One thing that disturbs me about naturalism is the increasingly frequent contention that there are objective moral “facts” or “truths,” which can somehow be discerned scientifically. I don’t agree with that, since at bottom I think that what one sees as “right” or “wrong” ultimately rests on a set of subjective preferences that can’t be adjudicated scientifically. This is the one major disagreement I have with Sam Harris and Michael Shermer, though I agree with Sam that being “more moral” generally corresponds to “providing more well being.” Like Sam and Michael, I am a consequentialist: I judge actions as “right” or “wrong” based on their consequences to society. The problem is that even if you’re a consequentialist, how do you weigh conflicting consequences—when an action is good for some and bad for others, and in different ways? And others—deontologists—see morality as resting on following rules rather than a utilitarian toting up of consequences, and some philosophers argue for that view.
My view is that there is no objective morality, though reasonable people will generally agree on what is moral. (However, “reason” tends to be bent when the morality is inspired by faith, for religious “morality” is often quite divergent from what most of us would see as our own morality.) But how do you convince a devout Christian that it’s wrong to prevent gays from marrying, or a devout Muslim that it’s wrong to prevent girls from going to school?
Justin P. McBrayer, however, disagrees in Monday’s “Opinionator” column in the New York Times. His piece, “Why our children don’t think there are moral facts,” argues strongly that there are moral facts, and they’ve been grossly misled by their teachers. He adds that we’d best tell our kids that moral facts are objective lest the world degenerate into immorality.
McBrayer is described as “an associate professor of philosophy at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., [who] works in ethics and philosophy of religion”, but I don’t know how much, if any, of his views about moral factitude come from faith. Regardless, I think he’s confused, and doesn’t make a good case for objective moral truths.
McBrayer first says that kids are taught that there’s a difference between facts and opinions, which of course is true, but then confuses people with the following dialogue between him and his son to show the supposed lack of distinction.
Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”
Him: “It’s a fact.”
Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”
Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”
Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”
Then McBrayer gives a list of things that, he says, most people consider opinions but that he clearly believes are “moral facts”:
Here’s a little test devised from questions available on fact vs. opinion worksheets online: are the following facts or opinions?
— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.
— All men are created equal.
— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.
— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.
— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.
— Drug dealers belong in prison.
The answer? In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. The explanation on offer is that each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts. This is repeated ad nauseum: any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact.
In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.
Well, I can see saying that if you have an opinion, which is your view on an issue, that opinion can also be a fact (i.e., “my opinion is that the speed of light is constant in a vaccuum”), but opinions may not be factual; they are, according to the Oxford English Dictionary
a. What or how one thinks about something; judgement or belief. Esp. in in my opinion: according to my thinking; as it seems to me. a matter of opinion : a matter about which each may have his or her own opinion; a disputable point.
In other words, an opinion is someone’s belief or judgement. Whether that opinion happens to be true (“a fact”) depends on two things: a). it concerns an assertion about reality that can be adjudicated by observation (instead of subjective judgments like “my opinion is that pie is better than cake”), and b). the adjudication shows that the factual belief is true. In none of the cases McBrayer gives above can I see a way to determine whether the “opinions” are “true” in any meaningful sense. I agree with some of them (but not all), but how do you determine whether it’s a “moral truth” that “drug dealers belong in prison”?
The correct way to teach the difference between fact and opinion is, I think, the way I outlined in the paragraph above, and I don’t see that it should cause any difficulties. When kids are young they must be taught that things are “right” or “wrong”, but I don’t think they should ever be told that those issues are simply factual. That’s no way to have a discussion. If the kid asks, “Why?”, then there’s the opportunity for a fascinating discussion (which will either involve “Because I said so” for the youngest kids or, for older kids, a discussion of what you—or society—see as the basis for morality.
The reason McBrayer thinks that we should tell kids that there are moral facts is because it supposedly makes them behave better than if they just see moral judgments as opinions:
It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on.
Indeed, in the world beyond grade school, where adults must exercise their moral knowledge and reasoning to conduct themselves in the society, the stakes are greater. There, consistency demands that we acknowledge the existence of moral facts. If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?
What he’s doing, in my view, is distorting the meaning of “fact” simply so that it will have better results for society. But what happens when a kid asks, “what is the basis for judging your moral claims as ‘true’?” You can’t just say “Because I said so”—that’s no way to determine truth, or educate kids. You have to prove it, and you can’t do that without appealing to subjective judgments. What happens when a kid asks a Christian parent, “Daddy, why is abortion wrong?” I won’t go on; you can see the problem.
