The Ethics of Language Games

In the previous post I took time out from our journey into metaphysics to make an important point: each of us has the agency to shape their own reality with their own beliefs and convictions. Especially important when dealing with the values a subject or community holds towards other subjects or communities — the terrain of ethics.

SPLectrum’s ethics is not normative but descriptive, it aims to provide clarity and insight, not to dictate. The way we project values towards others is more evolved than one might at first sight suspect. In a sense we live in multiple realities simultaneously. Being part of a family, of a local community, going to school, being at work, being in public … these often present themselves as very different realities. Each is governed by its own rules, each a different ‘language game’.

Consider this the base level where values are attached. As such each language game ends up having its own ethics. The next question is: when does it make sense to project values as good or bad at the community level, when so many are in play? It doesn’t make sense to shoehorn the games into an overall good / bad package. To be a good parent, a good citizen, a good judge, a good soldier - good means quite different things. A good soldier is there to kill, at times own citizens. A good judge is there to convict, and potentially cause hardship for innocent family and friends.

SPLectrum prefers an equal standing approach - there is no absolute ethical standard. Through belonging there is convergence on what a community considers appropriate - good if one wants to call it that - and this always spreads out across multiple language games. And often with a price to pay - a good soldier kills people, innocent people.

I think focusing on a ‘universal’ good is the wrong way to go about it, I consider it is better to start by judging each individual activity on its local merits. This should make it easier to build up an overall picture, position the values in our life where we feel comfortable having them. A descriptive approach to ethics helps to shed light, a prerequisite to informed decisions - agency in action.

One may think that (ethical) decisions are binary, but that is actually not the case. It is not: do I do this or not? In fact it is: do I play the game (as is), do I play it differently, or do I not play at all? There are three options. To be able to say ‘I don’t play’ is important, belonging is a choice best made actively.

Belonging to a community is not binary either, there are choices to be made about the language games I participate in. Belonging is fuzzy, but no less belonging. Black and white only exists at the imagined threshold of being in or out. In reality it is a resonance, how strongly I belong. And our natural language reflects this: ‘I have never felt really part of this.’ is a statement of fuzzy belonging. And this inevitably impacts the values we emanate towards others.

SPLectrum’s ethics, being concerned with the values a subject emanates towards others, is in my opinion similar to SPLectrum’s ontology in that it is static and descriptive. The still picture of ethics serves to better the understanding of values and language games, but living the values is a dynamic of co-existence, of resonance and dissonance. It runs between communities, between a subject and its communities, and — because none of us is a single thing — within each subject too, among the games it holds. That dynamic is politics, and it is where this series goes next.

This post is part of the reality series. More in the ethics area of the reference library.

Photo: Riccardo Annandale / Unsplash