Habitual Ethics?

Front matter

HABITUAL ETHICS?

What if data-intensive technologies’ ability to mould habits with unprecedented precision is also capable of triggering some mass disability of profound consequences? What if we become incapable of modifying the deeply-rooted habits that stem from our increased technological dependence?

On an impoverished understanding of habit, the above questions are easily shrugged off. Habits are deemed rigid by definition: ‘as long as our deliberative selves remain capable of steering the design of data-intensive technologies, we'll be fine’. To question this assumption, this book first articulates the way in which the habitual stretches all the way from unconscious tics to purposive, intentionally acquired habits. It also highlights the extent to which our habit-reliant, pre-reflective intelligence normally supports our deliberative selves. It is when habit rigidification sets in that this complementarity breaks down.

Foreword

OR A LONG time habits have had a bad reputation. In the Christian tradition our habits are those of fallen creatures, only to be redeemed, if at all, by strenuous exercises of faith and piety. Greek thought had a more optimistic view of our habits, particularly in its utopian tendency to suppose that virtuous habits always served one’s own interest best. But it has in turn been accused of a rather suffocating complacency, particularly given some of the unpleasant habits prevalent in Athens. With the Enlightenment came more optimistic views of human nature, but only as it could perhaps become, not so much as it was in its unrefined, natural state. And even before the Enlightenment had run its course habits were made subservient to their proper master, reason, either in its Kantian role of rightly dominating everything else, or at any rate in its capacity to give us the calculations of Benthamite utilitarianism. These two philosophies have thankfully had to abdicate, but habits cannot be said to have occupied the thrones they vacated. Reason thought of as a transcendent faculty, a captain we must obey above and beyond the rest of our natures has largely kept its Kantian place, and too few philosophers have understood that in our practical reasonings it is the mutinous crew of sentiments and habits that dictate what we take to be the pronouncements of reason. What we regard as reasonable is itself a function of our habits and dispositions. This is not widely understood, so Professor Delacroix’s title can be expected to have a shock effect. Yet as she well shows, an awareness of the immense role that habit plays in our lives is surely a gateway to any self-awareness of ourselves as practical agents. Most of our lives are spent doing what we do out of habit. The ordinary mores of everyday life which make social existence possible are as habitual as the words in which we describe what we are doing. The everyday decencies with which we avoid generating friction and insult, and the everyday considerations and kindnesses with which we lubricate social spaces are second nature to us. Any moral philosophy which is preoccupied with heroic deeds or intractable dilemmas is in danger of overlooking the ordinary routines when we know what needs doing and without thinking do it: the landscape of little decencies which form life’s background. Fortunately enough perhaps human beings have been able to construct worlds with few trolley problems and tragic dilemmas for most of us, most of the time. Except in moments of stress the habitual ways we feel about things quietly see us through. It suits the dramatist and the film maker to highlight the chaos when values clash and violent decisions must be made, but it suits the rest of us to avoid it as much as we can.

Nevertheless life has risks, and the traditions that worried about habits were not wholly misguided. As Professor Delacroix rightly goes on to emphasize, we vi Foreword can be lured into bad habits, not so much in the way that the Christian story supposes, through personal defects such as vanity, pride, greed, envy, or willful attraction to what we know is the wrong thing to do, but by cultural norms and reinforcements. Really bad people are relatively rare, but misguided, misled, careless and docile people are common. An atmosphere can then engender bad habits. One highlighted here is the deformation when the prevailing ethos of a profession, such as secrecy or loyalty to misguided ideas about leadership or hierarchy, spread bad habits through its practitioners. Even institutions that depend on our trust, such as parliament or the medical services, are badly, or in some cases hopelessly infected by habits of entitlement or by the expectation of deference and the inability to brook criticism, and it takes courage to hold a mirror up to give Caliban a good look at himself. It is always easier to go along with the flow.

Secondly there is the way in which our natural tendencies to chime in with others are recruited by the commercial algorithms governing social media, that direct us to whatever misinformation or propaganda seems to attract us.

Of course, something has gone wrong if only entitled twerps are elected to parliament, or the social media are cesspits of refuse and litter, and although it may often be difficult to pinpoint malevolence as the origin of these misfortunes, it is obviously bad habits that bring them about, and the bad habits they engender that sustain them.

