Instrumental to the formation of morality is the admission that the concept of morality is resting upon the axiom that we are, by being moral, attempting to move from the most possible suffering for everyone, to a place anywhere with less suffering. To say that this state of the universe isn’t “bad, or that distancing from this isn’t “good”, implies that your definition of the concept of morality is radically different then how it is commonly understood, and that you necessarily don’t understand the inbuilt biological drive towards states of wellbeing which every life form desires. This desire for wellbeing and avoidance of suffering constitutes the state of order which life attempts to organize itself into, ever since the first organic molecules fell into a state of order that allowed their replication at a level that was sustainable enough to be replicable across time. As evolution played its role in selecting for the genes, and its biological machines which carried them, it tended towards this principle, not in anthropomorphic terms (wellbeing and suffering), but towards a being that contained genetic fecundity, longevity, and copying-fidelity. The experience that an organism undergoes in relation to such aims, and the reaction to the environment and situations which necessarily determine the success or failure of these genes, are either right or wrong, good or bad, in relation to this, in human terms, as we experience this pendulum between things which aide and which admonish our biological fitness, the experience eliciting such awareness gives rise to the corresponding broad states of which we consider to fall into the suffering or wellbeing, pleasure or non-pleasure, mental states which characterize the situation consciously. In addition to the presence of such present moment conditions of “wellbeing” or “suffering”, we must characterize morality and acting from a philosophically moral system as consideration of not only the individual, but radiating outward from him to include all sentient beings, all life. Generally speaking, this conceptualization is a meta-ethical framework from which we will assume moving forward, specifically, that of Moral Realism, which is not only decided upon based on philosophical rigor, but based on biological and phenomenological evidence we have into the nature of things. We necessarily don’t find ourselves in a moral relativist position, at least not in the domain of considering wellbeing and suffering, which is necessarily all we are talking about when we speak of morality, especially when we take these words in their broadest sense, as that which is most optimal, and least optimal, for the life in question. For more on the meta-ethical principle of Objective Realism, see the essay “Basic Moral Realism”.

The broadest view of morality, and its implications, takes into accounts all beings in this manner, and their subjective experience of life. This experience of life is constituted by their state of being, which, generally speaking, can include a state of more or less suffering in the present moment. Morality must include the suffering undergone by the individual within the present moment, as well as his continued suffering through time, as well as the relational impact he has upon others across the span of time. When considering morality, we take as our foundational maxim that what is “bad” is characterized by the thought experiment in which we imagine the most possible suffering for everyone, without a silver lining. Movement away from this place, in degrees, we define as good. We find morality to be directed not only at the individual, but across all sentient beings, the degree of sentience and experience of suffering being relational to the importance within our system. We find that when we act towards one person, we necessarily take into account the trickle-down effect, and consider the chain of causality leading from such actions, not only in their immediate implications, but across time.

While there have been innumerable attempts to locate the state of mind that best is able to produce this effect, we can all agree that movement away from the most possible suffering for everyone is truly a moral good. Taking this as our starting place, there has been many attempts to articulate which method would be most useful and beneficial in employing a strategy that proposes to do this, in the practical sense of discerning action and moral worth. To name two of the chief contestants in this race, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism, we find very different methodologies in the application of their strategies, yet not always different outcomes.  

