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Moral Facts, Opinions, and Suppositions
Discussing a New York Times op-ed by a college professor about how young people are taught that all value statements are matters of mere opinion, Dennis Prager blamed the problem on a lack of religious faith. He went on to say that the kids have the logic, if not the conclusion: without religion, all moral statements have no truth claim:
If God doesn’t say “Do not murder,” murder isn’t wrong. Period, end of issue… Morality [becomes] just an opinion for “I like” or “I don’t like” if ultimately, there is no moral God in the universe that makes morality real. Without religion and God, there is no moral truth…
You can say “I think murder is wrong,” and I certainly hope you do. You can say “I believe murder is wrong.” But you cannot say murder is wrong.
I agree with Prager that it’s vastly easier to argue in favor of objective morality if we stipulate the existence of a moral God; indeed, I’d list that as among the top benefits of religion. I’ll further agree that the lack of belief in objective morality is likely related to the decline in belief in God (though I wonder if we’re seeing a similar effect as with voting; i.e., people’s habits and beliefs change — often for the better — as they get older and wiser).
However, I’ve two problems with Prager’s argument, one that he’s made before. Logically, I think he’s making a false choice by sorting all things as either demonstrable facts or mere opinions. As Professor McBrayer writes in the piece Prager cited, there’s a third option:
Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false… It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives).
So while demonstrating that the intentional taking of an innocent life is objectively wrong is difficult to do if God doesn’t exist, that doesn’t actually comment on the truth or fiction of the statement. The Earth was, objectively, the fifth-largest body orbiting the Sun even before we had the means of showing it (assuming, of course, that we actually have that correct now). As such, “murder is wrong” isn’t necessarily a mere opinion, but unproven supposition or speculation — perhaps with a lot to recommend it, logically and otherwise, but supposition nonetheless.
But there’s another, more practical problem: by switching the burden from proving the moral validity of a statement to proving God’s existence — which is the effect of Prager’s objections — you leave people without a belief in God with nothing else to work with. In a civilization with an increasing number of unbelievers, is it wise to essentially dismiss all ethical philosophy that isn’t explicitly religious?
I’m not making an argument against religion, let alone in favor of atheism (I’m not an atheist). But just as we seek independent lines of evidence in other pursuits as a means of moving suppositions and hypotheses toward the realm of working theory, it strikes me as a fool’s errand to abandon an entire line of pursuit. Civilization is too important.
“Vitrail de synagogue-Musée alsacien de Strasbourg” by Ji-Elle – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in Culture, Religion & Philosophy
No. I asked a specific question a long way back about the morality of behavior when it isn’t reciprocal. You have instead clung to a different question, that is, on morality when society is reciprocal. That’s the question you’d prefer to answer, but that’s not the question I asked.
The issue of reciprocity is important, because of the difference in motivation. If your motivation for following moral rules is so you can avoid retaliation, you’re only seeking your own self-interest. You might argue that it also serves others’ interests at the same time, but that’s not true necessarily. It doesn’t simultaneously serve others’ interests (a la Adam Smith), because you could equally serve your own interests simply by finding a way to escape retaliation.
Instead, if you followed moral rules even when you could have gotten away with it, it means that you’re not seeking your own self-interests alone. We normally associate morality with respecting the interests of others, even if it isn’t to your advantage.
So the issue of reciprocity matters. I ask again: by what rational argument (not religious) should we consider the welfare of others … if … we can profit by it and also get away with it?
No. To use Thomistic language, an observation is a passive function of the intellect, whereas a moral judgment in an intentional act of the will.
Although intellect plays an important role, morality is much more about the will than the intellect. When it comes to morality, the intellect serves the will. They are not the same. They are not equivalent. They are not co-equal.
Morality isn’t about knowledge but about volition. I disagree with your approach because you reduce everything to an act of the intellect; but in morality, intellect is not as important as the will.
You wouldn’t happen to have a reference for that would you? I did a quick Google search of Thomas Aquinas and ‘observation’ and didn’t find it.
In any case, if the distinction being drawn here is between conscious and unconscious mental processes then I agree that some judgments are unconscious.
I usually call those “perceptual judgments.” I think that’s a little more precise because some uses of the word “observe” entail a lot of conscious work. Suppose a scientist “observes” the spectra of a star, for example. That requires aiming a telescope at the star, passing the light through a prism or defraction grating, exposing film, developing film, etc. Quite a bit of work can go into an observation.
But I’ve gone off on a tangent. I don’t think the difference between conscious judgments and unconscious ones is all that revealing in this discussion. No one denies that moral reasoning often requires conscious effort. That fact doesn’t impugn its objectivity.
That wasn’t Thomas’ position. Thomas was an intellectualist, not a voluntarist. But I don’t think we need to get into voluntarisism vs intellectualism or Thomism vs Scotism for our purposes. Voluntarists are, after all, meta-ethical realists.