McBrayer winds up reiterating his unsupported assertions:
We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.
That would be wrong.
I find it odd that McBrayer is a professor of philosophy, and nevertheless can come out with things like this. Some value claims simply CANNOT be adjudicated by evidence. Abortion is one. Even if you’re a consequentialist like I am and on those grounds am pro-choice, what do you say to someone who feels otherwise, either because they have the religious notion that embryos have souls or the consequentialist notion that it’s worse for society to allow abortions than if it prohibited them? How can you decide? Even the notion “don’t kill innocent people,” won’t resonate with a Muslim extremist if those innocents are apostates.
Of course facts do come into play in some moral discussions. If you oppose abortion on grounds of fetal viability or fetal pain, those things can be empirically determined (or course the age of viability is going to get smaller in the future!). But at bottom all discussions of right or wrong come down to what result one prefers—what you think moralty is supposed to achieve. That’s not to denigrate it, for without rules we can’t have harmonious societies. But I simply don’t believe that one needs to tell kids that there are moral facts to get them to behave in a desirable way. But that, of course, is my subjective judgment.
This really is one of the reasons I like your writing – you follow the uncomfortable consequences of reality, whether it is determinism or moral relatively. Harris and Shermer are both very smart people, yet they seem really motivated to claim that we can determine morality scientifically, as opposed to *inform* our moral judgement scientifically.
Harris tries to hide his subjective moral judgements under a rug called “well being” and now McBrayer is trying to do the same with “moral facts”. Neither is actually helpful in understanding the psychology of morality, which is largely based in snap judgements we then create retroactive explanations for.
So is your objection that “well-being” should not be the beacon of being more moral?
I would guess Scote is trying to say “well-being” is hardly an objective criterion, or set of criteria, you can actually use to judge an action. It’s not even a subjectively well-defined term.
Sam tries to counter this objection by pointing out that “health” is a similarly vague term, yet we don’t have a problem bringing science to bear on medical issues. But I think Scote’s point still stands. Science informs us what to do in order to treat a disease; it doesn’t determine that we must treat the disease.
Sam also likes to warn that naturalists are ceding authority on moral matters to theists by virtue of not recognizing some method of determining objective morality. I would rather argue that “subjective” is not the dirty word Sam and those theists think it is. Why is subjective morality so bad? After all, even Sam points out that it’s the subjects involved that matter.
Science can tell you (even if in terms of probability) the difference between good and bad health and more and less reliable ways to achieve it but it can’t tell you whether you should value health. But “should value” assumes one can value good health and it seems nonsensical that one can’t value good health. What does that even mean? Bad health is really valuable? “I’m being burned alive! Science says this is a sure path to becoming unhealthy. I disagree because agony is my opinion of what healthy should be.” That would be valuing bad health (by definition) or not valuing good health. I also don’t see how degree (only my arm is on fire or less severe–a sunburn) invalidates this argument.
I am really bad at thinking of morals, it is a confusing subject because it is mostly … well, opinion. (But luckily I am no worse on moral reactions than the next person. =D) But we can find individuals that value bad health, such as drug addicts.
[I don’t like this argument because it reminds me of the Accommodationist Gambit that I think McBrayer aims at, see my longer comment below. But it is along Scote’s analysis of Jerry’s articles, let’s see where this leads.]
Moving on, isn’t this a recapitulation of Harris’s utilitarism, that people should aim for less suffering in order to maximize happiness? But we don’t need so much moral analysis in medicine because direct and indirect pain (say, suffering from being debilitated) is a huge driver. And we have those drug addicts, are they doin’ it wrong or are their brains remodeled by the drug so their trade off for minimizing suffering is different?
Drug addicts do not value bad health. Would a cigarette smoker change brands of smokes (assuming same taste, buzz, etc) if a study showed a new brand was guaranteed to never cause lung cancer or emphysema? I’d wager they all would. Who values bad health again?
It means that good health might not be the most important value in every possible instance. Bad health can be a consequence of risky but lucrative employment, such as mining, or it could be the result of doing recreational drugs. In such instances, bad health is not a value in itself, but an accepted consequence of attaining goals which are deemed more important.
The conflict/tension of moral predicaments usually lie not good vs. bad, but between good vs. some other good.
If not science, then what would you employ to decide to treat a disease? If not science, on what basis do you determine what to value?
Errm, ‘common sense’?
Some people think homosexuality is a ‘disorder’ that can be treated. In fact medical science can offer ways to treat it, if you want to. I don’t think science has anything to say about whether it *should* be treated, though.
