What’s So Great About Objective Morality?
I’ve observed conversations between theists and non-theists in which the theist will state that the non-theist doesn’t have a leg to stand on with regard to morality because if you don’t believe in a God then you can have no objective basis for your morals and so no moral belief can be better or worse than the other.
And I’ve watch many non-theists scramble to try to show that they do, in fact, have a basis for objective morality but I have to admit that I get a bit lost in the arguments. It’s likely that I don’t understand the finer details of what people mean by “objective” and “subjective”.
Every time I see such a conversation I think to myself that I’m quite happy to believe that there is no great measuring rod in the sky and that all such morals are evolved and subjective. To me, it seems to make sense that stealing can be both beneficial and detrimental depending on the circumstances (i.e. subjective) and that child rape is 99.9999999% detrimental (I always allow for those make-believe scenarios where you have to choose between, say, child rape and killing 1,000,000 people with a lawnmower).
I also think that when people use “wrong” and “right” as opposed to “detrimental” and “beneficial” it actually creates a circular argument for a kind of objective morality because the word “wrong” can be used in both an objective and a subjective sense (i.e. I hit the wrong key on the keyboard vs. abortion is wrong) whereas the word “detrimental” demands that you at least define a goal or framework that is being worked against.
So, theists and non-theists, is there really such a thing as objective morality? And what’s your definition of it? I’ve got no answers, only questions.
Tags: objective morality
I would like to suggest that there is some objective basis for morality beyond what has arisen via evolutionary processes.
Maybe its a bit like logic and arithmetic. While these may be highly developed arguments they have some objective basis in the sense that they realate to objectively existing objects. We can see the formula 2+2=4 as objectively based in that discrete objects exist and that we can group them. Of course such an objectively based logical or arithmetic argument may be applied quite inapopriately (eg. put 2 female cats and 2 male cats together in a closed ecosystem. Come back 6 months later and the argument that there should be 4 cats would be completely inappropriate. I think, as another exmaple, conservation principles – “something can’t come from nothing” – are often inappropriately applied to the formation of our universe).
So, perhaps because we exist as sensient individuals with a certain degree of consciousness and intelligence then we may say that some moral and ethical values have an objective basis. Perhaps this can be seen as an objective basis for ‘rules’ about how such individuals should intreract – and this is important for a social species. It seems to me that this could serve as an objective basis for rules about not killing and some human rights.
What I am saying is that the fact of our existence can serve as a basis, or even origin, for some human values – rather than assuming such values have ‘evolved.’ After all the arithmentic logic we all (?) accept didn’t evolve.
Having said that, the objective basis for some of our ethical/moral positions doesn’t justify their absolute adherence regardless of the situation. In practice our morality becomes relative. And much of our day-to-day morality/ethics is firmly based on our unconscious intuitions and feelings – and these have evolutionary origins.
Also, I get the impression that some theists who resort to these arguments see morality as objective in the sense of objectively existing objects rather than inherent logic – like a slab of rock with the 10 commandments engraved on it. They use this to infer an engraver/designer/god using the old intelligent design arguments of Paley. They will often go on to claim the same about arithmetic, logic and even the rational nature of reality. That is, this rationality had to be injected from the outside (by their god) rather than be an inherent aspect of reality (or ‘matter’ used in the most general sense).
Hmmm, at this stage I even have an issue with the concept of numbers being some kind of mystical external entities which seems to undergird many arguments for a need for objectiveness. (I’m in a state of flux with my thinking at the moment so reserve the right to change my mind on this!)
To my thinking numbers may not even exist outside of the creatures that use them to abstractly represent the world in which they find themselves. And the logic that we see as inherent behind the concept of 2+2=4 seems completely circular to me. But I struggle to express why I have this hunch.
Thanks for shedding light on your idea of what objective morality is.
[...] a post on his blog today, Damian Peterson asks ‘What’s So Great About Objective Morality?’ He asks this as an agnostic who has seen “many non-theists scramble to try to show that they [...]
Bnonn, in your post you represent my call for the use of “detrimental” over “wrong” as if I were asking that a single standard be set by which “detrimental” be judged for each situation. But that is not what I mean. If you ask me whether stealing is detrimental my answer would have to be “it depends on the circumstance, detrimental to what?” which means that there are as many possible ways to judge the morality of stealing as there are combinations of the effect of the action and the goals by which to judge them by.
And I suspect that your use of the word “duty” comes with an assumption of an objective duty-demander which, once again, becomes circular. Like the word “wrong”, the word “duty” can be used both objectively and subjectively.
In your first counter objection say that “non-theists will say that we have these moral intuitions as a by-product of evolution”. I don’t believe this to be the case. I think that evolution gave us the hardware and perhaps some of the instincts for communal living but that much of our moral framework has developed memetically. We’ve developed ways of living by spreading ideas.
Also in this first counter objection you raise the topic of rape. A lot of animals practice rape and it seems that many primitive cultures either actively participate in rape or have only recently started suppressing it. This makes sense when we see that rape actually becomes detrimental when a species begins to form and spread ideas for how to best get along.
To think that because I agree that evolution happens and assume that any evolutionary process is therefore beneficial for our species is to misunderstand both me and evolution in general. It may be evolutionarily beneficial for a praying mantid to eat its mate but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s beneficial for a horse or a human.
Now, you raised the ante with the polarising topic of rape so let me lower it a bit with the topic of speeding in a car. I can find many subjective reasons for speeding being both beneficial and detrimental depending on the circumstances but I’m wondering how someone would use objective morality to judge the action of speeding?
Regarding your second counter objection; the words “should”, “ought” and “duty” seem to all work perfectly well when used among a species attempting to live in a society relative to their common goals. We can simplify this by looking at a pack of wolves. If times are tough and they all need to work together to bring down a large animal but one doesn’t participate we can say that “in order to avoid being outcast, the wolf ‘ought’ to participate”. We don’t need to invoke a higher power in order to use the “ought” for the wolf – and I can’t think of a single situation within human morality where an objective “ought” isn’t superfluous.
It seems that the primary difference between our use of these words that can be laden with objective or subjective meaning is that, when used subjectively, you are required to be able to provide a context or a reason for it. When used objectively reason can be abandoned.
Damian, how you apply the term “detrimental” makes no difference to the fact that you’re trying to presuppose moral pragmatism, as if it were necessary to “neutral” discussion of morality. It also makes no difference to the fact that moral pragmatism is self-refuting by merit of not meeting its own criteria.
Regarding my use of the word “duty”, it does indeed come with the assumption of an objective duty-demander—the whole point of my argument is that duty is not actually duty if an objective duty-demander doesn’t exist. Once you introduce arbitrariness or impersonalness into duty at the most basic level, it isn’t duty any more. You don’t appear to have addressed that argument; and I suspect, though I don’t mean this unkindly, that it’s because you haven’t really understood it. I myself find presuppositional thinking about morality pretty hard, so I can hardly blame you if I haven’t articulated my argument in such a way that you will immediately get it.
But what does speeding being beneficial or detrimental have to do with whether it is morally right? You’re illicitly smuggling in moral pragmatism as if it’s necessarily true. But at best this is an assertion in search of an argument; at worst it’s self-refuting.
Barring legal impositions, driving at a certain speed is morally neutral. But “speeding” is, by definition, traveling in excess of a legal, imposed limit. Under a Christian worldview, therefore, speeding is morally wrong as a general principle. However, Christian theologies of ethics are nuanced; the view to which I hold certainly leaves room for speeding being morally acceptable in some cases. Just like lying, or stealing, or even murder. It’s important to remember, when talking to a Christian about objective morality, that a founding presupposition he holds in ethics is that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). There is, of course, a corollary to that: whatever does proceed from faith is not sin.
True, but this doesn’t actually address any moral issue. You’re levering an equivocation in the term “ought”. Here it is not a moral prescription, but a pragmatic description. Your argument plays off an ambiguity in the language, in a similar way to arguments about God’s responsibility for sin. There are different kinds of oughts; and different kinds of responsibility. Pragmatic or moral; causal or ethical.
And what I’m arguing is that any such context or reason ultimately reduces to absurdity through meaninglessness or question-begging unless an objective duty-giver exists, and duty itself is properly basic to human experience.
Regards,
Bnonn
Bnonn, thanks for explaining what you perceive objective morality to be. I can understand how your presupposition leads you to see moral issues in this light.
Great topic, aye?
I’d want to say right from the start that I don’t think morality is best discussed (at many levels anyway) with the use of all kinds of words like ‘objective’, ‘subjective’, etc. I certainly hope a) that God doesn’t expect people to have a phD level understanding of logic in order to obey Him, and b) that Christians (Bnonn… hint…) are able to present their views in terms that relate to people who don’t have such understanding. I like to think that if you can’t explain (‘translate’) what you are thinking so that most people can ‘get it’, then you might not truly understand it yourself (but of course, there’s always exeptions)…
1. I think God’s morality (to put it like that) is both objective and subjective in that it regards the (objective) ‘other’ and the (subjective) ‘self’.
2. God’s morality is both ‘top-down’ (God’s nature and character are the basis/foundation/etc.), and ‘bottom-up’ (the working-out of morality happens [where else???] amidst real-life, simple/complex and clear/confusing).
3. God’s morality (Law) reaches it’s telos (goal, end, destination) in the person (and spirit – but we won’t take that pneumatological tangent) of Jesus Christ, who taught and lived God’s morality, fully and completely revealing God’s heart.
4. As I said over at Ken’s blog, empirical observations (‘scientific knowledge’) cannot provide the basis/foundation (for example) for the loving regard for the self/other.
Oh yes,
and (just for fun) I also like to think about ‘morality’ in terms of both ability(capacity) and responsibility(duty). Enter the comic-book quote – ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
In this vein, God can be seen to be (via on-going creation and new-creation) bringing creation to it’s fullest expression. Creation has a telos (goal, ‘end’), which God is continually moving it toward. We may gripe that He uses processes that we think are inappropriate (natural selection, pain/suffering, death) and wish He only used ‘nice’ things (miracles, instantaneous completion, ‘fixing’ every single thing that could possibly go wrong, etc.)…
This ‘moving toward maturity/completion’ happens not only at a cosmic level, but corporate and individual as well. God uses the stuff (both ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’, both ‘good’ and ‘evil’) of creation – and our lives – to teach us how to love.