Being aware of the possible deformations of our habits is, of course only the beginning. We need to be self-critical, self-cultivating, and receptive to the voices of others. What we do not need is an ‘Archimedean point’ from beyond, on which we can stand and view and winnow out all our sentiments and habits in one fell swoop. As Delacroix says in Chapter 5, ‘When it comes to explaining our capacity to step back from the habitual, all the naturalist has at its disposal are socially conditioned emotions, practices and habits of evaluation’. This is no counsel of scepticism, for in exactly the same holistic way, we cannot evaluate all our empirical beliefs in one fell swoop, but we can stand on relatively firm ground in order to test others of them. And this is enough. So even when our habits are unthinking, they are not insulated from thought. Delacroix follows a great tradition of philosophers from Shaftesbury through Hume to Adam Smith who have highlighted the ways in which critical appreciation and encounters with others enable us, if we are careful, diligent, and perhaps a little lucky, to learn to face the gaze of the impartial spectator, and thereby learn to be better able to face others and to bear our own survey. And it is salutary to be shown that it is not only our own habits, but those prevalent in our own milieus, that we must interrogate as we do so.

Simon Blackburn Trinity College, Cambridge.

Acknowledgements

Leverhulme funded research leave in UCL in 2011. When they were

formulated in terms of moral change, these questions induced recurrent cases of ‘thinking in circles’. Many friends transformed what could have remained some lost at sea, circular experience into a colourful journey: written thanks cannot do justice to the significance of their role. Through generous conversations, a long list of colleagues helped turn inchoate concerns into the arguments at the heart of this book. Crucial among these colleagues was John Gardner, who is sorely missed. In alphabetical order, I would like to thank: Rudolf Bernet, Simon Blackburn, Jude Brown, Gavin Byrne, Clare Carlisle, Sean Coyle, Maks Del Mar, Mette Eilstrup, Sarah Fine, Jakob Holtermann, Kristjan Kristjansson, Maria Lee, Margaret Martin, Manolis Melissaris, Jonathan Montgomery, Bence Nanay, Georgios Pavlakos, Carolyn Pedwell, Dan Priel, Lubomira Radoilska, Andrea Sangiovanni, Philip Schofield, Bosko Tripkovic, Jana Van Grunsven, Michael Wilkinson and Lorenzo Zucca.

Given the importance attributed to our ability to learn from human encounters throughout this manuscript, a few are worth relating outside the confines of an alphabetical list. They were unlikely yet had significant impact. Some involved years-long detours that did shape the more concrete aspects of this book. Meeting Xueni Pan and Mel Slater, the potential of immersive virtual reality as a way of throwing light on the non-cognitive underpinnings of morally-loaded, professional judgment proved hard to resist. Born from the challenges inherent in sharing ‘smart’, personalisable objects, my conversation with Mireille Hildebrandt has triggered enduring concern for the effect of optimisation tools on our non-reflective agency. My collaboration with Neil Lawrence took shape through a string of chance coffees, which led us from Laplace’s demon to flying teapots via bottom-up data trusts. I am forever grateful for the research time that enabled the ebullience of such transformative encounters. This gift of time stemmed from a Leverhulme Trust Prize, followed by a professorial research fellowship at the University of Birmingham and a Mozilla Foundation fellowship.

Valuable feedback was provided during the talks and workshops that punctuated the book writing process. I am especially indebted to Rae Langton for making an in person, early manuscript workshop in Newnham College, Cambridge possible. Participants to this workshop (and the virtual version that followed) included: Anna Boncompagni, Clare Carlisle, Mario De Caro, Christos Douskos, Cecilie Erikssen, Sarah Fine, Hans Fink, Richard Holton,

] {THE QUESTIONS AT the root of this book were born while I was on a viii Acknowledgements

Rae Langton, David MacArthur, Georgios Pavlakos, Carolyn Pedwell, Gerald Postema, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Andrea Sangiovanni and Lorenzo Zucca. Each of their interventions helped me rethink key arguments, sometimes buoying up under-developed ideas, at other times shining light on gaping holes. I am deeply in their debt. I am also grateful for the support of a wide range of colleagues in both UCL and Birmingham, as well as the precious research assistance of Jessica Sutherland, Meagan Parent and Kelsey Ridge.

