Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
That’s slightly overstating it; my contention is that the arguments with God aren’t inherently stronger than those without reference to Him (as the former rely on assumptions about God that carry their own burden of proof).
No. They are evidence, though.
It’s quite possible for one kind of evidence to be outweighed by other evidence. So, for example, our gut reaction to help a loved one might be reluctantly outweighed by evidence that “help” is unlikely to help at all, but result in codependency. That our personal feelings are evidence doesn’t mean that they’re the only evidence.
But then what do you mean by “behave morally?”
Morality begins with the question of whether you should recognize and include the welfare of others when you make moral decisions. You’re taking that for granted, but you shouldn’t. Why should we give a damn about others?
In the OP, we see Prager suggesting that only God can provide a justification for respecting others. but Tom doesn’t think so. Tom thinks you can build a case for respecting the welfare of others without God.
OK, I’ll listen. But if your only justification for respecting the welfare of others is actually based on self-interest, then it begs the question. You would be saying that you should care about others, not for their sake, but for yours … which turns out to render the welfare of others secondary (and conditional) to your own welfare. Your justification would logically contradict itself.
Mike you are hurting my head. This is all just preference. Your preference over other preferences. Your intuition over other people’s intuition. What makes the bias to authority a psychological defect rather than a common sense intuition? Hell, I listened to the first several minutes of the video and I’m not sure he’s proven a bias to authority as opposed to some other common sense intuition.
Assuming that morality is an objective thing – do you? – how are feelings evidence of morality? Aren’t they really just evidence of your personal preferences? Or are you arguing that your gut is somehow tuned to the moral channel but someone else with the opposite gut reaction is out of tune with morality?
Granted. But arguments with God make an objective morality possible (even if we have so much difficulty discerning it that it’s functionally subjective), while arguments without God are inherently subjective. Or are they? What is the non-God road to objective morality? I haven’t run across any. I hear that natural law purports to do the trick, but I’ve never actually seen it demonstrated.
As I say, I think the best we can do is: we should prefer x assuming y.
OK, so why should we assume y instead of c?
Indeed. Isn’t this some of the territory Dostoevsky was walking in Crime and Punishment? That only the ultra-rare few can transgress the current morality does not negate the fact that people do transgress and then transform the current morality into something else.
Do you, personally, need a justification before you start giving a damn? Are those around you unable to give a damn without some justification first? Or are they like a lot of us, finding ourselves giving a damn (sometimes even when we’d rather not) because we were unlucky enough to be born human?
How can I care about others to begin with if I take no joy in their well-being or sorrow in their misfortune? That is, if their welfare doesn’t affect mine?
Whether I care because of a deliberate investment of my welfare in theirs or because of an unintended relationship between their welfare and my own, the result is the same: their welfare affects mine. How can we even know we care about someone unless their welfare affects our own to some degree?
There seems to me nothing illogical about this. Caring has to occur somehow, and it seems reasonable to locate it in how our sense of well-being responds to others’ well-being.
I can’t be the only one to have noticed that depressed people can be real jerks.
Hypothesis: they’re such jerks because not being able to give a damn about yourself makes it really had to give a damn about others.
You keep doing this, but you never account for those who are human differently than you or KC or me. It doesn’t have to be a huge number (but I’m surmising that the number is actually much larger than you seem to think). Is morality just not for them, then? Who’s to say? You? Them? Is it majority-rule?
Truth be told, yes, I do need a justification to give a damn sometimes. And yes, I’ve observed that in others around me too.
Not to brag (I will anyway), but I feel like I don’t need nearly as much justification as the average bear seems to require.
Haven’t you also noticed that jerks can often be both more self-absorbed and less depressed than those around them? Mind over matter: they don’t mind because you don’t matter.
True. Giving a damn about yourself doesn’t always lead to giving a damn about others. But would you agree with me that giving a damn about yourself is necessary for giving a damn about others?
Not caring what happens to yourself is a perilous state to be in.
I don’t know. I’m trying to stay on target. Is being a jerk immoral? Is caring about other moral? How do we know?
Well, with all due respect, Midge, that’s the topic of this post. Dennis Prager says that there is a justification, but the justification is only found in God. Tom Meyer says it isn’t, and (I presume) Tom looks for it within reason.
Like many Ricochetti who have studied moral philosophy, we’ve been down that road plenty of times. This is a frequent discussion and the idea of whether morality is really disguised self-interest is not my idea – as usual, I stole it.
Well that’s unfortunate. I thought we were just about to start making progress. One has to define terms sometimes before real conversation can begin.
That’s all well and good, I suppose, I just wish I knew what we are disagreeing about. I don’t think I said anything all that controversial in my last comment. That Aquinas was an intellectualist isn’t really in dispute is it? The notion that voluntarism is compatible with meta-ethical realism might be a little more debatable (although it would seem to me that the argument to the contrary is more an argument against voluntarism than meta-ethical realism). Is my belief that intellect and will are aspects of mind what makes you despair of having fruitful conversation?