For Christians, the ‘shape of maturity/completion/perfection’ is the person of Christ. He is the first ‘bit’ of the New Creation – the telos (goal) of all Creation, and the model for the self-less lives that we all should live (and none of us attain to).
But that, really, is the point under contention—and arguing that point is certainly something which happens among those with “PhD level understanding”. Not that I think that is necessarily required, but you’re definitely leaving the realm of discourse where most people will easily “get it”.
…and humans have a unique role in creation, in that God gives (has given) us the ability(capacity) and thus the responsibility(duty) of bringing the rest of the creation to its fullest expression. Painting great paintings, building wise (eco-friendly)
buildings, growing crops ethically and distributing food evenly and justly, writing beautiful and creative songs, caring for animals, caring for forests, appreciating the beauty of quasars, etc., etc. Might be a little anthropocentric for some, but you can’t argue that humans have the most capacity for good/evil (oops, ‘benefit/detriment’) in the universe (that we know of)…
Cheers, DBT,
I fully recognise the complexity of some things (and use large-ish words when necessary), but hopefully morality is a topic which we can always try to discuss with ‘down-to-earth’ language?
I’m not sure Dale. I am always looking for ways to simplify discussion of the topics on which I argue; but the truth is that some arguments are very difficult, and require precise, philosophical language. It very much depends on what exactly you’re discussing about morality as to how down-to-earth you can be.
I have to confess that I found Bnonn’s version easier to understand than yours Dale
By the way, on his blog, Bnonn defined “objective” as:
I’m fairly new to the terms objective/subjective but this definition seems to make sense to me and I’m happy to work with it. If anyone else defines “objective” differently I’d love to hear from you.
With regard to morality, would an objective moralist say that murder would be wrong regardless of whether there were any humans to murder or be murdered? How does that work? And does this only apply to humans?
I’ve got a feeling that what people refer to as objective morality is really just ubiquitous subjective morality. If that makes any sense.
I think it would be helpful for you to paraphrase how you’ve understood both of our perspectives (I find that a simple-and-incredibly-helpful way of just ensuring that the communication is clear) – i.e. ‘Bnonn, what I hear you saying is…’ and ‘Dale, what I hear you saying is…’ Only if you can be bothered, though…
Hey, since when did the person who didn’t understand have to do the summarising!?
Just kidding bro. I can make out what you are saying but it means little to me and after your jibes at Bnonn for an overly-complex argument I just had to let you know that, from my point of view at least, his seemed a less muddled argument. Others may disagree.
I feel that both arguments add an imaginary aspect to the issue but I’m happy to let that go and pursue the extents to which objective morality may play itself out in practical terms. Hence my questions in #14.
And I’m particularly interested to hear the opinions of my fellow non-theists who hold to a type of objective morality. I’d be interested to see if they can agree with Bnonn’s definition in #13. Ian? (you still visiting fella?) A3? Ken, do you think that numbers are objective in the same way that the theists think morals are? Or are our definitions different?
Yup still visiting although a little snowed under at the moment
A very fast answer: My understanding of objective morality is that it implies an absolute right or wrong answer to a particular moral question and with that definition in mind I think it is a myth.
IMO morality is simply the name we give to judgment calls we make, and I tend to agree with Marc Hauser who suggests the toolkit we have for making those calls is provided but the rules and context are not – much like we have a toolkit for language at birth but no specific words or grammar. This toolkit approach explains why, like languages, they tend to follow similar patterns but still vary dramatically in the details from culture to culture.
IMO morality is simply a convenience for rapid decision making (and hence an evolutionary advantage). I don’t think you need anything more than that to explain what we actually observe.
Hey cheers Ian and good to hear from you again. I’d been wondering where you’d gotten to.
So, if you were accused by a theist of having no basis for an objective morality would you attempt to argue that you do have a basis but that their definition of objective morality is wrong or would you go all out and say there is no such thing? Or something else?
And I’d still be interested to hear a theistic answer to:
Again, I’d see ‘morality’ (meanwhile noting that of course, morality is not some floating ‘thing’, but rather refers to the ongoing working out of what is right, wrong, good, bad, beneficial, harmful, etc., etc.) as both subjective and objective – or really that it transcends them.
As for your murder example, I think ‘murder’ itself would have no meaning with no humans, etc. I think morality is very much ‘bottom-up’, in that morality ‘arises’ out of contexts (and yet I also think it is grounded upon God’s own being – who is ‘near-to’ and ‘understands’ every context, every different scenario, every confused and compounded mixture of motives and outcomes (again – grounded ‘objectively’ in the all-present, all-wise, all-knowing-of-all-contexts God, yet emerging ‘subjectively’ from various contexts and scenarios).
Now, as for whether or not it applies only to humans, I’m open to other organisms being ‘responsible’ for the ‘use’ of their abilities/capacities, but (whether that notion is nonsense or not) the most urgent need is not for trees, birds and/or horses to be ‘moral’, but for humans to be. Again, this might sound a bit too anthropocentric (human-centered), but our power to help/harm is the greatest we know of.
And the distinctions Ian mentions may be helpful to me as well. Our biological make-up provides the ‘toolkit’ for decision making, but (like discerning the various ‘right/helpful’ and ‘wrong/harmful’ ways to use a tool such as a hammer) we have to work-out how to use the tools using non-biological, ideological (‘memetic’) concepts/ideas/truths/traditions/assumptions/etc. In other words, whatever evolutionary influence does or doesn’t affect us, our moral-outworking is done from and within our various philosophically-derived value-systems (i.e. one such value-system leads a person to only eat vegetables, another value-system leads a person to consume/use/abuse the worlds resources for all it’s got, and another value-system leads a person to enjoy meat and the use of wood from trees, etc. while doing so responsibly, respectfully and sustainably, etc.).
For the theist, objective morality and subjective morality, are given from the same origin of all things, that is, the personal, creator God. If God set the pattern of human behaviour and its limits and potentialities, then even if no one believed in God, would it not be natural that those limits and potentialities continue to be evident in some form, coming to the surface in human society?
Among non-theists, any such objective morality would be thought of as natural and universal, having no reference to God, and any religious claims would be seen as being derived from those innate moral impulses, rather than pointing to the author of any such objective morality.
Yup! Still here though I’ve been a bit snowed under myself, and just now took some time to make my way through all of the posts. First off, great discussion from all and great question from Damian!
Let me weigh in first by responding to Bnonn’s comment:
While I agree with the assertion that duty presumes a “duty-demander”, I disagree with the primace that a “duty-demander” is by definition a single being (presumably a superbeing, or God of some sort). For example, the duty-demander could be society as a whole. And in fact, that is what I believe it is. Let me explain how, and at the same time respond to the original question about the objectity and subjectivity of morality.
If we can agree that evolution occurs and that humans are the product of it (from the discussion here thus far, I think we can, but please let me know if we need to backtrack), then we also probably agree that we can learn much about humans and human society by studying our closest relatives. In bonobo and chimp troupes for example, we can observe the process of rule-making and rule-following. But rule-making and rule-following are essentially what we mean by “duty”. Then the duty-demander in the case of bonobo troupes is the troupe itself; the troupe as a unit demands duty from each of its members.
The practice of rule-making/following is the result of certain evolutionary traits: a sense of empathy, sense of loyalty, sense of fairness (reciprocity), and sense of repulsion (impurity), etc. For example, the Golden Rule is an example of a rule based on empathy. ‘An eye for an eye’ is based on fairness. Laws against treason are based on loyalty. These innate sensibilities form the threads of our moral fabric. Even ethics, the reasoning about morality and moral options, is based on evolution to the extent that our ability to reason in this way is a product of evolution. In this sense, the basis for human morality is quite objective.
While I hold the basis of our morality is objective, I agree with Damian that applied ethics is subjective. But notice that in discussions about which rules should apply when, our sense of morality, the feelings which guide the decisions, remain constant. If we ask if it is better to murder one child or 10 adults, we are really waying our moral reaction to each alternative as a way to reach a judgment.
In response to comments about simple answers to this tough question, I’ll offer some advice from Einstein: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Ian,
I would tend to agree that Christian objective morality implies an absolutely right or wrong answer in any given circumstance—but that is not what objective morality, in general, is. Objective morality is a shorthand way of describing a view wherein our moral intuitions have an ontological referent outside ourselves. This is opposed to subjective morality, wherein there is no such referent, and our moral intuitions are “all in our minds”.
Christians argue that subjective morality reduces to absurdity, for the reasons (among others) given in my pingedback article. Therefore, there must be an ontological referent for our moral intuitions. Since these intuitions are in the form of feeling duty-bound, the ontological referent must take the form of a moral authority. And, given that we cannot coherently reduce moral authority to arbitrariness or some non-moral cause, this means that the moral authority itself must be both intrinsically moral (ie, moral perfection is something completely basic to its nature); all powerful; and most importantly non-contingent.
However, a non-Christian could feel free to contest all of those points while still maintaining that morality is in some sense “objective”; as AskAnAtheist.org appears to do above. I think he begs the question by assuming that the appearance of morality in animals is the same as the fact of morality in humans; and also by using the word “fairness” in paragraph six. And he fails to interact with my argument that moral intuitions with biological origins are ultimately incoherent because the proposed ontological referent is actually not moral at all. But as you can see, he’s certainly contesting the Christian view while maintaining a semblance of moral objectivism. Objectivity doesn’t necessarily imply absoluteness; merely some actually-existing, external source of our moral intuitions.
Regards,
Bnonn
I would say there is no such thing.
I don’t have time for a detailed response to this but I think any absolute morality necessarily requires an external agent (in itself an argument against the idea) while any non-absolute morality can occur in any form. If it is “all in our minds” that’s fine by me provided that it also includes the societal meme pool which that mind is exposed to. One might be inclined to view the societal meme pool as an “ontological referent outside themselves” but I don’t think that is a useful distinction.
Ken, do you think that numbers are objective in the same way that the theists think morals are? Or are our definitions different?
I don’t think numbers are objective. They are abstract representations of objectively existing reality though. We can use numbers because reality comes in discrete forms. “There is a cat, there is another cat. Can’t see any more cats.” So we can say there are 2 cats. 2 doesn’t exist objectively but our concept of 2 has an objective basis.
