Acts and Rules

My way of viewing the world has been greatly influenced by computers. I see computing machines as close analogues of how human minds perform. There is a CPU, various subprocessors, and I/O. The mysterious and fuzzy-bounded consciousness is the ghost in the CPU. Complicated tasks requiring a lot of processing power that need to be performed in real time, such as walking, assembling the input signals into meaningful patterns, using language, or playing an instrument, and basically most habits of thought and behavior, are all offloaded onto dedicated subprocessors, though most reside in the CPU while they are first being learned. Of course, the whole thing is analog, and made out of gelatin rather than printed on silicon chips, and swimming in chemicals that control the relative strength and stability of different algorithmic figures, but in sum the mechanical mind is much like the real thing.

The central question for ethics is always the same for the CPU: what do I do now? If we are good machines, we make good choices. Ethical questions are judgments, but the only one that matters at any given moment is the judgment among alternative actions that one might do. Lots of insights might go into that, but it all comes down to the final choice.

Most of the time the choice is to follow along some default habit, so making the right choice is usually a function of forming the right defaults. Set up the subprocessors so the CPU can run efficiently. Kant called this character. Thomas wrote about it. We can't function without it. There's too much information to sort through, so you have to identify salient patterns, weed out irrelevant distinctions, and generalize like crazy. Deep Blue does it when planning its next move. We need to do it even more.

So from time to time you hear the question put to freshman philosophy students whether you should follow the rules, or decide on an act by act basis what is right. There are tensions here. We generally want people to follow legitimate rules rather than risk their acting according to idiosyncratic criteria that are much less reliable, going so far as to deride carefully customized decisionmaking as "situational ethics." On the other hand, there are bad regimes of rules too. And there are other tensions.

Ultimately, all decisions will be made at some level based on both. An individual's set of internalized general rules will determine whether the ethical choice presents salient features that make it suitable for conscious, individuated decisionmaking. If societal rules are legitimate, it is presumed likely that they will seldom be in tension with the conscience of a good individual, and that when they are, this will trigger attentive choice whether to violate the rule. At least for questions of first impression -- repeated instances will start to follow well-worn mental pathways and fall back into the mechanisms of habit. Of course there are many regimes of rules, but most moral systems likewise have a high degree of overlap.

When a decision must be made where utilitarian, teleological analysis of the particular situation appears to favor a different choice than what "the rules" would prescribe, should the rules be followed? The answer is no, but it is no only provided that the consequences of the rule violation are fully factored into the decision. Violate the rule only if it is worth it. This does not mean only if it can be rationalized, but only if it is really worth it. This would be a non-answer except that there are reasonable criteria on which both sides of the balance can be analyzed.

On one hand, the benefit must be calculated according to principles of good. The following of the rule must cause harm or deny the benefit of the violation, as would be perceived from a neutral perspective without favoritism to the interests of the decider (and compensating for the decider's bias and ignorance of other interests and inability to foresee all effects.)

Likewise, the effect of the violation can be analyzed: what is the likelihood that the violation will become known and be emulated so that the rule is undermined? How is the violation likely to be explained? Is the rule undermined a legitimate one, time tested, and generally sound? A sincere one (as opposed to one honored mostly in the breach)? Is it complicated? Is it important? Is it unassailably secure, or not even viable? Does it approach being universal and absolute or is it widely controverted and full of exceptions? Is the case for the exception generalizable on broad terms, or is it highly anomalous? Is it likely to be seen as an anomaly? Is the violative act prone to being preceived as part of an exception formed on other potential patterns of generalization that run beyond or counter to its actual basis?