Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

individuals. If the ‘least harm’ principle were applied to whole societies, whole nations, and indeed, the whole planet, then we might be onto something.

But – going back to the idea of value being somehow innate – one way to think about this is to recognise that the world is a world of choices rather than a world of facts. Even the swans are ruled by choices, albeit of the ‘aesthetic’ variety (in the broadest sense of that word). For instance, they choose a mate, choose the best location for a nest and choose the foods that they prefer. Our agency as creatures is not just some add-on that evolution has conjured up for ‘survival’ purposes. Our agency is what

defines us as conscious, moral individuals. When it comes to justice and laws, we are forced to adopt a pragmatic approach – something along the line of the modified ‘least harm’ principle discussed above. But again, it’s best to be mindful that value lies at the back of this. But there’s no reason that innate value has to mean static value. The derivation of

morality, justice and law from values can be an ongoing conversation – in fact, this seems unavoidable.

The thing we miss, very often, is to get a clear divide between values that come to us as a result of our evolutionary inheritance and values that come from the much later – and purely human – ability for rationalism. The former

often stems from seeing – we can see what’s a fair share, for instance. The latter stems from language. To get a handle on this, think of the difference between equality and equity. Equality is often visually obvious, but equity takes a lot of discussion and a lot of working out. Many of our problems as people stem from this

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