Teleological Ethics

In this post, I take up the task of arguing for a teleological ethics, that is, an ethics in terms of ends. I will be stealing an immense amount from Korsgaard, but I am not exactly sure which works, and some of it is likely second-hand.

A teleological ethics need not presume that things have ends given them by some external agent. It must, however, assume that ends of things can be posited in some manner. It is generally connected to a view of good in general that holds that "being good" is a predicate with application relative to the ends of the bearer.

Let us begin by elaborating this notion of good with a case where the end is provided by an agent: chairs. A chair has a purpose: to hold someone up who sits in it. Most chairs are supposed to do so in a manner comfortable for--and even better, good for--the individual sitting in the chair. Thus, a sturdy, ergonomic chair is a better chair, as a chair, than one which can only hold 100lbs, and is uncomfortable. These goods are all relative to the purpose the chair is to be put to, however. A children's chair makes a bad chair for a grownup. A good chair may make a bad prop. Furniture is often intended to be aesthetically pleasing, that is, they should look nice. So a futuristic-looking chair would be a bad chair for a cozy log-cabin-style den.

A teleological ethics claims that human beings have an end, and that to be a good human being is to fulfill that end. Some teleological ethics utilize revelation to determine what this end is. Others examine how humans operate in social life to try to figure it out. Both, however, assume that pursuing this end will result in a life we will be glad to have lived.

We all have a view about what our ends are. We all have views about what kind of life we will be able to look back on with pride versus shame. Further, I would claim, we all live in an effort to fulfill the ends we take to be ours. Insofar as we identify as being certain ways, we try to be those ways well. We try to be good versions of what we take ourselves to be. When we do not, it is because we do not value being those things. If you want to be x, then you will try to be a good x, whatever you take that to be, just as, if you want a chair, you will want a good chair, whatever that means in the given context.

If I understand her right, Korsgaard holds that we should base our ethics on those descriptions under which we cannot help but value ourselves. There is something to this, and it results in ethics being inherently motivated (albeit other motives can keep us from being ethical). However, as usual with Kantian moves of this sort, it is hard to see how we can get much of an ethical system out of this. What I think is right here is that whatever ethical system is right should hook up to how we are motivated in just this way: the truth-maker for a moral ought claim "one should phi" should, if we know and accept and value it, motivate us to phi.

Instead of relying on what we cannot help but value in this manner, I would suggest we examine the kinds of beings we find ourselves to be and what traits we find we cannot do without. We should then value those traits. We may avoid valuing ourselves as embodied, rational, social beings. Nevertheless, these are characteristics which human beings ought to possess. Things go poorly for us and others around us when they are lacking. Whatever one's values, one should value being embodied, rationally agential, and social, because we cannot do without them.

In closing, I want to distinguish between three ways in which one might be said to value something one is. First, one might explicitly value it, that is, one may claim and believe that one values it. Second, one may actually value it, that is, treat it as valuable. Third, one may find one's behaviors which exhibit disvaluing it to have results which one disvalues. The third is that in virtue of which we should do the second, ceteris paribus. The first has little to do with the above. Up to this paragraph, all my uses of the term "value" are meant in the second sense. The other two are derivative meanings which I include here to disambiguate what I mean by the verb "to value."