Looking in my quote file I come up with the following:

Universal Ethics

Rushworth Kidder:

“When you talk to people anywhere in the world about what they think are the most important values to hand on to the next generation, they will talk to you about five things: compassion, fairness, responsibility, honesty and respect. It’s uncanny the commonality with which those particular five values keep coming up.”

Michael Josephson:

His research resulted in what he calls the Six Pillars of Character, five of which–caring, fairness, responsibility, trustworthiness and respect–are essentially identical to the values identified by Kidder’s organization. The sixth is citizenship.

It is interesting to note that none of those values represent supporting an individual in a vacuum. They are about supporting the society through the “veil of ignorance” mentioned earlier.

I think a universal morality based on the individual is a faulty premise. I would choose three elements: reproduction, frailty, and “veil of ignorance”. Early societies that were little more than kin groups have built in glue via reproduction. The primary ethic is survival of your offspring or genes (I know we’ve all read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins). This is the primary motivation behind selfish behavior. Providing for ones offspring requires monetary (and other) resources and so one makes efforts to accumulate resources (Responsibility).

By itself it is little different than basing morality on the individual until it is mixed with frailty. An honest assessment of ones ability to protect and provide for ones children is going to run into the problem of ones own death rather soon. If you were to die in a hunting accident it wouldn’t be long before your children would be in dire straights. Given this situation it is in my children’s interest for me to set up alternate means of their care (Compassion). But this alternate methodology can’t be to draining on my own resources or I may not be able to care for my own offspring (Fairness).

When the veil of ignorance is added to the mix this leads to setting up a society where people contribute to the neglected and poor of the society not so much out of altruism but as insurance for their own children (Citizenship). While I may know my own status and wealth I can not know how my children will end up. For that matter I may not know all my children (more likely for males ;-)). So I am going to want to make sure all strata of society are reasonable protected and provided for, again with the caveat that it not be to draining on my resources.

The remaining universal ethics (Honesty, and Respect) are actually overhead costs to fairness. They support the society so that fairness can ascertained and social pressures can be brought against those who violate that system.

I believe that is a better picture of human morality than one based on the individual or freedom. Both important concepts but I do not believe they are the basis of human morality.

–Zafkiel