To consider “Why Should I Be Good?’ we can distinguish between two types of reasons. There are normative reasons, why an action is a good thing in itself, and there are motivating reasons, why I may be motivated to do what is good.[i]

Suppose I am wondering whether to return a dropped wallet. The normative reasons why returning the wallet is a good thing could include the benefit this gives to the owner, the fact that a generally beneficial rule is followed and the fact that morality is respected. By contrast, my motivating reasons may include fear of punishment, care for my reputation, feelings of sympathy and a desire to do what is right.

Normative and motivating reasons have different natures. Normative reasons are value judgements, while motivating reasons are psychological facts about what may motivate.

Normativity and Practical Reason

Normative judgements can seem mysterious, but we make them all the time, and use distinct words like ‘good’, ‘right’ and ‘ought’. Whenever we use these words, the underlying logic is to make a judgement relative to some end, standard or other criteria.[ii] So, when I tell you that my car is good, I imply it meets our implicitly agreed standards around speed, comfort and reliability.

We navigate our lives by making practical judgements relative to ends and standards that we choose.  I look at my wardrobe and set an end to get a new shirt.  At the shops, I choose a shirt that is good relative to my end of being cheap. Back home my wife tells me it is hideous relative to her aesthetic standard. I return the offending article and reflect further on ends and means and make a better choice.

This is a trivial example, but the same end-relational thinking applies across all personal, social, organisational and political decision-making.  Even the most consequential political decision can be analysed into ends and means.  Practical reason is an extensive feature of human lives, and doing it well matters greatly to our well-being.   

But our question ‘Why Should I Be Good’ has the concept of ‘Being Good’ which I take to be narrower than the concept of ‘Good.’ As discussed, something is ‘Good’ when it is positive for any criterion considered, but ‘Being Good’ implies a narrower range of ends.  I think we talk about Being Good when helping others or following rules.  

Normative reasons

I will consider three kinds of normative reasons to Be Good.  First, most straightforwardly, helping others can be considered a normative reason to Be Good. Second, more indirect, following norms and rules that are generally beneficial can also be considered a normative reason. And third, it is often thought that a normative reason to Be Good is to respect moral rules that exists independently of us.  I think the first two matter but the third is a mistake.

I will start with reasons about benefitting others.  I will use three terms: by welfare I mean how well a life goes for an individual; by happiness I mean a summary measure of the aggregate net value of the affective experiences that an individual has over a period; and affective experiences are elements of conscious experience that are liked or disliked and include sensations, emotions and thoughts.

For classical utilitarianism, all that matters is welfare and welfare is only about happiness.[iii]   But even on a more modest position – that welfare is a major component of value and happiness is a major component of welfare – our affective experiences are a major source of intrinsic value.

This seems right as we directly experience the difference between the good and bad in our conscious lives.  Value came into the universe when creatures evolved who are conscious and whose consciousness has affective qualities and so matter to them.  I am directly aware that my subjectively experienced life has some clearly good elements such as being with loved ones, engaging in projects and enjoying sensual pleasures, and some bad elements such as grief, mental distress and physical pains.  It may be unclear how precisely to aggregate the various elements, but my extremes of enjoyment are clearly good for me, and my extremes of misery are clearly bad. If you doubt that welfare matters, contrast a world maximally full of joy and flourishing with its opposite, a world with the worst possible misery for everyone.[iv]  The gradient in value between these extremes is apparent.

So, I am directly aware that my immediate welfare matters to me. From there, reasoning and consistency require me to expand the circle of concern[v] by a series of steps. First, consistency requires me to balance my immediate happiness with concern for my future happiness[vi].   Reasoning compels me to expand the circle further to consider the enjoyment and suffering of my family and friends, then my other groups, and then on to impartial concern for the interests of all people.  Reason pushes me beyond my evolved instinctive sympathy for those near me. I may then, subject to various practical and philosophical issues, go further to recognise the interests of sentient non-human animals, and also to consider the interests of future generations.