In the same way moral concepts don’t exist objectively. But our abstract moral concepts (or at least some of them) have an objective basis in the objective fact that we exist as separate, sentient, intelligent and conscious living beings.
Just thought I’d put a link to a well-phrased comment by ‘Iapetus’ over at Ken’s blog.
A sampler:
(See discussion for context as always)
Gentlemen, good comments all round. Sorry to be slow to respond but I have very few insights to offer and am a bit busy to boot.
I have to say at this stage (predictably) that the non-theists general consensus on the concept of objective morality makes a lot more sense to me. It seems to me that the theistic view merely adds an additional, but unnecessary, layer of complexity that doesn’t actually add anything of value in the end.
When I run through the two opposing scenarios of “What would the world look if life, societies and everything that comes with it”:
1. developed naturally over time without any external metaphysical influence
2. were instigated and fostered by an external intentional being
the first scenario seems to fit what I observe when I look around me far better than the second.
I can, however, understand how the theist would struggle to imagine life to be without this invisible external anchor. I have held that particular view myself and it takes a lot of adjusting to see that everything can still make sense once this layer of magic has been removed. More sense, in my opinion.
Damian, I don’t want to be a pain, but it does seem to me that you still haven’t understood the problems I’ve tried to highlight if you think that the theistic solution adds unnecessary complexity. Can a question?
Firstly, would you agree that we have a duty to do what is right?
Only within the context of the situation. If I am on a sinking ship and we all agree that bailing out water would achieve a common goal then to achieve this goal I have a duty to do what is “right” and get a-bailing.
When you define “right” as being a rule external to humans then of course you are going to see the “duty” to do right as being external as well. I don’t see it this way, I see all “rights” and “wrongs” as being dependent on the context of the situation. And if you want to make the jump to child rape then it just so happens that there are no (or, at least, no realistic) situations within our culture where I can think of a context where it would be of benefit. But this doesn’t child rape metaphysically and eternally “wrong”, just ubiquitously detrimental.
It’s quite possible that I indeed haven’t understood the problems you’ve tried to highlight. If this is the case please be patient.
Just a quick note: That sounds like a wrap up but I would still like to respond to Bnonn’s comments to me and then hopefully get his reaction – I just haven’t had time (I’ve been keeping late hours all week). So don’t go away yet – I’ll respond this weekend at the latest!
quick comment:
I’d want to point out that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ being “dependent on the context of the situation” doesn’t at all mean that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not grounded ‘on’/'in’ (or oriented ‘to’) some thing/person(s)/process/goal/etc. In other words, even people with a ‘list in the sky’ understanding of morality would agree that morality is worked out ‘on the ground’.
I agree Dale.
Hi Damian. I asked if you think we have a duty to do what is right. You responded:
Fair enough. My next question then is: why do you have a duty to help bail out the ship?
Regards,
Bnonn
In my case it might be a learned sense of cooperation, a fear of death or it could even be a fear of retaliation.
But feeling a sense of duty doesn’t always require having to reason it through. On a scale of complexity I feel that my sense of duty toward my wife, a crocodile not eating its young and a mosquito trying to get away from a flyswat are all related. None seem to require an external duty-demander.
I may have developed a sense of duty toward my wife through a combination of genes, upbringing and pheromones. The crocodile probably doesn’t spend too much time reasoning out why it doesn’t feel the urge to chomp on its babies and acts instinctively. And the mosquito would seem to be acting on a simple (relatively speaking of course) set of triggers.
Jonathan Miller had a good answer to this idea of “why” in a moderated discussion called “Life after Darwin” he had along with Richard Dawkins and Norman Macleod in 2005. When asked by the moderator “if there is nobody watching, no eternal bliss or damnation to follow, then what’s the incentive to act morally?”, Miller replies in his inimitable style:
“Getting on nicely. It is just nicer on the whole to behave nicely. People behave nicer to you if you behave nicer to them. Life becomes convivial, I mean in that true linguistic sense of convivial, living together. Living together turns out to be an amiable and pleasant way of carrying on your life.”
I think we feel a duty to behave “morally” because it is generally preferable to acting amorally, almost by definition.
Well said.
Another quick comment (actually 2)
1 – Christianity (and Judaism for that matter) is not intended to be merely a matter of attaining ‘eternal bliss’ or avoiding ‘eternal damnation’… It’s a way of being in the world, not a way out of it.
2 – ‘Getting on nicely’ by way of ‘acting morally’ is great; but the problem remains of what is ‘nice’ and what is ‘moral’.
…and with that, I’m away at a camp ’till Sunday… will check to see what wisdom has unfolded here when I get back – good conversation (subjectively speaking)…
I’d hold that (for our species at least) reason is the best way to define what is ‘nice’ and ‘moral’.
Have fun camping it up!
Damian & Ian:
You seem to be arguing that your sense of duty reduces down to genetic programming of some kind, such that you feel obliged to do that which will preserve your life, or avoid conflict, or maximize pleasure. But it’s very unclear that self-preservation and hedonism are valid or even useful bases for formulating moral opinions. For example, imagine a traveler in a Muslim country who was caught in a mob about to stone a woman caught in adultery. Say he acted to preserve his own life, avoid conflict, and thus maximize his pleasure, by conforming to societal norms and joining in the stoning. Would we not tend to call such a person a cad and a coward? We would find both his actions, and the actions of the mob, morally repugnant. (Indeed, in my experience the people who are most morally outraged by this specific issue are often atheists.)
Moreover, if we are to say that moral duty is just a matter of how we feel about something, because of our genetic programming, then we are forced to concede that it isn’t really a duty at all. There is no real reason, apart from how we feel, to do what is “right” as opposed to what is “wrong”. The terms themselves don’t actually mean what we typically assume them to mean—what our natural intuitions tell us they mean. They really just refer to whether we acted in accordance with our genetic programming and feelings (right), or whether we didn’t (wrong).
That seems like a very flimsy basis for a moral theory.
Bnonn, you seem to be disregarding the fact that we’re not just a product of our genes. Much of what we are and how we behave is learned.
(waiting for my ride to camp…)
Yes, but not everything we learn is ‘moral’. Judgments have to be made, etc.
Yes, Dale, and that’s exactly what we do. Some people find it reprehensible that others eat meat. Others have no problem with it. Both may have good “reason” to believe what they believe. It’s a grey, grey world and the best tool we’ve got is reason, not dogma.
And the beauty of all this is that in a society we use consensus to decide what we will tolerate and what we won’t. Our society has decided that slavery is not an option and the price for believing otherwise (or acting otherwise) is to risk being rejected by our society — i.e. sent to prison. Other societies may deem slavery perfectly normal but this doesn’t mean that I have to wimp out and concede that theirs is an equally valid point. No, I can say that I believe (whether by gut instinct, reason or whatever) that it is wrong. If I have a reason then I am more likely to convince those that I disagree with. If it’s just that my god divinely revealed to me that slavery is right or wrong then unless I get them to convert it’s unlikely that they’re going to see things my way.
Maybe in the future it will become morally ‘wrong’ for parents to make their infant children sleep alone at night or to eat meat. Who knows. But hopefully we’ll use reason to get us there rather than divine revelation.
(teaser) what if ‘divine revelation’ and ‘reason’ are related?
(I certainly don’t think they are mutually exclusive!)
I personally think that they are related. I think that many (well, all, actually) so-called ‘divine revelations’ are really just reason or opinion dressed up as such to give them more weight. The problem with doing so though is that it’s really difficult to negotiate when people believe that their morals have actually been personally handed down from a god.
In reference to Jonathan Miller’s outline of an ideal world without moral ‘stick’ or ‘carrot’, isn’t that how most people live; doing what seems right to them, sometimes with or without a thought for others? Often when communities work ‘convivially’, even in the ‘niceness’, something or someone spoils it, even without intention.
Does this failure of ideal harmony then, support the idea of the existence of objective moral parameters, which to some are explicit in a moral code, while others may see it as deriving only from ‘natural’ causes?
Do you really want a definition of nice? lol
These are precisely the kind of examples that make objective morality an unlikely proposition lol.
You say that like it’s a bad thing… I have no problem saying that it isn’t a duty. However I think we have been programmed (both genetically and memetically) to tend to prefer the kinds of behaviour that are societally beneficial. This intuitively makes sense because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have societies…
They may be related – but in what way may depend on how we define ‘divine revelation’.
For example, can we still consider an idea to be divine revelation any time the thinker feels that his ideas come from a divine source, irrespective of our agreement on the existence of a divine source, or our agreement on whether an extant divine source actually reveals to humans?
It may also depend on our definition of ‘reason’ but I suspect we will agree more easily on that term.
I think that ‘divine revelation’ is usually just the authority argument – using the ultimate authority! I am not convinced it is anything more that claiming support form that authority knowing that there is no way such a claim can be checked. An ideal situation for manipulation.
That’s not to say there aren’t people who hear voices and attribute them to a god. These days we usually see this as resulting from a psychological problem.
Of course people could have also dressed gut instinct up as divine revelation too.
Forgive the cliché but I can imagine Grak feeling uneasy about going into a cave and, having no real explanation, saying that the great Juju told him no one was to enter. If it’s found later that there was a wild beast hiding in the cave, the great Juju’s going to get the credit instead of whatever small signs Grak was subconsciously picking up on.
Regardless of whether ‘divine revelation’ is based on personal belief, gut instinct, selfish intent or even reason, it’s an answer that can only get you so far. Its weakness is that once people believe it to be divine there’s very little room for reason later on. This might work pretty well for the likes of “God says not to murder” and “Don’t tell lies” but causes ruptures among believers when the moral landscape changes with issues like “God says to kill fags” and “Don’t eat pork” and “God made the world in six, literal days” and “Women shouldn’t preach”.
I finally got some time to respond, though the thread has since turned a bit to a different topic. But here’s my response all the same!
Bnonn, thanks for pointing out my failure to interact with the main body of your thesis. I read through the posts rather quickly and didn’t notice your ping back. In my first response, in an effort to maximize clarity, I will forgo answering your criticisms of my thesis and will limit my comments to yours. I will answer your complaints in a separate post.
Let me first summarize my charges against your thesis. Then after the summary, I will offer my responses to some of your statements. Hopefully, the responses to the individual statements will serve to justify this summary.