My biggest thanks go to my beloved ‘optimistic pessimist’, Chris Pickard. Aside from his eye-opening research assistance as a ridiculously well-read physicist, this book would not have been completed without his rock-solid support and the many early-morning weekend writing sessions he made possible. Finally, I will never forget the solemn emotion with which Luke sent off a manuscript that so often diverted my attention throughout his (thankfully not over yet) childhood: even when it stood in the way of far more entertaining options, Luke poignantly cheered me on. This book is dedicated to him.

The open access publication of this manuscript was made possible by a community-development grant from the Mozilla Foundation.

Contents

Foreword seseris eedan Aa Stele et ede E EESE a S v Acknowledgement Soses e a a EEEE EEEE vii MM trOCUCH OT esaeen A A AA SS 1 Te Whatisa abit? sits cok ccesticnGastectiasesaccecsicacstiasestacivtaineebiasestedeaeanes 2 UI. The Habitual and the Ethical: Unhappy Marriage? «0... eeeeeeeeeeeereees 5 Ill. Why Does ‘Habitual Ethics’ Matter Today? sssssessssressisesseisessssressesssrea 7 IV... ‘Chapters Overview ad icctinws incase Gavin E 10 PART I HABIT AND INDIVIDUAL AGENCY A. When ‘the Natural’ is Restricted to that which is the Result

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A. ‘Primitive Appropriateness’

Introduction

EW THINGS MOVE us as surely — or as universally — as habits do. Habits

pervade every aspect of our existence: without carefully cultivated habits

you would not be able to read this book or have a conversation about it. Yet we know remarkably little about the habits that structure our life, whether at an individual or collective level. In that sense habits may be deemed the ‘black holes of social sciences’: just like black holes, what we know about them is mostly inferred from the observed behaviour of those it impacts — us. Because habits are not easily disentangled from the deliberative determinants of our behaviour, that inference process is both complex and haphazard. Fancy tech may not help with the visual portrayal of habit (unlike black holes), but it has already had a dramatic impact on our ability to capture habits we were previously unaware of. How?

The multitude of tracking schemes and devices we rely on has turned even the most innocuous aspects of our existence into data points. Where the human mind might only see noise, algorithms trained to detect patterns within vast amounts of data can yield insights. Initially leveraged to anticipate things like consumer behaviour, those insights are now the building blocks of sophisticated behavioural interventions. The latter are designed to exploit the fact that we are creatures whose habits can be moulded by the shape of our environment. The manifold legal, political and ethical issues that stem from these increasingly fine-tuned behavioural interventions are only starting to be grappled with. What if data-intensive technologies’ ability to mould habits with unprecedented precision is also capable of triggering some mass disability with profound consequences? What if we become incapable of shifting or modifying the deeply rooted habits that stem from our increased technological dependence?

On a narrow, impoverished understanding of habit, the above question is easily shrugged off. Habits are rigid by definition: as long as our deliberative selves remain capable of steering the choice or design of data-intensive technologies, we’ll be fine. To question this assumption, one needs to articulate the various ways of having a habit, and the extent to which the habitual stretches all the way from unconscious tics to purposive, intentionally acquired habits. One also needs to highlight the extent to which our habit-reliant, pre-reflective intelligence normally supports our deliberative selves. It is when the nature of the automaticity underlying these habits degenerates — thereby allowing rigidification to set in — that this complementarity breaks down. Given the extent to which our ability to find our way around the world often presupposes some informal, experienced-based ‘know-how’, habit rigidification is bad news — never more so than when it comes to the ethically loaded aspects of our lives.

2 Introduction I. WHAT IS A HABIT?

Habit requires repetition — whether it be repeated movement, or posture, or frame of thought. In the pattern shaped by this repetition,! at some point a habit is formed. To try to identify a precise moment in time when a habit is born is notoriously difficult, since diminished awareness of the pattern underlying it is key to its emergence. You do not have a habit unless it has at least momentarily escaped your conscious awareness. This emergence condition need not confine habits to mere conditioned reflexes or Pavlovian automatisms.

