT.
All of these rules are based on private
principles, one person at a time. [Chapters 3 and 4: Simple Moral Choice and Complex
Moral Choice]
9.
Different situations call for different actions. Although they can be complicated, there are
a limited number of types of moral engagements. Thus it is possible to identify and
characterize the structure of every imaginable case. Most are munificent in the sense that
it “pays” to engage others rather than work alone. Sometimes circumstances combine to
compel agents to make choices among degraded alternatives. When nature deals us
difficult hands, we must still play morally. [Chapter 5: Simple Moral Engagements]
10.
It is possible, using either a set of six “rules of thumb” or a simple spreadsheet program,
to uniquely identify the optimal mutual moral solution, called RECIPROCAL MORAL AGENCY,
for every possible type of moral engagement that might arise. [Chapters 5 and 6: Simple
Moral Engagements and Complex Moral Engagements]
11.
We solve moral problems as we understand them, not as an impartial third party might
see them. We only have access to how we interpret matters and how we believe others do.
[Chapter 7: Framing]
12.
The process of moral perception or framing inherently conflates cognitive, emotive, and
conative dimensions. The thoughts on which we base moral choice are preloaded with
value and feeling at such a deep level that these cannot be bracketed off to gain a purely
rational solution. [Chapters 7 and 8: Framing and Common Sense and Moral Standing]
13.
Neurobiological and social psychological evidence show that “misframing” is inevitable
and systematic. Thinking our way out of this human condition is as illusory as is lifting
ourselves by our bootstraps. The continual corrective of seeing how others respond to us
and then trying again based on what we have learned is generally more effective in
promoting common moral progress than is deep reflection on ethical principles. [Chapter
8: Common Sense and Moral Standing]
The Ethical Perspective
In the previous section we looked at what actually happened on the UC Davis campus
and the moral alternatives had the administration the students, and the campus policy considered
the situation from each other’s perspectives as well as their own. Some readers may consider that
unnecessary. They might say, “Ethics is not about accommodating to other’s principles. Just do
the right thing. We should still follow normative principles ourselves even when others choose
not to. The chancellor need only consider how students should have acted and what the police
should have done.” Others might say, “Just do the right thing. We students (or campus police)
are only responsible for doing what we believe to be right and Chancellor Katehi should have
known better.” The usual way of resolving such standoffs where each party is reading from a
different page in the ethics handbook is for a third party to offer a new, revised edition. But that
process tends to go on until those involved agree to use the various versions each feel best suit
their interests. Sometimes there is agreement among parties about how to frame an encounter and
which principles take precedence, but in many and important cases, that is not so. We still need a
way to make moral progress for all cases. There is nothing wrong with honoring abstract ethical
principles. What requires explanation is acting in ways that predictably degrade both others’ and
one’s own potential to live a better life when the principles fail to get the job done. The answer is
not to have a “principles war.” 11
The relationship between ethical principles and good behavior works on a rational system
known as the ethical syllogism. 12 It functions like this:
Major premise: It is a violation of individuals’ civil rights to permit them to be subject
to physical harm without legal grounds when there is no imminent threat of danger.
Minor premise: The policies and leadership in place at UC Davis on 18 November 2011
did not adequately protect against unwarranted bodily harm.
Conclusion: Therefore the leadership team contributed to violating students’ civil rights.
If both the major and the minor premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily –
inescapably by logical or reasoning. But the major and the minor premises are verified using
different means. The major premise is established by philosophers, or sometimes by lawyers or
religious leaders. These principles are meant to cover a wide range of actual situations, some of
which have not even been imagined yet.
The minor premise is a matter of interpreting specific cases. Illegal public safety hazards
should be removed on principle, but did Chancellor Katehi overstep her authority in making a
tactical decision regarding the execution of her responsibility? There was certain to be a large
crowd of spectators and protest supporters on hand then in the middle of the day. Was it wise to
overrule the campus police who recommended that such action be taken at 3 at night? Was it
legal to declare the tents an unlawful overnight encampment in the middle of the day? Did Police
Chief Spicuzza fail in her responsibilities for coordinating administrative and enforcement
efforts? Did she fail by not representing to the leadership team the officers’ determination that
force would be required or absenting herself from the meeting of officers on Wednesday where
the operational plan was created? These are judgments about facts and not judgments about
ethical standards. The events of 18 November 2011 at UC Davis could not have been “fixed” by
having better ethical standards.
