Morality is a word that we use to extend right and wrong from the factual realm to the realm of conduct. How do we define right and wrong in terms of conduct? Its definition has a lot of pull because moral correctness is generally desired among the majority of society. In order to be accepted by the rest of society one must make morally correct decisions. In fact, extreme immorality can be so unacceptable that society may confine, torture, or even execute people who do not conform to the rules of morality. Many people desire to be accepted and thus strive to become morally upright members of society. Each of us have been taught morality from our parents and other members of society, but each of us were taught slightly differently. At the same time, most of the rules we were taught are relatively similar to what others were taught.  Is there a force which pushes us to define morality in a certain way, are we conforming to each other’s definition, or are we conforming to a definition laid down by a divine entity?  These are a few of the questions that I intend to provide answers and/or insight to in the following paragraphs.

A generally accepted definition of morality is what one ought to do. Ought generally refers to what one needs to do in order to accomplish some specified goal. In this case the specified goal is to be moral. I believe that this definition of ought is acceptable. It is important to note, however, that although the definition of morality is widely accepted, the same cannot be said for the given definition of ought. It can be conflicting, for instance, with kant’s categorical ought provided that it is possible for one to not desire morality. One could escape the bind of the ought by saying (and meaning) something like "but I don’t care about morality." One could not, however, escape by saying something like, "but I don’t care about compassion" because although they have rejected compassion which may be connected with morality, this does not mean that they do not desire to be moral. If one can desire not to be moral, then according to the definition of ought I have given, the ought has a dependence on ones wants and desires. Of course, rejecting morality would most likely lead to condemnation and punishment, and it does not mean that just because someone has escaped the bind of the moral ought one can no longer tell the person what they ought to do. Instead, it still functions as an explanation about what one is required to do to become moral, and repeated explanation of morality implies a strong desire on the part of the speaker for the listener to become moral.

Defining morality in terms of ought, where the ought describes the obligation of an action in terms of morality, is rather circumlocutory. The only information given in this definition is that morality requires certain conduct. This definition is very vague because it does not tell us what type of conduct is required, or how to determine it. So how is morality determined? Kant says that morality is a force that guides our lives. He calls it the force of reason. Is reason really a force? This may seem to be the case since if one reasons properly, one will always come to the same conclusion (provided that he or she is omniscient, the factors affecting reasoning are identical in each case, and there is only one course of action which will produce the greatest outcome that is in accordance with his or her moral values.) Thus one is "forced" to come to that conclusion. However, reason is merely a tool that we use to to translate our values into moral conduct. Reason cannot act by itself, it can only be used by an underlying force. It is dependent on one’s values system. It is true that many values are also dependent on reason, but it is true that we are born with certain irrational intrinsic values such as the value of one’s own life.  It may also be possible that irrational values can be obtained from society that are not in conflict with one’s intrinsic values system. Thus rational values are obtained directly from one’s irrational values system through use of reason. These irrational values are forces of morality which come from genetic and cultural evolution.

Evolution is a real force that determines how we as humans decide what is right from what is wrong. Thus morality is a method of survival. Evolution is the only major force to which one can describe morality. The only other observable forces are randomness (i.e. chaos used by evolution), and forces such as happiness which are really forces created by evolution. No other forces affecting morality as of yet have been in any way observed, and thus any attempt to define morality as a force outside of evolution would be arbitrary.

As I mentioned earlier, different people have different values. This is part of the force of evolution, and thus the force of morality. Since this force of values varies from person to person, it follows that the force of morality varies from person to person and thus appears to be subjective, but since morality is defined here in terms of an external force (not in terms of the self), it is therefore objective. This may seem somewhat confusing since the evolutionistic forces act on the individual and seem to be of the self (subjective). It appears as if this theory is very similar to simple subjectivism. In order to illustrate the differences it would be helpful to analyze it by looking at the arguments raised against simple subjectivism and attempting to apply them to this theory.

Let’s take a look at the two most prominent arguments according to James Rachels in The Elements of Moral Philosophy. The first on is stated as follows:

1. If Simple Subjectivism is correct, then each of us is infallible in our moral judgments, at least so long as we are speaking sincerely.

2. However, we are not infallible. We may be mistaken, even when we are speaking sincerely.

3. Therefore, Simple Subjectivism cannot be correct.

In order for this argument to be valid, premise #2 must be referring to moral infallibility and not infallibility in general. Rachels backs up premise #2 by saying that sometimes we discover that we are mistaken, and may want to change our judgments. Rachels apparently believes that people changing their minds implies that they are or have been mistaken. This is not the case with simple subjectivism. According to this theory, saying X is wrong really means I disapprove of X. This is a statement of the present. It says nothing about the past or the future. Its assigned truth value depends on the time at which the statement is expressed. For instance, if I noticed that you were wearing a blue t-shirt I could say "You are wearing a blue t-shirt" and it would be a true statement. A week later I might see that you are not wearing a blue t-shirt anymore. Thus I could say "You are not wearing a blue t-shirt" and it would also be a true statement. Notice that I was not mistaken when I made the first statement, and I was not mistaken when I made the second statement, yet my judgment of the color you were wearing changed.

