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.

Rational Basis of Ethics

An underlying premise to this study is that ethics is based on reason, and that any action that is not the result of a reasoned decision is not subject to ethical evaluation.

That said, I think it's acceptable to hold as unethical the failure to apply reason: if a person who is a capable of rational though undertakes an action without considering the consequences, this is a dereliction of ethics. While they have not chosen to act in an ethical manner, their choice to act without due consideration is, in itself, considered to be a failure of their ethics.

Said another way, if an actor is capable of rational though, we expect them to apply reason to determine the ethics of their decisions and the precipitating actions. The converse of this statement is that if an actor is not capable of rational thought, we cannot expect them to apply reason, nor can we assess the consequences of their actions as ethical.

This would seem to be a reasonable premise: we do not hold animals accountable for the ethics of their actions. We may assess them to be dangerous, but this is in much the same way as we assess an inanimate object to be dangerous: a wild animal that attacks a person is no more "evil" than a sharp stone that cuts the foot of a person who treads upon it.

The matter becomes less clear when we are considering a person who is incapable of reason: a person who is mentally retarded, a child who is too young to exercise logic, a person whose mind is disabled by age or psychological disorder, or a person who is overcome by emotion. We cannot consider the action of such individuals to be influenced by ethics, or subject to ethical evaluation.

This is not to say that we cannot choose to react to their actions, or act in advance to prevent them from harming others, if we consider them to be dangerous - but whether or not we are required or entitled to prevent dangerous individuals from doing harm a separate ethical decision, pertaining to the actions taken by others, not to the actions of such individuals.

The assessment of whether a given individual is capable of exercising logic is a matter of psychology rather than philosophy, and a clear distinction should be made between the two fields of study. We must take care to refrain from classifying a person as "incapable of rational thought" simply because we disagree with their reasoning. As to what other criteria might be implied to correctly determine a person's capacity for logic, I leave that to psychology.

Other than the lack of capacity for logic, there may be instances in which a person who is capable of reason chooses not to apply it. In certain circumstances, the necessity for action is such that it is not possible or practical to undergo the mental effort of applying reason - action must be taken quickly. My sense is that it would be difficult to make a general assessment of situations where one can reasonably state that there is "no time to think," and that the determination of whether this is true must be considered in the context of a specific situation.