As the most popular form of agent-driven morality, virtue ethics is a strategy of morality where we are focused on the content of our own being, of our character, and what is directly emanating from ourselves. We are focused on acting in such a way that displays virtue, to us. In looking for what is virtuous, Aristotle states, we can find the trait in between two opposing extremes. If we look to honesty, we find it in between secrecy and talkativeness. If we look for courage, we find it between cowardice and rashness. If we are to take this virtue ethics approach, our goal is to embody these virtues to the greatest extent we can, to make them a part of our character, through our manifestation of them in thought, speech, and actions. The virtues being morally beneficial, the effect of us focusing on acting in such a way to be “courageous” or “honest” can create (if done well) beneficial effects upon other people, which isn’t the intention of this philosophical system. The outcome is necessary a given, that it would be optimal, if we act in accordance with virtue. While compassion may be a virtue to us, in taking a virtue ethicist approach, we are not focusing upon the effect of our actions, as we are logically concluding that the effects will be beneficial, rather, we are focusing upon the content of our character being pure, upon the manifestation of virtue, which is the “good” to a virtue ethicist. The consequence or impact of such virtue upon others, as stoics emphasized to a large degree as stated in “On Stoicism”, is out of our control. What is in our control, and what we should focus on, according to virtue ethicists, is the content of our actions, and their accordance with our consciously derived virtues. In the trolley cart problem, the virtue ethicists doesn’t switch the lever, as the act of voluntarily taking the life of someone, albeit one instead of five, necessarily is an evil in which he would not partake in, let fate run its course without the moral agent as an individual being involved. Now, on the other hand, if we take virtue as being those character traits that are beneficial in allowing us to act morally, in reference to the universal maxim underlying morality, we find that the implication of certain virtues at certain times would be most beneficial to the overarching progression away from suffering.

As the most popular form of consequentialism, a utilitarian may produce similar effects upon the lives of others as some virtue ethicists, through their mutually shared unconscious consideration of the above maxim, but how they get there, is always at odds with one another. A utilitarian considers in any situation, or reciprocal interaction, what the effect of his action would be, rather than the action being in accordance with virtue. A utilitarian seeks to maximize the welfare of the largest amount of people, over the largest amount of time, in the most beneficial way possible. How we come to that conclusion, or how we act, our conduct, as it attributes to that goal, is not important (from a strictly hard utilitarian position). Whether we must break the virtue ethicists moral code in the pursuit of the greater good is entirely unimportant to the utilitarian, what is important is the effect of the actions. This approach uses the mental faculty humans are imbued with, that of the ability to consciously entertain multiple scenarios stemming off as the hypothetical effect of our actions, and in our ability to use relational reasoning to decipher which of these outcomes is beneficial to the most amount of people. In the trolley cart problem, the utilitarian views the lives of five more than of one, regardless of his direct involvement in the murder of one, and chooses to flip the switch. The pathway that is consciously thought of as leading to the most usefulness, or beneficially, towards the largest amount of people, over the largest amount of time, is the path embarked upon. This, according to utilitarians, in theory, produces the most moral action we can take as it contributes most to the universal maxim with which morality rests upon.

To say that one or the other is answer, universally, in any situation, leaves out important aspects of reality which should not be ignored. I propose, that the solution lies in their transcendence. Once we can gain knowledge into the benficiality of both systems, both for ourselves, and for others, both in the short term, and long term, both in the effects of our actions on our own character, and its iteration across time, we essentially come to a place of cognitive dissonance. This state of dissonance is located in the consciousness of the philosopher which is able to simultaneously hold the value and see the beneficially of both systems of ethics, yet sees also their mutual incompatibility.

Ignorance on another subject is of importance to our practicality in embodying either system philosophically. That is of the real scientific effect of our actions upon others, or the right answer to moral questions, as describe by the meta-ethical framework of moral realism. If we were able to consider all content, all pathways, all data and relatable factors of experience, both going into a situation, and upon the effects, concretely, using a deterministic framework, we would be able to scientifically calculate which pathway would be most progressive in moving away from the maximum universal suffering, and be able to see how different pathways lie upon a spectrum of “good” and “bad” in their relation to the most optimal path of movement away from the “bad” of the moral maxim. This is how we can derive the “ought” of moral action, from the “is” of Hiedeggerian factical reality. In regards to the trolley problem, the moral realist, theoretically, would calculate the exact degree of beneficiality of saving the lives of the one as opposed to the five, and the implications of the survival of such people upon the wellbeing of all sentient beings, and from this data, choose which is most optimal. We could, given the relevant data (all data), discern the most optimal action to produce the most optimal effect. The problem lies in the practicality of moral realism, that we are wholly ignorant of this data and its conclusions, thus the meta-ethical framework has a practical impossibility in its application, albeit, in extreme cases, we can intuit more or less what the data would show quite easily. The problem is, we infrequently find ourselves contending with extreme cases, and when we do, almost all the conventional ethical frameworks point towards the same conclusion. We more often than not find ourselves in a more intermediary moral dilemma, where the answer is difficult to discern, and oftentimes two competing desires, and difficult to compute effects of action, are in play in regards to the situation.

