A Secular Basis for Morality?
I've discussed at length my religious views in the past on Ricochet. To sum it up, I'm a secular agnostic and conservative. I have no hostility towards religion, though cannot bring myself to believe in any particular religion or deity.
On one theoretical issue though, I am torn: Does there exist or can there exist a secular basis for objective morality?
In my own life, I operate under the assumption that there is objective morality. Rape, murder, abuse, are absolutely wrong and must be severely punished. But on a philosophical level, what is the objective basis for believing these things are wrong? I concede that I am incapable of producing one. However, as a secularist, I must act as though there is. Does that make sense?
In other words, good religion has a utilitarian and perhaps even evolutionary purpose. Society can exist fine with non-religious individuals, but a non-religious society with no objective basis for morality is doomed to all sorts of evils.
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Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Why, thank you.
Merely because we can reason about it?... Not merely... though I take our fairly well-developed capacity for moral reasoning as evidence that morals are oriented to an external reality.
But reason and aesthetic sense get so intertwined that I don't know exactly where the one leaves off and the other begins. All facts are theory-laden, and theories not only appeal to cold logic and hard data, but to our aesthetic judgment.
I'd call aesthetic sense the main reason I believe in objective morality. A profound aesthetic sense of reality can exist without belief in God, though in my case it doesn't.
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Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
So I'm of two minds.
My own moral vision doesn't see without God. But clearly there are people who believe in objective morality but not in God.
Now, these peoples' existence only demonstrates that a belief in objective morality can exist without belief in God, not that people could believe in objective reality if God didn't exist, or that objective morality could exist if God didn't exist.
But I don't presume that they must be wrong. They don't seem very out of touch with everyday reality, after all. Perhaps they, too, are driven by an aesthetics not wholly alien to what David Bentley Hart calls "the aesthetics of Christian truth".
On the other hand, being a Christian means claiming that a peculiar story is true, and that this story frames all truth, including moral truth. And that is a radical departure from what a non-Christian would believe.
All this means, I suppose, that I am still confused. Though probably less confused than I was formerly, thanks to this conversation.
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Edited on March 29, 2012 at 7:08amJun '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Valiuth
Joseph Stanko
Valiuth:
The ultimate validation of our morality is seen in the results of their implementation.
That seems circular to me. How do we judge the results of implementation if we don't first agree on the criteria, the desired outcome?
I would say the standards while not universally perfect are fairly universal. All people want to have security of their body and property, and access to goods and services they find desirable. Privately people have constructed for themselves a set of rules by which to live by that seek to fulfill these general human needs. We institute governments to enforce these rules in a uniform and effective manner. · Mar 21 at 3:43am
Wow, I hadn't realized this conversation was still going on, and some fascinating things have been written since I last checked in!
Valiuth: some standards are fairly universal, but others are not, and those tend to be the interesting ones as they cause the most vigorous debates.
For instance: is eating meat wrong? How would you determine that by the results of implementation? Eating bacon makes me happier, but presumably it does not make the pig happier.
Jun '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mack The Mike
Is the question on the table from the original post whether some sort of divine revelation is needed as a source of Morality, or merely whether Morality itself implies some sort of transcendence or mysticism?
If the later then we must confront the fact that even atheists can recognize transcendence. Not all atheists (let alone secularists) are crude materialists.
Obviously a crude materialist who denies that patterns of matter and energy can ever produce beauty or goodness won't believe in objective Aesthetics or Morality, but that's just a truism. You can't believe in Aesthetics without beauty or Morality without goodness.
This is a great post, Mack, for me it goes right to the crux of the question. I do not believe that divine revelation is needed as a source of morality, but I do believe divinity itself is necessary.
I agree that many atheists "recognize transcendence" in that they believe in healing crystals, auras, astrology, and host of other New Age beliefs that I personally regard as nonsense. However, the atheists that I respect, the ones that seem to me to present an intellectually rigorous and coherent worldview, are indeed crude materialists.
May '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mack The Mike
Mark Wilson: I really like your last post.
