Addendum: a response to a person who asked what, in this theory, makes ethics different from any other kind of preference.
I consider ideologies to be a belief structure that lies somewhere halfway between ethics and empirical beliefs, heavily blending in parts of both. In an ideology, empirical beliefs are promoted to a level where they gain a moral worth by themselves.
To answer your actual point, I would say that ethics really are just a special case of ordinary preferences. Normatively, there’s no reason why a preference for a hamburger would be more important than a preference for not killing. Of course, ethics-related preferences tend to be much stronger than others, giving them extra worth.
What makes ethics special is their functional role for the organism. (From now on, I’ll reference the original moral intuitions as “morals”, and the theoretical structure an organism builds to explain them as “ethics”.) Morals tend to be rather strongly experienced preferences, driving behavior quite strongly. In order to better plan for the future, an organism needs to know how it will react in different situations, so over time it observes its moral reactions in a variety of circumstances and builds an ethical model that best fits the data. (This is basically a variant of the “the self is a self-model” idea from philosophy of mind, applied to ethics: see e.g. http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318670.html )
Of course, we humans tend to confuse models for the real thing. “I experience moral repugnance at this situation, which could be explained if my moral intuitions thought that killing was wrong” becomes “killing is objectively wrong”. Eventually we forget that the model was a model at all, and it becomes an ideology—a system where empirical beliefs about the nature of our morals have taken a moral value by themselves. Our morals aren’t entirely untouchable black boxes, of course, and this kind of confusion may serve to actually shift our morals in the direction of the theory. And I’m not saying that the models must be mistaken—they may very well be correct.
How is it possible to discuss ethics in such a scenario? Well, it needs to be noted that there’s also an additional reason for ethics are likely to have evolved. Building ethical models that predict moral behavior is useful not only for predicting your own behavior, but also that of others. I suspect that part of the instinctive dislike many people feel towards hypocrites is the fact that inconsistencies between theory and behavior means the hypocrites’ behavior is harder to predict, thus making alliances with them less safe. This drives people towards adopting ethical theories which are more consistent internally, or that at least appear such to others. (This theory is closely related to Robin Hanson’s theory of identity: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/a-theory-of-identity.html ) And since ethical theories also take a moral worth for the individuals themselves, this provides another method for how discussion can actually modify our ethical systems.
Addendum: a response to a person who asked what, in this theory, makes ethics different from any other kind of preference.
I consider ideologies to be a belief structure that lies somewhere halfway between ethics and empirical beliefs, heavily blending in parts of both. In an ideology, empirical beliefs are promoted to a level where they gain a moral worth by themselves.
To answer your actual point, I would say that ethics really are just a special case of ordinary preferences. Normatively, there’s no reason why a preference for a hamburger would be more important than a preference for not killing. Of course, ethics-related preferences tend to be much stronger than others, giving them extra worth.
What makes ethics special is their functional role for the organism. (From now on, I’ll reference the original moral intuitions as “morals”, and the theoretical structure an organism builds to explain them as “ethics”.) Morals tend to be rather strongly experienced preferences, driving behavior quite strongly. In order to better plan for the future, an organism needs to know how it will react in different situations, so over time it observes its moral reactions in a variety of circumstances and builds an ethical model that best fits the data. (This is basically a variant of the “the self is a self-model” idea from philosophy of mind, applied to ethics: see e.g. http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318670.html )
Of course, we humans tend to confuse models for the real thing. “I experience moral repugnance at this situation, which could be explained if my moral intuitions thought that killing was wrong” becomes “killing is objectively wrong”. Eventually we forget that the model was a model at all, and it becomes an ideology—a system where empirical beliefs about the nature of our morals have taken a moral value by themselves. Our morals aren’t entirely untouchable black boxes, of course, and this kind of confusion may serve to actually shift our morals in the direction of the theory. And I’m not saying that the models must be mistaken—they may very well be correct.
How is it possible to discuss ethics in such a scenario? Well, it needs to be noted that there’s also an additional reason for ethics are likely to have evolved. Building ethical models that predict moral behavior is useful not only for predicting your own behavior, but also that of others. I suspect that part of the instinctive dislike many people feel towards hypocrites is the fact that inconsistencies between theory and behavior means the hypocrites’ behavior is harder to predict, thus making alliances with them less safe. This drives people towards adopting ethical theories which are more consistent internally, or that at least appear such to others. (This theory is closely related to Robin Hanson’s theory of identity: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/08/a-theory-of-identity.html ) And since ethical theories also take a moral worth for the individuals themselves, this provides another method for how discussion can actually modify our ethical systems.