Let me begin by saying that in here I am disclosing the inner workings of a personal philosophy of mine that I've decided to call Pixelism. I believe that a lot of people will merely skim this, misinterpret it's genuine meaning, and attack the validity of this ideal. I request that you don't do that. I aim to share the mechanisms of my scarred psyche, and I would not expect most people to adopt the belief.

Many people believe that in the world we all share that there is a so-called moral grey area in which the morality of an action or associated consequences become ambiguous. This is because matters become so complicated that the nature of a certain action is unclear to the person asking. I attribute the majority of this issue to a general failure of people in general to remain objective when asking questions that they anticipate may be disturbing when answered. Many people simply choose to say that moral grey areas simply can't be decided and are open to interpretation. I disagree.

I advise that you take a look to the background surrounding the text you are currently reading. As of the time I've written this musing it should generally be considered a dark shade of grey. As I understand the word to mean, grey is an intermediate between black and white. Wait though! How can that be? Is it black? Or is it white? Well friends, I tell you that the answer isn't an or, the answer is that grey consists of black and white. It may seem obvious, but such a distinction is crucial to the foundation of my belief that no moral grey area exists, nor has it ever.

Now you may be thinking that it's easy to say that with colors and measurable qualities like literal pixels where you can define the exact ratio of black and white using a precise stream of binary 1s and 0s. And you may object because it is quite a different beast to quantify morality. But I disagree on one condition: You must have a concrete set of values in order to judge whether or not an action can be deemed righteous according to them. I'm going to test this belief by utilizing what is called a thought experiment.

Virtues & Maxims

1. Causing harm is Wrong


2. Life should be Preserved


3. Happiness is Precious

Now let's continue to find a morally obvious situation in order to act as a controlled test.

Obvious Situation:
A boy and his parents are exiting a movie theatre.

Decidedly the aforementioned situation is what we will call a morally white situation. The characters (The boy & his parents) have done nothing that contradicts the established virtues and maxims. Because no one has done anything morally black (contradicting the maxims) we will deem the situation as white as well. So let's continue.

Only Slightly Less Obvious
A boy and his parents are exiting a movie theatre. Suddenly, emerging from the shadows, a mugger approaches them and, pulling a gun, requests that the mother surrender her valuables.

Now, it is obvious that the boy & his parents have done nothing wrong, they are still white. But the mugger has committed a wrong by causing emotional and financial harm by threatening the family and committing armed robbery, meaning whether he physically assaults them of not, he has caused them to experience harm. So, for now at least, we will call him and his actions black. As a whole, the situation is obviously tainted from it's previously innocent state, and as a whole could be classified as grey because there were both actions that contradicted and sustained harmony with the maxims.

Classically 'Grey' Scenario:
A boy and his parents are exiting a movie theatre. Suddenly, emerging from the shadows, a mugger approaches them and, pulling a gun, requests that the mother surrender her valuables. The father steps forth and assaults the mugger, defending his wife and son.

The Son & Mother are still white. The Mugger is still black. But now the father has committed a righteous action by defending the lives of his family, but also an action against the maxims by causing the mugger harm. In effect, he has also harmed his family psychologically by exposing them to such violence. That, under such careful scrutiny, would classically/mathematically be considered a grey action, because it is an intermediate of black and white actions... or is it? It is not an intermediate, it is a combination, meaning he has created varying degrees of black and white, though at no point are his individual actions subject to scrutiny. It is merely when you take a step back and treat it as a singular action instead of a series of separate decisive actions that you can't accurately define if he was black or white.

Classically 'Grey' Scenario:
A boy and his parents are exiting a movie theatre. Suddenly, emerging from the shadows, a mugger approaches them and, pulling a gun, requests that the mother surrender her valuables, which had been stolen from their original owners before being sold multiple times, so that he may be able to sell them once more to provide sufficient money to pay his family's rent. The father steps forth and assaults the mugger, defending his wife and son. The mugger shoots the father and mother, steals the jewels, and, days later, sells them, and creates a healthy environment for his own family. However, the now orphaned boy grows up and, in an effort to prevent other children from suffering his same fate, grows into an adult who intimidates, assaults, and violates the legally granted rights of criminals and resists arrest from the police.