Both consulting reports detail many instances where, in their opinions, the actions were
inconsistent with principles. In the American legal system, we recognize a division of
responsibility concerning the major and the minor premises in the ethical syllogism. Judges
interpret the law; juries determine the factual nature of the situation. In philosophy, metaethicists concoct major premises; ethicists assist lay individuals in interpreting the meaning of
minor premises. Sometimes ethics gets tangled up trying to solve an ethical dilemma by
providing better justification for the major premise when the real question is its application in a
particular context. Sometimes we just go out looking for principles that have been violated when
we dislike what others have done.
When more than one principle applies or when cases are ambiguous, there will always be
ethical regret. This is a technical term for the uneasiness, dissatisfaction, or sometimes anger one
feels in having made a choice when there is a mixed bag of blessings and troubles associated
with every one of the alternatives. This happens because ethical principles underdetermine moral
action: knowing the principles often does not cleanly determine what should be done. Principles
may be universal, but when we have to choose what to do, the alternatives are jumbles of things
we want and things we have to give up to get them. There are no perfect moral answers; there are
only better ones and worse ones.
Our mind can sometimes fool us into thinking that the world is a certain way just because
we can conceive of it as being such. This is called an antinomy. Oxymorons, such as “large
shrimp” or “deafening silence,” are the pairing of words that conjure up unexpected situations.
An antinomy is a juxtaposition of several parts where each provides defeating context for the
other. Each part makes sense by itself; but the parts are antagonistic to each other. A man can be
an only child, and a man can be my brother. But my brother cannot be an only child. Ideas of
unicorns are as real as anything, but it would be foolish to try to feed an idea. Among the most
famous antinomies is Lewis Carroll’s description of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland
(2000). The creature gradually disappeared until there was nothing left but a broad smile. Some
of the things we can imagine cannot exist outside our imaginations. That is fine as long as we do
not confuse thought and action. 13
Figure 1.3 shows two visual antinomies. They make perfect sense if the elements are
abstracted and considered in their own contexts. They just do not work in reality. Most of life
involves harmonious and mutually enhancing context. We are better together. The elements in
antinomies provide contradictory context for each other.
Figure 1.3: Two visual antinomies. The parts make sense, but when one part functions as the
context for other parts, the whole is impossible.
Chancellor Katehi and her leadership team failed because they tried to impose an ethical
solution on a moral problem. She embraced the antinomies. She is quoted as saying after the
incident, “I had my notions of the desired outcomes and did not provide direction on how to
achieve my goals because I expected that people will [sic] make the appropriate decisions to
make these things happen.” Chancellor Katehi sent the message that she wanted the tents
removed and did not expect the use of force (there was no ranking of outcomes in her view). She
wanted the tents taken down in the afternoon and wanted there to be no crowd of spectators. She
claimed to have simultaneously favored the right to assemble in peaceful protest and wanted to
block what was during the day a legal form of protest. She insisted that the campus police
coordinate their actions with the administration but neither sought information about what the
police intended to do nor provided clear instructions to them about how to proceed. The central
point of the external reports was that one could not act consistently on the set of values the
chancellor articulated. The antinomies of ethical norms fall apart when put into moral action.
Unfortunately they fell apart in a bad way on the UC Davis campus.
14.
Ethical issues cannot be solved rationally or on principle unless (a) the problem is
hypothetical, (b) is artificially reduced to only one or two dimensions, or (c) there is a
precondition that others see the world the same way the ethical dictator does. By
contrast, moral engagements can always be uniquely resolved with a best solution, and
without making any of these assumptions. [Chapter 8: Common Sense and Moral
Standing; Chapter 9: Reframing and Bargaining]
15.