Of course it does. What on earth else would we employ to make a decision on such a matter? “Science” would confirm for us homosexuality is not a disorder and scientific reasoning would conclude there is no valid reason to consider homosexuality immoral.
And to be clear, are you suggesting you favor employing “common sense” in contrast to evidence and science in determining what to value? We do know many things that appear to people as “common sense” do not hold up under scientific scrutiny. Common sense tells us to run when we are in danger. But if we cross paths with a grizzly bear, that is likely to trigger a pursuit or attack.
‘Common sense’ was a facetious suggestion. I just don’t think science can tell us what is moral or not.
You need to define ‘disorder’ before you can say whether science can tell us whether homosexuality is one. Science can certainly tell us that heterosexuality is the predominant state, therefore in that sense homosexuality is ‘abnormal’. What science doesn’t tell us at all, I think, is whether homosexuality is therefore undesirable and should be discouraged.
(I hasten to add I’m just using homosexuality as an example, not giving an opinion on it. I could have used, for example, autism or albinism).
I doubt whether scientific reasoning could tell us whether any of those conditions was undesirable or immoral. That’s more a social judgement.
What if you’re an adult with a terminal illness, but you’d prefer not to treat it? Just because science has determined how to treat it doesn’t mean you should want to treat it.
Faced with a terminal illness and all the challenges they bring, some people will say “I want to fight!” Others will say “I’m tired of fighting.” I don’t see how science can be used to tell either one of them “no, you’re wrong, you should prefer the other option.”
But there “is” an answer to the question. “Should a person choose assisted suicide.”
Should needs to be clarified: should in what basis? On well-being. There is an answer to the question “would the quality of a person’s life in a given circumstance be reduced by continuing to live vs choosing to end that life now?” Even if we, with our current limitations, couldn’t get to that complete answer, the question has an answer. And we can get part or much of the way.
Even by saying “leave it to a person’s subjective opinion” you are still using science. You’re just limiting the evidence considered in that person’s scientific reasoning. And to acknowledge that is not opening the door to lab coats determining who lives or does, it’s simply acknowledging there is an answer. What we do with that answer is another debate. The moral implications are that we can objectively, through evidence, demonstrate that it is very likely that denying a person the option for assisted suicide is not moral.
Science can help a person determine the likelihood of living for a certain amount of time and under certain a condition (with or without pain, sleepy vs engaged, etc), but it cannot provide the answer for whether to, say, take a particular drug and live longer but not in the way the person wants versus not taking the drug and die sooner but able to live the way they want in the time they have. That is a subjective choice on which there is no absolute right or wrong answer.
Science provides factual findings which inform our decision such that we can choose the optimal course based on our subjective values and preferences. Science does not on its own determine whether any particular path is the right one.
Well-being is a wonderful basis for determining good and bad, right and wrong, in my personal subjective opinion. However it is poorly defined in many circumstances and is still value-based.
Harris addresses this objection. There are more salient passages in his book, but here is a quote from a talk:
“Many of you might worry that the notion of well-being is truly undefined, and seemingly perpetually open to be re-construed. And so, how therefore can there be an objective notion of well-being? Well, consider by analogy, the concept of physical health. The concept of physical health is undefined. As we just heard from Michael Specter, it has changed over the years. When this statue was carved the average life expectancy was probably 30. It’s now around 80 in the developed world. […]
Notice that the fact that the concept of health is open, genuinely open for revision, does not make it vacuous. The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is about as clear and consequential as any we make in science. Another thing to notice is there may be many peaks on the moral landscape: There may be equivalent ways to thrive; there may be equivalent ways to organize a human society so as to maximize human flourishing.”
Another thing to note is that Harris not only admits these facts are subjective but asserts that subjective experience is the *only* thing that matters morally.
Having said that, I agree that science isn’t the tool we use to claim that well being is the basis of morality. Neither does Harris. He explains that we can’t talk about morality coherently unless we are talking about it in terms of well being. He offers a number of arguments. So, agree or not, that’s his philosophical basis, upon which he argues science is the best tool for understanding how to maximize well being.
Well said, Jerry, you’re entirely right on this one.
Philosophers are rather weird on this one. According to a recent poll a majority of academic philosophers (54%) still hold to moral realism (the idea that there are objective moral facts). Though none of them can produce an actual argument for moral realism, of course.
Forget “an actual argument,” I want a goodometer! If you think there are moral facts, build me an eviloscope I can point at some action and use to determine whether what’s going on is moral or immoral.
