The Limits of Ethics

We have come a long way from a world that was about fighting to survive.  Today, society is more about not harming any person while trying to grow and thrive in life.  In the billions of years since the first organism came into existence, social animals evolved to cooperate for greater survival and well-being.  Now, we face a strange situation where biology, which evolved in a “survival of the fittest” manner, and civilized society, where we try not to cause any harm, are in conflict with each other.  So what are the limits to how we can apply ethics?  Let’s take a look.

I should preface this post with the fact that I have a long explanation (80 pages!) in my book, The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose, about ethics, how they formed and come from values, and how humans apply them to other living organisms.  Let me give you the summary of that Ethics chapter as to how it gets us to the question of what the limits of ethics are:

• All living organisms follow rules to live optimally (i.e., maximize growth and minimize harm).  Ethics are rules that social animals follow to live with other animals to minimize harm to each other (“negative ethics”) and maximize growth (“positive ethics”).
• Ethics evolved in social animals because cooperation is an evolutionary advantage—i.e., it makes you better at surviving and more likely to reproduce.  Ethics generally evolved within families first (i.e., don’t hurt your offspring or your genes are gone forever) but then, due to more advanced communication and other capabilities, were able to apply to large groups and, now in civilized society, the entire human race.
• Ethics are set in place based on values.  Values are things that are important to you: your life, your property, your family, your friends, etc.  Because of those core values, you hold ethics as rules to protect/foster what you value.  So, if you like your family, you have an ethic not to harm them because a. they’ll be worse off and b. they won’t like you anymore.
• Here’s the issue: life also evolved to consume other life. (I didn’t make the rules, so don’t shoot the messenger) Plants translate sunlight and nutrients in the ground into energy that they use to grow. Animals evolved as creatures that were more likely to survive by moving around and consuming other organisms than by being set in place and hoping they get enough sunlight (note: plants fight for light from the sun—trees creating a canopy prevent other plants from growing…so no classification of organism is devoid of harming other organisms or at least preventing their growth).  Then, animals evolved to consume other animals rather than plants, and the most versatile animals evolved to consume plants or animals to survive.  Microorganisms evolved to consume plants and animals, which then break them down into nutrients for the next generation of plants and animals to consume.  That’s commonly called the circle of life, and that’s how it evolved.
• On a final note about ethics, ethics must be shared by everyone who holds them, or they fall apart.  For example, if I agree not to hurt you but you don’t agree not to hurt me, then I can’t hold to my ethic without risking harm from you (and, because you know I won’t harm you, you’ll feel safer in hurting me and be more likely to do it if you have a strong incentive).  So, in order for everyone to have shared ethical accountability, you have to be able to understand the rules, communicate the rules, agree upon the rules, plan the rules in advance (i.e., before the situation where you need to apply the ethic happens), and follow the rules (i.e., control your behavior).  If you can’t do those five things, you can’t have the same level of ethical protection and accountability.  The thing is, only humans have all five—and not even all people have all five. Therefore, we have different ethics for the average person than we do bacteria, plants, animals, children, the elderly, and people with mental conditions.

So, let’s put all of this together to figure out what the limits of ethics are.  First, value is subjective—there is no such thing as intrinsic value (except in the philosophy of ethics, in which every human has intrinsic value—let’s put that aside for now because all that means is that you can’t kill people or treat them much differently than other people).  There is simply what people place value on and what ethics they then decide to follow based on those values.  Humans value human life, so they protect it.  They value money, so they work to obtain it.  They value honesty, integrity, and honor, so they don’t lie, cheat, or steal.

This is where limits come in: life evolved from valuing only the self to families to unrelated groups to all of the same species (i.e., humans) to having ethics for animals such as dogs, cats, birds, cattle, elephants, and lions.  There aren’t many laws for harming plants, insects, or rodents yet, as the harm they can cause (e.g., diseases, property damage) supersedes the protection that parts of society might which to afford them.  Here, we are reaching the limits at which you can apply ethics to all living creatures: because no other organism has all five criteria for ethical accountability (i.e., understand, communicate, agree, plan, and follow the rules), something has to give.  You cannot have a crime against squirrels for murder, for example, if squirrels can’t consciously stay off the road where people will run over them.  Insects have no sense of property rights, so you have to be able to kill them if they make a home within the walls of your house (imagine being legally required to tear up your house and safely take them outside).

So what will happen?  Well, it will be a constant battle between the biological nutritional needs of humans and animals to consume other living organisms (and defend themselves from animals who cannot adopt human ethics) with the desire to minimize overall harm to life.  The biggest issue for most people is the value piece.  Many ask, “Well, if we can establish that all humans have value, then why can’t we establish that all animals have them?  And why can’t we stop eating all animals if we can invent nutritional replacements (e.g., plants plus vitamins or lab-grown meat)?  And why can’t we treat them ethically even though they don’t know any better?”  Well, you can see the issues as we mentioned above, so let’s summarize them since they determine the limits:

• Animals, plants, fungi, microorganisms, etc. all have to eat or harm each other to live.  Plant-eating animals eat plants, meat-eating animals eat animals, plants kill plants by crowding out their roots, plants kill insects (e.g., the Venus flytrap), and microorganisms kill plenty of animals and plants.
• When organisms vie for growth, they have to prioritize their values as they evolved: themselves, their family, their friends, their group/society, their species, and then the closest species to them (e.g., mammals) (though, sometimes is based on arbitrary criteria like “cuteness”).
• It’s not about whether certain organisms have more intrinsic value than others but prioritization and relative value (e.g., would you rescue a person or an animal first from a burning building?).
• Organisms need to have the five requirements for ethical accountability, or you can’t apply the same ethics.  Since we can’t negotiate shared laws with insects, bears, etc., we can only try to keep them from harming people (through techniques such as managing their population) so that we can coexist.

So those are the limits of ethics.  Yes, we will keep pushing the limits for both sustainability reasons and because humans value other organisms.  However, there’s no doubt that we cannot have the exact same ethics for animals and plants as humans because they do not satisfy the five requirements for ethical accountability.  Many will argue for more ethics because humans have the knowledge that animals and plants do not, while others will point out the great cost to humans if they cannot, for example, cut down a tree that might fall on someone or use pest control techniques.  Some will point to the innovation in nutrition and say that animal product consumption should stop, whereas others will point out that humans still have the evolutionary biology of omnivores and so have to be able to access those nutritional options (e.g., people on the carnivore diet for health/allergy reasons).

While this post mainly focused on the limits to applying ethics to all living organisms, there is one final point to make about the limits of ethics in humans: what is harm, and to what extent can you prevent it without encroaching on someone’s freedom and right to grow and protect themselves?  For example, can you pass laws governing what people eat so they’re healthy?  Can you pass laws or set rules against saying things that offend people?  Can you prevent people from protecting themselves because those protective measures could also be used to harm?  Just like with the limits of ethics toward all living creatures, societal ethics will reach a conflict at the point at which someone’s desire to be safe, comfortable, and gratified/validated will conflict with other people’s right to be free.

Ultimately, you’ll have to pick where you draw the line today and in the future so you can live with yourself.  There’s no doubt that the ethical line will continue to move as new technologies and societal advancements develop, but there are theoretical limits to ethics as long as biology, intelligence, rights, and other factors continue to be major influences as to how organisms behave with regards to each other.