How To Make Good Decisions And Be Right All The Time: Solving The Riddle Of Right And Wrong

I've just finished reading this and, frankly, I was amazed! The book tries and probably succeeds in answering most of the outstanding problems in moral philosophy. Let me say that again: the book tries and probably succeeds in answering most of the outstanding problems in moral philosophy.

The book starts with a well-written introduction that draws you in, comparing the long-running hunt for right and wrong to the enlightenment search for scientific formulae, once dismissed as heresy, showing how philosophers have been looking for equivalent formulae to tell us what is the right thing to do. It then outlines two of the dominant and most long-lasting ethical theories - utilitarianism, and Kant's categorical imperitive, and this leads neatly into a concise history of the study of moral philosophy over the last century and a half.

After a demolition of religion-based ethics, the book then starts to establish a new system. It does this partly by identifying the flaws with Kant and with utilitarianism and seeking to address them one by one, and partly by starting from the very beginning, asking 'why should we be good?' and 'why should we do anything at all?' It surveys attacks from relativism, nihilism and intuitionism, then focuses in on an approach rooted in empathy and obligation - the former as a distinctly Humean or Adam Smith type sentiment, the latter rather Kantian or Rawlsian. The beauty of this approach is that it then manages to combine virtue (empathy) with deontology (the book proffers the Help Principle: 'Help someone if your help is worth more to them than it is to you'), and consequentialism.

From this impressively firm basis (the book tests it against various classical attacks), a whole set of principles is developed, answering ethical puzzles on topics ranging from euthanasia, to sex and romance, to lying, to group decision-making (the book spans individualistic-based approaches to group choices such as rights with majoritarian and democratic systems), to punishment, to blame, to legal disputes, to how much to give to charity, how much to favour friends over stranger, and lots more.

The real shock of this book is that everything fits together. It invites the reader to see how incoherant most pervasive moral systems are, and you begin to realise why the problems of moral philosophy have been so long lasting, perhaps even impossible to solve. Then this book, almost magically, conjures up a solution which answers centuries of debate and discussion. That is why it is so brilliantly astounding.

I'm going to re-read this book in a month or so, to let the ideas settle in my mind, and to allow me to wonder whether there is an error in the theory, and if so, where it might be. (Chapter twelve looked suspect to me at first, but upon re-reading it, the logic was definitely water-tight. Finding possible flaws in this book could well be the subject of many future PhDs)

It is a truly incredible book.