Don't Worry, Be Happy by Andrew Pessin
There’s plenty of moral controversy, to be sure. But there’s also a lot of moral agreement. Make quick lists of some actions you think of as uncontroversially morally good ones and morally bad ones and ask a friend to do the same. You and your friends will probably find much overlap in your two lists. In fact it’s easy to generate lists that most people more or less agree with.
What’s harder is explaining just why that’s so easy.
The lists just can’t be arbitrary. There must be something that all good actions have in common by virtue of which they count as good and something else that all bad actions have in common. Well here’s one idea: the moral value of an action is determined by how much overall happiness the action produces. Morally good actions maximize that happiness, while bad ones fail to.
Treating happiness as the fundamental moral value makes a lot of sense. Suppose you ask your friend why he chose to go to a certain college. He might say: because that college will help him get a good job. And why does he want that? Because he wants a nice home and to buy lots of nice things. And why those? Eventually he will say: because that will make me happy. If you ask him why he wants to be happy he will stare at you like you’re crazy. That’s because everything we want, we want for the sake of the happiness it brings us; but happiness we want for its own sake.
Happiness is the fundamental thing we value.
Some may object by insisting that morality must ultimately be traced back to God. But our theory is perfectly happy (so to speak) with doing that, if you happen to believe in God. For presumably a benevolent God would want human beings to be happy, so whatever morality God provides would increase human happiness.
If it didn’t, then that would truly be something to worry about.
What’s harder is explaining just why that’s so easy.
The lists just can’t be arbitrary. There must be something that all good actions have in common by virtue of which they count as good and something else that all bad actions have in common. Well here’s one idea: the moral value of an action is determined by how much overall happiness the action produces. Morally good actions maximize that happiness, while bad ones fail to.
Treating happiness as the fundamental moral value makes a lot of sense. Suppose you ask your friend why he chose to go to a certain college. He might say: because that college will help him get a good job. And why does he want that? Because he wants a nice home and to buy lots of nice things. And why those? Eventually he will say: because that will make me happy. If you ask him why he wants to be happy he will stare at you like you’re crazy. That’s because everything we want, we want for the sake of the happiness it brings us; but happiness we want for its own sake.
Happiness is the fundamental thing we value.
Some may object by insisting that morality must ultimately be traced back to God. But our theory is perfectly happy (so to speak) with doing that, if you happen to believe in God. For presumably a benevolent God would want human beings to be happy, so whatever morality God provides would increase human happiness.
If it didn’t, then that would truly be something to worry about.