Criteria of Rightness vs Decision Procedure

Most moral philosophy concerns itself with providing criteria of rightness. "Right acts are those which...".

A second question is how people should deliberate in their lives so as to act well; a decision procedure. "People ought to reason using...".

This distinction all too often gets missed when discussing moral philosophy.

So one thing people sometimes say is that humans are all selfish, so that studying ethics can't be right. But this doesn't follow. Even if it were true - which it very obviously isn't - that people always acted selfishly, this wouldn't undermine the fact that some (many, or all) of their acts would be wrong, and that some would be right. We might be interested in that distinction even if no-one could live up to it.

Another objection is that free-will is an illusion, and that studying ethics is a waste of time (I'm assuming strong determinism here, not compatibilism). But again, this simply doesn't seem to follow. Some, none or all acts will be right and wrong even if there is no free will. Some determined acts will have been better than others. An objector might say that an action can't be right if it isn't performed freely (ought implies can?). But this is simply to grant my point! Such a claim is one about criteria of rightness, saying that any right act is one performed freely. It would be an interesting conclusion if no-one has ever acted rightly because there is no free will. But this is part of the study of ethics, and not a threat to it.

Finally, someone might think that I've seperated criteria of rightness too far from the correct decision procedure. Wasn't ethics the study of how to live? But whilst I say above that criteria of rightness and a decision procedure are two different things, there's still a pretty close link. That is, criteria of rightness, plus some empirically discoverable facts, determine the correct decision procedure. If right acts are those that maximise happiness, but we observe that people are bad at this when they try to do it directly, we can infer the correct decision procedure by working out which decision procedure does maximise happiness.

Criteria of rightness are not, but partly determines, the correct decision procedure.