Goodometer. I *like* that! 🙂
But I think it’s already been done…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_VIII_E-Meter.jpg
“I find it odd that McBrayer is a professor of philosophy, and nevertheless can come out with things like this.”
The first six weeks of the first undergrad philosophy course I took (PHI101 “Introduction to Morals and Ethics”) dove well past this shallow level of analysis. Perhaps Professor McBrayer might benefit from sitting in on such a course to refresh his recollection of the various treatments of this philosophical question by his academic predecessors, both modern and classical.
I disagree Coel; I find (some) moral realist arguments more cogent than the other options.
But I’ve been over that before on these pages.
🙂
I am (sometimes) tempted by the idea that one can argue for a moral realism (called “social moral relationalism” as follows. Pick species of interest (as many as wanted). What contributes to their well-being (pick any quality of life indicator you want) is thus what is right. What detracts from it is wrong.
It is, of course, very difficult to determine what counts as a quality of life indicator, or to decide what species to include. Are any of these processes subjective? No, I don’t think so. And then figuring it out the consequences is even harder. But that doesn’t change the fact there may be answers. (It doesn’t follow that the answer must be unique.)
Notice that this yields *activities* not propositions – this is the “Kitcher point” in his _The Ethical Project_.
However, since the above is so hard to actually *use* perhaps the subjectivity comes into play with the epistemology of ethics, rather than the metaphysics, sketched above. After all, realisms are strictly speaking epistemic theses, not metaphysical ones.
It looks to me that the associate professor of philosophy made up his mind then bent over backwards to fit everything to come out as he desired.
Aren’t phlosophers supposed to think things through from basics to complex?
Naturalism, true, correct naturalism as Santayana revealed to the modern world (“In the words of John Herman Randall, Jr., in leading philosophers out of the deserts of modern philosophy, Santayana is ‘the Moses of the new naturalism'”, *The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, p. xix, MIT Critical edition) is relativistic in morals, as you very aptly comments.
A Naturalism with objective morals is no such thing, but a mask, probably for some divinity behind.
Fetal pain is irrelevant, IMO, as fetuses are non sentient, and besides, if they are viable, the heart is stopped before they are usually delivered (as they are too large by that time to remove the usual way)
As for viabity, fetuses are incapable of sentience prior to 25 weeks gestation, so even if an artificial womb could keep one alive at 20 weeks, it would still not be viable due to still being under construction, and incapable of surviving as a biologically autonomous individual.
I don’t see how their lack of sentience makes their suffering irrelevant.
citation:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110908124136.htm
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2900885-2?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982211008852%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
What’s any of that got to do with the question?
…of why non-sentient suffering should be considered irrelevant that is.
Because it’s an oxymoron?
If it’s not sentient, it can’t feel pain so it can’t suffer.
…which sounds rather circular, like the 19th Century naturalists who tried to rigorously distinguish species from varieties based on hybrid fertility. Darwin was ever so slightly snarky about this in the Origin.
How does one define or diagnose ‘sentience’ to avoid circularity?
Sentience = basic awareness.
Which is not possible unless the thalamus and cortex reach functional maturity, which does not happen until 25 wks gestation, long past when the majority of abortions occur (91% are prior to 13 wks, the majority past 20 wks are not done absent medical necessity).
In late term abortions, standard practice is to induce fetal demise in utero first by stopping the heart, then, usually, inducing labour. Labour is usually induced post viability and the fetus delivered because it is too large by that time to remove in other ways.
But yeah, when most abortions occur, the embryo/fetus is incapable of cortical processing. No cortical processing = no conscious awareness. And when the fetal heart is stopped in a late term, there is no opportunity to feel pain, even if it could.
Pro lifers like to pretend that women have abortions on a whim at 24 wks all the time. This just doesn’t happen. And if you consider the cost – 8k to 20 – which is not always covered by insurance, and definitely not covered absent medical need, you realize that pro lifers have invented a giant straw man of the selfish evil woman torturing viable babies with glee.
@John Scanlon
I think part of the definition of ‘sentience’ must be the ability to be aware of things. So ‘non-sentient suffering’ is an impossible concept.
At bottom discussions of right and wrong are I think neither completely objective nor subjective, but deal with some basic facts entailed in achieving harmony in any society.
The common ground is there, formed from our evolutionary heritage as a group-dwelling species — but it’s very broad and without detail. “Cheating” and “murder” are wrong in all cultures because they violate common human standards of reciprocal fairness. Arguments otherwise are never actually in favor of cheating or murder or ‘doing wrong’ — they involve claims that the situation entails that in this particular case it’s not really cheating, murder, or wrong. That’s when accurate facts matter.