Moral engagements can be made more attractive by reframing them. This involves
repeated engagements among agents to build trust, negotiation to reduce misframing and
optimize choices, and nesting engagements through a review process where communities
set standards for and may modify joint strategies taken by individual agents. [Chapter 9:
Reframing and Bargaining; Chapter 10: Moral Community]
16.
Joint actions agreed to be moral at one level are subject to review at higher levels in
communities. Communities “sponsor” engagements and have a legitimate interest in
harmonizing agreements among those in the community. By nesting engagements within
engagements we see how communities become both the context and the consequence of
moral action. [Chapter 10: Moral Community]
Plato’s Missteps
When asking for directions, the words that make my blood turn cold are “Oh, you can’t miss it.”
True story: some years ago a few colleagues and I were standing in front of a parking garage in
London, Ontario, Canada, waiting to retrieve our rental car with plans for dinner at a highly
recommended restaurant near town. We were each facing different directions because we had no
idea where the restaurant was. We asked for help from a woman who was passing, and she said,
“Oh it’s wonderful, it really is. You just continue on as you’re going here out of town and turn
about half a mile before the church that used to be there. I don’t recall the name of the road or
really it’s more like a street, but it’s the only one there. In three blocks it ends in a T and that is
Bennett Road, I think. Anyway, take a left. Go two more blocks to the first stop sign. Right turn
on St. Augustine, and the restaurant is two or three houses on the right. It’s a light blue Victorian.
Parking in the back. I love it because I’m a vegan. So I’m positive you’ll love it too. Oh, and you
can’t miss it.”
We thanked her, asked the garage attendant for directions, and drove out, wondering all
the time about anticipating the former church or finding the only road that was where that street
was. The dinner was lovely, as promised, which made us ponder on the drive back whether our
first direction giver was following the Golden Rule in commanding us to like what she liked or
whether vegans are good at reading minds.
The directions at the end of the list were precise and impeccable. The potentially fatal
advice came at the beginning, “just continue on as you’re going here.” The woman may have
known where she was going, but we were just standing there directionless at a four-way
intersection. The detail about the end of the trip was of little value because the first step was
quite likely to have been a misstep.
Something like this happened as Western philosophy was being systematized. Plato gave
us directions for ethics that included conforming to idealized norms and building up societies by
improving individuals. Two missteps. He thought it was obvious, and many since have just
continued on as instructed. As Alfred North Whitehead remarked, “The European philosophical
tradition . . . consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” 14
Plato believed in the existence of a world of abstract idealized forms or principles, such
as the ethical norm of justice. No one has yet been able to prove conclusively that there is
anything wrong with these ideals because no one has direct knowledge of anything in its
idealized form. Ever since, despite what we say about perfectly comprehended universal first
principles, human beings have been stumbling along based on unclear impressions of imagined
landmarks. We like to say that we are governed by a pull toward the ideal, but our saying so is
only vague and hopeful. On one has been to the end of the roads yet and come back with
directions.
There are two details to work out in our program to ground moral behavior in ethical
theory. Despite the fact that there are many times the number of salaried individuals working on
the problem than there were 2,500 years ago, we are still pawing through the possible principles
and cannot reach agreement even among those who are experts. What is more troublesome is that
people are inconsistent in acting on the principles they do profess. Philosophers have usually
wiggled out of the latter responsibility, leaving it to the clergy, politicians, or more recently to
psychologists. The fact that people misuse the best principles in a wholesale fashion has not been
regarded as discrediting the principles. Perhaps Plato was confused about where to start and we
should stop and ask for directions.
Plato’s other misstep also started us on a path that is now being questioned after having
been worn to a century’s-old rut. It is widely assumed that the unit of analysis in morality, or
certainly in ethics, is the individual. The world is made better by correcting the flaws in this
person or that and repeating the process.
In the fourth book of his masterpiece, the Republic, Plato (1945) outlined his theory of
the person and his theory of the state. He saw each as having a “soul” or nature, composed of
three parts. For the individual, he attributed most of our functioning to instinct, appetites for
food, video games, comfort, and bodily necessities. The second part of the soul was the spirit,
but more in the Greek sense of will, self-control, or even ambition or love of honor. Finally, each
of us, according to Plato, has a rational nature, the thinking function that distinguishes the real
from the apparent and governs the appetites and the spirit. Justice was conceived as the harmony
of the three parts of the soul. Each part was to carry out its own functions, with the spirit serving
as an enforcer of reason’s judgment on the natural human drives.