This idea of expanding the circle of concern is championed by Peter Singer.  I am directly aware of my own enjoyment and suffering and consistency directs me to also consider the relevantly similar experience of other sentient creatures.  From the point of view of the universe, all enjoyment and suffering matters.[vii] But note this is pure normative reasoning – about what is good – and motivation need not keep up.

On this view, when I help others, this is normatively good. For example, I may donate to an effective global health charity such as Against Malaria Foundation, where the benefit is reliably forecast to be 100 times my loss and I can save a life for around £4,000.[viii] My donation increases the aggregate balance of happiness, it makes the world better and is normatively good.

The second kind of normative reason to be good concerns following rules and other useful social arrangement. There are lots of these including obeying the law, respecting property, honouring commitments, honesty, taking turns, respecting rights, following moral norms and family responsibilities.  Giving back the wallet is an example of something that is good largely because it accords with a rule (not to steal) where that rule is justified by its generally beneficial effects. While giving to charity is directly good, giving back the wallet is indirectly good.  Social arrangements as an indirect way of doing good will be essential in some form to provide coordination and to stop individuals causing harm.  Also, an individual has limited sympathies, knowledge, judgement, authority and resources, so collective institutions are needed.

The third kind of normative reason sees morality as obedience to an independently existing code or natural law, perhaps revealed by conscience or commanded by God.  This is a common way of thinking and is reflected in our moral language when it speaks as if morality is an independent truth.  The widespread practice of reifying the local morality as an objective truth evolved to support beneficial social conformity.[ix]But a little philosophy shows that this kind of thinking is mistaken.[x] First, it creates a metaphysical problem, suggesting that moral rules somehow have an independent existence, yet they don’t seem to be part of the fabric of a naturalistic universe.  Second, there is an epistemological problem of how we can find out what an independently existing morality requires.  Perhaps this is set out in a holy book, or perhaps revealed to conscience, but both ancient texts and our conscience reflect primitive moralistic instincts, and are subject to interpretation, and history has shown that they are dangerous ways to approach deciding how to act.

Three Metaethical Views

Despite our instincts and our language, Being Good doesn’t need an independent morality, a mysterious conscience faculty or God.  Instead, Being Good matters because it promotes sentient welfare, either directly by individual actions, or collectively through social arrangements. [xi] The idea of Being Good is man-made but grounded in our needs.

Ethics isn’t something more than this, something unworldly. It doesn’t exist in a separate, magical world. But it isn’t less than it is – something that does not matter or that we cannot reason about, as in non-cognitivism, expressivism and relativism.   So, we have three very different views of the nature of ethics: metaethics as grounded, unwordly or meaningless.

Over time, different views have been dominant.  In tradition societies ethics was considered unwordly, but this was challenged by philosophical thinking. A common pattern in philosophy is for reason to show that our instinctive ways of thinking can’t be right.  This is the case for the self as an unchanging essence, free will as acting outside nature and similarly for morality as existing independently.  But in seeing this, many philosophers reacted too far and crossed to what I think of as the dark side of ethics as meaningless.  This was actually the dominant view when I started to study moral philosophy forty years ago.  Fortunately, since then, many philosophers have come to see this as a mistake and now see ethics as a practical matter where we can reason and improve.  Philosophers are now back on the job.[xii]

I think a reason why ethics went to the dark side of non-cognitivism was that Moral Philosophy tried to explain morality rather than practical reason.  It analysed moral rules like ‘do not steal’ which are difficult abstractions, and it is tempting to think that if they don’t exist independently, they are just expressions of attitudes. But if we instead consider Practical Reasoning broadly then it is more obvious that we are just making judgements about achieving human ends.  A focus on explaining Morality led to expressivist confusions, looking at Practical Reason shows that Being Good is grounded.  