I recently read Ron Lindsay’s essay on morality in Free Inquiry, and I think he articulates a good position between a transcendental Moral Facts objectively embedded in nature and “anything goes, it’s all opinion.”
and I think he articulates a good position between a transcendental Moral Facts objectively embedded in nature and “anything goes, it’s all opinion.”
Bookmarked for later!
I am reading an interesting discussion over on The Friendly Atheist, where a commenter is making the case that it is ‘morally repugnant/impermissible’ to deny any random person your bodily organs/tissues to save their lives, as life trumps temporary inconvenience.
He has made the argument that yes, forcing organ donation from people would be infringing on their liberty, but, since everyone has a different idea of what liberty *is*, the ‘liberty to live’ is the ONLY liberty that really matters. Therefore, he concludes, since it is morally repugnant/impermissible to deny people lifegiving treatment (your organs) in favour of your comfort, then you should be forced into donating those organs, and that if you refuse, you are guilty of murder.
He keeps trying to get people to make a moral argument as to why forced organ donation is wrong. I can’t make up my mind if troll, or serious. He also says that he admires pro-lifers because they put life before ‘temporary inconvenience’. He is ignoring the fact that pro-lifers, and specifically the men, argue that *others* should lose their bodily autonomy, while refusing to donate their own organs to save those lives that they claim to care so much about.
Definitely a troll.
“He also says that he admires pro-lifers because they put life before ‘temporary inconvenience’ ”
Idiot. The ‘life’ he refers to is that of a fertilised egg. It has no sentience (useful word that), or if it does, rather less than a tapeworm. How does that ‘life’ differ in any way from the life of a sperm, millions of which are gonna die anyway? (Of course, to carry his argument to its ridiculous conclusion, rape is justified because one of those sperm is gonna get to live on…)
The ‘pro-lifers’ definition of ‘life’ is so arbitrary as to be meaningless.
‘useful word that’ – useful rhetorically, I might grant.
He claims to be a consequentialist, just like PCC, and that forced organ donation will lead to a greater good for all.
I don’t see how he can say that he admires pro lifers because they put life ahead of liberty, and claim that he is ‘utterly appalled and sickened’ by those of us who do not support forced organ donation, when pro-lifers do NOT support forced organ donation either.
He is now saying that the onus is on us to make the case that we are not entitled to other people’s body parts if we need them to survive. I did make a case, that using a person as a mere means to an end is slavery, and that slavery is wrong, but he discounted this, as apparently stealing people’s organs isn’t slavery if it’s done for a good cause.
“pro-lifers do NOT support forced organ donation either.”
Yes, even the pro-lifers aren’t _that_ crazy. (Probably it’s just as well organ donations weren’t practical in biblical times, so there’s nothing in the Bible for them to follow on it. That aside, they’d also know – as would anybody with a shred of sanity – that supporting forced organ donation is a sure way to utterly discredit yourself forever).
Murder =df unjustified killing.
Consequently of course all societies have a rule or principle or other norm-expression against it. (Only a society which allowed all killings as justified would lack this.)
What *is* variable is what counts as (un)justified.
Oh, and I might add that’s what’s partially wrong with the 10 Commandments – the text says “don’t murder”, for example, which is an ethical tautonomy (true by meaning of the words).
So does this “professor of philosophy” also teach student we have free will because if they believed they weren’t ultimately in control of their actions they would disregard rules do whatever they wanted?
The notion that moral facts exist seems to me not much different than the notion that there is an external source (e.g., God) of moral commands. And this is also related to the fallacy of treating abstract ideas as concrete things.
In fact most philosophers (whether believers in objective moral truths or not) reject the divine command theory. No surprise there: most of them are atheists to begin with.
I’m not aware of any philosopher who believes in moral facts because s/he confuses the abstract with the concrete, either.
An interesting case (which I happen to have read about) which suggests a different hypothesis, is Peter Railton, whose belief in objective moral facts seems to have roots in his political activism dating back to the 60s. Thinking of other prominent moral realists – most notably Peter Singer – perhaps there is a pattern there. People who care deeply about practical issues and hold strong views tend to think there is more to them than just preferences.
You can read Railton’s 16-page autobiography here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/files/dewey-lecture-drs-rev1.pdf
There may indeed be more to them than just preferences. There may be deeply ingrained moral intuitions honed by megayears of natural selection. But it’s still a considerable leap from there to “objective moral facts”.