Maybe I have been operating under a false assumption. You and Mack seemed to both say that morality is objective regardless of a divine authority, merely because we are capable of reasoning about it. I took that to mean that you think the answer to the original post question is "yes", so I have been trying to pose my arguments against that and get your response. Have I been mistaken?
Not about me. I do think moral truths are discoverable without divine revelation. · 3 hours ago
Ok, sorry Mack. At this point in the conversation I am really having trouble keeping track of all that has been said. If you would allow me to reset it for a moment, it seems you are proposing an observational process analogous to science by which we could determine whether a particular action or value was objectively right or wrong. Could you give a simple example?
May '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Mack The Mike
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Yes, morality is enforced by consensus, so "morality =whateverour consensus says it is" is a reasonable operational definition.
Ah, there's the nub. It's that 'whatever' that I really object to.
I am not a huge fan of the operational definition of morality myself for the same reason. Because if you mistake it for a normative definition, you're sure in trouble!
Mack The Mike
Science can be self-correcting because it can change.
A population's moral consensus can change over time, too, though.
But I think Mark and I have tried to make it clear that we don't want that operational definition of morality to be the normative definition. The operational definition of morality is inadequate for morality. · 3 hours ago
Perhaps I did say that in not so many words, but could you elucidate "operational" and "normative" for me?
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mark Wilson
Perhaps I did say that in not so many words, but could you elucidate "operational" and "normative" for me?
What I meant -- and it may have been sloppy terminology -- is that operational defines how something behaves in practice and normative defines how things ought to be.
We both seemed to agree in previous comments that "might makes right" and "morality is whatever the consensus says it is" are good descriptions of how people actually behave, and so good operational descriptions.
However, you seemed to agree with me that it was problematic for people to only look at morality in those terms, and when I claimed it was morally important for people to look beyond "might makes right" and the consensus in deciding what is morally good, you seemed to agree. That is, you seemed to agree that people should think about more than the operational definition of morality. And what people should think is normative.
Therefore, you seemed to agree that defining morality in operational terms wasn't the same as defining morality in normative terms, and also that the operational definition was insufficient.
May '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Thanks for the explanation. Yes, we are in solid agreement. I'm sure glad you explained the terminology though, because to me, operational and normative have meanings completely different from what you said. =)
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Yes, I'm used to using operation-words and norm-words in different senses, too. Which is one reason I suspect that my attempts to use them in these other senses may be a bit clumsy.
You get specialized in a terminology, and the world can start looking pretty weird... If there are natural numbers, does that mean there are unnatural numbers? Is the opposite of functional analysis dysfunctional analysis?...
I looked up "normative" in the dictionary, and I'm pretty sure I used that one right. As for "operational", I'm still undecided as to whether "operative" might have been the better choice of words...
Words... At least most of the time they aren't impediments to communication.
May '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
If there are natural numbers, does that mean there are unnatural numbers? Is the opposite of functional analysis dysfunctional analysis?...
No, everyone knows it's supernatural numbers (meaning roughly "noncorporeal songs from a theatrical performance") and functional catalysis ("making your car pollute less by rapidly solving the Bessel differential equation while you drive").
I thought I had written a longer post than what actually showed up in #248. I went on to explain that I actually took those two words normative and operational in approximately the opposite sense that you meant them. I understood "normative" to mean "what everyone agrees on", as in cultural norms. And I understood "operational" to mean "something you can work with; i.e. something you can start from and derive other things by operating on it".
Funny how that worked.
Jun '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Some recent remarks from the Pope's homily during his visit to Cuba struck me as relevant to this discussion:
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mark Wilson
No, everyone knows it'ssupernatural numbers(meaning roughly "noncorporeal songs from a theatrical performance") andfunctional catalysis("making your car pollute less by rapidly solving the Bessel differential equation while you drive").
Oops. My bad :-)
I suppose once Mark Steyn is dead, he'll be performing supernatural numbers.
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
CS Lewis appears to suggest in The Abolition of Man that belief in God is not necessary for dogmatic belief in an objective morality, which he calls "The Tao" (or The Way):
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Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Those quotes are scattered throughout his essay, so reading the whole thing (all four sections) when you've got the time is the best way to see them in context.
