Inductivist

Few things have frustrated me more than the modern philosophical view that there is a gulf between facts and values. While hypotheses can be tested against the empirical world and rejected if not supported, there is no similar way to test claims about right and wrong. Morality only exists in our imaginations, we're told. I don't know about you, but that is completely unsatisfactory.

Only one man has offered a way out of this mess: Aristotle. According to him, your design dictates your morality. A knife is a good knife if it does well what it is intended to do -- cut stuff.

Aristotle used this approach to develop an ethics for man, which was further refined by Thomas Aquinas centuries later. But neither man, of course, knew the works of another genius, Charles Darwin, who figured out natural selection centuries later.

What is man's design, according to Darwin? Simple -- to propagate. To turn the world into copies of yourself.

It just so happens that this is roughly what Aristotle and Aquinas argued.

Three geniuses from three very different eras agree more or less about what you are.  So what is right for you?  To go forth and propagate.

A rule to live by: WWHO: Did you read the story about Harvard setting aside gym hours for Muslim women only? Now, a principled administrator would have looked at how other religions on campus were treated and would have concluded that it is not fair to give preferential treatment to one religion. You might respond that the ethics of a liberal require that we favor the little guys, and Islam is a small group in America. My answer is that Pentecostals are a small group too, but we can imagine Harvard's response to a request for special treatement from them.

I think I might have the answer to crack the mystery of elite ethics. Really, it's so simple even a toddler could grasp it. It could be called the "WWHO rule" (pronounced "who"). WWHO means What Would Hitler Oppose. If Hitler is against it, it must be the right way to go. If a Muslim girl comes to you and asks for the gym several hours a week all for herself, well obviously Der Fuhrer would snarl a "NO!" at her, so it must be a good policy.

The rule really applies to everything. Racial issues are obvious: mass non-white immigration is a must since that would drive the NSDAP nuts. And social issues are clear too: Gay marriage must be right because Herr Hitler loathed homosexuality (except for when he was a male prostitute in Vienna, they say). But the rule even works in the area of taste. Jazz is the greatest music ever since the Nazis hated it. Even science must conform to this principle: biological sources of behavior must be false since You-Know-Who would like that idea.

The Golden Rule or the old "What Would Jesus Do" might work for the hicks, but WWHO is the only way to go for the truly enlightened.