Habits can be acquired in many ways: intentionally (for instance to foster the realisation of a particular goal) or unintentionally (through learned responses to particular environmental features or contexts). The intentional acquisition of a habit can be difficult: one may repeat a particular pattern of behaviour — for example, I go jogging every day at 7am, rain or shine — and fail to develop the desired habit. Even though I have been careful to never stray from that jogging pattern for weeks, I know I still haven’t developed the desired habit because today nothing prompts me to put my trainers on: I have to will myself out, remind myself of my fitness goals etc. But if, upon stepping onto the pavement the next day, I realise with a sudden pang that here I am, all clad in running gear when I am meant to take a long-scheduled video call in 5 minutes, I might celebrate despite the inconvenience. I have finally developed the desired habit! That I am on the pavement all geared up when I had been preparing for that video call only the night before testifies to the birth of a running habit.

My going running this morning (unlike yesterday) was not ‘goal-mediated’,” to use psychologists’ jargon. I am in a celebratory mood because I know that my fitness goals are now much more likely to be achieved. My being in the habit of jogging means I can now free myself from the need to consider my fitness goals to shape the requisite behaviour. I can focus instead on the news of the day or my scheduled video call. Of course, habits cut both ways: I will feel a lot less celebratory later when I realise I have travelled halfway to my son’s school even though I am meant to pick up my son from the other side of town that day. In this case, the habitual pattern of behaviour has led me to loose sight of the goal that prompted my hopping on my bike.

The bulk of experimental research in neuroscience has been dominated by this negative, ‘goal-blind(ing)’ side of habit. In contrast to teleologically driven actions, habits are often defined by their insensitivity to the outcome they lead to.? If an animal’s pattern of behaviour persists despite the fact that the goal that initially prompted that behaviour is absent (or of diminished value), it is deemed

'See notably Nathan Brett, ‘Human habits’ (1981) 11 Canadian Journal of Philosophy 357.

?Wendy Wood and David T Neal, ‘A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface’ (2007) 114 Psychological Review 843.

3 Christopher D Adams and Anthony Dickinson, ‘Instrumental responding following reinforcer devaluation’ (1981) 33 The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section B 109.

What is a Habit? 3 a habit.* The appeal of this purported opposition between goal-directed actions and habits is not difficult to understand. For experiments that often have to make do with a study of animal — rather than human — habits, this distinction has the merit of providing a neat, observable condition. Yet when one switches from animal to human habits, this ‘diminished goal-sensitivity’ condition proves neither necessary nor sufficient to the existence of a habit.’

Similar difficulties are encountered with any singular condition purporting to neatly distinguish habits from non-habits. Availability to conscious awareness or to cognitive control are sometimes put forward as purported demarcation criteria, yet while drafting this book Iam acutely aware of — and seek to correct — all sorts of writing habits. The only ‘safe’, necessary conditions when trying to define habit have to do with its emergence conditions. The repetition that gives rise to a habit is as important as the fact that a habit is only born if it momentarily escapes our awareness. After that, habits come in all shapes and colours. Most are essential to our physical and mental well-being. Many make us capable of wondrous things, including the art of living together. Some hold us back, sometimes painfully so.

Careful readers will rightly point out that these emergence conditions are not specific enough. These conditions fail to highlight one important by-product of having a habit: once something has become a habit, that ‘something’ requires less effort. The nature of that effort will vary. In the above jogging example, I am saved the effort of not only reminding myself to go running, but also overcoming the many conflicting desires or propensities that would otherwise keep me in bed a while longer. Once one pays attention to the degree of cognitive effort that is bypassed by the birth of a habit, one is soon led to the distinction between skill and habits. There is only partial overlap between the two: just as some habits have nothing skilful about them, only some skills have habitual components.

Some skills are innate. Some people are lucky enough to be born with natural social skills, or an ability to put skis on and immediately go down a slope. In such cases, those skills can be said to have less habitual components. Others need to laboriously train themselves to look people in the eye, shake hands, ask for a name and so on, until one day they do so without realising. Suddenly they don’t have to go through their mental ‘to do’ list. In such cases, the skills are acquired through a process of habituation. That process is gradual. The ‘to do’ list will progressively shrink as different components are chunked together: I might

4Henry H Yin and Barbara J Knowlton, ‘The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation’ (2006) 7 Nature Reviews Neuroscience 464.