Obviously, we're talking about The Batman right? He's a good guy, right? Is he? Really? As a whole the situation just became morally ambiguous. The father had been black & white. The mother had possessed long stolen goods, debatably contributing to the loss of another person's happiness. The mugger had taken a life and happiness, though he'd sheltered that of his own family. And the boy committed many rights and wrongs, namely causing great harm, in order to preserve life & happiness of others. Clearly, this would classically be considered morally grey. But it can't be judged that way. Doing so fails to convey what actually had happened and is almost inconsequential in the end. But looking at the pieces of the proverbial puzzle clearly indicate what was right and what was wrong. Therefore, not only is the color grey an optical illusion, there is no such thing as a grey area, merely a black and white area but there is also no need for, or benefit to having a moral grey area. That is why I've called this philosophy Pixelism, because in order to see what all truly exists and has specific qualities, you must judge every detail individually, objectively, and without bias.

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Comments are welcomed, as are opposing viewpoints. I feel that if I cannot stand by my beliefs in the face of opposition, they are not worthy of continued existance.

A lot of 'gray areas' come into play when you introduce 'conflict avoidance' as a virtue. It becomes a moral imperative to refuse judgment (which isn't necessarily wrong). More often than not, people use 'gray area' to either (a) mask their own ignorance, or (b) feign maturity -- sort of like.... okay, let's say a man robs a bank. Morally wrong -- you can't do that. Done deal.

Now, let's say I stop someone in the street and say "Hey, so I want to ask you a complicated question. Tell me if this is definitely right, definitely wrong, or if you can't be sure without more information. The situation is.... 'robbing a bank.'"

In that scenario, no part of the hypothetical has changed. But because they're presented with the situation in a potentially challenging way, you'll see a *lot* more people saying 'Uh.... I don't know, I need more information.' Anticipating a trick question, or whatever.

What I've found is that this tendency carries over to a lot of conversations. You could describe it as a fear of being wrong, or as overzealous conflict avoidance, or whatever you like; I bring it up to say, 'Moral gray areas' are drastically over-represented in conversations about morality, whether you think they exist or not.

Your perception of what a moral grey area is seems strange to me. So far as I have always thought of them, moral grey areas are situations in which there's a mix of goodness and badness in someone's actions/intent that is either closely balanced (such as mugging someone in order to feed your kid) or ambiguous in nature (such as pirating a movie to bring happiness and entertainment to your friends). Your first supposedly grey area in your thought experiment is in no way a grey area: the father was protecting himself and his family from someone with ill intent, and this good action heavily outweighs the badness of harming the guy or exposing his family to violence. In the second supposed grey area scenario the mother can only be said to have done something wrong if she knew she was purchasing stolen goods, the father's acts clearly lean toward being overall good, and nobody in their right mind would argue that Batman's negative actions in doling out vigilante justice outweigh the huge amount of good he does. Only the mugger's situation actually comes close to being a true moral grey area, but I'd wager that the vast majority of people would say that his actions were overall bad without needing to think too hard on it.

Grey areas are those which aren't easy to judge on first glance, not just anything that happens to have a mix of black and white parts. True moral grey areas are actions and situations which can only be judged by actually analyzing the situation and filtering it through your own personal moral code and values and giving differing weight to various actions based on what you feel is more or less good or bad (such as how murder is worse than theft, thus a murder would be weighted as being more negative than stealing something). People who say that they cannot make a judgment on a grey area are just lazy, they don't want to exert the mental effort it would take to go through this analytical process. Saying grey areas are bad because of this laziness is like saying calculus is bad because most people don't have the patience or knowledge to solve calculus problems that are randomly shoved in their face. This laziness extends to people not wanting to think about questions of morality in general, even when it's a pretty clear situation; the things mdk brought up are also true, and they contribute heavily to people making it seem as if the vast majority of the morality spectrum is shrouded in a grey fog that cannot be pierced. It's intellectual laziness, not a true problem with standard morality systems.

