Historically, many ethical theories such as Utilitarianism have made an assumption about what is intrinsically valuable. Classical Utilitarianism for instance, has, at its core, the assumption of hedonism, the idea that it is pleasure or happiness that is intrinsically valuable, and that pain or suffering are intrinsically the opposite.
However, hedonistic theories like this can lead to counterintuitive conclusions, such as that a universe with slightly more suffering than happiness should not exist and should be destroyed. This seems, well, wrong.
To rectify this issue, I propose an alternative to hedonism, which I’ll refer to as creativism. Creativism is essentially the idea that creation is good, and destruction is evil. This implies that existence is good, that the universe should exist, and is fundamentally a more life-affirming idea that hedonism.
It also, interestingly, can map over to hedonism in ways that match our intuitions if we think about it. Pleasure and happiness are generally the experience of things that exist and are created, like the beauty of art, or the joy of living an interesting life. Pain and suffering are generally caused by some form of destruction, whether it is the physical damaging of nerves, or the destruction and loss of hopes and dreams that we hold dear, or the death of people we care about.
The emphasis in creativism is somewhat different than hedonism however. Whereas hedonism is biased towards sentient beings, creativism expands the moral circle even further and encapsulates even inanimate objects that happen to exist. It is, in this sense, the most expansive moral circle possible.
The primacy of existence over happiness also makes it much harder to justify annihilating the universe, or committing suicide to avoid suffering. It is in this sense, absolutely life-affirming, and arguably the most logical formulation of an ethical core that something like a Creator God would have.
At the same time, most normal moral intuitions can be reconstructed in creativistic ethics. For instance, lying is generally wrong because the truth maps to states of the universe that exist, while lies map to states of the universe that do not actually exist. Killing is obviously wrong because it is inherently destructive, and not just because it denies a being potential future happiness.
Intrinsic value in a creativistic ethics is also more objective. Everything is valuable, even if we as mere human sentient beings are unable to recognize their value. Everything could, potentially, have some use that we are not aware of. And, with sufficiently advanced technology, any matter or energy could be converted into other matter or energy.
It also is more consistent with mathematics. Zero is not valuable, it literally stands for no value. Anything with a positive number, like one apple, has a value. The addition of things adds value. The subtraction of things reduces value. Thus, creation is good, and destruction is evil.
Truth has a value of 1.0. False has a value of 0.0. As things become more likely to be true, they gain in value. In this sense, creativism is more truth oriented. Falsehoods that make people happier are, in this sense, disvalue compared to telling them the truth. Thus, creativistic ethics will tend to promote honesty and integrity to a greater degree than hedonistic ones.
In practice, the differences between creativistic and hedonistic ethics are likely to be marginal and mostly reflected in edge cases. Most of the time, they would advocate the same moral actions. I thus, offer this idea mostly as an intellectual curiosity for those interested in an alternative to hedonism.