Thus we have three general systems of morality, held in the consciousness of a single being, creating a mode of consciousness that not only has the dissonance of seeing the beneficiality of virtue ethics, but also seeing the beneficiality of utilitarianism, while holding the knowledge of his ignorance of the desired pathway produced by moral realism, or the “most right” answer to a moral question. We come into a sort of existential dilemma in regards to a philosophical system of morality. The individual thus contains three antitheses, and must look to his logical ability to prioritize the practical aspects of such systems, to move them from purely abstract idealism, in their existence solely within his mind, into their implication in his daily life. This is necessarily only able to be accomplished by a Hegelian dialectical move, to a transcendent mode of morality which contains the truth of the three philosophies within its conceptualization, in order for the individual to remove his dissonance, and confusion, in regards to the optimal solution. To solely philosophize under these conditions would necessary produce stagnation, due to our ultimate ignorance of the complete causal chain in relation to the effects of an action. What we seek, and what we need to work from, is a mode of being which is readily able to act. But where the dialectic takes a true thesis in its competition against a secondly truly found antithesis, here we must use a trialectic system to encapsulate a third thesis.

This conceptualization must be more than theoretically sound, and more than logically coherent, it must be practical and the individual must be able to not only use it to see its validity in daily life, but also to be able to act from it in determining answers to moral questions. It must contain a “why” as well as a “how” to conceptualize a moral position. This necessarily requires that his conception of what is the best moral system to act from is directly relational to his knowledge and experience thus far in life, as one cannot consciously act from information on which his Being is ignorant of (unconsciously of course he can, but here we are looking for a conscious conceptualization which is useful). This reliance on knowledge of causation and effects, and the experience needed to gain such knowledge in its practicality, necessarily leads the individual to accept the best possible form of action, and philosophy in which to inform such action, be reliant upon wisdom. Here I am going to put forth the conceptualization of wisdom ethics, a general abstract of it is found in “Precursor to Wisdom Ethics”. Here we will look at how it is able to be used by the individual to concretely understand his actions in a given situation, as well as consciously project himself into future situations to act in accordance with our universal maxim of morality, that is, moving away from the greatest possible suffering for everyone.

Using a system of wisdom ethics, the individual contains the knowledge of prior philosophical systems, and puts them under an umbrella value, which supersedes them all, in a gradient fashion towards higher heights of moral accountability. This wisdom ethics umbrella works under moral realism, yet supersedes specific schools of thought that outline practical solutions, it is, in fact, a mediator between the two, it is the mode of being which can discern between the higher framework of moral realism, and the lower forms of practical implication of moral judgments and actions. Whereas we can use a phenomenological examination of the individual’s life, which coincides with the historicity of the developing moral theories, to show that in both cases the order moves from the system of acknowledgement from agent based ethics, to consequentialist based ethics, both transcended by wisdom ethics, operating in its perceived attempt at embodying the individual intuition of moral realism. This movement, hypothetically, takes place in a step ladder fashion in relation to time, as experience increases, to be measured by the increments of time, so does his position and data set towards moral answers. The individual may hypothetically stumble upon virtue ethics, accept its usefulness, then utilitarianism, accept its usefulness and see the flaws of virtue ethics (for example the contradiction between opposing virtues), then stumble upon moral realism, accept its usefulness and see the flaws of utilitarianism (for example that of actions which are morally unbeneficial to the character of the individual in their sacrifice for the greater good). From the position of realizing the moral meta framework, we see its impracticality in discerning decisions in our everyday “natural” mode of being, the philosopher, or moral contemplative, necessarily reaches a state of confusion as to what exactly to act from and with, consciously. While our manifestation of action is necessarily deterministic, and our embodied perception and value system stem from meaningful significations “Value System Instantiation”, the conscious articulation of something from which to consciously direct ourselves “Intro to Phenomenology of Action, Spontaneity and Conscious Directedness” becomes the object of inquiry to the philosopher at this stage.