Ethics as grounded is supported by one of my favourite books, Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined.[xiii] Pinker explains how violence has reduced and morality has improved over history – for example our chances of a violent death have reduced by a factor of 50 since hunter-gatherer times. He argues that this moral progress has been due to moving past instincts such as honour, revenge, nationalism and religion to a more rational and scientific focus on the welfare of individuals.[xiv] History suggests that ethics have improved by focusing increasingly on directly or collectively improving welfare.  

Motivating Reasons

Being good is normatively valuable, but what may motivate us to be good?  My main point about motivation is that we generally are more motivated to do good indirectly by following social arrangement than to do good by acting independently, supererogation.[xv] Following norms is easier because there are a series of social expectations and sanctions that keep us playing our part in beneficial institutions.  Contrast handing back the wallet with giving to an effective charity. 

There are several motivations to hand back the wallet. I may worry about legal penalties, the risk of revenge, fear gossip and be concerned about my reputation.  Such reactive attitudes are part of human nature that have evolved to support core social behaviour and can be further formalised into law.   These sanctions are generally effective, and they need to be for society to function. They generally leave it easy for the individual to follow social norms – the wallet is handed back with the alternative not even considered.

By contrast, even if donating to charity may do more good than handing back the wallet, there are fewer resources to make me do it.  It is hard enough to motivate myself to look after my future, such as with exercising, so helping others off my own bat may be challenging.  Why may I be motivated to do good independently?

One possibility is I may simply appreciate that the donation is normatively good and be motivated to do what reason tells me is the right thing to do. A normative reason can be a motivating reason – sometimes I am motivated to avoid the cognitive dissonance of not doing what I should.  But motivation from reason is variable and often weak.  Besides reason, my donation could also be motivated by sympathy.  This may be effective when the beneficiary is close to me, but likely to weaken as the beneficiaries become more distant and abstract. There is also scope to make myself donate by building good habits, by making commitments and by surrounding myself with like-minded people.  I can also try to make the normative argument and the beneficial effects of the donation more vivid to make my instincts for reason and sympathy more powerful.

But human nature is such that motivations to Be Good when acting independently are limited compared to the motivations to Be Good by complying with law and social norms.  Moral progress through history has been partly about individuals thinking and behaving better, but it has been more about societies collectively adopting and enforcing better norms and institutions. Taxation and the welfare state do more than charity.

A View of Ethics

Having considered normative and motivating reasons, I can pull together the underlying thinking, to outline a contemporary view of ethics in 10 brief points:

(1) The starting point is to recognise that making good choices, practical reason, is a central human function.  

(2) Practical Reason has a simple nature as judgements of how to achieve ends.

(3) Practical Reason matters because making good decisions affects welfare and things we value.

(4) We have evolved to mainly make choices instinctively with the subconscious mind being brilliant but quirky.

(5) But reasoning has a part to play, to control and improve on our instincts.  Over history practical knowledge has advanced by collective effort and scientific methods, like factual knowledge, but perhaps more slowly.

(6) Rules, norms and commitments are important within practical reason, but this does not mean that they should be thought of as having an independent existence.

(7) Indeed, we should use reason to improve on our moral instincts which evolved to allow genes to survive rather than to produce happiness.  Our moralistic instincts can be dangerously misleading, as with hostility to strangers, which we need to reason past.

(8) Reasoning is more important in the modern world where we have greater power, opportunities, risks, interconnectedness and new issues far beyond our evolutionary environment, such as concern for humanity’s long-term future.  

(9) Welfare and impartiality should be central ends, but perhaps balanced with other concerns.  There remain important questions: What is happiness? What is experience like for different animals? How should we take account of future generations?

(10)  Normativity is separate from motivation.  We should work out what is good and then move on to consider what may be achieved, taking human nature as it is.  Doing better will likely require changes in laws and norms, not just telling people to Be Good.  

Effective Altruism

The view of practical reason I have presented has emerged from progress and new confidence within philosophical ethics. Over my forty years following moral philosophy I have seen a welcome recovery from non-cognitivism and seen new ideas from interdisciplinary work with psychology and evolutionary theory.

