n the American judicial system, insanity is sometimes used as a defense, and the test for sanity is

whether or not the accused can tell the difference between right and wrong. I suggest that, by this test, the vast majority of the human race is insane, for very few know how to correctly determine whether a particular action is right or wrong. Sure, we have been given a set of rules with the labels Right and Wrong, but we haven't been given valid reasons why particular labels are chosen. Correct reasoning is the key ingredient in any search for truth. To determine right from wrong, we must first use correct reasoning to establish the basis for differentiating right from wrong. Then, with this basis, we can use reason to determine the rightness or wrongness of any particu-lar action or thing.

To begin with, right, wrong, good, and bad are unfinished terms and have no meaning until completed with a state-ment of right for whom, wrong for what, etc. Good and evil are often talked about as though they are "things" that exist on their own, but they are not. They are more properly used to evaluate the effects of some action or thing. So how do we determine which actions/ things are good and which are bad? Many people still believe that knowledge of good and bad is intuitive, that we are born with a "conscience" that directs us down the right path. Some believe that we have a Parent Ego State where we

A.W. (`Art') Eaton is a retired elec-tronics engineer. His main interests are psychology, philosophy, and the application of logic and reason to all aspects of human endeavor.

store rules learned from parents, teach-ers, and other authority figures. Some believe that knowledge of right and wrong is to be learned from some reli-gious document. In any case, we each have a stock of beliefs that we have acquired by various means, and the beliefs about moral right and wrong are included in this stock.

Even in the most basic rules of ethics on which there is widespread agreement, we realize that there are some circum-stances where one might take exception to the rule. For example, it is generally accepted that it is wrong to lie, but, if lying to a vicious criminal saves an inno-cent victim, most of us would lie. Therefore, obedience to the rule should not be the ultimate goal; rather, the rule should be a tool that is used to achieve the ultimate goal. A rule is a means to an end, not the end itself.

We don't have to look very far to see there is widespread disagreement on many rules of conduct. Many rules differ from country to country culture to cul-ture, and religion to religion. Some behavior is inherently wrong and is wrong in any culture, but some is wrong simply because it goes against the expec-tations and habits of a particular society. Obviously, the more important rules are those that deal with inherently wrong behavior. But we receive them all mixed together from the same sources and can't tell which rules should be vigorous-ly defended and which can be modified to accommodate different cultures. And what if the rigid rules of my culture are in direct conflict with the rigid rules of your culture? In such cases one or both of us must be incorrect in our belief of what is right and what is wrong. It fol-lows that if my belief is incorrect then the

reasoning that led to it must be faulty. There is a reason for every belief,

even if the original reason has been for-gotten. For example, I may believe that it is wrong to steal and, if asked why, I may say, "Because it just seems like the wrong thing to do." The reason it seems wrong may be that my mother told me at a very young age that it is wrong to steal, and I stored that rule in the part of my brain where such rules are stored. There is a reason for every belief and, if the reasoning is correct, the belief is likely to be correct. If the reasoning is faulty, the belief is probably faulty.

How do we know if a reasoning process is faulty? For thousands of years people have been studying and formulating rules for reason and logic. The rules that are valid are the ones that consistently yield correct conclu-sions. If a method of reasoning produces a conclusion that can be shown by other means to be definitely in error, then that method of reasoning can be discarded. For example, if a single method of rea-soning can be used to produce conflict-ing results, the method must be faulty. Let's say I believe in Santa Claus because my mother assured me that he exists, and mothers are always truthful, and you believe Santa does not exist because your mother told you so, and mothers are always truthful. We are both using the same reason—mothers are always truthful—to arrive at con-flicting conclusions. We can therefore conclude there is a flaw in the reasoning and that we cannot be certain that something is true just because a mother says it is.

By starting with known facts and applying valid reasoning, additional facts can be ascertained, which can be used to derive still more facts. As in solving a complex mathematical problem, if an error is made at any step in the process, the final conclusion is unreliable. (It could still be correct by accident!)

When two beliefs are in conflict, at least one must be in error. The abun-dance of conflicting beliefs indicates that a lot of faulty reasoning is taking place. Conflicting beliefs often lead to physical conflicts, as evidenced by the large number of wars and fights that are still occurring. If everyone could purge the false ideas from their stock of beliefs, most of these conflicts could be

The Difference Between Right and Wrong A. W. Eaton

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resolved. Thus, it is worthwhile to learn how to reason correctly and how to rec-ognize fallacies. Many books have been written on the rules of correct reason-ing. Unfortunately, they are rarely incorporated into public education.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HAPPY Let's cleanse our stock of beliefs by fol-lowing the example of Descartes and starting with the most certain bit of knowledge the knowledge of our exis- tence: "I think; therefore I am." I would paraphrase and say, "I feel; therefore I am." The ability to think has no value in itself, but the ability to feel is very signifi-cant. One of the first things we learn is that we have the ability to experience feel-ings and that feelings have both positive and negative values. From the moment of birth, we can tell the difference between being hungry and isolated versus being fed and held. We can experience various degrees of pleasure or happiness, and we can experience various degrees of pain or unhappiness. Without this ability, nothing would have any value or importance. A rock doesn't care if it gets crushed. A peach doesn't care if it gets eaten. Humans do not care about anything that does not affect their feelings. The value of any rule, action, or thing is determined by its effect on feelings.