Alas.
What subjectively chosen assumptions does Science make?
Ed. Could you define subjective as you’ve been using the term? That might be helpful.
That bolded term you use above is interesting. ‘Rational’ is used in different senses. In the broadest sense it just means “not arbitrary or contradictory or ungrounded.” I take it that isn’t the sense you are using it here, otherwise you’d be implying that religion is arbitrary, or contradictory, or ungrounded. ‘Rational’ can also mean demonstrable without recourse to faith or authority. I think that’s likely what you mean here. But I wonder if you don’t also have in mind something like ‘not empirical.’ Empiricism and Rationalism were two contrary schools of thought during the enlightenment about how knowledge is obtained.
In this last sense, an argument would only be rational (as opposed to empirical) if it relied only on a priori reasons and not on observations. I bring this up because the best arguments for considering the welfare of others (or as the concept is reffered to later in the thread “giving a damn”) are empirical.
The argument would go something like this: The community of which I am a part has achieved great things: alleviated suffering, produced subtle and insightful literature, played beautiful music, revealed hidden patterns in the natural word, coordinated human activities across vast swaths of space and time to achieve common goals. This community, Civilization, has accomplished all this through the accumulation and preservation of both knowledge and wisdom in the receptacle of Culture. This Culture is manifestly good to the extent to which it facilitates human flourishing. Our Civilization is worthy of our love.
The fact of Civilization’s accomplishments demonstrates that humans are social animals. We, by our nature, form groups that accomplish good things. It is a requirement of our nature that we, as individuals, contribute to the common endeavor which is the Great Human Enterprise.
The Culture which has enabled Civilization to succeed contains within it Wisdom. This Wisdom is both a product of Civilization and a shaper of it. One of the deepest and broadest teachings of this Wisdom is that helping one’s fellow man is good.
Descending from a grand overview of the human experience and lots of capitalized words to the particular experiences of individual people, we see that those who consider the welfare of others are admired. And they are admired because helping others is intrinsically admirable — it is good. This is both a general observation and a personal one.
I have a friend who’s brother-in-law died saving people from a flood. He saved 6 people before going back in one more time to attempt to save more people and he never came out. When I attended his funeral rosary, the room was full of other people who, like me, had never met the man. We were there out of respect — out of gratitude. To those who think that dissent shows that our morals are subjective, I can tell you there was no dissent in that room. And what if there had been? What if someone there had said that our admiration was just a subjective state of mind derived from arbitrarily chosen assumptions. What would that have meant? That the deceased wasn’t really, objectively admirable? Or would it have just shown that the dissenter was an [REDACTED]?
I don’t tell this story because I think I have special insight. I don’t. This is a common experience. We all have stories like this: of friends, or friends of friends, who risked, or gave, their lives for their country; of elders who we know, from years of experience, give of themselves every day to help others. The inspiration we draw from people like this and the gratitude we feel we owe them aren’t just subjective evaluations. They are empirical evidence. And they are also a call to action.
Have you ever done something for another human being after having been inspired by the example of someone else? If so, did you do it to be admired? Or did you do it to be admirable, because you wanted to be that sort of person?
The upshot of the notion that moral judgments aren’t about objective facts is that the admiration and gratitude we feel when confronted with real goodness isn’t true. It isn’t justified. Subjectivism means that the hypothetical [REDACTED] in my story isn’t wrong.
I can’t accept that. I won’t accept that. Justly deserved gratitude and admiration are true just as much as any scientific observation.
That’s why it’s “rational” to consider the well being of others. That’s why you should give damn.
Morality isn’t science.
a : characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind : phenomenal — compare objective 1b
b : relating to or being experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental characteristics or states
Or,
a (1) : peculiar to a particular individual : personal <subjective judgments> (2) : modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background <a subjective account of the incident>
b : arising from conditions within the brain or sense organs and not directly caused by external stimuli <subjective sensations>
c : arising out of or identified by means of one’s perception of one’s own states and processes <a subjective symptom of disease> — compare objective 1c
Wanting the [REDACTED] in your story to be wrong doesn’t make it so, objectively speaking. It’s only so in relation to underlying assumptions which are themselves not fact. That 95 out of 100 agree with us and our underlying assumptions still doesn’t make it so either; though, 95/100 makes it a helluva lot easier to enforce that standard anyway and to not lose any sleep over it.
If you’re referring to me then you are not understanding me for some reason, even after I’ve directly denied this several times. I don’t think that dissent proves subjectivity. However, you can’t continue to claim objectivity in the face of dissent without proving your point or refuting theirs. And you haven’t proven anything except that you prefer one set assumptions over another. You haven’t proven anything except that you feel a particular way in response to particular stimuli.
This is on topic.
Following up on Mack’s response at #410, I don’t argue that there are rational, a priori proofs for objective morality, though I would argue that there is objective evidence in favor of it.
With regards to reason in general, I’m much more of a Hayekian than a Randian. It’s an amazing and powerful tool, but it has it’s limits.