Speaking of which, your idea here isn't anything fancy or special. Everyone is well aware that grey areas (in the broad sense of everything not clearly black or white) are made up of both black and white parts, so emphasizing that point isn't any kind of breakthrough. Your "Pixelism" does the exact same things as any standard morality system (look at action/intent, weigh the good versus the bad based on your personal moral code, then make an overall judgement), you're just taking that optional deep analysis step and applying it to everything, even simple questions. Think of morality like liquid in a glass, good actions and intent are water and bad ones are oil, and the goal is to determine whether there is more water or oil in the glass. Let's say there's one of these hypothetical morality glass with oil and water in it sitting on a table and a person is told to figure out which one there's more of; someone operating under your system would immediately start siphoning off the oil into another glass so as to look at them side by side; someone with a normal morality system would take a look at the side of the glass to see if there's a readily apparent answer by eyeballing it, and they'd only start separating the stuff if there wasn't a blatant answer.

What I'm getting at here is that your way of looking at morality is impractical for most situations, and in the situations in which it becomes practical it operates in exactly the same way as any other normal morality system. Breaking things apart into black and white bits to analyze them all even for obvious situations just isn't practical, and I doubt you actually do so even though this is your system; when you look at a situation like a person harming someone else in clear self defense I'd wager your immediate reaction on the morality of it is that it was justified (or righteous, to use your word), not to tear the information apart to make a determination about it. When it comes to things that are true moral grey areas, anyone who's going to put the effort into analyzing and making a call on them is going to break up the good and bad things and weigh them against one another to make their decision, so your "Pixelism" thing isn't any different there.

It seems like you just dislike the idea of moral grey areas (due to a misunderstanding of what they truly are, from what I can see) so you've come up with these alternative terms to avoid using the term 'grey area' when talking of morality. In reality your morality thing is no different mechanically from the average morality system (just less efficient if you really do take the time to give in depth analysis to situations that don't warrant it), you just use some different words. Speaking of your special terms, I have to say your chosen name just doesn't fit. Talking about pixels makes sense insofar as you're talking about looking at the pieces that make up the whole, but the fact that they don't in any way fit with the "black and white only grey does not exist" thing because colors don't work that way makes it seem like a bad name choice; seriously, just look at all the grey pixels on the screen making your name choice look silly. A more appropriate name would be something more like analytical moral dualism, though that doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Another better choice of name would be to call it monochrome morality or something similar, since the term 'monochrome' is used to refer to things done in only black and white, which suits your idea quite nicely. Naming your concept after things that immediately contradict the core idea you're proposing just doesn't make any sense.

MDK said A lot of 'gray areas' come into play when you introduce 'conflict avoidance' as a virtue. It becomes a moral imperative to refuse judgment (which isn't necessarily wrong). More often than not, people use 'gray area' to either (a) mask their own ignorance, or (b) feign maturity -- sort of like.... okay, let's say a man robs a bank. Morally wrong -- you can't do that. Done deal.

You certainly must be on to something when you suggest that Conflict Avoidance is often included. I chalk it up to personal taste. I personally prefer having a definite answer, as opposed to peaceful ignorance.

MDK said Now, let's say I stop someone in the street and say "Hey, so I want to ask you a complicated question. Tell me if this is definitely right, definitely wrong, or if you can't be sure without more information. The situation is.... 'robbing a bank.'"

In that scenario, no part of the hypothetical has changed. But because they're presented with the situation in a potentially challenging way, you'll see a *lot* more people saying 'Uh.... I don't know, I need more information.' Anticipating a trick question, or whatever.

Once more, I believe you are almost undeniably correct.

MDK said What I've found is that this tendency carries over to a lot of conversations. You could describe it as a fear of being wrong, or as overzealous conflict avoidance, or whatever you like; I bring it up to say, 'Moral gray areas' are drastically over-represented in conversations about morality, whether you think they exist or not.

I can agree with the belief that they are over-represented. I personally believe that people don't like to admit that they've done something wrong, even if it led to something right.