“Even the notion ‘don’t kill innocent people,’ won’t resonate with a Muslim extremist if those innocents are apostates.”
But to the Muslim extremist, an apostate is not an innocent person. Which just emphasizes that morality is entirely relative, not objective.
No, I think your point leads to the opposite conclusion. “Don’t kill innocent people (unnecessarily)” is as objective (intersubjective) as it gets. Muslims extremists agree with it, as do we.
Then we quibble over interpretation … which usually brings in disputes regarding objective facts.
The fact that we agree on it doesn’t make it objective though surely? I don’t quite think you can have your cake and eat it on this – it’s the supposed knockdown argument for theists: ‘how can you believe in objective morality?'(which is why I take a certain slight pleasure in telling them I don’t). But it’s an either/or as far as I can see. I can’t see much room for a crossover and I always wish other atheists wouldn’t tie themselves up in knots trying to square this circle.
In principle anything does go – but in practice, and exactly as you’d expect if morality weren’t objective, we’ve come to various, tacit agreements concerning the big, obvious no-nos, and we’ve failed to come to an overall agreement on a multitude of smaller issues. Like you say, we’ve reached a certain shaky consensus on some issues but agreements are never going to calcify into absolutes. They just can’t – they don’t track anything that exists outside of our heads. If we were wiped out tomorrow values would go along with us.
Yes, if we were wiped out tomorrow our values would go with us. Morals are not objective in the same way physical objects or facts are — and if that’s what you mean by “objective” then I agree with you.
But the term has various interpretations and some of them deal with recognizable rules on equity and fairness in relationships. “It’s wrong to cause significant, unnecessary harm to what matters.” This wouldn’t be ‘true’ if no humans, people, living things, groups, or societies existed — but if we consider the purpose of morality it does seem to be true from the perspective of every moral agent.
If morality weren’t in any way objective then I don’t think we could come to any kind of agreement on “big, obvious no-nos.” The whole idea of anything being “obviously wrong” would make no sense. It seems to me that this is a rather important step in refuting the idea that morals must be grounded in some sort of Transcendent Authority or we’re left with nothing but the chaos of competing opinions in every direction and no way to judge or say that any action is “better” than another. Moral progress is possible, because we’ve got some general agreements to measure against — and facts and reason to frame the specific situations.
I don’t think this is right. What’s obviously wrong to us in the area of, say, child care would not be obviously wrong to a sea turtle. To them, abandoning hundreds of children to fend for themselves is how it’s supposed to work.
There may be widespread agreement among existing human societies that cheating, murder, and so on are “obviously wrong”. But I leave open the possibility of post-human, non-human, or even non-biological societies in which the very notions of cheating and murder are so ill-defined as to have no moral value whatever. And that’s what makes the notion of “objective moral facts” nonsense.
In the here and now, we can still try to make things better for us as humans, and deploy objective facts about human biology and psychology in pursuit of that goal. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that we’ve discovered any objective facts about morality in the process. There are only pragmatic facts about what works for us in our present situation.
Rudimentary forms of what we’d recognize as morals and ethics are found among other species, though I’ll grant EO Wilson’s point (and yours) that ants would likely agree that eating one’s own excrement is a self-evident good — and we would not. A genuinely universal morality which is supposed to apply to every species, terrestrial or not, would probably end up as a completely tautological ‘good is good and bad is bad.’ We probably do need to be a bit human-centric here if we’re going to fix on something with more ethical bite.
But I very much doubt that the most general big obvious no-nos weren’t the same for primitive human societies around the world, who share the same basic needs and concerns that we do now. If nothing else, basic intuitions on reciprocal fairness seem to be found in some of the other apes, if Frans de Waal is to be believed.
Nothing wrong with adopting a human-centric perspective, so long as we’re honest about it. My issue is with trying to reify our human-centric moral intuitions as Truths of some Platonic universe of objective right and wrong, when at best they’re contingent psychological facts about us.
What about mathematical truths? Are they also contingent psychological facts about us, or are the objectively true statements about a Platonic universe?
Hardy: Mathematical truths are not facts about us; they’re facts about formal systems of reasoning that (we have good reason to believe) will be universal to all reasoning beings.
If ethicists manage to come up with a system of moral reasoning of equal rigor and universality, then I’ll be willing to entertain the notion of objective moral truths on par with mathematical truths.
