However, I want to learn how to construct ethical arguments for myself. I want to evaluate how well these guidelines mesh with my own ethical axioms. What I really want is an algorithm allowing me to carefully move from fundamental principals to deciding whether an action is consistent with those principals. I have analogous training for the physical world. I can move from first principals through a provably correct chain of arguments to a description of how a baseball will travel from the pitcher's mound to a catcher's mitt. This train of reasoning is useful, but too cumbersome for humans playing baseball. Despite no understanding of the physical principals, Little League players perform prodigies of differential equation every game they play.
In the same way, the algorithmic approach to ethical decision making is useful for writing institutional standards of behavior or for deciding upon the value of a proposed medical device, but too unwieldy to have practical value for a parent admonishing a child, a grocer culling vegetables or a soldier facing a crowd. Just as humans have the capacity to instinctively catch balls, we have the ability to instinctively make ethical decisions. Just as years of playing baseball, learning from coaches and training your body produce a professional pitcher, society and our parents spend years teaching us to make ethical choices.
The stories we tell form our ethical training. Stories show exemplary behavior and its rewards, as well as bad behavior and its punishments. We are the main character in a continuous narrative that we tell ourselves. The story in which we star provides ready-made choices when we face decisions. The narrative we tell about ourselves conflicts with the character we play in other people's stories. These conflicts force us to change the narrative, and if severe enough, they force us to live a story we don't enjoy.
All people need access to stories where they are the main character. This was driven home recently by a video showing how even now African-American children belittle their worth. Women and men who flout the conventional stories display great imagination and courage in finding a tale they like better than they were offered. Pursuing these unconventional narratives also imposes great costs. It is important that their stories be told in full, including flaws and doubts and costs, so children breaking from the story they are born with expect adversity and know it can be overcome. It is important that our stories be true.
We need to ensure that all people have access to stories allowing them to live a life of which they are proud. This is why often maligned disciplines such as Women's Studies and African-American Studies are vitally important. That is why maligned efforts such as affirmative action and diversity are important. Lives lived well show new generations how to make their own story exciting and admirable. All of traditional science and humanities provide examples that I can emulate to live an enriched and meaningful life. It is important that people who aren't well-educated, strait, white, middle-class males have access to a correspondingly vast set of examples.
Knowledge is not a zero-sum game. We can afford scholarship in any area people are passionate enough to pursue. The knowledge may not be relevant to my story, but I don't lose anything by its existence. In the worst case, I cease reading after a few paragraphs and move on. In the best case, I expand my experience and my choices as my narrative progresses. The story in my head at the moment is devoted family man by day and seeker of scientific truth by night. Both narratives are vital to my self worth and both provide guides until something more profound comes along.
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