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Jorick said Your perception of what a moral grey area is seems strange to me. So far as I have always thought of them, moral grey areas are situations in which there's a mix of goodness and badness in someone's actions/intent that is either closely balanced (such as mugging someone in order to feed your kid) or ambiguous in nature (such as pirating a movie to bring happiness and entertainment to your friends). Your first supposedly grey area in your thought experiment is in no way a grey area: the father was protecting himself and his family from someone with ill intent, and this good action heavily outweighs the badness of harming the guy or exposing his family to violence. In the second supposed grey area scenario the mother can only be said to have done something wrong if she knew she was purchasing stolen goods, the father's acts clearly lean toward being overall good, and nobody in their right mind would argue that Batman's negative actions in doling out vigilante justice outweigh the huge amount of good he does. Only the mugger's situation actually comes close to being a true moral grey area, but I'd wager that the vast majority of people would say that his actions were overall bad without needing to think too hard on it.

I'm one of the biggest fanatics that The Dark Knight has, but I disagree in saying that his vigilante ways are an acceptable cost for the harm he causes. In the beginning, Batman had no intention to prevent mass bombings or fight massively powerful ghouls like Solomon Grundy. He intended to avenge his parents murder. This may have led to him saving humanity multiple times, and though I guarantee that he wouldn't refuse an opportunity to prevent an extinction, on a personal level, generally speaking, he does more harm than good. First off is the fact that he uses terror as a primary method. His tactics have not only directly led to the creation of the Joker among others, but he has reinforced the idea that justice is an idea to fear and that must be fought in the same way that citizens would be expected to fear supervillains. Also, his shock n' awe create both mental instabilities and PTSD, but also inspire copycats instead of allowing the judicially-guided (for the sake of an argument let's pretend that it works) system to handle obvious legal problems that they personally do have the manpower to stop (Two-Face, Falcones, Scarecrow, Joker, Holiday, Maronis, etc.).

I believe, with the mugger particularly, that intent, action, and repercussions should all be judged independently of one another only in combination with the person they are associated with and his personal history. If the mugger robs someone every day to feed his family, he probably could've gotten a legitimate job. If it's a one time thing and he's only doing it to care for his kids, he should've avoided a family where he'd create a situation similar to his own.

Jorick said Grey areas are those which aren't easy to judge on first glance, not just anything that happens to have a mix of black and white parts. True moral grey areas are actions and situations which can only be judged by actually analyzing the situation and filtering it through your own personal moral code and values and giving differing weight to various actions based on what you feel is more or less good or bad (such as how murder is worse than theft, thus a murder would be weighted as being more negative than stealing something). People who say that they cannot make a judgment on a grey area are just lazy, they don't want to exert the mental effort it would take to go through this analytical process. Saying grey areas are bad because of this laziness is like saying calculus is bad because most people don't have the patience or knowledge to solve calculus problems that are randomly shoved in their face. This laziness extends to people not wanting to think about questions of morality in general, even when it's a pretty clear situation; the things mdk brought up are also true, and they contribute heavily to people making it seem as if the vast majority of the morality spectrum is shrouded in a grey fog that cannot be pierced. It's intellectual laziness, not a true problem with standard morality systems.

I would agree in saying that everyone, as individuals, have their own personal system of beliefs and values as well as reasons for them. And I would say that many people are decidedly comfortable without a definite right or wrong. But I do not believe that their laziness determines that their lack of perception is just or even valid.

Still Jorick... said Speaking of which, your idea here isn't anything fancy or special. Everyone is well aware that grey areas (in the broad sense of everything not clearly black or white) are made up of both black and white parts, so emphasizing that point isn't any kind of breakthrough. Your "Pixelism" does the exact same things as any standard morality system (look at action/intent, weigh the good versus the bad based on your personal moral code, then make an overall judgement), you're just taking that optional deep analysis step and applying it to everything, even simple questions. Think of morality like liquid in a glass, good actions and intent are water and bad ones are oil, and the goal is to determine whether there is more water or oil in the glass. Let's say there's one of these hypothetical morality glass with oil and water in it sitting on a table and a person is told to figure out which one there's more of; someone operating under your system would immediately start siphoning off the oil into another glass so as to look at them side by side; someone with a normal morality system would take a look at the side of the glass to see if there's a readily apparent answer by eyeballing it, and they'd only start separating the stuff if there wasn't a blatant answer.