Mack, I’m sorry, but I don’t see how we can continue. When you say that Thomas was an intellectualist not a voluntarist, that doesn’t translate into anything meaningful that we can work with. When I say that morality is about volition more than the intellect, you reply betray no recognition of the difference between will and intellect, casting the whole lot under the banner of mental processes. So at this point I’m just going to agree to disagree.
You have referred several times to objective moral facts; perhaps we’re operating with different understandings of “fact”. To me, fact simply is. It’s observable and verifiable. Judgements may be observable, we may be able to verify that someone judges a certain way, but there is no way for us to observe/verify that these judgements are correct unless we first select criteria which are not fact but are instead simply a preferred assumption. In that case, how can we talk about fact? How can we claim a judgement using one set of assumptions is correct while another judgement using different assumptions is wrong? As long as we get to choose the assumptions there can be no fact unless we’re all operating with the same assumptions. But the world doesn’t operate that way.
Nothing is wrong with your answers. As I keep saying, I likely agree with most of them. However, I disagree when you go on to call them observable facts. You’re choosing your judgements, not observing them.
How is morality similar? Scientists can experiment with dual fluid theory or single fluid theory and decide which theory more closely matches the results of the experiment. That is an objective process that depends on observable events and preferred outcomes are irrelevant.
You and a Saudi merchant observe a person killing another person, and you arrive at different moral conclusions about that act. There is no experiment to which we can refer to say one judgement is more correct than the other. The best we can do is to say one judgement is correct given certain assumptions while the other judgement is correct given different assumptions. I suppose you could call that fact in a limited sense, but you can’t claim it to be fact in comparison to the Saudi merchant’s competing claim of internally consistent fact.
We fundamentally disagree on whether when we feel that something is wrong that it is an observation. This entire disagreement is largely about that. We don’t choose to find murder wrong; it is a part of us. It is partially influenced by other’s insight the same way we’re not born with the insight that all objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum. With enough argument, the vast majority of people are convinced that gravity makes things fall at the same rate and with enough argument the vast majority of people are convinced that murder is wrong.
You could keep asking why we find it convincing, we’re not going to satisfy you because you are looking for an argument that excludes intuitive observation. It’s the same reason studies keep saying we don’t have free will when we know we do. Those studies reject our intuition as evidence.
Irrelevant how?
I think you’re conflating theory with observable facts with value judgements. A theory purports to explain and predict observable facts. Facts just are. Value judgements take theory and facts and assess whether they are useful, practical, beneficial, harmful, desirable, etc.
You’re classifying moral judgements in the same category as facts occupy in the science example. I disagree. As I said: we can observe and verify that some one has judged a certain way but we can’t objectively determine whether that judgement is correct because the criteria used are inherently subjective. The best we can do is assess internal consistency but that doesn’t say anything about external systems dependent on different assumptions.
The other problem is you assume we must work from a set axioms. I’ve told you my one uncontroversial axiom, that our observations tell us about the world. If the Saudi merchant worked from the same axiom with the same intent to find the truth there would be agreement. If there’s disagreement, like you say, it’s because we’re not starting from the same place. If we found the other assumptions he was using we could begin to show where they are flawed. Really “agreeing to disagree” is impossible. If two people are working from the same assumptions, with the same intent, they have to agree.
Mike, basing something on your feeling is probably the most solid example we can produce of what it means to be subjective. The thing is, other people can – and do – have different feelings.
Everything is based on feelings when you really get down to it. We all experience the world in slightly different ways. We all interpret it in slightly different ways. And yet we manage to agree on a whole hell of a lot. That’s not a coincidence.
Your use of the word subjective is misleading. You’re implying that our subjective experience cannot contain any objective information. This is obviously not true.
What if it’s not part of others? Does your perception of the commonality of your intuition make this objective fact? Careful there, Mike, that and your belief that objective morality gives rise to a duty to enforce and you just might have to abandon your anarchic ways. Or good luck with your vigilantism.
Or, more common, what if there is disagreement over what constitutes murder? We have several different classifications for killing (murder being one), and these distinctions are based on different levels of justice. Person A killed person B: was it just to do so?
Is justice an observable fact or something subject to different intuitions and preferences? Of course it’s subject to different opinions and preferences. We can claim objectivity only after we make the first subjective choice to choose one set of assumptions over another.
There is nothing wrong with my use of the word “subjective” in this thread, and I’m not implying anything. I’m asking whether you think morality is objective or subjective, and you have spent a lot of words resisting your fundamental conclusion here that it is subjective. You don’t have to fear that conclusion.
“Duty to enforce” was probably too strong of language. We have a duty to follow objective morality, and sometimes this will lead to some people having the duty to enforce morally sound laws in a morally sound way if they agreed to do so. Common people at least have a duty not to cause moral injustice whenever possible.
