A few years ago I finally made good on a long-ago promise to look into a possible connection – at least a parallel, perhaps something more – between music and ethics.
In a 2015 post on teaching my older child how to drive, for example, I wrote:
I picked up on the connection between music and ethics in a week-long class on improvisation with Joe Craven, who focused from the first on the development of particular cognitive skills of receiving and sending, which are very much like what I’ve been calling noticing and responding.
In that class, we didn’t do much at all with music theory, which is the thinking part of playing music, being able to stop and analyze a chord progression, for example.
Of course, what I would aim for, in the end, as a musician and as a driver and as a social being, is not to have to stop and think too often, but to be practiced and experienced enough that everything just flows.
It took about a decade to get from that workshop with Joe Craven to the publication of my first paper on music and ethics in 2023. Today I offer the first installment of that paper, taken from the final typescript:
In the opening section, I tell the story of a young engineer wrestling with doubt and responsibility in the context of an important meeting, a context in which doing the right thing is at least as much a matter of reading the room and having good timing as of knowing the codes of ethics and having good judgment.
The “Tuning-In” Relationship in Music and in Ethics
Consider the plight of a young engineer, in her second year of work for a prestigious firm, attending the final meeting of all the design teams working on a major project before the new system goes into production. Her own part in the design was small, and it pushed her to the limit of her current knowledge and skill, but she has begun to have doubts about the project as a whole: she suspects that testing carried out by another team on one critical subsystem was not sufficiently rigorous, and that a failure in that subsystem could set off a cascade of further failures that would pose a grave risk to end users and to the general public.
In the meeting, the young engineer holds back from saying anything as the team leads review the relevant test results from each team in turn. The situation is awash in uncertainty, as her doubts about the testing of that critical subsystem struggle with her doubts about her own judgment and her standing within the hierarchy of the firm. At no point in the meeting does anyone else raise doubts about the test results.
Finally, the lead engineer for the project asks if there are any further questions or concerns before the meeting ends and the first steps of production begin. He pauses.
A beat passes.
Another beat passes.
The lead engineer draws a breath as if to speak.
The question for those concerned with professional responsibility, or with the teaching of practical ethics, is this: What would be required for the young engineer to respond well in the lapse of time between beats? How might she have been prepared to do so, in her personal and professional development?
One ready answer would be that she should have been introduced to the codes of ethics relevant to her field, and she should be able to reference them at will: engineers shall “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public”, but shall also “act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees” and at the same time “avoid deceptive acts” (National Society of Professional Engineers 2019). An ability to recall the letter and the spirit of the codes may help to draw the young engineer’s attention to what might be important in this situation, but it is likely still to leave her at an impasse, pulled in different directions by the obligations of non-maleficence, loyalty, and honesty.
Perhaps the young engineer also needs to have been instructed in moral theory as a basis for independent moral judgment. She might then be able to decide what to do based on well-framed descriptions of the basic moral values in play, and in the precise determinations of which provisions of the codes ought to prevail over which in this instance. In a situation already awash in uncertainty, though, and one already changing rapidly in the brief pause between one utterance and another, there simply will not be time for the kind of careful investigation and deliberation required to arrive at a sound and defensible judgment.
A further requirement, then, might be that she have a well-formed character, with stable dispositions to respond appropriately in the moment as it passes. In establishing the scope and limits of ethical inquiry, in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (2011: 1104a5-10) stipulates “that every argument concerned with what ought to be done is bound to be stated in outline only and not precisely.” This is so because humans act in response to the particulars of situations that “have nothing stationary about them.” Argument concerning particulars, Aristotle continues, is always imprecise, “for it does not fall under any art or any set of precepts. Instead, those who act ought themselves always to examine what pertains to the opportune moment [when it presents itself], as is the case both with medicine and with piloting.” The young engineer would then need the practical judgment to perceive and navigate the particulars of this situation, and the dispositions of character to act appropriately, like a skillful driver in the present day would respond to a sudden shift in traffic patterns.
To respond well, though, the young engineer would need also to perceive well. She must be able to “read the room”, to grasp the social relationships in play, including the lines of authority, the centers of trusted expertise, and the points of tension among those who may each be making sense of the situation very differently from the others. To do that, she must be able to imagine the situation from others’ points of view. She needs to imagine how her speaking, her choice of words, and even the timing and tone of her utterance might send ripples out through all those various connections and tensions, and to what end (see Werhane 1999: 100).
Perhaps most urgently, the lead engineer’s pause before the end of the meeting has a rhythm and a tempo to it, like a moment of suspension before the resolution of a musical cadence. The young engineer needs to grasp how long a beat is.
And she needs to be able to improvise.
References
Aristotle. 2011. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (University of Chicago Press: Chicago).
National Society of Professional Engineers. 2019. “Code of Ethics for Engineers.” In, edited by National Society of Professional Engineers. Alexandria, VA.
Werhane, Patricia H. 1999. Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making (Oxford University Press: New York).
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