As with oil and water, density, or more appropriately, significance is something else to consider. In the case of the man you'd called ambiguous, who'd pirated a movie to entertain his friends, one might say that the joy received from doing so outweighs the possible financial loss suffered by the studio who'd created the 'contraband'. I don't think that right & wrong is always obvious, but I do believe that according to a concrete set of beliefs, it can be calculated to an exact degree. I wouldn't feel the same about valuing a glass who was 51% Oil the same price as a glass who was 75% Oil. I feel that the little details make all the difference when it comes to finding accurate and valid answers.

Jorick said What I'm getting at here is that your way of looking at morality is impractical for most situations, and in the situations in which it becomes practical it operates in exactly the same way as any other normal morality system. Breaking things apart into black and white bits to analyze them all even for obvious situations just isn't practical, and I doubt you actually do so even though this is your system; when you look at a situation like a person harming someone else in clear self defense I'd wager your immediate reaction on the morality of it is that it was justified (or righteous, to use your word), not to tear the information apart to make a determination about it. When it comes to things that are true moral grey areas, anyone who's going to put the effort into analyzing and making a call on them is going to break up the good and bad things and weigh them against one another to make their decision, so your "Pixelism" thing isn't any different there.

It's not actually a morality system. It's something I like to use to look back on previous actions. Really, it would be more accurate to call it a judgement system. While it is almost guaranteed you won't be able to apply this toward future planning, I feel that it is extremely effective in reviewing prior action. I actually do use it to look at myself from time to time and judge the things that I have done.

Jorick said It seems like you just dislike the idea of moral grey areas (due to a misunderstanding of what they truly are, from what I can see) so you've come up with these alternative terms to avoid using the term 'grey area' when talking of morality. In reality your morality thing is no different mechanically from the average morality system (just less efficient if you really do take the time to give in depth analysis to situations that don't warrant it), you just use some different words. Speaking of your special terms, I have to say your chosen name just doesn't fit. Talking about pixels makes sense insofar as you're talking about looking at the pieces that make up the whole, but the fact that they don't in any way fit with the "black and white only grey does not exist" thing because colors don't work that way makes it seem like a bad name choice; seriously, just look at all the grey pixels on the screen making your name choice look silly. A more appropriate name would be something more like analytical moral dualism, though that doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Another better choice of name would be to call it monochrome morality or something similar, since the term 'monochrome' is used to refer to things done in only black and white, which suits your idea quite nicely. Naming your concept after things that immediately contradict the core idea you're proposing just doesn't make any sense.

I didn't say I was original in suggesting that this is how morality works, or should work. I said it was a philosophy of mine. I never meant to put any real emphasis on wording, I think the only important thing in the post was the idea behind it. If you actually could look close enough, then you'd see that the grey pixels you're talking about are actually just black pixels next to white ones. It's no breakthrough, it's merely underemphasized. Naturally, as I would have the bias, I feel I do have a firm understanding of what a moral grey area is. However, you are completely correct in saying that I dislike them.

Nightrunner said I'm one of the biggest fanatics that The Dark Knight has, but I disagree in saying that his vigilante ways are an acceptable cost for the harm he causes. In the beginning, Batman had no intention to prevent mass bombings or fight massively powerful ghouls like Solomon Grundy. He intended to avenge his parents murder. This may have led to him saving humanity multiple times, and though I guarantee that he wouldn't refuse an opportunity to prevent an extinction, on a personal level, generally speaking, he does more harm than good. First off is the fact that he uses terror as a primary method. His tactics have not only directly led to the creation of the Joker among others, but he has reinforced the idea that justice is an idea to fear and that must be fought in the same way that citizens would be expected to fear supervillains. Also, his shock n' awe create both mental instabilities and PTSD, but also inspire copycats instead of allowing the judicially-guided (for the sake of an argument let's pretend that it works) system to handle obvious legal problems that they personally do have the manpower to stop (Two-Face, Falcones, Scarecrow, Joker, Holiday, Maronis, etc.).

