Morality Tier List
You WILL NOT BELIEVE what brand of deontology hits B tier!
Every day I wake up, open this dumb app, and have to read all these well thought out moral posts by people with different moral viewpoints than me. Boring! Stupid! Everybody knows they should just put me in charge of morality, as I’ve figured out all the correct moral axioms.
But anyway before I’m made the Czar of Morality I guess I’ll talk about which moral viewpoints I kinda buy and which I sure don’t. And I suppose I’ll shout out some of the best of these different-minded Substackers who might be pretty intelligent and maybe more trained in philosophy than I (don’t get a big head about it).
Move over, well-thought-out-philosophy-papers-with-a-clear-focus, we’re doin a tier list.
F Tier: Virtue Ethics — Cultivate virtuous character traits
Virtue ethics, literally the most popular position as polled from all philosophers, gets F tier. Sorry, sucks to suck. The main question you may have after reading the name: ok, so how do you select which virtues? I regret to inform you it’s pretty much vibes-based off of ill-defined terms like “human flourishing.”
The idea to focus on character instead of choices or outcomes like the other two moral fighters in the ring do is a genuinely cool idea that sounds like it could work — but there’s just no principled way to pick the virtues or figure out what “pure virtue” is. It’s so unprincipled it’s difficult to find what the theory ACTUALLY advocates for in a logical way, besides “the stuff you think is good” which is unhelpful if I want to know which good stuff I should focus on. How do I balance multiple virtues? No good answers are given.
There are good arguments you should act like a virtue ethicist, but they ground this action in a serious moral philosophy which does things like “tell you what to do”.
gives the best defense I’ve ever seen of it here, though, about how virtues are about kindness and community. I recommend it. Handsome guy, too.D Tier: Prioritarianism — Maximize welfare w/ extra moral weight for the worst off
Utilitarianism, but we changed the utility optimizing to weight a small, random part of it, with no reason at all supplied except for dodging one bad vibes problem of regular utilitarianism where one guy can suck up all the happiness like a utility vampire. I feel like you have to justify major weighting changes in utilitarianism with more than just “it makes some outcomes look slightly less bad.”
D Tier: Contractualism — Principles no one could reasonably reject lead to equal basic liberties
First imagine perfectly rational beings deciding from behind a veil of ignorance what they want the world to look like when they don’t know which conscious being they’re gonna be. Then, imagine a philosopher saying “these perfectly rational beings would subscribe to my dumb brand of deontology therefore I’m right lmao”. Rawls says equal basic liberties and prosperity are the two things these beings would want (in order), instead of, oh I don’t know, wanting the average life on the planet to be the best it could possibly be.
isn’t necessarily a contractualist; he’s some other amalgamation of agent-centered and waivable-duties deontology and has critiqued contractualism but uhhh this is where I’m gonna recommend him because I didn’t have another space and he’s also a handsome guy with some fun viewpoints.And what’s that? I wrote out that entire paragraph above critiquing contractualism and only found out after that
made pretty much this exact post? Gee golly I guess great minds think alike.C Tier: Kantian Deontology — Act only on moral beliefs you can universalize while respecting rational agents.
Kant is a guy who tried to think up some really sick, interesting, and internally consistent rules out of pure logic, which, respect brother. The only issue is the perfectly-logical rules he cooked up endorse the dumbest moral actions known to man. I’ve looked at the actual logic and I really believe the “cannot lie to a murderer about where your friend is hiding” thing is actually a 100% necessary feature of his morality, which doesn’t seem great Bob. Kant > Rawls’ contractualism because Kant’s beliefs actually kinda naturally follow from his premises.
reps for this position here, subscribe to them. I made a big long counter to them and Kant yesterday where I expand on all the points above. Sadly I’m not even allowed to be jealous of how Florence has gotten more subscribers even faster than me because of how good their articles are, boooooo.C Tier: Preference Utilitarianism — Maximize the informed preferences of agents
The most popular version of utilitarianism, based off preferences, is actually mid. It has no way to sort out bad actors with dumb ideas (guys let’s all torture this one guy, if the majority of us want to it’s optimal), stupid mfers (guys it’s morally optimal for me to eat all these bees), or people having a mental breakdown (let me out of the hospital plz). Don’t get me started on animals.
The above isn’t very fair to preference utilitarianism, because the intent is to avoid irrational priorities. But the only way to get around this is by stipulating some sort of perfect “ideal-preference” where we only count what people WOULD prioritize if they were fully informed, rational, and free of bias. I fully believe these abstract fully rational beings would unironically just endorse a better version of utilitarianism so this stipulation destroys the entire point.
B Tier: Divine Command Theory — An act is moral because God commands it as good.
Hear me out guys hear me out ok. Divine Command Theory makes so much sense. I firmly believe a world where religion is right is the world deontology makes the most sense by far. The source of morality in a world where God produces a literal book that tells you what the good virtues are should be THE BOOK. THE UNIVERSE HAS A HOW TO GUIDE, GUYS. Or at least whatever God himself thinks is moral. Try to match that instead of playing some wishy washy vibes-based religious justification for doing stuff you already wanted to do.
This is also why if Christianity is correct, Christian literalists make way more sense than the contextualists who treat the Bible as a big metaphor. Now it’s getting spicy.
Anyway if you’re not religious (I’m not) this one is useless but I firmly believe Christians should roll with this and it gets lots of internal consistency points. Sometimes I feel insane when religious philosophers try to “play the game” and build up moral axioms atheists could agree with. No, man. If you’re in a religion sourced from a book that tells you what to do, that has such massive implications for morality that there’s no bridge. And nothing an atheist philosopher says should change your mind away from Divine Command Theory either, unless they challenge your religious foundations themselves!
A Tier: Strong Negative Utilitarianism — Reduce suffering above all else
Erm, guys, this one’s a little dark? Nah this is easily the most internally consistent and actually respectable position among edgelords who believe life is suffering. So, so much better than nihilism or miserabalism or the modern antinatalism movement (click on that link I hear from a friend that that article is sick). “Suffering is really bad, guys” is a true slogan to have, and yeah, Hell seems like a bad place to be.
Subscribe to
, NOW. Strong negative utilitarians are rare but I respect the commitment to one principle, especially when that principle is indeed what I think matters most in the world.S+++ Tier: Hedonistic Utilitarianism — Maximize good experience; minimize bad experience
It’s beautiful. It’s clean. It’s sexy. It gets the most important aspect right: good things are good, and we should make more good things. Who gives a shit what those pesky humans think, they WILL be fulfilled and loved and hopeful and experience the greatest aspects of existence against their will.
It focuses on conscious beings as the moral endpoint of the universe, cares about animals, and says the goodness acted upon our conscious experience matters more than the random circumstances of the rocks and silt and dead concrete that surrounds us. S+++ inject it into my veins.
I’m the Substack rep for this one — oh, wow, the Substack rep for the best moral position ever? You have to subscribe, right?
Make sure to LIKE and COMMENT!!!1!11!! If I hit my goal of 1 like I’ll make a Meta-Ethical Positions Tier List and beef with
about how guys morality is real and I’m not just coping I swear. Subscribe to him too.By the way, shill for your beautiful moral viewpoint and Substack in the comments if you want, self promo is encouraged on this post only.
Haven’t even read it. Already a banger. Please add the actual tier list image to the article somewhere though!
I can see your view on divine command if it’s like, “god is smarter than me, if I disagree with him on morality it’s probably me who is wrong, not him”, but not if it’s “the good is literally defined by god’s will, rather than god’s will simply being aligned with the good”. If it’s the latter then strong disagree, but the former definitely makes sense.