Gregory, saying that “mathematical truths are facts about formal systems of reasoning” dodges the question of whether they have objective truth independent of the minds that perceive them. Do you think the prime number theorem was true in the first second after the Big Bang?
If you grant mathematical objects an independent Platonic existence, it’s harder to argue that there cannot be objective ethical facts. Saying that philosophers have not been able to develop a rigorous ethical calculus on par with the best mathematical theories also doesn’t mean there cannot be an objective morality. It may just be that moral truths are harder to apprehend than truths about geometry.
When it comes to theists claiming that there can’t be objective moral values without God, the answer is, “so fucking what”?
Suppose there are not objective morals. Again, so fucking what? The answer they always fall back on is that there are objective morals. At that point, it becomes one enormous and contrived exercise in question begging. (There are objective morals since God gave us them and God exists because we received his objective moral values!) Yet, this position does not even address the claim that God is necessary for moral values. This argument for theism is one of the weaker ones and that’s saying a lot.
Cliff, this:
“But to the Muslim extremist, an apostate is not an innocent person. Which just emphasizes that morality is entirely relative, not objective.”
doesn’t show moral realism is false, it simply assumes to reach your conclusion.
It could be that the Muslim is simply wrong.
Geologists believe the earth is billions of years old. Some Christians hold the opinion that it is merely thousands of years old. Does pointing out this difference in belief establish “this shows that the age of the earth is entirely relative?”
As Jerry already wrote, it becomes objective when you have an external measuring stick like science.
So while we can judge the age of the Earth, good luck using science (or anything) to prove what objectively constitutes an innocent person, and so prove this Muslim wrong.
Thanks for your thoughts on the NYT Opinionator piece. I, for one, was impressed that children were being taught the difference between fact and opinion. A useful distinction to know early in life. The author was muddying the waters with his assertions about moral “facts.” I’m sorry for his son.
Agreed. McBrayer’s leaps of fallacy are disturbing, but that’s just my opinion.
I know of no teachers in my district that teach facts as being the same as truths.
Thanks for your thoughts on the NYT Opinionator piece. I, for one, was impressed that children were being taught the difference between fact and opinion. A useful distinction to know early in life. The author was muddying the waters with his assertions about moral “facts.” I’m sorry for his son.
Thanks for your thoughts on the “moral facts” issue. I was impressed that young children were being taught to distinguish between the two and sorry that the author’s son was going to be confused by his father.
Well said Jerry. Science and evidence can tell you what is probably the best way to achieve your goals and satisfy your values based on a consideration of consequences, but they cannot tell you what your goals and values should be (the so-called fact/value distinction), as these, as you say, boil down to subjective preferences. Of course,contrary to the claims of religionists, morality based on divine commands is no less subjective, as it depends on the preferences of the deity. By the way, the positivist philosopher A.J. Ayer referred to this emotivist meta-ethical position as the ‘hurrah/boo’ theory of morality.
YF,
Your comment is pretty much in line with the criticisms of Sam Harris’ moral realism, that Jerry is rejecting. With that in mind…
I don’t believe your comment actually gets at what Sam Harris is saying. Sam isn’t saying that
science itself establishes the very bedrock of morality, of what we ought to value.
It can’t. Same says this all the time, which is why he argues that values and intuitions are already inherent for even science to get off the ground. Rather, Sam gives a philosophical argument for the bedrock of morality: that is he doesn’t simply say “we ought to value well being.” Rather, he IDENTIFIES “well being” as what we ALREADY VALUE. And he combined identifying the underlying concerns people have in the moral realm with the stance that it seems NECESSARILY SO insofar as it seems no other viewpoint makes sense of both what we already care about, and what we COULD care about.
I see so many criticisms of Sam Harris on the purported basis that he just assumes his argument, when he doesn’t. (And Ive been listening to him defend it at length once again, on the Very Bad Wizards podcast).
You’ve articulated this precisely. What we ALREADY VALUE is foundational. Sam’s argument still resonates with me. Jerry’s point about how to resolve conflicting consequences seems to me to hide behind complexity. Maybe there are too many variables to solve that equation but that doesn’t mean we have no right answers.
Vaal, first of all, I didn’t comment directly on Sam Harris’ thesis (I didn’t even mention Harris). Second of all, let us recall the title of Sam’s book:
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
Now, assuming that what you say accurately reflects Harris’ position on the nature of morality, then I think we can at least agree that his book is poorly titled, as science CANNOT determine human values.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with the idea of moral facts. I don’t think there’s even a difficulty in the use of facts to have an analogous meaning to how facts are used in history or science.