Plato advocated for the same three-part structure in society. Ordinary folks like teachers
and fast food workers were to be kept in line with the help of “auxiliaries,” the guardians or
police and their rules and principles. The whole show was to be run by the philosopher kings
who interpreted the true principles.
Plato believed that community was simply the individual man writ large. (Women,
slaves, children, and those who could not speak Greek were capable of “acting” virtuously only
in the sense that higher-order primates are capable of “aping” rational human behavior. They
possessed no moral agency.) 15 We could understand his state if we had a list characterizing the
qualified citizens and an adding machine. This is still the generally accepted view in ethics.
Ethical communities are thought to be created or strengthened by training individuals in ethical
principles and reasoning. The more numerous good individuals there are or the better the
principles, the more ethical the community.
Such linear reasoning was the best that thinkers could do until about 150 years ago. The
clockwork physical model of everything was the only tool we had to work with. Quantum
mechanics, relativity theory, psychology as the proper study of humans by humans, complex
adaptive systems, the new biology, holism and spirituality, non-Euclidian geometry,
indeterminacy proofs in mathematics, behavioral economics, the computer, social networking,
and many more related developments have pointed to the inadequacy of complete rule-governed
theories. These are not candidates for better principles; they are new ways of thinking.
We have gone beyond believing that the elements of a system behave the same regardless
of what the other elements in the system are doing. Context matters: so does size of the group
and time. I am both agent and your context; you are an agent as well as being my context. We act
jointly to improve our worlds; the outcomes of our moral engagement create a new context.
Morality is reciprocal and evolving. There is no beginning on this ball of string. “I am more apt
to cheat just a little bit if others are doing so” is a reasonable thing to say, although difficult to
work with in the logic of 100 years ago. “I have never cheated because cheating is wrong” is
unreasonable.
This new way of understanding community is called emergence, and the central idea is
that complete understanding of how each part works in isolation often fails to tell us what will
happen when we put the parts are put back together. Think of how wet hydrogen is and how wet
oxygen is; then think of water. This will be the most challenging concept in this book. It calls
into question not only the conclusions of centuries of ethical theorizing but also the method for
reaching these conclusions. In the received ethical tradition one says “show me where to stand
and I will judge the world.” We are beginning to think it is a more worthwhile task to work with
other moral agents to bring about a better world. We may be able to pass on the judging and
telling others where to go. Relationships among agents are replacing relationships to principles.
Humankind, collectively, has the capacity for moral improvement built into it. The result is that
communities can evolve morally at a faster rate than can individuals.
17.
There are levels of nested analysis in communities. Although the same mechanisms exist
at each level for finding the optimal joint way forward, building the moral community
involves interacting values rather than one group substituting or imposing its
interpretation on others. [Chapter 10: Moral Community]
18.
Communities are created by moral engagement. They come into existence, change form,
interact with each other, absorb each other, and pass out of existence based on mutual
interactions. [Chapter 10: Moral Community]
19.
Conceiving a class of other moral agents as an undifferentiated “other” causes collapse
of moral action into principled ethical justification. [Chapter 11: Failure to Engage]
20.
Making realistically weak assumptions that allow for some lapses in moral behavior is a
precondition for the moral growth of individuals and the advancement of society.
[Chapter 12: Moral Progress]
21.
The neurological structure of the adult human brain differs from that of other animals
and from children. This includes separate, specific circuitry for rational deliberation
(ethical reflection) and for actions intended to produce a better world (moral behavior).
[Chapter 12: Moral Progress]
22.
The basic preconditions exist for a Darwinian view of the evolution of morality. [Chapter
12: Moral Progress]
23.