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Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
As for non-believers still believing in absolute beauty, I found this essay, a Catholic's take on Richard Dawkins's belief in a beautiful universe, quite interesting:
The money quote:
But reason in this sense (and in CS Lewis's sense) isn't merely the logical or analytical. It has a broader meaning than that, one hard to define and easily forgotten in this age. In fact, I'm not yet sure I understand this broader conception of reason.
Edited on March 31, 2012 at 1:47amSep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
[quoting C.S.Lewis]
A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
Yes! That's it precisely! That's what I meant when I said that to reason about morality is to implicitly accept its objectivity. The dichotomy between objective morality and mere slavish obedience is the same dichotomy I have been trying to convey between a morality grounded in external reality and one grounded in an act of will (the "whatever" in Midge's earlier post). Of course C.S. Lewis can express it far better than I ever could because he was a genius and I am not.
Thank you for the quote Midge.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake:
But reason in this sense (and in CS Lewis's sense) isn't merely the logical or analytical. It has a broader meaning than that, one hard to define and easily forgotten in this age. In fact, I'm not yet sure I understand this broader conception of reason.
There are at least two types of reason other than the logical/analytical type. One is the synthetic/empirical type and the other is the transcendental type. These three types are represented by (in order) Math, Science, and Philosophy.
I highly recommend Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg sermon on this topic.
Sep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mark Wilson
If you would allow me to reset it for a moment, it seems you are proposing an observational process analogous to science by which we could determine whether a particular action or value was objectively right or wrong. Could you give a simple example?
Certainly. The good of each thing derives from its nature. The nature of life is to grow and survive and reproduce. The nature of an animal includes the nature of living things (since all animals are alive) but also has more specific requirements such as motion and eating. The good for a human being includes the good of animals but also incorporates specific requirements deriving from the nature of humans as reasoning, social animals. The good for humans is to live a life fit for humans that fulfills human potential.
Since you asked for a simple example let's consider an aspect of the good life that humans share with other creatures: bodily health. The good for a human includes being healthy. Smoking, over-eating, and lack of exercise are actions which fail to promote health. They are vices. The opposite behaviors (avoiding smoking, healthy diet, and exercise) are virtuous.
Aug '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Mack The Mike
There are at least two types of reason other than the logical/analytical type. One is the synthetic/empirical type and the other is the transcendental type. These three types are represented by (in order) Math, Science, and Philosophy.
Any creative activity I've ever done has involved something that "smells like reason" even if it's not analytical. This includes math, writing a poem, drawing, writing music, cooking, making observations... To me, aesthetic intuition obeys a certain logic, for lack of a better word.
But I never know, really, until perhaps after the fact, how to separate the logic of an aesthetic intuition (for lack of a better description) from strictly analytical logic.
Nor would I say that math uses only analytical logic and never synthetic (in observing and constructing) or perhaps even transcendental logic (taking into account our ability to visualize ideal mathematical forms), or that science uses far more synthetic logic than it does analytical...
I sense that reason in the broader sense is something I'm committed to using. But use and articulation are different. And if I had to choose which one to be good at, I'd go with the use.
Edited on March 31, 2012 at 6:48amSep '10
Re: A Secular Basis for Morality?
Health is not just an example of a moral good but also a metaphor for it. Good character is to the soul as health is to the body. Many of the objections to real reason-based morality given in this thread also apply to the concept of health.
One objection to metaethical realism ('objective morality') is that some individuals may chose to deny what is good. The same can be said of health. Someone might claim that the ability to become winded from climbing a flight of stairs is more healthy than the inability to do so. That position, of course, would be absurd, but why? Because climbing stairs effortlessly is desirable and running out of breath is not? But doesn't that just introduce an arbitrary value judgement? So it would seem, and yet no one seems to think that the idea of objective health is incoherent, unsupportable, or requires Divine Revelation to understand. Why is that? I think its because we can perceive an asymmetry between healthy and unhealthy which, while it may be difficult to precisely articulate, is nevertheless quite easy to see. You know it when you see it. The same is true of good character.