To summarize:
You seem to be arguing against utilitarian ethics, but not against the view that morality is the result of natural causes. Simplistically put, morality, the way we choose to behave, is governed by how we feel about acting and how we feel about the outcome of our actions; ethics is a branch of philosophy, it is the reasoning about these moral feelings. Our tendency to feel a certain way, including feelings about what is good and bad, are a product of evolution. Our ability to think, including our ability to reason, is also a product of evolution. The act of reasoning about anything, including our moral sensibilities, is a process that humans use to make sense of our world. I claim that what we know about our moral sensibilities, and our reasoning about those moral sensibilities, are more consistent with a natural origin than with a divine origin. I also claim (but I don’t justify the claim in this post) that utilitarian ethics is necessary, but not sufficient for sound ethical doctrine. Note that evaluating behaviors as “beneficial” or “detrimental” (ethical conclusions) does not preclude evaluating those same behaviors as “right” or “wrong” (moral sensibilities). Categorizing behavior as “beneficial” or “detrimental” is often a useful tool for reaching consensus on which behaviors we should generally reject or accept in order to promote behaviors that best align with what we consider to be moral.
If I may summarize a key aspect of your argument: ethical verdicts (e.g., detrimental and beneficial) ultimately only have meaning when measured against good and bad (e.g., why is beneficial good?). Then the ultimate metric for all ethical pronouncements is “good” and “bad”. But good and bad have no meaning without an objective source for good and bad. The objective source can only be God. [end of summary] I agree with this up to your conclusion, which I find to be a leap in otherwise sound logic. There is another candidate for an objective source (and one which is most consistent with the world we observe); that source is innate moral sensibilities which evolved naturally.
[end of summary]
A brief note about style: I found it more convenient to respond to specific statements you made, rather than simply responding to the gist of your thesis. I chose not to surround your statements with block quotes because, in addition to adding my comments, I wanted to preserve the context of your statements. So I opted to reproduce your text here, and to insert my comments where I felt they were appropriate. So as not to force you or other readers to reread your original post (which hopefully they have previously read), I put my comments in bold-face font, and surrounded them with square brackets to make them stand out.
One last note, to make it clear to which of your statements my comments refer, I underline your original text. So my comments in bold-face refer to your preceding underlined text.
—————–
What’s so great about objective morality?
Posted under Ethics on Wednesday Oct 8, 2008 by Bnonn
In a post on his blog today, Damian Peterson asks ‘What’s So Great About Objective Morality?’ He asks this as an agnostic who has seen “many non-theists scramble to try to show that they do, in fact, have a basis for objective morality”—but isn’t sure why. As he puts it, he’s “quite happy to believe that there is no great measuring rod in the sky and that all such morals are evolved and subjective.” What’s the problem with this?
Let me try to give a few solid answers to stimulate further discussion.
Defining the terms
I think it’s pretty important at the outset to define the meaning of the words we’re using. Often, people don’t understand these terms as well as they think they do.
[I agree. Later in your thesis, you use terms like "theist" ethics, "non-theist" ethics, "atheist" ethics and "Christian" ethics. This may only be a quibble and we may continue to use these terms, but it seems that "theist" vs. "non-theist" morality is not precise since ethics differ among non-theists and also among theists. Is the difference between a "non-theist" and an "atheist" or do you use the terms synonymously? When you say "non-theist" vs. "Christian" ethics, is this a different distinction? Note that not all theists reject the idea that morality is the product of evolution. And not all theists have the same ethics as Christians. Not all Christians share the same set of ethics.]
Objective refers basically to the condition of being actually real in a way which is independent of any particular human mind. Subjective, on the other hand, refers to the condition of being perceived as real. This can be confusing, because sometimes we need to decide whether our subjective perception is actually of some objective thing, or if it is just “all in our minds”.
Morality is a term used somewhat ambiguously. It can refer to moral duty in a general sense: that is, to the mere fact that we ought to behave in certain ways and not others. More specifically, it can also refer to some or other system of conduct: a set of rules or norms which describes the ways in which we (allegedly) should and should not act.
Under any given system of morality, right refers to the condition of a person’s actions being in accordance with his moral duty; and wrong refers to the condition of his actions being in violation of his moral duty.
But what is moral duty?
Damian suggests that
when people use “wrong” and “right” as opposed to “detrimental” and “beneficial” it actually creates a circular argument for a kind of objective morality because the word “wrong” can be used in both an objective and a subjective sense (i.e. I hit the wrong key on the keyboard vs. abortion is wrong) whereas the word “detrimental” demands that you at least define a goal or framework that is being worked against.
This is a fairly normal approach for non-theists. Superficially, it seems to allow that the words “right” and “wrong” don’t have the sort of power which theists say they have, while at the same time not robbing them of so much power that they become entirely meaningless. If we think of morally “right” as that which is beneficial, and morally “wrong” as detrimental, then we can have a more productive discussion without perhaps unintentionally begging the question in favor of the objective view.
Reciprocal question-begging
A little consideration should show that there’s an obvious problem with this approach. We’re being asked to say “abortion is detrimental”, rather than “abortion is wrong”. [I agree: the problem is one of confusing ethics (specifically utilitarian ethics) with moral sensibilities] But this is really to ask us to abandon our own moral notions, and adopt a kind of moral pragmatism. We’re being asked to stop saying “abortion violates our moral duty”, and start saying “abortion is ultimately impractical”, or perhaps “abortion is destructive”, or “abortion is not socially beneficial” or something like that. We’re being asked to essentially say that something is morally wrong only if it fails to stack up against some practical goal or purpose; [I agree: this is also the result of confusing ethics with moral sensibilities] and right only if it furthers that goal or purpose. But Christians don’t believe this: we believe that something is wrong only if it violates our duty to God, and right only if it does not. [This is a form of the moral pragmatism you complained about – in your view of Christianity, we are asked to abandon our sense of what is moral and adopt what is taught by various passages in the Bible in its place] So what the non-theist is implicitly suggesting is that we should abandon our Christian ethics altogether, and accept non-Christian ones instead. [This is a non sequitur: the "non-theist" is simply suggesting here that moral sensibilities have a natural origin. It does not follow that "Christian ethics" are automatically inferior to "non-Christian ethics"] Naturally we aren’t going to do that, because we don’t believe morality without God is a sensible concept at all. We’ll point out a number of problems with it:
Problems with non-theistic morality
Firstly, we’re going to highlight the fact that the terms “detrimental” and “beneficial” are very ill-defined. What are the specific practical goals against which any action is being evaluated? Is it social harmony? The greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? Survival of the species? Something else?
[That may be a problem in the sense that these terms should be (and indeed can be) better defined in this discussion, however it is not a defeater for the proposal that ethics should be concerned with labeling behavior as detrimental or beneficial.]
Secondly, and more importantly, why are these practical goals the ones which have been chosen? [Traditionally, these goals are chosen when considering utilitarian goals. They are not necessarily apropos to all ethical discussions. The fact that they are apropos to certain ethical discussions but not all does not invalidate their utility.] Let’s say that “the greatest happiness for the greater number of people” is the pragmatic goal against which actions are evaluated for rightness or wrongness. This is a fairly common position known generally as utilitarianism. Why does the non-theist believe that we should evaluate actions according to this criteria? It seems very arbitrary. [It's not at all arbitrary and here's why: utilitarian ethics is an attempt to generally classify behaviors as aligning with our moral sentiments or diverging from them] Why can I not make up my own criteria instead? [You can, but you will be making an ethical argument which would be general accepted or rejected based on how well your criteria aligns with our innate moral sentiments. However, to "make up" your own criteria for moral sentiments is a nonsensical proposal.] What makes one criteria better than another? [A criteria, like "detrimental/beneficial" for example, is better than another if it aligns better with our innate moral sentiments] In short, why is it right that it is right to act to further the non-theist’s practical goal? His notion of how we should evaluate morality plainly doesn’t pass its own test. [The test is how well the criteria aligns with our innate moral sentiments. How does his notion fail this test?]
In other words, the non-theist is implicitly assuming some other standard of morality by which we can know that we’re obliged to follow his standard of morality. [The non-theist presumes that moral sensibilities evolved naturally; we do not have the ability to choose at random what feels moral. However, given these moral sensibilities, we can an do reason about what behavior aligns most closely with them.] And that is self-refuting. He’s saying that actions are moral depending on whether they work for or against some practical goal [Can you demonstrate how this ethical position is self-refuting?] —but when he speaks of actions being “moral”, he’s really saying that we have some kind of duty to act in that way. [We feel a duty to act in a certain way, and we are compelled by society to act in a certain way, but there is nothing beyond those things that compels us. Note that in special cases, like individuals who are sociopaths, and individuals who are above the law, these compelling forces are considerably emasculated.] Conversely, when he speaks of actions being “immoral”, he means that we have a duty to not act in that way. But why do I have a duty to act in a way which furthers some practical goal the atheist has invented? [You are not given a mandate by the atheist, instead you most likely feel a duty to behave in certain ways – this feeling is the product of nature. On the other hand, the atheist's criteria for acceptable behavior may be closely aligned with the innate moral sensibilities that most of us have. If a society finds that these criteria align with their moral sensibilities, the society will likely incorporate the criteria into its normative rules. In that society, you have a duty to follow the rules.] More specifically, since duty is to an authority, to whom is the duty I allegedly have under the atheist’s view? [Social groups make rules that conform to their moral sentiments. As a member of a social group, you have a duty to that social group. In addition to being compelled by your own moral sentiments, you also feel that you should remain in good standing with your group. This feeling that you should remain in good standing with your social group evolved naturally as well] To the atheist himself? Why? He isn’t a moral authority. To society? [Correct.] Again, why? [For reasons offered above] If one person is not a moral authority, then why would a collection of persons be? [Because the collection in question, the society, threatens the individual with either punishment or banishment, or can reward the individual in various ways. This is the basis of the authority.]
What this highlights is that the proposed non-theistic view of morality is really neglecting to answer what morality actually is in the first place. [Hopefully, I have clarified this a bit, and also disentangle the definition of "morality" and "moral sentiments" from the definition of "ethics"] Since questions of morality are questions of duty, a non-theistic view of morality needs to be able to not only say what it is that we have a duty toward, but also show convincingly that we really do have such a duty. [Can you demonstrate this? I propose that it is sufficient to identify our feeling of duty, and that this feeling has a natural source, and that the authority is our social group.] This is where non-theistic moral theories really run aground: they cannot provide an adequate account of duty itself.