>To show that such a condition is not necessary, Bernacer and Murillo refer to shoelaces tying as an ‘outcome-oriented’ habit: Javier Bernacer and Jose Ignacio Murillo, ‘The Aristotelian conception of habit and its contribution to human neuroscience’ (2014) Frontiers in Human Neurosciences. To show that diminished goal-sensitivity is not sufficient, one need only contemplate those occasions when one sets out to do something (for instance getting a book downstairs) only to find oneself wondering, once downstairs, what prompted that trip down the stairs.

start automatically asking for a name as soon as I shake hands, for instance. Or I might start moving my ski poles as soon as I shift my weight from one ski to the other.

Considered from this perspective, automaticity may be said to be the ‘glue’ that allows habit to come into existence. Left unattended this ‘glue’ can also be the cause of habit degenerating into rigid addiction or other pathologies. Yet automaticity was not included in the emergence conditions mentioned earlier. This is to avoid a frequent misunderstanding: automaticity is too often presented as a necessary condition® for the existence of habits. That is misleading.’ Being an emergence condition does not entail being an existence condition. Having developed the habit of greeting people by looking them in the eye, shaking their hands and asking for a name, I may find myself deliberating about the appropriateness of doing so in particular circumstances without necessarily having lost that habit. The existence of a habit is compatible with ongoing deliberative control and intervention: in the middle of a pandemic, I might train myself to greet people with a loud ‘I am sorry we can’t shake hands’ to remind all concerned (including myself) of the need to avert shaking hands. If this lasts long enough, the habit of shaking hands may be transformed beyond recognition.

Now to go back to the emergence conditions mentioned so far: a habit emerges once a repeated pattern of behaviour (or thought) at least momentarily escapes the subject’s awareness. This is made possible by the fact that that behaviour (or train of thought) is not dependent anymore upon the conscious activation of its constituent parts or steps (such as ‘make eye contact / shake hands / ask for name’). Many skills, dispositions, addictions — and even some social practices — satisfy those emergence conditions too. Rather than hankering for some elusive demarcation criterion, this book pays attention to the habitual elements in each.

Many — but not all’ — skills, dispositions and social practices develop on the back of habits: whether they do so depends in large part on the quality of the automaticity inherent in the underlying habit. When it degenerates — leading to a rigidification of the underlying patterns of behaviour — a habit may for instance é Within the psychology literature, ‘automaticity’ tends to be deemed such a central feature as to allow habit and automaticity to be used interchangeably (this is highlighted in Wendy Wood and Dennis Riinger, ‘Psychology of habit’ (2016) 67 Annual Review of Psychology), even if the concept of ‘automaticity’ itself admits of several definitions. See for instance: ‘[habit is a] form of automaticity in responding that develops as people repeat actions in stable circumstances’: Bas Verplanken and Wendy Wood, ‘Interventions to break and create consumer habits’ (2006) 25 Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 90. Things are more nuanced in the philosophical literature, which will be discussed in chapters one, two and five.

7For a critique of such automaticity-centred definitions of habit, see notably Christos Douskos, ‘Deliberation and automaticity in habitual acts’ (2018) 9 Ethics in Progress.

8 Some skills, dispositions and even addictions are ‘innate’, in that they are not acquired through behaviour repetition. Some social practices are born out of purely deliberative interventions: this will be unpacked in chapter six.

The Habitual and the Ethical: Unhappy Marriage? 5 give rise to some form of addiction. If, by contrast, these patterns remain plastic enough to successfully adapt to changing environments or aspirations, they are more likely to be conducive to the development of dispositions or skills.

The birth of a disposition (or skill) does not entail the disappearance of the underlying habit. In many cases, the same behaviour might be characterised as a habit, disposition or skill depending on one’s vantage point. My messy eating habit might be apprehended as a disposition acquired under the influence of some implicit norm, while in other contexts it might be deemed a valuable skill. Those who insist on strictly demarcating ‘mere habits’ from dispositions often do so on the basis of an impoverished account of habit: the latter might for instance be presented as inflexible behaviours that are the result of direct conditioning.’ These reductive accounts of habit not only struggle to accommodate our quotidian reliance on intelligent, highly adaptable habits, they also mask the contribution of the habitual to the ‘small piecemeal business’ constitutive of our ongoing ‘moral life’.!°

Il. THE HABITUAL AND THE ETHICAL: UNHAPPY MARRIAGE?