Operational definitions can be given for moral action (but not for ethics). All of the
propositions in this book can be represented dynamically using agent-based simulation
computer models. [Chapter 12: Moral Progress]
But let’s go one step farther. We are all angles, but we only have one wing. No person
can be moral by himself or herself. By definition, morality is a relationship – the mutual effect of
agents’ actions on the welfare of others. It is about patterns of behavior, replacing old ones with
better ones. If we frame the job as building moral community, the next several hundred pages
will be easier to follow. In fact “you can’t miss it.”
24.
There is a better way to improve the world than making individuals conform to privileged
ethical principles. RECIPROCAL MORAL AGENCY creates its own emergent and continuously
evolving standard of morality that provides an account of how agents nested within
communities function morally. [Chapters 7, 10, 11, and 12: Framing, Nesting, Failure to
Engage, and Moral Progress]
Point of View: Philosophy as Stories
Academic writing about philosophy typically takes a point of view on a circumscribed matter. It
lays out a position and develops the consequences that flow for that and makes connections with
established positions in the field. We recognize better philosophy because it covers more
territory, or more interesting territory, without becoming fragmented or inconsistent. Each
contribution is supposed to be a better point of view. As a general rule, most of academic
philosophy is argumentation, studded with cameo examples. Richard Rorty (1979) made a useful
(one might even say a “pragmatic”) observation in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that
good philosophy does not solve problems: it extends the scope of the conversation.
What I have in mind is to establish a small beachhead for an alternative narrative
regarding how groups of people work together to create a better world. I am building a new
house (a very modest one to be sure). But I feel no need to pull down other structures in the
neighborhood. I am putting a lot of new features in the model. Traditional philosophers will
likely only let my discussions of game theory, computer modeling, economics and social
psychology, complexity theory, and neurobiology into the conversation with a visitor’s pass and
mostly as metaphor. Hard reality is where one finds it. Nietzsche reminds us in his fragment “On
Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense” that “Truth is a movable host of metaphors.” 16
This first chapter leads with a bit of empirical social science research describing how
things are rather than how they should be, and most of the copy in the chapter is a detailed
retelling of a story about pepper spraying students on the UC Davis campus. It is narrative rather
than argumentation. This is in the tradition of the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus (1921/1974). He
argued there and generally throughout his career that truth cannot be told, it must be shown.
“Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them. I
cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are.”
Because there is reason to believe that the same can be said of all moral engagements, I will
refrain from making claims about what people ought to do. My reason is that what I am talking
about may not be the same as what others are talking about. But I would like, as Donald
Davidson suggests, to put a concrete example of sufficient interest in front of us. And if I can
coordinate my responses to the situation and to your actions and if you can do the same, we can
bid fair to part company in better shape than if we had to argue to theoretical agreement.
The distinction between claims about what “is” and what “ought” to be and the
Naturalistic Fallacy that some philosophers choose up sides over will not be very important in
the development of my ideas about morality. The more basic question is how to cross the noman’s land between theory and practice. Think of a farmer loading a wheel barrow full with
frogs in the Land of Ethical Noumenal Truth (which is near the Land of Ethical Consequential
Certainty, etc.) and setting off on the cross country trip to the Land of Practical Moral Action.
The issue is how many frogs will arrive fit for duty.
In addition to examples and reports from the natural and social sciences, my method for
developing the material will be to work through examples in an extended form. Alternative
interpretations will be encouraged and it is quite possible that readers would decide to follow
different paths. We could say that they are not facing the same moral engagement, despite how
clear it may be to me.
Stories with narrative structure about making a better world are the oldest form of moral
instruction. They predate philosophy by thousands of years. Even set to poetry for easy recall
and expressed in art and architecture for the non-literate, this was the moral instruction in preSocratic Greece and the Old Testament; the parables of Jesus; and Chinese, Indian, and Early
American tradition. European civilization and philosophy is often commentary on the stories.
The examples one encounters in modern writing on ethics are usually “set pieces.”
Should I return a book I borrowed from a friend? Is it right to torture babies just for jollies?
There is a huge literature on whether one should push a fat person off an overpass to stop a
trolley that might otherwise run over some folks trapped on the track ahead (Thomson 1976).