Possible objections
Damian, or some other non-theist, might object that I am unfairly imposing my theistic requirements on his non-theistic worldview. Christians may believe that a theory of morality is only intelligible given an absolute moral authority—but why should atheists believe the same thing? What’s wrong with having an arbitrary moral authority, like the opinion of the majority of society? If a group of people all agree that we have a duty to do certain things, and a duty to refrain from doing certain other things, then they can impose that belief on society as a whole, and act as a moral authority. In fact, that is generally how society does operate. There’s no need to invoke some higher authority for this. There’s no need to say that God must exist.
This objection fundamentally misses two points:
Counter-objection 1: people do believe in objectively true moral duties
[People once believed the earth was flat and that the Sun moved across the sky. People's belief is no guarantee of reality. Intuitions are informed by our observations and experiences. As science progresses our ability to observe is enhanced. If our enhanced ability allows us to experience new phenomena, then we should expect that our intuition would be effected. We should expect our observations of mental processes, the evolutionary process, and our observation of similarities in our closest relatives to have an effect on our intuition. In fact we now intuitively believe that the earth rotates and the the sun does not revolve around the earth. Likewise, those of use who observe evidence for evolution and cognitive science feel intuitively that morality is based on our feelings which are ultimately the product of evolution.
Firstly, and most simply, such a view of morality ignores yet relies upon the common moral intuitions of mankind as a whole. For example, most people will find it impossible to concede that rape could ever be right. The fact that rape is wrong is not a mere matter of convention or opinion, as if it could be changed with sufficient voting power. We just don’t believe that, if enough rapists got together to form their own society, they could possibly be morally justified in declaring rape to be legal and right. [This observation is consistent with my assertion that moral sentiments are innate] Morality is not a matter of legislation. We are very much inclined to say that their society would be morally depraved and in need of correction, not just regardless of the fact that their arbitrary moral authority is opposed to ours, but in fact precisely because it is so opposed. [This view begs the question of the origin of morality and duty. Some cultures regard other cultures that do not practice female genital mutilation as immoral. Ditto for animal and human sacrifice. Ditto for committing suicide to preserve one's honor. Ditto for euthanasia. If these were moral considerations, and if morality were from a divine source, we would expect more homogeny. However, I propose that these societies share the same moral sentiments, but their belief about the results of their actions differ. In these 2 examples, the societies believe that their God(s) will be offended if these actions are not performed.] So in reality we don’t actually believe that moral duty is an arbitrary affair, involving duty to whatever authority we happen to have established. On the contrary, we believe that whatever authority we happen to have established is established on the very basis of our strong, non-arbitrary duty to an authority which supersedes our own. [We agree.]
Now, non-theists will say that we have these moral intuitions as a by-product of evolution. [So do some theists for that matter. I say that moral sentiments are a product of evolution, but moral institutions are a product of ethical thought.] We tend to feel a duty toward actions which promote the survival of the group, and against actions which would detract from this cause. But if this is the case then certain moral intuitions we have don’t seem to make sense. Rape will certainly tend to benefit the survival of the group. [How does rape benefit the group? Here are a few ways that it harms the group: rape is a form of stealing - which is harmful to group in that it engenders mistrust which undermines group relationships. It is also a hurtful act which offends our sense of empathy - which is beneficial for individuals but beneficial for a society as well.] Yet our very strong moral intuitions are that rape is always wrong.
More importantly, if our belief in the moral abhorrence of rape is a byproduct of evolution, then it is purely arbitrary. It is not as if evolution selected for things which are morally good, and against things which are morally bad. [We agree: but this observations does not seem to further your position.] Rather, what is morally good is what evolution, a non-rational physical process, happened to select for; and what is morally bad is what evolution happened to select against. It could have gone the other way [From any perspective outside of our own, it did. That is, if evolution would have taken a different turn, our moral sensibilities would appear less moral to our alternates.] —or even if it couldn’t have, we still only believe that rape is evil because a non-intelligent, non-moral biological process occurred in such a way as to produce that belief.
Counter-objection 2: duty is unintelligible without God
Secondly, then, the non-theistic view ignores and yet relies upon an even more fundamental fact: duty is an incoherent concept if it is reduced to something arbitrary or something non-personal. [The sense of duty we feel is personal, and is not arbitrary in the sense that an individual can choose an alternative sense of morality. In so far as evolution does not follow any set of moral rules, you are correct to say that our sense of morality is arbitrary in that it depends on the unguided path of evolution. However it is not arbitrary in the sense that humans can choose between alternatives of moral sentiments. Moral sentiments are part of human nature, and human nature is the result of a natural process of evolution. We have no choice regarding our nature (which includes our sense of morality) and as such, our nature (and sense of morality) is not arbitrary.] The atheist wants to say that an arbitrary and man-made moral authority is sufficient for a workable system of morality. But he ignores the fact that the authority is not really arbitrary because any man-made authority is based on a prior, shared view of morality in which we feel a moral duty to something not man-made. [We agree: ultimately, humans and human nature is not man-made.]
When this is pointed out, he then wants to say that this prior, shared view of morality is a result of evolution, [Morality per se is not the product of evolution, rather moral sentiment is the result of evolution] such that the duty we feel is not really toward anything [The duty we feel is toward society] —it’s just a result of biological pressures causing us to act in certain ways. [This is true, but more germane to the discussion, it is a biological predisposition to feel certain ways about the outcome of our behavior. These feelings guide our behavior] But if this is the case, then ultimately our ideas about moral duty are founded on non-duty. [We agree: but this does not seem to further your position.] It is not sensible to say that we have a duty to evolutionary processes. [We agree: and I don't say that] Duties are things owed, and things owed are to persons. So if our sense of moral duty is a result of evolutionary processes, then it is actually a total fiction. [Can you demonstrate that our sense of moral duty is fiction under these conditions?] We actually have no duty whatsoever. [We feel that we do, and these feelings are the result of evolution, and they guide our behavior.] We aren’t even being intelligible when we talk about “arbitrary moral authorities”, [The authority is not arbitrary since human nature is not arbitrary (in that we cannot choose a different nature). This is true even if evolution was unguided, and even if it is in part a process of chance] because to talk about such a thing presupposes the notion of duty itself, and the notion of duty is just a result of biological processes. In other words, in a non-theistic worldview, duty is actually the same as non-duty [However, my view which I have expressed here acknowledges a sense of duty]—a contradiction in terms. The non-theistic view reduces to absurdity. [This is only true when the view is mischaracterized]
Therefore, when a non-theist says that we should do something, or ought not do some other thing, he is actually contradicting himself. The words “should” and “ought” refer to duty [More precisely, they refer to a sense of duty, which I maintain we have, and which I maintain we acquired through natural means] —and duty doesn’t exist in the final analysis of his worldview. [In my view, the perception of duty exists, and this perception guides our behavior.] It is a term without an actual referent in the real world. [As you stated earlier and I agree, it is often necessary to define our terms in order to have a meaningful discussion. Define "real" in the way you mean it here.] It doesn’t refer to anything which resembles what it’s supposed to mean. Yet atheists and agnostics certainly do believe that we have duties. [I maintain that we feel a sense of duty] In fact, they know we have duties. [How to you define "know" in this context?]
Now, if someone claims to “know” something which is a contradiction in terms, something which isn’t real, we tend to say that person is deluded or insane. Thus, when we carefully work through all the implications of a non-theistic worldview, we find that non-theists, under their own view, are deluded or insane. And that is the problem with subjective morality. This is why “many non-theists scramble to try to show that they do, in fact, have a basis for objective morality”. [Could you explain how you know the reason why atheists seek to explain their basis for objective morality – and also could you explain why other atheists seek to explain their basis for subjective morality? How do you distinguish between "scrambling" and other acts like "musing" or "contemplating" for example?] This is what’s so great about objective morality. A worldview which reduces our plainly recognizable duty to God to insanity is an insane worldview. [Since you concede here that atheism indeed reduces a recognizable duty to God to insanity, but fortunately it doesn't count because atheism is itself an insane view, would you then concede that believing a recognizable duty to God is indeed insane if atheism cannot be shown to be insane?]
AAA.org: my apologies, but I haven’t even had a chance to read this yet, let alone formulate a response. I do plan to get to it, so I’m just posting this to let you know that I’ll reply when I’m able.
Regards,
Bnonn
I really like the underline, bold, all-within-entire-post approach…
…but it is a mammoth post…
(gets me thinking again about the best ways/methods to exchange ideas, etc.)
-d-
Bnonn,
No apology needed! I’ve been busy too and it took me a while to respond to you as well. I look forward to your response.
Dale
I agree – it’s humongous! But I couldn’t think of a better way to insert my responses without losing the original chain of reasoning. I’m certainly open to suggestions!!
Just a thought that popped in my head – perhaps the best place for interacting with Bnonn’s lengthy post is… well… where he posted it – i.e. his blog? Allowing us to focus on Damian’s post here???
The downside of that would be that his blog would make the 3rd blog (not counting individual post on each blog!) that recently have touched on this broad topic – and also I’d considered doing a post as well – making 4 blogs… sigh…
I don’t even want to imagine the chaos of having all of us trying to keep up with everyone’s comments on just ONE blog (some of the discussion over at Ken’s blog has been – I think – hindered due to too many people saying too much – maybe me!!??), so maybe it’s good for us to allow these conversations to be ‘splintered’ off at various blogs?
Others may have other ideas about the best way to interact? Like a word-limit (which could be annoying) or something?
-d-
BTW, just had to check – 4286 words all total (keeping in mind only the ‘bold’ ones were yours, though!)…
I’m normally against long comments — usually because they tend to deviate from the topic — but A3′s one deals succinctly with the question of objective morality and the issues that Bnonn raised which were a direct response to my OP.
And I’m happy with the clarity that this conversation has compared to others that I’ve observed around similar topics. I’m looking forward to Bnonn’s reply in due course.
I’m learning a lot!
Dale’s comment (October 14th, 2008 at 9:53 am) about putting lengthy comments one one’s own blog has a lot of merit. Multitudes of comments, and lengthy ones at that, do actually inhibit discussion. It seems to me that comments are most useful when they are briefer and a responding to the original post (article).