Within the wide spectrum that leads from unconscious tics and compulsive behaviour all the way to collective, goal-driven endeavours developed on the basis of habits, one cannot identify a point where the habitual suddenly starts — or ceases. One can look for its absence. That we are creatures that are capable of stepping back from the habitual is significant. When we deliberate about the merits of doing X or Y, our deliberations will be affected by our habits of thought, yet with the requisite level of awareness and distanciation, we may claim to have reached a ‘free’, deliberate decision.!! The conditions under which we may rightfully claim such autonomy have received huge amounts of philosophical attention. One need only consider how infrequent such instances of pure deliberative agency are — compared to the bulk of our non-deliberative, yet intelligent existence — to guess at the emotional stakes underlying this assertion of freedom.

Hence, for many, the provocativeness of this book’s title: to argue that there can be such a thing as habitual ethics would be to admit defeat from the start.

? Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind: 60th Anniversary Edition (Taylor & Francis 1949/2009).

Tris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge 2013) 36.

11 The frequent reduction of the ethical to such deliberative instances will be criticised in chapter five along lines that echo Murdoch’s own critique: ‘If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not’: ibid.

On this view, ethics — and our capacity for deliberative agency — is our ‘way out’ from routine selfishness and short-sightedness. On such accounts, the idea that there could be such a thing as habitual ethics makes little sense, since it is precisely because we are capable of distancing ourselves from the habitual way of doing things that we are in a position to address the ethical question: ‘how should I/we live?’.

This book not only argues that there can be such a thing as habitual ethics; it also argues it is high time we paid attention to the conditions under which the possibility of habitual ethics becomes compromised. We will get a rather poor and incomplete grasp of these conditions if we only consider those compromising factors from an individual perspective, as in the first part of this book. The second part ventures into ‘macro’, collective factors to tease out the impact of ‘system design’ interventions on our capacity to sustain habits that are flexible enough to remain at the service of our ethical life. Two types of systems are considered. The algorithmic systems we have become so reliant on, and legal systems. Analysis of the former’s ability to generate and mould habits is far more studied than the latter.

Legal theory scarcely mentions habits. When legal theory does refer to habits, itis mostly to contrast them to the kind of practices that are capable of giving rise to social (and legal) norms. This stark contrast is unhelpful in several respects. Not only does it encourage implausible accounts of the processes that lead to legal norms (they are implausible because deliberative all the way through). It also conceals the moral risks inherent in certain institutional designs, which will become apparent in chapter six. Borrowed from that chapter, the figure below provides an artificially linear, ‘macro’ perspective on the relationship between collective patterns of behaviour, habits, social practices, social norms and legal norms. While legal theorists will be familiar with the last three elements (on the right hand-side), the left-hand side is often ‘left’ to the province of sociology. By the time you’ve read this book, the amplitude of that mistake should become apparent.

Figure The two way movement from patterns of behaviour to legal norms, and back

Collective Reflective social Patterns => Habits ———p> | STIS? | mene in, => Legal norms Of behaviour ensanennneeneenennsnaneni> Practices

Note: Vectors 1 to 9 are defined in chapter six.

Why Does ‘Habitual Ethics’ Matter Today? 7 Ul. WHY DOES ‘HABITUAL ETHICS’ MATTER TODAY?

The adaptability of both our individual and collective habits is one of the central threads running through this book and its title: can there ever be such a thing as habitual ethics? Most would agree to say that a world in which ‘the good’ was done habitually (and hence effortlessly) would be an attractive one, yet most would also hesitate to say that acting ethically can ever be a matter of ‘mere’ habit. Why? While habits can enable wonders (I wouldn’t be able to type this without a variety of carefully cultivated habits), they can also be what makes us oblivious to important features of the world we inhabit. Among the factors that may call into question the possibility of habitual ethics, the Christian distrust of the visceral features prominently, as does the intuitive — and warranted — association of ethics with the idea that living a good life demands that we be able to step up and question the usual.