There is no end of finely crafted ethical dilemmas where two principles are balanced off against
each other to hypothetical perfection. Bernard Williams (1981) wondered precisely at what point
an individual ceases caring for mankind under the hands of a sadistic surgeon who each night
replaces parts of his body and mind with those of Napoleon. Frankfurt cases are a new
subspecialty in exotic counterfactual ethical theorizing (Frankfurt 1969). Kant even argued in
support of his categorical imperative that South Pacific Islanders as a race were morally inferior
because they were lazy by European standards. 17 If we remove the “ifs” and the “let’s assumes”
from most of the examples in the philosophical literature, there would be very little to talk about.
The stories and examples in this book were not selected to illustrate an ethical point of
view. They are sampled from the world we live in and they show what kind of world we could
bring about if we made various choices about how to live together. The examples include: civil
protests, domestic violence, police corruption, perjury, gang membership, child custody and
other law suits, volunteer work, watching others in pain, corporate greed, the causes of the
Second World War, “adjusting” our taxes, human trafficking and international hostage taking,
bullying, white lies, mugging, fair value in purchases, government support for health care, hostile
workplace environment, restraint of trade, hypocrisy, participation in markets and commercial
transactions, terrorism, division of common assets, disciplining a student in academic jeopardy,
and dogs in packs. These are all situations where it is not crystal clear what is “right,” but it is for
certain that we could do better by one action than by others. The subject matter of the book is
less about the ethical hero than the rest of us working along day by day to make a common better
future. The discovery of new ethical principles did not end the commercial trade in slaves or give
women the vote. Untold numbers of individual moral actions were needed.
Wittgenstein, in a fine example of antinomical reasoning, tried to pull himself up by the
straps on the back of the boots he is said to have always worn. He told us repeatedly that the
truth cannot be told. Other philosophers have related stories when they felt it would help spread
the conversation beyond academic circles. Plato, Boethius, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Murdoch,
and Sartre and Camus are examples. (The latter are arguably the only philosophers to have been
selected for the Nobel Prize.)
The impetus for placing stories about how we might better live together above theories
and principles flows from an ancient tradition. At the beginning of the axial (value) period in
history (Eisenstadt 1982), in sixth or seventh century BCE China, Taoism evolved as an
approach to life that did not make theoretical certainty a precondition for doing what is good and
right. 18 The first poem of the Tao Te Ching (1963) begins
The Way that can be told is not the true Way;
The name that can be named is not the true name.
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of ten thousand things [a Chinese idiom for chaos].
1
Most philosophers use either one term, usually “ethics,” or alternate between “ethics” and
“morality” as though they were functionally equivalent. Sometimes “morality” has a separate
meaning, something like “the body of all widely accepted ethical percepts.” A short list of
philosophers who separate the terms the way I do includes: Stephen Toulmin (1950), Hanna
Arendt (1971), Gilbert Harman (1977), David Wong 2006), Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008),
and perhaps even Immanuel Kant in his distinction between categorical and hypothetical
imperatives (1785/1948). Moritz Schlick (1939, 3) is very clear on this point: “Since ethics is, in
essence, theory or knowledge, its task cannot be to produce morality, or to establish it, or call it
to life.” Of course, many observe the distinction while using other terms or using terms
haphazardly.
2
John Dewey (1994) was scornful of what he called “moralism,” meaning the mistaken notion
that society can be improved by getting other people to do what is right.
3
The distinction between ethics and morality has a very strong analogue in statistics and
economics. “Ethics” has a Greek root meaning something like character (a personal attribute of
individuals); “moral” is Latin and points more toward customs within a community. When
statisticians are talking in a theoretical fashion, they use Greek symbols in their formulas.
Thus, 𝜇 is the mean of any set of numbers -- but never the average of any particular set -- and 𝜎
is the standard deviation. The symbols for particular values that have been calculated are always
expressed in Roman characters, as x̅ for average and SD for standard deviation. Statisticians
always know when they see a Roman letter in an equation that they are talking about something
that has been measured, counted, or otherwise directly encountered. When they see Greek
symbols, they know that the conversation is about the relationships among abstractions and not
about particulars.