Vigilantism can be morally just, but I can’t think of a time where it is required.
I am resisting nothing except your fundamental misunderstanding.
Well, society is reciprocal. So there’s that.
So first and foremost, morality involves respecting the interest of others (for whatever reason). The case where it isn’t obviously to your advantage to do so is then a special case of respecting the interests of others in general.
Even with religion, people resort to arguments about long-term self-interest to persuade people to be good. “You’ll go to Hell,” or “You’ll be scorning God, who loves you, and lose the pleasure of closeness with Him,” or “You won’t be able to commune with God and your fellow coreligionists,” or simply, “You’ll regret it someday.” If religious arguments are free to rely on long-term self-interest in order to persuade people to be considerate, then I don’t see why non-religious arguments must be constrained from doing so.
In this question, the “it” we can profit by appears to be “consider[ing] the welfare of others”. Which is why I don’t think it’s the question you meant to ask.
But at any rate, the argument, “What makes you so sure you’ll benefit from or get away with it long-term?” is a perfectly cogent response to, “Why shouldn’t I do evil if I can benefit from it and get away with it?”
You use the word “profit”, I think, to make things sound more cold and calculating, but, as a good economist would tell you, the “profits” that factor into our decision-making do, in fact, include intangibles like psychological well-being, maintaining relationships with others, self-respect, the nebulous factor of “happiness”…
If part of being human means having fellow-feeling for other humans, as Smith observed, then it’s perfectly rational to take this fellow-feeling into account when dealing with others. Which is why, I suspect, that the simple question, “How would you like it if someone did it to you?” is so often an effective curb on ordinary people’s inconsiderate behavior.
That’s an uncontroversial statement alright. But there’s a difference between observing fact and assessing those observed facts based on chosen criteria. I can observe that people fall to the ground when they jump off of a cliff. I can’t observe, however, whether this is good or bad. Good or bad how? For whom? In comparison to what?
Mike, how do you know that there is one set of “true” assumptions? How can you tell the difference?
Duty to whom and derived from what?
I understand that you think morality is inferred from your intuition. I understand that you acknowledge that different people have different intuitions about the same thing. So unless I’m missing another step, you therefore think morality is subjective even though you seem to claim otherwise. Or unless you’re applying a special definition of subjective. In which case, let’s hear it.
In general, yes. It isn’t always that way on the level of specific acts/interactions.
Is part of the disconnect between KC and me here that I’m focused on the arguments people use in real life to actually effect an improvement in each other’s behavior, while KC wants something more abstract?
Typically, I enjoy abstraction. But I keep on observing that, in real life, mundane arguments like, “You’ll be unhappy if you persist in this badness,” or “How would you like it if someone did this to you?” can effectively persuade people into more considerate behavior. Much more effectively, I think, than abstractions.
People have been making these humdrum arguments throughout recorded history – and keep making these arguments – because they tend to work.
You say, “for whatever reason”. It’s precisely that reason we’ve been trying to discuss in this thread, isn’t it? I (and I guess KC too) already agree that doing things a certain way is practical and works and such, but I thought we were considering the why of morality and whether that why is objective or not.
Everything points to there being a set of true assumptions that we can know with sufficient accuracy. There might not be, but I see history is pointing a giant glowing arrow in that direction.
I feel I need to stop. Nothing I say is going to get us anywhere.
Well….sure. Ok. But do you really think that there is only one way to happiness, well-being, self-respect? That people can’t achieve these things by actions you or I might consider immoral?
Everything being what? The commonality of certain assumptions?
Oh boy. Yet you favor SSM. Yet you take the most obscure views contra the intuitions of the vast majority of people (eg anarcho capitalism). Are you simply inconsistent or is your assumption about “true assumptions” incorrect?
Or, are you claiming to have some special knowledge of the true assumptions?
I wish you would have said this awhile ago.
There is a major disconnect in our communication. I don’t know which end it’s on.
There is probably a set of assumptions that we don’t know yet but that the cutting edge of morality is moving towards. This is best approximated as western civilization. When we find true morality to the best of our ability it will seem “obvious” to most people like so many things in the past seem obviously wrong.
I don’t have special knowledge of the assumptions, though I do fancy myself closer to the ultimate truth than the vast majority of people. Closer does not mean close.
Yes, arguments like that “work” for many people. But it’s hardly universal, it’s more like a rule of thumb. Yes, we can use this kind of analysis to justify establishing a particular viewpoint as the law of the land.
But from a “meta” viewpoint, can we say that one viewpoint is fact while another is wrong? We can do so if there is God (even if we humans can’t definitively know what God’s will is) but how do we do so absent God? So far Mack seems to think it’s a trivial matter but I don’t understand why he thinks so, Mike seems to argue for subjective objectivity (?), and you’ve been arguing practicality via rules of thumb.