My bibliography includes some of the authors who have contributed to this new view.  Among these Peter Singer has been the central figure over forty years.  Recent leaders are Oxford philosophers Will MacAskill and Toby Ord, and much was learnt from Derek Parfit and Henry Sidgwick. My list also includes writers who are more psychologists than philosophers – Joshua Greene, Jonathan Haidt and Stephen Pinker.  Most of the books I list are very well written and I recommend them.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the new philosophy is the Effective Altruism movement which was founded a decade ago by Will MacAskill and other Oxford philosophers.[xvi] The EA mission is: ‘to do as much good as we can, using reason and evidence to decide what will do the most good, and then take action using our time and money.’  The group quickly collected many followers, including the Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz who is donating his $10 billion fortune over his lifetime to fund the EA movement. The movement is now substantial.  It provides grants for action and research on the world’s most pressing problems, shares what it learns and encourages supporters who may donate their money, ideas, time and careers.  The movement includes the charity evaluator Give Well[xvii], which has established that interventions such as anti-malarial nets, deworming and direct transfers to the very poor can give the 100 times returns mentioned earlier.  In parallel, the movement also funds action, research and lobbying on more speculative projects where high payoffs are possible.

Effective Altruism currently focuses on three priority areas.[xviii]  First there is global health and development where money mainly goes to the Give Well top charities.  Second there is Farm Animal Welfare, where there has been successful lobbying for better conditions.  And third, there is the long-term future of humanity, where arguably the greatest value will come from finding ways to reduce the risk of human extinction and to align artificial intelligence and other technologies to human needs. 

Conclusion

In recent decades we have develop a better understanding of both the normative, philosophical question of what it is to be good, and of the factual, psychological, question of how people are motivated to be good.  So, why should I be good?  Being good matters because it directly (by individual good acts) or indirectly (by complying with beneficial norms) improves sentient well-being. And while motivating myself, particularly for individual acts, may not be easy, I can do my best by building good habits, employing sympathy and making vivid the normative reasons to be good.

Media

My slides are here and an audio recording is here.  

Notes

[i] (Alvarez 2017) and (Singer 1981, Afterword to 2011 Edition)

[ii] (Finlay 2014)

[iii] (Utilitarianism 2021)

[iv] (Harris 2010). 

[v] (Singer 1981)

[vi] (Parfit 1984)

[vii] (Sidgwick 1901) and (De Lazari-Radek and Singer 2014)

[viii] (MacAskill 2015) and (GiveWell 2021)

[ix] (Haidt 2012)

[x] (Mackie 1977)

[xi] (Utilitarianism 2021)

[xii] (Singer 1981, Afterword to 2011 Edition)

[xiii] (Pinker 2011)

[xiv] (Greene 2014)

[xv] (Haidt 2012)

[xvi] (Effective Altruism 2021)

[xvii] (GiveWell 2021)

[xviii] (Effective Altruism 2021)

Bibliography

Alvarez, Maria. 2017. “Reasons for Action: Justification, Motivation, Explanation.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/reasons-just-vs-exp.

De Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Peter Singer. 2014. The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick & Contemporary Ethics. Oxford: OUP.

Effective Altruism. 2021. https://www.effectivealtruism.org.

Finlay, Stephen. 2014. Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normative Language. Oxford: OUP.

GiveWell. 2021. https://www.givewell.org.

Greene, Joshua. 2014. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them. New York: Penguin.

Haidt, Jonathan. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon.

Harris, Sam. 2010. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. London: Transworld.

MacAskill, William. 2015. Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference. London: Guardian.

Mackie, J. L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin.

Ord, Toby. 2020. The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.

Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: OUP.

Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Penguin.

Sidgwick, Henry. 1901. The Methods of Ethics. Vol. 7th Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Singer, Peter. 1981. The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution and Moral Progress. Vol. 2nd Edition 2011. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Utilitarianism. 2021. https://www.utilitarianism.net.