While in the historical development of philosophical systems they moved, to a greater or lesser degree, in this fashion, I am not stating that every individual’s adherence and knowledge of the systems moved in a parallel fashion throughout his experience of life, this is just a hypothetical movement, that ends with the individual containing knowledge of all three. What we find in the developing of our knowledge to include differing moral theories is that they all are located within the arrow of time, within our lifetimes. It is a gradual movement towards greater demolition of ignorance, and towards greater knowledge, encapsulating more content and information. As our theoretical knowledge progresses to include more content, so does the knowledge of the experience of the implication of such principles within our lives further contribute to our picture of what is “good” and “bad”, what is the best thing to do in a given situation. Where we find these systems to be roughly incremental in their development, as time goes on, knowledge goes on, the admission of the beneficiality of wisdom ethics shows its true colors.

Wisdom ethics is a place of morality which necessarily stands upon the shoulders of its forbearers, of past experience, previously gained knowledge, and moves, potentially, infinitely upwards in its application. The individual recognizes the true nature of his psychological state, and of the true nature of its manifestation into his actions. What we do is simply an expression of who we are. Whether it be of a nature of concealment, or false representation of ourselves or not, the content we express whether in speech, action, or thought, all is a reflection of the mode of being which we currently find ourselves in. The individual who has thus far progressed, realizes this, and realizes, based on his experience, the uncertainty as to the effect of his actions, yet as he moves through life is better able to accurately predict, (using unconscious probability based upon prior experience), what the best course of action is, and to this he credits the system which produces his actions to wisdom. This system is dependent upon the determinacy of brain organization in its bottom-up integration to consciousness, and then to the top-down control, or direction, within which our conscious content imposes upon the embodied system. The bottom up procedure relies on memory, mental schema in relation to concepts language has organized reality into, the development of which is wholly determined on past experience, stemming from genetic perceptibility, towards accumulated environmental modifications (cultural, familial, experiential). The top down utilization of the content which enters consciousness, and is directed by consciousness, depends on this information, yet plays a role in being part of the causal chain which leads to greater adherence between the lower and higher systems. The top down function can be improved by greater articulation of mental schema, and a more accurate representation of phenomena through language in their representative nature of phenomena. This “truth seeking”, is beneficial to the top down integration, and can be further utilized through understanding the contents of consciousness, understanding one’s Being, through mindfulness, or conscious awareness of the present moment, the only true moment available to consciousness.

Ultimate Wisdom, in relation to morality, is that of acting in accordance with moral realism, in producing the greatest movement away from the universal maxim of suffering, but the individual knows he doesn’t contain the totality of such knowledge, and so Ultimate Wisdom (the best answer to a moral question), is something unattainable by anyone. The factors and conditions as well as knowledge of the mental states and futures which actions produce amounts to a precise knowledge of, unfortunately, everything, something we must accept as falling well outside the limits of our mental capacity. This state of “godhood” or “enlightenment” or “divine inspiration” is what religions claim to have achieved in their patriarchs, yet which the individual in his understanding of wisdom ethics, knows to be impossible in human form. What is not impossible, and what we find borne out in reality, in which evidence abounds to elicit, is the degree of wisdom possible in an individual in relation to the state of “Ultimate Wisdom”. This degree of closeness to such a hypothetical rightness, is something we aim to advance in relation to.

