The idea of alternate ethical schemes was sparked by a shooting star. After I had seen it, I sat in the tent thinking, “What would I really wish for?” I decided that I would not wish for a change in the composition of human nature, such as making us more benevolent, because our institutions, like government, are designed to take account of human nature. If human nature changed, our societies would collapse. Or so thinks the conservative me, who still places a lot of value on contingency.

Way later on, now that I’m taking a class on ethics — a philosophy class, not a jailed CEO’s re-education course — I’m beginning to wonder if ethics are contingent on human nature. That is to say, are our moral systems dependent on human psychology? If we came across alien creatures, would have they have ethics in a way we could conceive? Would it be entirely different? Or would they necessarily have ethics, the way they would necessarily have mathematics (although even this is up for debate)?

At this point, I don’t know. I’m leaning towards believing that there are some universal conceptions they’d have to share, like fairness and justice, but that these could be expressed in completely different fashions, thus making our two ethical systems incompatible. I’m leaning towards believing that ethics are contingent on human nature, and that to believe that ethics are God-given is completely wrong.

Before I even broach the topic of God, I must first decide to what degree ethics are contingent on human nature. I plan on using a strategy of first attempting to devise alternate ethical systems.

Here are my different ideas:

• Find differences in morality between different cultures and exaggerate them.
• Find psychological subjects and imagine an entire society of these brain-damaged or neuro-atypical individuals
• Examine Asimov’s 3 Laws and see how they’d work for robots with free will
• Look at the structure of animal societies and see how they’d work with more intelligent agents
• Scour science-fiction literature for alien ethics
• Examine tit-for-tat and other strategies in economics literature and see if I can imagine societies

But even before I do all that, I’ve got to look at what “ethics” and “morality” mean.

Tomorrow: Defining morality and ethics in a broad sense.

A personal note: I have an unidentified disease at the moment. I’m enjoying calling myself a medical mystery. But I’m seeing someone who’s not a general practitioner on Monday, and hopefully he’ll figure it out. I’d recommend limiting contact with me until further notice.