It is natural and all right that we seek to increase positive feelings (hap-piness) and decrease negative feelings (unhappiness). The ultimate goal of each person—either consciously or unconsciously—is to maximize his or her happiness. This will not feel right if you have been taught that hard work and sacrifice are good and the pursuit of pleasure is wrong, but happiness is used here in a broad, general sense to include all positive feelings, not just hedonistic pleasure. It seems that even acts of apparent generosity and self-sacrifice are connected—directly or indirectly—to some positive reward or to the expectation of some reward. Sometimes a selfless act comes auto-matically, as a result of training or char-acter development. But rules of behav-ior that become one's character are originally adopted for acceptance, praise, or some other reward. Someone once said that the one thing worse than being unhappy is being despicable, to which another remarked that the trou-ble with being despicable is that it

makes you so damned unhappy! The immediate reaction to this thesis

is usually, "How selfish! Surely there is something more important than the pur-suit of one's personal happiness." Before rushing to judgment, however, let's continue to build on our foundation of fact. Now that we have acknowledged that sane people strive to maximize their happiness, the next step is to determine what we can do to accom-plish this goal. Happiness comes in many forms from many sources, but it didn't take long for humans to discover they could not accomplish much by themselves. Not only happiness, but sur-vival itself, requires the help of other people. So what happens when people gather in a group and each wants to maximize his/her own happiness? Compromise! Cooperation! They quick-ly learn that to receive the help they need, they must be willing to give the help others need.

This brings us to the concepts of right and wrong. For an individual, things that are right are the things that increase one's happiness and things that are wrong are things that decrease one's happiness. I think most people would prefer to have their total happiness spread over their lifetime rather than have one day of ecstasy and little or no happiness the rest of their lives. If one were to plot a line graph where the Y axis represents Happiness and the X axis represents Time, the resulting line would show the variations in this person's hap-piness over time. The line would show positive peaks at times of greatest happi-ness and negative peaks at times of greatest sorrow. In mathematical jargon, the area under the Happiness Time curve represents the integral of Happiness with respect to Time. Perhaps the opti-mum life is represented by a maximum net area under the curve, or the most happiness for the longest time.

Ideally, society represents all its members equally, so the goal of society must include a factor that represents the number of people receiving a fair share of the Happiness Time integral. Until a more precise formula is devel-oped, we can say that the goal of society should be to achieve the greatest hap-piness for the most people for the longest time, and society's rules of right and wrong should be based on how an action or policy affects this goal. Let's call this principle the "HPT

(Happiness-People-Time) factor." To correctly evaluate the rightness or wrongness of a law or policy, the total net effect on HPT must be evaluated.

Rarely does an action produce results that are 100 percent good or 100 percent bad. Often, results cannot be predicted with enough accuracy to be sure which is the best course. To be as accurate as pos-sible, it is necessary to apply correct rea-soning to the best knowledge available, to keep an open mind to new knowledge, and to remember the objective of maxi-mizing the HPT factor.

We should not forget that the basic goal of each person is to increase his or her happiness. The creation of a society by enlisting the cooperation of others is one of the tools to further that goal. Society is created to serve the individu-als, not the other way around. If the rules of a society maximize the chances of happiness for as many of its members as possible, those members will be moti-vated to cooperate with those rules. Nevertheless, there could be times when the best interests of a person are not served by the rules of a society. In these cases the person has a right to reject those rules and attempt to achieve hap-piness by some other path. If in so doing the happiness of others is affected, the others have an equal right to protect their happiness by enforcing the rules of their society. One example might be a case where a person is charged with a crime he or she did not commit. The evi-dence could be so strong that reason-able jurors could conclude that the probability of guilt is beyond a reason-able doubt. The accused knows he or she is innocent but has no way to prove it. He or she has the right to try to escape or use whatever means are available to try to preserve his or her freedom and happiness. On the other hand, society has the right to restrain him or her and protect its other mem-bers from possible harm.

In the above example, the harm resulting from society's error will be much less when our penal systems have advanced to a level where their goal is protecting the public rather than exacting vengeance. In the absence of absolute knowledge, society must con-tinue to judge guilt based on probability. And, yes, it is better to occasionally con-vict an innocent person than to punish untold numbers of innocent people by letting large numbers of criminals go

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free. The guiding principle in this and every other issue is this: the best choice will result in the greatest happiness for the most people for the longest time.