Another advantage of placing a long comment on one’s own post is that it gets far more attention and can actually get more readers involved in following, if not participating in, the discussion. It will stand out on its own and have more permanence than a buried comment.
The disadvantage is that discussion can get spread over a number of sites – which makes it harder to keep things together. But, then again, why worry about that. Perhaps we just have to get used to the nature of such discussions on an interactive web medium. Perhaps we need to see this ‘keeping things together’ more in terms of multiple sites. Perhaps clicking between different sites might turn out to be easier (and provide a clearer format) than clicking between individual comments on one site – especially if commenters place hot links to their posts/comments on other sites).
Without reading A3′s mammoth comment in detail (yet), I do agree, Damian, that it’s quality of interaction is good. I still wonder, though, if commenting over at Bnonn’s site and placing a link here would have been (somehow?) better/cleaner, etc.?
We could say Bnonn should have responded to your post within the comments; but (due to the mammoth size of this topic) one can fully understand why he thought to do his own post.
I’m very un-dogmatic as to what the best way to interact is… I guess a lot of it has to do with how much time people have for reading/reflecting-on/responding-to blog posts/comments!
Nonetheless, I too am enjoying the topic.
Cheers,
-d-
AAA:
I think that you offer a good critique of my article up unto the point where I argue that, if it is the case that our sense of moral duty is a product of evolution, then our ideas about duty—that is, the notion of duty itself as well as the specific duties we believe we have—are built on a non-moral, non-rational foundation which precludes the existence of duty. In your commentary, you say that agree with this. I then proceed to comment that, if this is so, then our sense of moral duty is a total fiction. You ask if I can demonstrate this. Well, this comment was merely another way of phrasing my argument that our moral sensibilities have a non-moral foundation—which you say you agree with. That is to say, in a non-theistic worldview, what we perceive as duty is actually not duty. In other words, the non-theistic view of duty is absurd, since it is manifestly delusional. I don’t see how I’ve mischaracterized the view as you say I have. The fact that we have a sense of duty, under a non-theistic view, does not have any bearing on its foundation.
The plain fact is that an evolutionary foundation for moral duty reduces it to non-rational and non-moral biological processes—which means that our sense of duty has no actual basis qua duty. If moral duty reduces down to biological imperatives, then it isn’t moral duty any more. I may feel that I have some duty to do some thing, but that’s just because evolution has programmed me that way. I am, in fact, being fooled by biology into feeling something which is objectively nonsensical. It isn’t as if we can say that I have a duty to biological processes—even if we could, that would be begging the question, since duty is a biological process.
In other words, I don’t think you’ve really understood the main thrust of my argument: that duty, to be duty at all, must be underwritten by a moral ontological referent; because if it is not, then it reduces down to non-duty, which makes any duty-claim absurd.
Regards,
Bnonn
For the sake of clarity here I’ll post some definitions of duty:
- That which one is morally or legally obligated to do
- The social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force
- A term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something
- A moral compulsion for ethical action that is innate
- An obligation that one has by law or contract
Bnonn,
In an ant colony each individual plays a specific role that helps the colony to survive. If an ant was dysfunctional and, as a result of not performing its role, was killed or thrown out of the colony would you say that the ant had a ‘duty’ that it wasn’t fulfilling? If so, was this sense of ‘duty’ a purely a result of biology and is it therefore an absurd use of the word?
In a wolf pack if an individual didn’t participate in hunts and was eventually banished from the pack would you say that it had a ‘duty’? If so, is this not also a result of biology as well as perhaps learning and therefore also absurd?
With chimpanzees, if one falls into water and another drowns after jumping in to save it (monkeys can’t swim) is it not responding to a sense of ‘duty’? Rhesus monkeys will starve themselves if by taking food another monkey is given an electric shock. ‘Duty’? Absurd?
If I hear someone screaming in a house down the road and I rush to see if I can help we would clearly say that I was responding to a feeling of ‘duty’. I presume you wouldn’t have an issue with this duty-claim? How about the monkey example? What’s different?
I think if you have first presupposed that morals and duty are supernatural and don’t occur naturally then you will try to measure any duty-claim back against some supernatural origin. This is circular reasoning like saying “All chocolate is made at Cadburys therefore your claim of owning Lindt chocolate must be absurd”.
We can at least demonstrate forms of duty that can be explained using only natural causes. But can we demonstrate duty that can’t be a result of natural biology or shared learning?
interaction with definitions (helpfully) posted by Damian:
- That which one is morally or legally obligated to do
…which raises the question of source/nature/kind of moral/legal obligation.
- The social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force
…tough to know when ‘bucking the system’ (system = ‘social force[s]‘) is good/bad. Grammatically, any/all ‘courses of action’ un-bound by said ‘social force(s)’ are here determined ‘un-dutiful’ – and may or may not be moral, virtuous, good, etc.
- A term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something
…commitment seems to have quite the ‘metaphysical’ ring to it…
- A moral compulsion for ethical action that is innate
…interesting – and probably very true to common experience…
- An obligation that one has by law or contract
…good/bad laws? good/bad contracts?
While I quite like Bnonn’s emphasis on ‘duty’ (I’ve mentioned elsewhere the simple link: ability/capacity –> responsibility/duty), I think it needs to be coupled with a discussion about value-judgments (which would/could/should demonstrate why ability –> duty)…
off to a late lunch…
-d-
Damian, in your example of the ants, I would say that the ant had a teleological duty. Of course, teleology is another problem from a non-theistic viewpoint; but it’s tangential to the issue. But I definitely would not say that the ant had a moral duty, no. That is clearly not the case. The same applies for the wolves. As regards your chimpanzee example, I contend that it constitutes question-begging on your part, since I deny that the appearance of moral duty in animals necessarily entails actual moral duty. I don’t find it surprising that higher animals act in ways which reflect their creator’s moral characteristics; but I don’t take it to mean that they themselves are moral creatures. I don’t see how you could set about proving that my view is false or that your view is true based purely on observing their behavior—in principle, without additional external information (such as, you know, God telling us one way or the other), we can only interpret that behavior as best our presuppositions allow. If your naturalistic presuppositions are false, as I have argued that they must be, then your interpretation is false also.
Then I’m afraid you need to re-read my argument. My claim that morals and duty are supernatural is predicated on the prior argument that they cannot be natural in origin. I am not presupposing that they must be supernatural; nor am I presupposing that they cannot be natural. I am arguing that they cannot be natural, and therefore must be supernatural.
I don’t grant this. We have yet to prove that any kind of duty can be explained using only natural causes.
side comment: I’m not sure that the ‘natural’/'supernatural’ division needs to be (or is) central to the discussion? I think we may all agree that morals/ethics are ‘worked at’ by way of reason (or lack thereof!), and all talk of nature/super-nature aside, I think exploring how this reasoning process is done will be interesting enough? How, for example, does one person’s ‘moral reasoning’ allow for chickens to be eaten, and another person’s ‘moral reasoning’ not? What values are being constructed/accepted/assumed/etc. in the process of ‘moral reasoning’ by both?
(and I refer to two people in the same place/time/context reaching two different moral conclusions)
Bnonn,
What is the difference (other than your presupposition that humans are not made from the same stuff as other species) between a chimpanzee going to the rescue of another and a child of two trying to fend off a person attacking his mother? The child has ‘duty’ simply because its genes classify it as homo sapien? Because it has magic stuff inside it?
And your prior argument is wholly based on circular logic. Why can’t they be natural in origin? Because you’ve already presupposed ‘duty’ and ‘morals’ to be supernatural. Can you not see the circularity here?
To illustrate this, define the word ‘duty’. I bet you can’t do it without some reference to the supernatural.
But what we have is exactly what we’d expect to see were what we term ‘duty’ to be a by-product of nature and the need to live in societies. A perfect tapering-off of the appearance of duty throughout the species depending on their complexity and their need for society. Presupposing nothing more than what we observe with our eyes, the explanation that what we term ‘duty’ and ‘morals’ certainly appears to fit the naturalistic explanation far better than one that has to entertain the notion that all other species only appear to have varying degrees of morals because they are acting out God’s characteristics (and further having to patch this with the explanation of fallen nature when they behave badly).
Dale,
I’m not sure that Bnonn would agree with that statement. I could be wrong though. And the reason for the supernatural/natural distinction is that it is central to the discussion about objective morality and whether morals are evolved and learned (i.e. natural) or from some external, non-physical source (i.e. supernatural).
I agree that they need to be ‘worked at’ and with regard to the vegetarian argument I’d say it’s merely down to people’s varying senses of duty (whether they be genetic or learned and whether they be concerned with the environment, animal suffering or just diet) but that invoking any ‘supernatural’ explanation is really just to take a shortcut in reasoning and put a halt to any further discussion. And it’s my conviction that the word ‘supernatural’ is, in fact, nonsensical which explains why any time it is invoked reason takes a back seat.
Dale, the vegetarian moral issue is a good one (I’ve been thinking about it some more). Where do you stand on the issue of raising chickens for food and do you think that those who think differently on the same issue have valid grounds to do so?
Here’s how my reason-based morality plays itself out:
I personally have decided that I’m not going to be a vegetarian at this stage but that I will attempt to eat less meat and, when I do eat meat, that I will try to have meat that has been raised with as little suffering as possible and who’s processing cycle causes the least harm to the environment.
My reasoning is that I consider it healthier for me to eat more veggies and better for the environment to encourage more plants and less plant-eating animals (not very efficient). I also value the extraordinary complexity of all living things and know from my own experience that I strive not to suffer and so assume that other creatures probably have similar sentiments albeit to varying degrees of awareness.
But I also enjoy the taste of meat and recognise the nutritional benefits for an omnivorous species such as myself and recognise that all living things eventually die and that, once dead, they no longer exist to rue the shortness of their life. My two main ‘beefs’ (hyuk hyuk) about killing animals is whatever suffering they may endure leading up to slaughter and what suffering their death may cause to other animals that might have bonded to it. For this reason I’d prefer the meat I eat to come from animals that don’t bond too closely and aren’t very smart (i.e. cows, sheep, chickens fit this criteria well but monkeys definitely don’t) and that they are killed as quickly and as sneakily as possible.
I’d be interested to hear your reasoning for whatever your stance might be. [edit - I just realised that this might sound combative but it's really not; I'd like to see practical outworkings of various people's morality. We're probably very similar.]