4
A huge proportion of people, perhaps the majority, believe they have a privileged position with
respect to morality. They know the difference between right and wrong – they are right and you
are wrong, unless of the same mind. “If it is not obvious to you,” they say, “there is no point in
your reading books about it.” I am not afraid of offending them. They are very unlikely to be
reading this. As I will demonstrate in Chapters 3 and 4, those who do take a moral approach will
have no particular difficulty dealing with these folks. Morality is based on interacting behavior.
It is the thinkers who wrap themselves in abstract norms who will be most troublesome.
5
Ralph Wedgwood (2007) provides a classical treatment of normativity. A leading proponent of
the principles approach was W. D. Ross (1930). Currently, this view is most fashionable in
bioethics: Beauchamp and Childress (2009).
6
Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (1951) and William James, in the Principles of
Psychology (1890/1950) come the closest to maintaining that to see the good is to do the good.
7
The comment about lack of research evidence showing that the study of ethics promotes moral
behavior is more than “tongue-in-cheek journalism” in the style of Mark Twain. See R. A.
Posner (1997).
8
Aristotle (1951), in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, casts a clear vote for moral action over
ethical theory: “Hence we are correct in asserting that a man becomes just by doing just acts and
temperate by doing temperate acts, and that without doing them he has no prospect of ever
becoming good. But most men, instead of following this advice, take refuge in theories, and
suppose that by philosophizing they will be improved.”
9
The questionable ethics of deciding for others is covered in Buchanan and Brock (1990)
Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making.
10
The breakdown in communication during the confrontation where protesters were pepper
sprayed on the UC Davis campus is documented in the phone records of Campus Police Chief
Spicuzza. Despite having delegated field operations to one of her officers, she engaged in
sporadic communication between the police and the leadership team, obscuring the
responsibilities of those involved. The log of her cell phone shows that she made or received 21
calls during the 40 minutes of the operation.
11
John Dewey is typical of the philosophers in the pragmatic turn who note that the bridge
between ethical and morality has been out of service for many years. “It is reasonable to believe
that what holds moral knowledge back is above all the conception that there are standards of
good given to knowledge apart from the work of reflection in constructing methods of action”
(Dewey 1916/1954, 243).
12
The ethics syllogism is richly illustrated in Alastair MacIntyre’s (1988) Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? A. J. Ayre makes a similar argument in the broader context of truth claims at the
beginning of his Language, Truth, and Logic. (1936/1946). But the tradition can be traced back
at least as far as Epictetus, who was active in the first century of the Common Era, in IV, I of his
Discourses.
13
The most famous of the philosophical antinomies are found in the second chapter of the
transcendental dialectic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1993). He makes a pretty
convincing case there regarding the inherent tensions between reason in its pure form and the
kind of practical reason that is necessary for living in the actual world. I am a camp follower of
Dewey, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Putnam, Rorty and others who willingly concede the
transcendental solution to Kant, subject only to the condition that no one be allowed to use it in
any situation where practical conditions apply.
14
Alfred North Whitehead’s (1929/1959) dense 1927-1928 Gifford Lectures proposed a theory of
relativity similar to Einstein’s and was one of the first systematic statements of emergent
thinking in philosophy. The comment about the European tradition in philosophy clinging to
Plato’s coattails in found there on page 39.
15
The mid-nineteenth century author of Social Statics and advocate of “social Darwinism,”
Herbert Spencer (1888) made the same mistake Plato did in claiming to be able to derive all of
social life based on characteristics of individual humans, although both Plato and Spencer
discounted women and others as possible moral agents (Part I, Chapter 1, § 1).
16
The full quotation: “What is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and
anthropomophies: in short a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically
intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be
fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions”
(Nietzsche (1873/1954, 46-47).
17
Kant on his Pietistic high horse: “ . . . although [as with the South Sea Islanders] the human
being should let his talents rust and be concerned with devoting his life merely to idleness,
amusement, procreation – in a word, to enjoyment; only he cannot possibly will that this become
a universal law or be put in us as such by means of natural instinct.” Kant (1785/1964, 90).
18
See Raymond Smullyan’s The Tao Is Silent (1977) for a mind-twisting reimagining of Taoism
by a contemporary logician.