Ethics in Social Context

Another extrapolation from Maslow is that action is motivated by the needs or interests of the actor, and that ethics is considered in terms of the impact of that action in terms of its consequence to other parties. In other words, ethics is not primarily concerned with the self-interest of the actor.

It is expected that a person will act in pursuit of their own values, and in instances where there is no consequence to any other party, ethics does not apply. When a person is motivated by their own hunger to eat, the act of eating is not of any ethical significance whatsoever – it is merely the satisfaction of his own needs, of consequence to no other party.

That is not to say that any benefit to self is to be excluded or discounted from consideration. The fact that the act of eating renders a benefit to the actor remains as a motivation to act. The decision is still rational, and it is practical, but the lack of benefit or detriment to another party makes it of negligible interest to ethics.

Ethics is concerned with the social context of action – the consequences of an action to other parties. I cannot go so far as to say “to society,” as “society” lacks definition and includes parties for whom an action has no consequences. And again, if there are no consequences, there is nothing for ethics to consider in determining the nature of the action in terms of good or evil.

It’s also noted that needs are taken for granted, and a motivation to fill a need is presumed. This is the rationale for action, which is of key interest to ethics. It seems pointless to apply reason to evaluate an action that is not the result of a reasoned decision, though ethics may castigate the neglect of considering consequences before undertaking action.

It is also presumed that some action will be taken to address a need. A person who is hungry will seek to satisfy that need by eating, a prerequisite of which is obtaining food. In such an instance, ethics is not primarily concerned with the satisfaction of the need for the actor (to eat being neutral), but with the actions undertaken in obtaining food, insofar as they affect other parties.

That is to say that the person will eat, as a practical matter, and the function of ethics is to help him to identify the course of action, among the various possibilities, by which he will satisfy this requirement. It is the means, rather than the action, that are evaluated with the intention of making a rational decision, given that the individual is motivated to undertake some form of action to fill that need.

And to return to the original point, that if the action an individual undertakes to fill a need has no impact on any other party, his actions are of no interest to ethics.

Maslow Reconsidered

The primary problem in applying Maslow's hierarchy to ethics is that Maslow explores the motivations of the individual to act in his own benefit, whereas ethics most often considers the effect of actions upon others.

That said, there are a few aspects of Maslow's theory that seem compelling:

Primarily, that interests can be prioritized by a hierarchy, some being more important than others. This seems entirely rational, and has value to ethics in overcoming some to the problems inherent in binary systems of ethics - in which a consequence is labeled as good or bad without a sense of the degree of importance or impact.

Second, that the importance of an interest is relative to the achievement of a core value. In Maslow's hierarchy, it is clear that the chief "need" toward which an individual is motivated is life itself - in the sense of the survival of the individual. I have a sense that the same can be said of ethics - not only in the role that values play, but also in the identification of life itself as the root value, from which all other values are derived.

Third, and this is admittedly an indirect extrapolation, that the motivation of an individual to serve his own interests is entirely a matter of psychology that has little importance or interest to ethics. Said another way, ethics takes it for granted that an individual will act in his own interests, to serve his own needs, and that this is of no consequence to ethics. Instead, ethics focuses on the consequences of an action to others, and one of the chief ethical dilemmas is in considering when the harm done to others is justified by the benefit to self.

Each of these three aspects merit further consideration.

Maslow's Hierarchy

I've been stewing over the previous post and have found it difficult to proceed further along the topic without more detailed consideration of needs, desires, and interests. Unable to define them from a purely philosophical perspective, I defer to psychology.

It merits mention that philosophy and psychology are closely inter-related, such that one often intrudes on the other, and generally, the consequences are less than optimal (a psychologist's take on philosophy, and vice-versa, tend to be sloppy and inaccurate), and so it's important to state that my intent here is not to redefine psychology, but borrow upon it until a purely philosophical answer can be found.

Even so, it cannot be borrowed without some modification. Primarily, Maslow's theory is considered to be a hierarchy of needs, and I find that the distinction of "need" from "desire" is hazy at best, and moreover, it is of no consequence to ethics. And so, my intent is to translate Maslow's hierarchy of needs into a hierarchy of interests, and set aside the classification of an interest as a need or a desire.

Maslow's theory was that there are a broad array of human needs that can be depicted as a hierarchy, such that the lowest level of need is of primary interest to the individual, and that it is generally the case that the individual will be inclined to fill his lowest level of need before seeking to fulfill needs on a higher level.

This would translate to the subject of ethics as the motivation to serve an interest (or "satisfy a need"), and to prioritize certain interests over others (addressing basic needs before seeking to fulfill higher ones).

The lowest level of the hierarchy, hence the highest level of priority to motivation, are "physiological" needs, which arise from the immediate necessity of sustaining life: the need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, and react to medical emergencies that pose immediate threat to life and well-being. The needs at this level can be further prioritized by their immediacy: the need to breathe being more pressing than the need to eat.

At the next level are the needs that Maslow considered to be essential to safety and security. These are still based on physiological needs, but seek to fulfill future needs rather than immediate ones: the need to avoid injury or treat medical conditions that are not an immediate threat, the need to establish stores of food and water for future consumption, etc.

The next level are social needs, which are also derived from physiological needs, but in the context of other people. Specifically, the individual is motivated to enter into relationships with others that will help him to fulfill his future needs more efficiently: family, neighbors, community, employer, etc. It is at this level that the motivation begins to become blurred, as psychology insists that an individual has a "need" to belong to social units that is not directly related to his ability to fulfill his physiological needs.

The next level of needs pertain to esteem, which is a purely psychological consideration. This deals with the emotional fulfillment of the individual: self-esteem, the respect of others, confidence in his abilities, and a sense of achievement.

The highest level of needs pertain to self-actualization: the development of abilities that did not previously exist, and are not directly related to physiological needs. Though it seems to me that this is related to esteem (a person gains abilities to increase the same factors, respect, confidence, sense of achievement), I may be overlooking the reason for differentiating them.

From a perspective of ethics, the first three levels of Maslow's hierarchy are acceptable in their objectivity. I do not think it could be argued that these "needs" represent genuine and objectively valid motivations.

However, the purely psychological elements of the highest two levels (and the psychological rather than physiological element of the third) are more difficult to accept as a basis for objective evaluation. I don't dispute that humans are motivated by such things, but find it difficult to include them in objective assessment of interests as they are tautologies (a person desires to belong to a group simply because they desire to belong to a group).

Borrowing upon Maslow's hierarchy, I will accept for the time being that there are four "levels" of interest, in order of highest to lowest priority:

1. Interests that are served in order to satisfy immediate physiological needs
2. Interests that are served in order to directly impact the ability to meet future physiological needs
3. Interests that are served in order to directly impact the ability to meet future physiological needs by means of others
4. Interests that are served for reasons unrelated to physiological needs

I have a sense that this will hold up under a liberal amount of scrutiny, and will suffice for the evaluation of ethics in most situations.