SPLENDID STUFF!!!
First I’ll observe some things about your moral reasoning, and then I’ll cheerfully share mine (which – not surprisingly – overlaps at points).
Your approach to the meat-eating issue appears to be value-based (as I think all morals are).
You value suffering as negative, and value ‘the environment’ as something worth preserving. (I agree, of course, just noting value-judgments along the way)
‘health’ highly valued…
‘extraordinary complexity’ valued – avoidance of suffering affirmed, and also assumed of other creatures – or at least thought a good (worthy) goal for animals…
‘enjoyment’ valued, nutritional benefits valued…
recognition of mortality of all living things – reasoned outcome = after death, organisms don’t exist to suffer, regret, etc. therefore shortening life of oranism is justifiable, etc. (to a degree?)
again, ‘suffering’ = bad, either from cause of own death or loss of death of one bonded with… suffering is valued negatively. awareness of suffering is also noted, with the logical inference that increased awareness of suffering infers a greater degree of negative value.
I love this stuff.
So, if I can stir the pot a bit
, some would hold their enjoyment of meat above the concern for animal suffering, while others do the opposite. Leaving us unsure which one is a better conclusion, etc.
Now, here’s how I reason it out…
Conversely, the ‘fullest, richest expression’ for chickens is not going to be living its entire life in a cage barely bigger than it’s own body and continually covered in its own dung and/or that of others; being fed various kinds of GM food and God-knows what else to make it more marketable. Full, rich expression for a chicken is (perhaps) somewhere between this – where they have ‘free range’ (yes 
) to ‘live, move and have their being’, enjoy their existence as much as possible (and as much as their level of consciousness allows?), and also perhaps bring satisfaction and sustenance to another organism who needs to eat their flesh to survive (perhaps even humans! 
).
I hold to a worldview (informed by things like reason, tradition, scripture, experience and culture) where humans (individually and corporately) are invested with (‘given’) responsibility over creation (soil, trees, oxygen, ants, monkeys and yes, chickens), to ‘lovingly rule’ it with the justice, wisdom and care of the creator. The creator affirms the goodness of the creation (humans included), so it is to be valued solely because it belongs to the Creator. Humans a) have a special place as the ‘crown of creation’, therefore their survival and productivity has the highest value – though not at the expense of the value of other things (both living and non-living), because humans b) are responsible for creation. In other words, anthropocentric identity does not mean ecological or geological or biological apathy. Creation (including it’s human ‘crown’) is to flourish, thrive and be fruitful.
From this worldview, this ‘loving rule’ of creation needs (of course) to be reasoned-out depending on the context. Humans are to ‘tend and keep the garden’ to cause it (and at the same time themselves) to come to its fullest, richest expression.
Chickens (to bring in view our example) have a very different place within creation than humans. The ‘fullest, richest expression’ for chickens is not going to be writing songs or fixing either the global financial crisis or climate change. That’s too lofty a teleology for chickens.
(time for me to go home now and cook some cow-meat for my wife and I!)
-d-
Absolutely. Like I say, it’s a wondrously grey world we live in!
I’ve got to shoot out myself but will address the rest of your comment later (or tomorrow).
…moral/ethical greyness valued as ‘wondrous’…
(teasing)
-d-
Dale,
With regard to the way you see ethics played out in the food chain it appears that you have a kind of hierarchy among living things with humans being one step below God and so on down. Is this the case or does it just go God > Humans > All the rest?
If you do see it as a continuous hierarchy, are there ethical implications for all animals along the way (in ever-decreasing amounts presumably) and by what measure do you judge the ability of an animal to commit a moral ‘wrong’? I have a video of some chimps beating the living crap out of another chimp (it’s pretty disturbing) – would you see this as ‘wrong’ in any way?
Also, you say “The creator affirms the goodness of the creation (humans included), so it is to be valued solely because it belongs to the Creator” – where do you see the Ebola virus or malaria parasites placed in all this?
Also, also, would your stance on eating meat remain pretty much the same in the absence of scripture? And, if so, is it possible that your interpretation of scripture is being retrofitted to suit your inherited cultural views? (I know that there are Christian vegetarians who also use scripture as a basis [Genesis 1:29-30] and can’t help wondering whether scripture isn’t being selectively read and ignored as it suits).
And finally, do you think there was such a thing as ‘ethics’ or ‘morality’ 4 billion years ago before the first replicators started doing their replicating? (Forgetting, for the moment, the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe).
Fair enough questions, Damian.
Actually, one need not look outside humans for such complexities. Humans of different age and mental/physical conditions (and therefore different mental/physical abilities) could complicate things further. Indeed, they do – e.g. euthanasia (not ‘youth in asia’ – ba dump ching!), abortion, rest-homes, etc. We could ask what moral responsibility does a pre-born fetus, or a person in a vegetable state have?
Part of the worldview I hold to (again, formed and informed by things like experience, tradition, scripture, reason, etc.) is that ‘to those unto much is given, much is required’ – in other words, if ability –> responsibility, then the degree-of-ability –> degree-of-responsibility. In this light, I’m completely open to lesser degrees of responsibility in other organisms. Immediately, I think of the power of reason, however, and how this provides humans with a greatly enhanced ability – and therefore responsibility. It’s an interesting thing to think over though – what of the responsibility of a tree, or a blade of grass, or apiders, or cancer cells (either in humans or horses)? And – why stop at abiogenesis (i.e. self-replicators)? What about soil, magma or the element of sodium?
The fighting monkeys video indeed sounds disturbing, though this could likely be for anthropomorphic reasons. However, there is no doubt that chimps, bonobos, monkeys and apes are the nearest things we know of to humans (whatever ones view of biological history).
As for your questioning of the Creator-affirmed ‘goodness’ of things like viruses or parasites – I’ll simply (though hopefully not simplistically) say that death and disease is a part of the way things are. Whether Christians beleive that these things ‘entered’ history 6,000 years ago (contrary to a good bit of evidence), or that these processes and realities are ‘built-in’ to creation; we all agree that the Creator uses not only happiness, ecstacy and life, but also pain, suffering and death. But of course, this is a discussion not about morals/ethics, but of divine providence. My point regarding ethics/morals was that a) because the creator values creation, b) his image-bearing creatures (humans) should also.
Because morality is reasoned-out, would not morality then be the domain of creatures invested with the capacity to reason? Apes, dogs, ants, viruses, trees, grass and soil do not moralise, so perhaps this again raises the scandalous notion of particularity regarding human morality.
Oh yes, the issue of the use of scripture. Yes, I’m well aware of the strong influence of culture on our interpretation of scripture. I see it as a strength, though. Particularly when not only MY culture is in view, but the culture out of which the verse, etc. came out of. In this sense, culture enhances and sharpens (in some cases, i.e. 1 Cor 11!!!, enables!) interpretation. Usually, I find that mis-uses of scripture are almost always a failure to appreciate culture – this is why culture is an important theological source.
Hope these rambling thoughts are constructive to the conversation.
-d-
I guess this is largely dependent on how we define “moralise”. If we define it to require every human nuance then I agree that humans certainly seem to have the monopoly on moralising. But this is a bit circular and from what I’ve read of animal behaviour it would certainly appear that the essentials of what we call “moralising” occur in other species.
An example of this is that monkeys have a highly developed sense of fairness and would rather starve than inflict pain on another. They even display embarrassment which would further bolster the idea that they have developed a theory of mind (which might actually be the necessary ingredient for the complex social morality we experience as humans).
So I disagree that moralising requires reason but would suggest that, while we often use reasoning ourselves, the ability to moralise is in essence a heritable trait that is enhanced by our ability to use language to communicate ideas. Thoughts?
Having not read those articles you refer to, I can’t help but wanting to summarise (hopefully fairly) what you’ve said here as: “some species are almost-human, and have almost-human moralising abilities”
Even if these notions of ‘embarrassment’ and ‘fairness’ aren’t anthropomorphic, these abilities of these animals don’t conflict at all with my moral/ethical position – even it’s scandalous anthropocentric features. Heck, we may even have a moral duty to responsibly appreciate these abilities of our ‘almost-human’ friends.
Now that is egocentric! In the same way that an albatross might say “some species of ducks are almost-diomedeidae, and have almost-diomedeidae flying abilities”.
If many of the foundations of what we call morality can be observed as heritable traits in other species then our extraordinary ability to communicate and further develop our morals don’t indicate that we’re at all on the top rung of any evolutionary ladder any more than a hedgehog would consider itself a pinnacle of extraordinary spikiness. Our evolved and developed sense of morals are like they are because of the environment we find ourselves in which happens to be large and complex societies.
My purpose in pointing out similar traits in monkeys was not to say that they are “almost human” but that they appear to share features (like the duck and the albatross) of a trait that you implied was unique to humans when you said “Apes, [...] do not moralise”. “Ducks do not fly” says the albatross.
Do you see what I’m saying here?
[going to be away from a computer until later this arvo - will respond then!]
-d-
Back,
It’s quite simple, I think. Biologically, monkeys/apes are nearest to humans. That is what I meant by saying they are ‘almost-human’. All I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be suprising for there to be the beginnings of ‘moralising’ in animals so close to being human. And again, none of this conflicts with my position, I don’t think.
To sum up (I think):
a) Theologically, I affirm anthropocentric ‘moral particularity’ within creation.
b) The varying degrees of similarity between humans and other species does not conflict with this affirmation. (i.e. ‘Being the most-rational creatures, and therefore having the most capacity for moral out-working, humans are ‘uniquely moral’ creatures – ‘moral’ in a way that no other creatures are.’)
Damian, I don’t understand what you mean. My argument is that duty qua duty cannot be described purely naturalistically by definition, because to do so would be to stop describing duty qua duty and start describing duty qua biological process. But if duty qua biological process is all there is, then “duty” doesn’t mean what we think it does; duty qua duty does not exist.
You’re missing my fundamental point, which is that duty cannot be defined without reference to some other dutiful notion. Duty is properly basic. I can say that duty is a moral obligation, for example. But that’s just another way of saying that duty is duty. Or I can say that duty is that which we ought to do. But that’s just another way of saying that duty is duty. What I can’t say is that duty is a biological imperative and nothing more. It is nonsensical to say that I ought to do something if what I really mean is that I feel compelled to do something because of non-moral, non-rational forces. That isn’t what “ought” means. What does “ought” mean? Well, it’s the first and third singular past indicative and subjunctive of “owe”, used to express obligation.
