Ethics

The Senior Common Room had become the temporary site of an ethics symposium entitled:

“Normativity in an Age of Complex Systems.”

Nobody was entirely certain what this meant, though the catering had become unusually apologetic.

Professor Quillibrace sat near the fire with the rigid stillness of a man anticipating conceptual injury.

Miss Elowen Stray was reviewing the symposium handout, which contained the phrase “distributed moral architectures” no fewer than six times.

Mr Blottisham had just discovered trolley problems.

This was already proving dangerous.

“I’ve solved ethics,” he announced.

Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.

“Of course you have.”

Blottisham leaned forward excitedly.

“You see, every moral action can be justified from some perspective.”

Miss Stray looked up carefully.

“In what sense?”

“Well,” said Blottisham, “utilitarians justify one thing, deontologists justify another, virtue ethicists something else entirely. Every action seems defensible somewhere.”

Quillibrace nodded cautiously.

“That is a familiar observation about competing normative frameworks.”

Blottisham smiled triumphantly.

“Exactly! Therefore every action is morally valid in at least one system.”

A silence followed.

Somewhere in the distance, a door closed itself protectively.

Miss Stray set her pen down very carefully.

“I’m not sure that follows,” she said softly.

Blottisham frowned.

“But if an action can be justified, then it must be morally acceptable within that framework.”

Quillibrace opened his eyes.

“My dear Blottisham,” he said gently, “you have mistaken the existence of justification for the collapse of evaluation.”

Blottisham looked puzzled.

“They’re not the same?”

“No.”

“That seems inefficient.”

“It is also civilisation,” said Quillibrace.

Blottisham pressed on.

“But if someone can produce a coherent argument for an action, doesn’t that make the action defensible?”

Quillibrace leaned back.

“Defensible to whom?”

“To the framework.”

“And who selected the framework?”

Blottisham paused.

“…the person making the argument.”

Quillibrace nodded slowly.

“Excellent. We are now perilously close to discovering why ethics is difficult.”

Miss Stray spoke gently.

“There may be a difference between an action being interpretable within a normative system and being thereby endorsed universally.”

Blottisham brightened.

“Yes! Exactly!”

“No,” said Miss Stray softly. “Not exactly.”

The fire crackled quietly.

Blottisham persisted.

“But surely every action makes sense under some conditions.”

“Yes,” said Quillibrace. “Humans are extraordinarily skilled at constructing retrospective coherence.”

Blottisham frowned.

“So morality is just explanation.”

“No.”

“Justification?”

“No.”

“Interpretation?”

“No.”

Blottisham looked genuinely distressed now.

“Then what is it?”

Quillibrace considered this carefully.

“A normative construal of action under conditions of value conflict.”

Blottisham blinked several times.

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is,” said Quillibrace.

Miss Stray added thoughtfully:

“The problem may be that you are treating moral systems as if they were interchangeable permission structures.”

Blottisham tilted his head.

“Aren’t they?”

“No,” said Quillibrace immediately. “They are attempts to organise evaluative relations under competing principles and constraints.”

Blottisham sat back.

“But if I can justify something…”

Quillibrace interrupted gently.

“You can justify almost anything if sufficiently motivated.”

A pause.

“That,” he added, “is not generally considered reassuring.”

Blottisham thought for a moment.

“So ethics doesn’t tell us what is correct.”

Miss Stray shook her head slightly.

“It attempts to provide grounds for evaluating action.”

“But those grounds disagree.”

“Yes.”

“So morality is unstable.”

Quillibrace sighed softly.

“Normativity is contested,” he corrected. “Not therefore meaningless.”

Blottisham stared into the fire.

The symposium banner above the mantelpiece had begun curling slightly at the edges, as though even the paper distrusted abstraction.

Then Blottisham’s face brightened suddenly.

“I see!” he declared. “So morality is basically an infinite multiverse of locally justified behaviours!”

Quillibrace froze completely.

For several seconds he appeared to leave ordinary historical time.

Miss Stray spoke with unusual care.

“That,” she said gently, “is not quite the conclusion we should draw.”

Blottisham waved enthusiastically.

“No, no — think about it. Somewhere every action is morally correct relative to some system!”

Quillibrace finally spoke.

“My dear Blottisham,” he said quietly, “if every justification automatically validated the action it justified, ethics would collapse into competitive excuse production.”

Blottisham paused.

“That sounds plausible.”

“Yes,” said Quillibrace. “Which is precisely why one must resist it.”

Miss Stray leaned forward slightly.

“A justificatory framework is itself open to evaluation. One does not escape ethical responsibility merely by locating a system in which one’s action appears coherent.”

Blottisham frowned.

“So I can’t simply choose the framework that approves of me.”

“No,” said Quillibrace.

A pause.

“Though much of human history may be described as an attempt to do exactly that.”

Silence settled across the room.

Blottisham looked down at the symposium programme.

“So ethics is not about finding permission.”

“No,” said Miss Stray softly.

“It is about negotiating irreducible tensions within systems of value.”

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

“That sounds much less satisfying.”

“Yes,” said Quillibrace.

“Reality often declines to organise itself around emotional convenience.”

The fire crackled again.

At length Blottisham spoke quietly.

“So if every action can be justified somewhere…”

Quillibrace finished the sentence:

“…then the real ethical question becomes whether the justification itself survives scrutiny.”

A long silence followed.

Blottisham nodded slowly.

Then, after considerable thought, he said:

“So ethics is basically the study of why my first explanation is usually not enough.”

Quillibrace looked at him for a long moment.

Then allowed the faintest trace of approval.

“That,” he said, “is one of the least catastrophic summaries you have produced in months.”

Miss Stray smiled faintly into her tea.

And above them, the symposium banner finally detached itself from the wall and drifted quietly into the fireplace, as though withdrawing from the discussion on moral grounds.