The adherence to wisdom ethics entails the diligent striving towards the state of “Ultimate Wisdom”, or of the height of moral realism, through the implication of acquired virtue in the pursuit of the greatest good for all. It is a synthesis of all three aforementioned systems of morality, that is progressive in its ability to be better informed by a higher resolution image of psychology, science, philosophy, real-world experience, and causality. Through advancement in understanding the effects of causes in their implications within the real world, our data set moves towards providing more favorable decisions and behavior in regards to their results both on our own character and that of others. As we progress through the infinite degrees of wisdom ethics, we find the use of time in better ways, towards better goals. The use of time for the conscious pursuit of improved character, towards the greater understanding of physiological and psychological systems, towards the growth of experience in real world application of our virtues, towards the analysis of the effect of our actions and how they are related to the improvement of alleviating suffering in others and ourselves and others across time, is all pursued, in a way that values certain life and decisions more than others as its effect upon this movement is better understood. As we improve our character we become better able to spontaneously act upon those unconsciously habituated and improved character traits in a way that is most beneficial to others. As we improve our knowledge and conscious ability to direct our actions, we become able to employ the rational faculty towards increasingly better solutions to real world problems. As we increase in wisdom, we are able to distinguish, both consciously and unconsciously, which situations require the spontaneous reaction from virtue and the conscious action which considers the effect of our action. In regards to the trolley car problem, a wisdom ethicist is basing his decision based upon his current state of being, informed by the information of the situation regarding the web of causality tied to the lives proceeding into the future stemming from the six people in question. His experience, memories, and developed moral system, gives him a foundation in which to rationally estimate the beneficiality of the one or the five continuing to live, and how they match up to his conception of Ultimate Wisdom. As he doesn’t have all the information, he works with the information he has on the people, their age, background, jobs, whatever information is present to him, he judges them upon “On Judging”, and this judgment is the same he uses in regards to his actions across any interaction with any being. Thus he chooses to push the lever or not, depending upon an informed calculation taking into account any information he has acquired on the lives in question. If all six people appear to be of the exact same age, with no information given on their background, he will take the utilitarian option. In the same manner, the wise man judges every situation, every interaction, every person, in every way possible, in order to produce an optimal interaction that proves to be beneficial and useful. Outside of the trolley car problem, he judges on race, religion, and gender, where such aspects of a person’s being are causally related to the content of the situation in which he finds himself in, and refrains from doing so where they are unrelated to the situation. With the increase of wisdom, we are better able to see the potential actions available, and the potentialities increase as wisdom increases, as well as we are better able to formulate the effects of such actions, and better able to see clearly which path would be optimal (given our fallible conscious state of not having “Ultimate Wisdom”).

The mode of consciousness which I am describing sees the use of benefiting character growth in agent based moral decisions, and sees the use of consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism, the mode sees the good intention behind them, but holds their use to the standards imposed by moral realism. But what it does that neither does, is admit to be itself a system of continual improvement as time goes on, which not only is a philosophically held conceptualization of morality, but the actual state of things in which we find ourselves in. Most of us are within this state of wisdom improvement unconsciously, the biological system is naturally seeking for better ways to understand the world, and to improve its actions upon it in a way that is beneficial for our selfish genes. The goal for the philosopher, in all accounts, is to consciously describe this process, and his awareness of it, and the methods in which to improve it. We ought to move into direct perception towards this process consciously, to erode any dissonance in regards to the most “thought out” moral answer, and conclude that the embodied system which we are, in our totality, holds the intuition towards the greatest answer, for us, in this present moment, that we can act upon. Whether this entails further research, is better served by spontaneity, or requires “Conscious Employment of the Unconscious”, we ought to attempt an authentic manifestation of the call to conscience (Heidegger) which is dependent on our alignment with the totality of our Being as we so far can articulate it. In acting in accordance with our conscience, that has been so developed to intuit the best mode in which to inhabit to navigate novel situations, we are acting using the best system we have, yet this time, consciously.