From this we can see that Rachel’s second premise has no backing and the argument is unacceptable. Even if we did find a sound argument to back up premise #2, this type of argument would not hold for my theory because my theory states that people are morally fallible. In order for someone to make a morally correct decision, one must find a method of conduct which is in accordance with his or her values. This involves the process of reason, which is where human error can occur. Some people are not very good at reasoning, and many people use hardly any reason at all when making moral decisions and thus end up with countless undesired outcomes. Desire is a force of happiness pushing us achieve outcomes in accordance with our intrinsic values systems. They may even incorrectly reason that the outcomes were desired when in fact they do not realize that the great amount of undesirableness that has occurred is a result of their conduct, or they may not take into consideration the undesirable long term effects of their conduct. One could argue that if someone changes his or her values, the two values at different time periods are conflicting and at least one of them has to be incorrect and any moral decision based off of these values and a second argument would be incorrect. We can see that this type of argument does not hold by using the same reasoning that was expressed earlier to disprove Rachel’s basis for premise #2.

The second argument that Rachels makes against simple subjectivism is as follows:

1. When one person says "X is morally acceptable" and someone else says "X is morally unacceptable," they are disagreeing.

2. However, if Simple Subjectivism were correct, there would be no disagreement between then.

3. Therefore, Simple Subjectivism cannot be correct.

This argument is sound provided that there really is disagreement in ethics. It is true that people say they disagree, but according to simple subjectivism they are really not disagreeing at all and are actually talking about completely different things. Although plausible, people leading themselves into thinking that they are disagreeing when they are really not is rather silly, and one would hope that they are not making a fool out of themselves every time they try to have an argument about ethics. Emotivism was developed to patch this anomaly by saying the moral statements are not statements of truth, but of attitude and that a disagreement in ethics takes on a different meaning than a disagreement of facts.

The reason why this argument does not work against my theory the way that it does with simple subjectivism is that despite human diversity, we all have similar values. One can argue that someone else's line of reasoning was faulty. Since reasoning can be very complicated, people validly disagree all of the time. One usually makes an argument based of one’s own values under the assumption that the listener has the same or similar forced irrational values as the arguer. If the arguer knows the listener well enough, he or she may try to make arguments based on the listener’s values. Often times an argument between two people will come down to an obvious specific difference in values, in which case there is usually not much left of an argument. Arguing over forced irrational values does not make any sense and any attempt to do so would be silly. Even if the values in question are of a rational basis, they may be very difficult to argue for or against because their rationality may be very minimal.

Here is the propositional argument so far:

1. Evolution is the force behind morality that "pushes" us to define correctness of conduct in a certain way.

2. Evolution "pushes" different people differently by slightly diversifying people’s intrinsic values systems.

3. Therefore, morality is defined differently for each person and may even change if his or her irrational value system is altered.

Unfortunately this argument is not valid. Defining morality in terms of the force applied to each individual alone is not necessarily logical. Evolution is a force of chance. It uses randomness to create diversity so that a species can thrive. This randomness often causes creations that cannot survive properly or are destructive to the rest of the community. Are these creations still moral even though they are destructive? Even a subtle deviation from normal morality could cause disruption to all those in contact with the creation. If one takes into account the general goal of the force of evolution, a more useful definition of the force of morality can be defined. One can superimpose the specific goals of evolution together to form a general goal that defines morality in a more useful way. A way which describes how the "average" person looks at the correctness of conduct. This is a definition that defines morality in a way that we as society view it.

Here is the revised propositional argument:

This argument is valid, however, it has limited practical use . One would have a hard time concluding directly from this theory that a certain controversial act would be moral or immoral. There are too many factors involved. Not only does direct application involve the difficulty of predicting the future, it also involves the difficulty of assessing an outcome's correspondence with the force of evolution. It is useful, nevertheless, to understand the basis behind morality. Take quantum physics for example. This is a description of the quantum world where electrons seem to randomly appear in different locations and entire ions have been induced to exist to multiple locations simultaneously. Although this theory has been around for nearly a century, it has not been able to describe the nature of the macroscopic world, but it is nevertheless useful to our understanding of it. It has caused us to reevaluate the nature of the universe around us. It has shown us that the physical Newtonian equations we use to describe the universe are only close approximations to the macroscopic translation of the underlying quantum laws.

The soundness of the preceding argument can be faulty under religious assumption where morality can be defined by something other than a force. For instance, the divine command theory states that morality is defined by the will of God and if an act is moral because God commanded it, then premise #1 does not hold. Rachels argues that this divine command theory cannot work because then morality would be arbitrary since God would be able to define morality any way he wants.  This is true, however, arbitrarity in this sense is not very useful and definitely does not disprove the divine command theory since the same could be said about anything.  morality could be considered arbitrary no matter how you look at it. Rachels says that morality is arbitrary because God has chosen it however he wanted to. God would of course only choose morality that corresponds with his personality or values system. God is then arbitrary because he could have just as well have had a different values system. This is true, however, the same thing can be said about morality if it were defined outside of God’s will. If morality is a force for instance, it could just as well have acted totally differently and thus would be arbitrary. We can see that arbitrary in this sense is not detrimental to the divine command theory. This makes sense because God would have been the one to originally come up with the word morality and tell humans what it meant.

I do not claim my theory to be perfect by any means, but I have learned a great deal in formulating it, and I hope that I may have brought up a few issues that the reader has not considered previously. I have found that it is very easy to make major logistical errors when analyzing theoretical ethics. I have revised my theory many times and it continues to need revision.