We are often forced to make choices in situations where we do not have enough information to be absolutely cer-tain of the correctness of our conclu-sions. In fact, we usually must base our beliefs on an assessment of the probabil-ities, as indicated by the available evi-dence. It seems, then, that belief is not an all-or-nothing-at-all function. Ideally, the strength of one's belief should be in direct proportion to the strength of the evidence. And one should be flexible enough to reassess a belief when addi-tional evidence is available. The objective is to keep false beliefs to a minimum, thereby reducing conflicts between peo-ple of differing beliefs, thereby increas-ing the greatest happiness for the most people for the longest time, and thereby increasing the probability of happiness for each individual!

UNITING FOR TRUTH

Let's review the logical structure of this thesis, remembering that the term happiness is used to include all pleas-ant—or positive—feelings:

1. My most fundamental knowledge is that I exist and am able to experience positive and negative emotions—happi-ness and unhappiness.

2. I can see that—as far as I am con-

cerned—the value of any action or thing is determined by how it affects my happiness.

3. Therefore, as far as I am con-cerned, the difference between right and wrong is that actions/things that enhance my happiness are right (or good) and those that decrease my hap-piness are wrong (or bad).

4. I have learned that, to achieve maximum happiness, I need the help of others and, since their goals are the same as mine, they need my help and have no motive to help me unless they receive help in return.

5. The need for humans to work together to achieve mutual happiness results in tribes, communities, and nations. For these groups to function they must adopt some rules of behavior.

6. Since each member of a society has the goal of maximizing his/her own happiness, the rules established by that society should have the objective of cre-ating the most happiness for the most people for the longest time.

7. To develop the best rules and poli-cies possible, it is necessary that the rule makers acquire as much knowledge as possible, use correct reasoning, and maintain the HPT factor as the guiding principle.

8. To obtain cooperation and support of the public and to keep the legislators and policymakers honest, all members of society should be taught to reason cor-rectly and to participate in the democrat-

ic process. The teaching of basic rules of reason should begin at an early age. Let's start teaching the four R's: readin', 'rit-ing, 'rithmetic, and reason. Let's cultivate thinking humans, not sheep.

We are each thrust into this world with one objective—to make our lives as pleasant as possible. Every human has an equal right to the pursuit of happi-ness, even though that right may be thwarted by those more powerful or by plain old bad luck. We should never expect other humans to voluntarily relinquish their rights just because we perceive them to be inherently less wor-thy. There is a difference between healthy self-interest and short-sighted greed. With healthy self-interest, you stand up for your rights while allowing others the same privilege. With short-sighted greed, you pursue immediate gain without regard to future conse-quences to others or yourself.

It is highly unlikely that all humanity can be united to endorse one set of fal-lacious beliefs. Truth is the only thing on which we have a chance of approach-ing universal agreement and, even then, only if people are able to apply the rules of reason and convince themselves that it is indeed truth. Imagine what will be accomplished when the energy being expended on fighting each other and supporting unworthy causes is directed to constructive projects for the mutual benefit of all humankind! f©

The Extinction of Priests

Charles M. Selby

Recent surveys about the Catholic "religious" have shown that one-third of priests are over seventy years old. I made a rough estimate of the present situation:

Priests over 70: 11,500 Priests 55-70: 14,000 Priests under 55: 12,500

Given the present rate of new ordinations per year, the situa-tion in fifteen years would be about like this:

Priests over 70: 14,000 Priests 55-70: 11,000 Priests under 55: 1,000

Enrollments in seminaries have declined steadily for the last forty years, such that the figure may be near zero in another three or four years. If that happens, the annual priest population will continue to decline, so that in fifteen years there will be very few under seventy. Most who are now over seventy will be gone.

The attempt by Pope John Paul II to force all the Catholic

universities to accept official theology has raised opposition: I think the academics hope to delay amending their curricula until a new pope leads the church. But many who were con-sidering becoming teaching-priests must now be rethinking that decision.

The Catholic claim to control 23 percent of Americans is way overblown; it may have that number on one list or anoth-er, but in reality a lot have already quit or are inactive. I don't know what part of the present priests are "parish" priests, but it seems to be under 17,000, because there are about 19,000 churches, with around 2,000 without a priest. Most over seventy years old are retired, so that, if there are still 17,000 parish priests, there are approximately 9,000 others under seventy who are mostly academics or administrators.

The average age of the priests continues to increase, being now between sixty-five and seventy. Older priests can't relate very well to the younger people; for that they must be under thirty-five. f©

Charles M. Selby of Christmas Valley, Oregon, is a long-time supporter of FREE INQUIRY.

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