Do you see what I’m getting at here?
Bnonn,
Why not? Because you have first presupposed that ‘ought’, ‘obligation’, ‘moral’ and ‘duty’ are all supernatural in origin. Which creates your circular argument.
Now, if I am right, and morality is the result of the biological development of complex brains, we should be able to alter a person’s sense of duty merely by manipulating their physical brain. Guess what? People often suffer from brain damage and their sense of ‘ought’, ‘obligation’, ‘moral’ and ‘duty’ can be altered – sometimes drastically.
[And I have a hunch that communication works in a similar fashion (that it somehow causes physical rearrangements in the brain) but we have not even scratched the surface on the complex workings of the brain yet. But don't let that side-track us.]
If you are right, why do you think it is that manipulating the brain can cause people to experience a sense of less (and even more) duty, love, grief, morals, etc? Why, with simple knock to the head, can you be turned into a completely different person?
I’m confused, Damian,
Should we be surprised that a steel rod through a man’s brain had a profound affect on his consciousness (including moral reasoning)?
We should be if we assume ‘duty’ and ‘morality’ to not be the result of physical processes. (But I’m not sure you’re entirely in that camp eh?)
No Damian, because I have presupposed that they actually mean what we take them to mean.
Of course, I’ve never denied a causative correlation between the brain and the mind.
BNONN!!! I’m Dale. Damian is Damian.
(no worries) 
[edit by Damian: I've been correcting the mistakes just in case someone thinks Dale is going mad]
And yes, (Damian), you smash a radio and it’ll likely not function as it’s meant to.
In other words, we are discussing whether or not ‘duty’ and ‘morality’ are more than physical, not whether or not they are less than physical.
Bnonn,
Your “we” in that comment doesn’t include me old chap. I (and many others) don’t believe ‘ought’, ‘obligation’, ‘moral’ and ‘duty’ to be external to living creatures and that they are the result of physical processes.
So, if I can alter your morality or your sense of obligation by meddling with something physical in your body and if we can observe very similar behaviours in other species what is it that you think goes on in the magical bond between body and mind (BTW, I see the mind as the outworking of the brain, not a separate entity but I’m happy to use the word in the sense that you mean it).
Dale,
Keep in mind that meddling with the physical brain we can also restore functionality too. I’m not sure my argument is with you on this topic (maybe it is?) but if you believe morality to be metaphysical then you’d have to wonder what happens when a drug makes someone behave more ‘morally’.
…and if you repair a smashed radio it ‘works’ again…
Exactly. Like I said, I think we both agree that morality is a physical thing. Or at least a description of the outworking of physical things.
Indeed, we may disagree about morality being more than physical, but we agree that it is not less than physical.
True.
In that case we might as well be speaking a different language. When you say that I ought to do something, you mean that arational and amoral biological processes will typically make me feel compelled to do it. When I say that you ought to do something, I mean that you have a real moral duty, to a rational and moral authority, to act one way as opposed to the other.
I don’t see how your view can possibly result in a sustainable ethical framework. Hitler? Just following his own biological imperatives. Sometimes biology gives you blue eyes and blond hair; sometimes it gives you a weird mustache and a megalomaniacal desire to wipe out the Jews. But it’s just biology. Nothing more. Our own biology makes us dislike Hitler’s biology—but there is no “better” in biology. There’s just “different”.
PS. Apologies for the names mixup. For some reason I find that you guys having names starting with “Da” just really confuses me at a subconscious level. Must be my biology
Bnonn, you are still leaving ‘moral’ in the realm of the supernatural. I think all of this is a direct result of natural processes. What you are doing is moving, say, ‘ought’ alone to test it in a naturalistic way but testing it against ‘moral’ which you leave firmly grounded in some external agency.
Try testing the logic of a world in which everything is the result of natural processes and see how it works. You don’t have to agree, you just need to stop assuming that I’m referring to some bits of my worldview as natural and others as supernatural. I don’t even think the word ‘supernatural’ has a meaning.
With regard to Hitler in this light, I find his actions despicable for many reasons: my upbringing, the thought of what someone like him could have done to me, the desire I have to live in a peaceful society, and so on. Your use of the word “better” also implies that you are measuring against some kind of external framework. I experience “better” subjectively and so do you and I’m content with that. My sense of “better” is formed in the same forge as my sense of “morals”, not as some absolute ideal plucked from thin air. And because you think that I’m in some way ignoring your external “better” you find it amazing that I could abandon what you perceive to be an absolute truth and therefore have no moral leg to stand on.
Bring it all into the context of the natural world and see if you can at least understand where I’m coming from. You don’t have to agree.
It’s metaphysical, I’m sure of it
Damian, I’m not trying to leave “moral” in the realm of the supernatural. You keep claiming this, but what I’m trying to do is keep “moral” meaning what people actually think it means. It’s just that this actually does imply the supernatural. That is why there are moral arguments for the existence of God. Did you notice that those definitions of duty you provided before all defined it using other moral terms? I reiterate my point: morality is properly basic to human experience, and so cannot be reduced to biological causes without changing its most basic meaning. Try replacing “ought” statements with “biological imperative” statements from now on. “You have a biological imperative to not rob that liquor store.” “That man went against his biological imperative to not kill my father!” It’s absurd.
But if morality is properly basic and irreducible, as I’ve argued, then of necessity moralness is something which is actually real in its own right. There is an ontological referent for it. And, as I’ve also argued, that cannot be in human beings themselves; it must imply a non-contingent moral authority. You keep objecting that I’m just presupposing the supernatural and thus rejecting the natural explanation, but what I’m actually doing is showing that morality is unintelligible on a natural explanation, and am therefore concluding that the supernatural one must be true.
As regards Hitler, the term “better” does not meaning anything in biology. You can’t say that you’re just using is subjectively. In biology, one process is not better than another. They are just different, and have different results. And one result is not better than another. It’s just different as well.
side note: Hitler-talk can be useful to make some points, but hopefully we all understand that all of us condemn his actions. Cheap statements like a) ‘faith’ or b) ‘evolution’ leads to Hitler-ish genocide are all too common ’round the web (thankfully not here).
An interesting question is this (perhaps): If morality is socially constsructed (and ‘relative’ in this sense), then suppose Hitler was very ‘successful’ (as can be argued he [partially] was) in convincing social opinion as to the ‘benefit’ of his action. What would make a small, dissenting voice (i.e. Sophie Scholl – GREAT movie, by the way! – a must see…) more ‘moral’ than his?
Whatever role evolution did or did not play in shaping our capacity and ability to reason-out morality, “[n]ature has equipped human beings with urges which are both altruistic and non-altruistic” (as said at interesting site here…), so we are left to make our own value-judgments using reason.
Oh yes, I also meant to say:
While I do think that our (for want of a better wording) ‘innate moral convictions’ do point to an ontological referent for them, I don’t think we need to focus on this dimension in this discussion. I think it’s useful just to focus on how moral convictions are formed, and how we deal with the challenge of subjectivity (or whether or not subjectivity bothers us at all!).
Bnonn,
I fully understand that there are people who naturally tend to think of morality as a supernatural thing. But there are also plenty of others who, like me, have asked ourselves whether our moral intuitions might be purely the result of natural causes. In almost exactly the same way that it was perhaps intuitive for our ancestors to think that the stars revolved around their steady earth I believe that when you make the paradigm shift daring to imagine that, despite being counter-intuitive, the ground we are standing on may be spinning at 1670 km/h and that our morals may be a product of nature and of the need to live in societies.
The thing is, when I attempt to see morality as a natural product, my observations make more sense than when I’m required to posit a ‘supernatural’ (whatever that means) being. I have seen and experienced morality among people and even among some animals and, to me, the concept that morality is subjective (but often shared) and naturally occurring especially among social species, makes perfect sense.
Lots of us think this way.
Also, I want to pull you up on your continual reduction of my moral argument as simply “biological imperative”. I argue that biology is where what we term ‘morals’ finds its origins but that the combination of the sharing of ideas and the desire to live socially on top of fairly rudimentary biological instincts are what really constitutes the word “morality” when I use it in relation to humans. I don’t believe worms experience ‘morality’ anywhere near what humans experience in exactly the same way that they don’t experience ‘communication’ like we do. That is not to say that they don’t communicate or that communication is supernatural, just that there is more to it than plain genetics which I take it you are implying.
And regarding your complaint about the word “better”; you can’t use the word in a natural sense when you are still presupposing that all other referents are firmly lodged in the supernatural. But you can use the word when you give it subjective context for a start. Which brings us back to my call for the use of the words “beneficial” or “detrimental” because we are required to give it context i.e. “beneficial for what goal?”.
We’re getting close to comment #100 now and I feel I’ve really benefited by being forced to think through the issues surrounding what people call “objective morality”. But I feel we’ve got to the ‘cud-chewing’ stage here, Bnonn. I can picture what it must be like to presuppose the Christian God and to make everything fit that presupposition but I’m not sure you’ve been able to picture what it’s like to see everything as a result of natural causes (likely my inability to get my ideas across). Obviously I think my hunches reflect what really happens in the world more accurately than yours and you think yours are more accurate than mine. No surprise there eh!
I’d still like to hear some thoughts by non-theists here though. Perhaps someone has different ideas to me about the origins of morals? Perhaps that there really is more to the human experience than the sum of our genes and our interactions? Perhaps that objectivity is very real but not what we think it is?
I know you do, but since your view necessitates you believing that humans are no more than biological processes, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for me to refer to morals are biological imperatives. Your notion of “sharing ideas” and “desire” are also just biological processes or imperatives if your view is correct. The fact that they’re more complex than basic instincts doesn’t alter the fact. Notice that I’ve never suggested morality is just “plain genetics” in your view; I’ve just said that it’s no more than biological processes. Genetics is only one of the biological processes involved.
What are you talking about? Even if you define “better” subjectively as referring to some goal, how will you argue that your morals are “better” than Hitler’s? Because your goal differs from his? But then you have to argue why your goal is “better” than his goal. How do you propose to do that?
Bnonn, we’re talking around in circles now and I’m getting bored. Sorry.
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