Religions seek to point out an optimal path from deductions from mythology, dogma, and superstition, and these deduces conclusions they use in describing our place in the universe, they also elicit a system of morality, which falls upon this spectrum of better or worse as it relates to the universal maxim. While these systems can produce a movement in the good direction, and often provide a stable foundation across time to a more or less beneficial morality in its adherence, it is within the criticism and acceptance of fallibility that ultimately leads to any moral agent’s progressive growth and transcendence to greater accuracy in regards to moral good and truth-finding. Many people do not have the desire to work outside the bounds of a religion, or to question its claims, or to have the time and intellectual ability to make progress in a system that lies outside of conventional, or already demonstrated methodologies, and this is okay. Where they do not seek the truth, where they do not seek novel, unique, original, individuated conceptions of reality and the setting up of a value structure independent of previously formed systems, the philosopher steps in and finds his niche in the pursuit and expression of such aims. The philosopher seeks answers to questions not previously asked, and finds truths undiscovered. If he is a good communicator these truths are conveyed to others memetically, and they live on in the minds of the people, impacting them and their moral systems, their way of life, for better or worse. The goal of a philosopher is to articulate phenomenological findings which help lead the person to consciously improve his morality. In doing so, a philosopher is inclined to give better representations of reality, or to strive to find better conceptual representations of phenomena, to inform his conclusions on ways of living, or philosophies of life, which are better ways, or paths, for individuals to carry down. To seek out and find these new insights into the nature of reality, and to find information and experience which enables the movement of the owner of such knowledge to live a life of increased well-being, or to produce an effect that leads to the distancing from the maxim of suffering, is the ultimate claim to fame of every philosopher, and should be the end goal of modern philosophers. He who is able to increase in wisdom, to heights not yet achieved, and share such knowledge with the people who do not have the means to acquire it for himself, is the responsibility of the philosopher. Whether this information is directly conveyed in his writings, or in his actions, the effect of such seeking and of his findings, if he is truly right and “foursquare beyond reproach”, is beneficial to the continued progress of humanity towards a more enlightened state of wellbeing. It is the role of the philosopher to discover these pathways, and to articulate them to the people. He must discover the hidden treasure, through the metaphorical hero’s journey, and return it to the people for their benefit.

This continually improving system of wisdom ethics, as expounded upon by philosophers and religious leaders, and great people throughout history is the foundation for which we have to work with in our current day and age. The information and insights gleaned by countless seekers and their actions is the foundation which we have to work with, and the information which we should utilize in order to ultimately transcend, in our continuing of the tradition of philosophical inquiry towards greater wisdom. Once we reach the realization of the impact which wisdom has upon our actions, both consciously contained and unconsciously accumulated, we realize the importance of its training and consciously directed improvement. This is done through a conscious analysis of our current value structure, and restructuring, continuously, as new information is absorbed. We must then act on the aspects near the top of our hierarchical value system in order to improve in the areas that we find important to the contribution of improved wisdom. “Value System Instantiation”. Whether this be the extension of knowledge in a given field, or an expansion of acquired experience in different areas of life, where we all are and what we all most need, is unique to each of us. The more we direct our consciousness in pursuit of such a goal, the more we progress, the more we explore and train, the more we learn and become. The more accurate our conception of reality, the more experience we have, in the right domains (conducive areas to understanding morality) the better we become in deciphering which action is optimal given the situation.

As to what this training and manifestation of wisdom, in its accumulation and its displayal, actually looks like, it varies from wise inquirer to wise inquirer. As it is an accumulation of all an individual’s psychic content, physical experience, and acquired knowledge, it is hard to pinpoint a universal system. The easiest grouping system I have found for organizing aspects of wisdom accumulation and improvement is to be found in the Buddha’s eightfold path, the content of which and improvement of which, I have gone into great detail in “Basic Dharma Explanation”, but whose structure can be individualized across all individuals as they see fit, and doesn’t need to match up with mine or with the Buddha’s. This entails the eightfold path, in its application and conceptualization in our own lives. It is the pursuit and carrying down a path, of eight categories, which are easy to remember, and the content of which is extremely expansive as our knowledge grows. These categories are; right view (understanding of reality), right thought (intention), right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. It appears to me, that progress in any one of these eight categories (what each one means is continuously refined by the individual and thus valued differently accordingly) produces an increase in wisdom.   

The main take away is that we shouldn’t view morality as a static, concrete set of imperatives to adhere to, but rather as a dynamic, evolving, and improving process. Every situation we run into is unique, given the continually changing and impermanent state of the universe which we find ourselves thrown into, and our morality should reflect that. The ability to cope with this continual change, both in our own psyche, our own character, as well as in the external world, and its situations, is the task given to wisdom, to find the best optimal solution given the present moment which is always novel and unique. History never repeats itself, but aspects of history appear to follow similar patterns, which we can learn from and use in a probabilistic way to better inform our present decisions. This is the natural way in which our brain operates, through the use of pattern recognition, and hierarchical reasoning, and mental representations using concepts, and this system is best directed by a consciousness which is ever becoming aware of its content, ever seeking to expound its horizons, ever pursuing an inner expansion in pursuit of Ultimate Wisdom to inform his morality.