I believe, with the mugger particularly, that intent, action, and repercussions should all be judged independently of one another only in combination with the person they are associated with and his personal history. If the mugger robs someone every day to feed his family, he probably could've gotten a legitimate job. If it's a one time thing and he's only doing it to care for his kids, he should've avoided a family where he'd create a situation similar to his own.

We could rule that Batmans original motivation in that sense was not a white issue. But his original motivation, and his current motivation and effects of being Batman are different things. Those are two seperate cases that require seperate analysis. As for terror as a method? That goes back to what Jorick was mentioning on grey areas where you use personal values and such as a scope/lens to view grey areas through. How do you feel fear should be used/applied?

Personally, I think we'd be better if people were good because they all wanted to and not due to fear. But fear also works, when it comes to fear of being a villain.
It becomes one of those "The Technology is not evil, it is the one who uses it" situations. A government using fear to control the citizens to be mindless servants? Evil. An abusive spouse using fear to prevent their partner from defending themselves or leaving? Evil. A parent using a fear rather than logic/reason to make their child listen to them? Evil. Using fear on those who cause harm, to prevent innocents from being harmed? Not so evil.

It changes from being purely something used to control an individual into something used to protect other innocents from pain and suffering. Pain and suffering that would happen without said fear being used. Though at the same time, when a person reduce's themselves to being a murder, kidnapper, rapist etc I tend to lose all respect for them as human beings and stop caring for their well being, so my analysis of this may be a bit bias.

As for Batman creating over villains? That is a black/bad result, but it is not an intended one. Batman does not be batman for the sake of making villains, that was an unforeseen side effect of becoming Batman. Saying the Batman is Dark/evil for that is the same as saying something like "A mother has a son who is suffering from severe cancer. He sends his son in for treatment, making all the sacrifices needed on herself (loses her home, her job etc.) to make him better. A purely selfless act (for the sake of hypothetical, let's assume afterwards they both have a place to stay and be safe, relative, welfare etc.). But by doing so, caused a rather skilled doctor to invest all his time on that one child, a doctor whose since he was so occupied with the one was unable to save several other children who needed similar treatment". Did the mother overall cause harm to society? Yes, she saved one child, but indirectly caused others to die. But morally, and in terms of intention she is clear. She never went in thinking she would let other kids die for her own son, she simply saved her son.

Nightrunner said I would agree in saying that everyone, as individuals, have their own personal system of beliefs and values as well as reasons for them. And I would say that many people are decidedly comfortable without a definite right or wrong. But I do not believe that their laziness determines that their lack of perception is just or even valid.

I'd agree here. Being to lazy to give a proper observation is just that, laziness and not having a proper observation.
If they can't take the time to be properly aware of the situation, they should be treated as valid responses to said issue.

However, just because most people are too lazy (or simply not capable) of making such moral choices doesn't mean there's no grey.
It just means people are unwilling to question the grey, and make the choice to sacrifice some morality, knowledge and awareness for the sake of having slightly less demands and issues in their life.

Nightrunner said As with oil and water, density, or more appropriately, significance is something else to consider. In the case of the man you'd called ambiguous, who'd pirated a movie to entertain his friends, one might say that the joy received from doing so outweighs the possible financial loss suffered by the studio who'd created the 'contraband'. I don't think that right & wrong is always obvious, but I do believe that according to a concrete set of beliefs, it can be calculated to an exact degree. I wouldn't feel the same about valuing a glass who was 51% Oil the same price as a glass who was 75% Oil. I feel that the little details make all the difference when it comes to finding accurate and valid answers.

To have such things though we need to assign values and weights to certain acts.

Such as how evil is say rape compared to murder? How much points/percentage is each act given? Why are they given? What are the exact modifiers given due to different circumstances? This may sound contradicting to what I just said about laziness though. It is important to delve into these issues and gain better abilities to evaluate and judge them, but it is not an exact numerical science. There will be multiple ways to evaluate it, multiple answers and none of them may be wrong or right. Just all closer to being accurate than many other evaluations.