“It’s a fact that it’s wrong to starve your infant child” seems like a perfectly fine sentence on the face of it.
The difficulty is in articulating what “fact” means in that sentence, but I don’t think it can be ruled out so easily that there is an answer to this. One only needs a weak sense in which “fact” holds for the claim to work.
Not to me. “It’s a fact that it’s wrong to starve your infant child without a good reason” is much less disputable and far more universal.
Some of the “good reasons” are more rationally defensible than others.
I see your point.
In both cases, though, the word opinion cannot be substituted without something being lost in the meaning.
“I find it odd that McBrayer is a professor of philosophy, and nevertheless can come out with things like this. Some value claims simply CANNOT be adjudicated by evidence. Abortion is one. Even if you’re a consequentialist like I am and on those grounds am pro-choice, what do you say to someone who feels otherwise, either because they have the religious notion that embryos have souls or the consequentialist notion that it’s worse for society to allow abortions than if it prohibited them? How can you decide? Even the notion “don’t kill innocent people,” won’t resonate with a Muslim extremist if those innocents are apostates.”
I think it kind of misses the mark by a little bit to talk about whether or not we could convince certain types of people of moral facts. I mean facts would remain facts whether people believed them or not so if there are moral facts, the way to show it is to substantiate them objectively unless I’m missing something.
I think the core reason there’s so much disagreement about what can be objectively substantiated in moral terms is that we simply haven’t defined the question we’re trying to answer and we allow others to change that definition on the fly. We’d have the same problem with mathematics if we didn’t lay down axioms and precisely define the problems that we’re attempting to solve. If there was a major religion that believed 2+2 equaled 5, or that ‘addition’ should work in a slightly different way, we’d be constantly bombarded with reminders that mathematical axioms are human constructs and mathematical progress would likely be impeded by them. I think there are ways to define the question of morality with useful axiom(s) that will lead us to counter intuitive, and useful moral progress and while I don’t agree perfectly with Harris’s or Shermer’s models, I do think they both do just that.
I know you don’t like lengthy posts here so I won’t get into it anymore but hopefully this is somewhat meaningful in its brevity.
If someone claims abortion is immoral on the grounds that embryos have souls, that is no different than opposing on fetal viability. In both cases we should look to the body of empirical evidence to adjudicated the claim. I don’t understand why you say we cannot. Why wouldn’t we? What differentiates the two? And how can you object to religious claims, unrelated to morality, on the basis of lack of evidence, but then allow religious claims with similar insufficient evidence so long as they relate to morality?
“How do you convince a devout Christian that it is wrong to prevent gays from marrying?” Who cares? I mean in the context of determining objective morality, a claim that we were all created by a god who insists “sexual relations occur only between men and women” doesn’t stand up to empirical evidence. Unless all you are arguing is how difficult a shared objective morality based on evidence/reason might be to get worldwide buy in on. Sure. But that is quite different from can objective moral facts actually exist. And it seems you’re only objection to that is some people might not like them.
The idea of moral absolutes does seem to come from the religious idea that we are at the center of creation and everything exists for our benefit.
The way I would explain morality is as you would, it is measured by consequences, but consequences to human society in particular. The discovery of penicillin was great for mankind, not so good for bacteria—if they had consciousness, they would regard it as pure evil. So in that sense, it is relative. In the old testament, it’s even more relative—what was good for the Israelites was all that mattered, although it was very bad for several unlucky tribes.
What bullflop. We teach our students that it is a fact that the teacher gave you the assignment to do on your own. It is a fact that some methods for deriving the answers are not given credit because the purpose of the exercise is to improve or show your mastery over method.
And pretty much every student knows these “social contract” style facts, so whether the professor or the student believes in some separate set of objective moral facts or not is irrelevant.
Bingo!
I largely agree with this piece, only I think the issue of subjectivity is at a more meta level. For example, as Sam Harris points out, we could in principle, scientifically determine whether an action is moral based on whether it increases well-being. This could be objectively determined whether we’re calculating well-being for a single person or for its impact on overall well being for humans (or sentient beings even).
However, where is the objectivity in determining what the scope of well-being is? Some actions only have short consequences, others long. Is an increase in well-being over the next year in exchange for less well-being 10 years from now better or worse than an increase in well-being 20 years from now in exchange for 2 years of misery now? There’s no way to objectively determine this since there is only one end game: we’re all dead and at that point everyone’s well-being is the same.
A brilliant commenter made the point that the earth’s resources are finite, and that more people = scarcity of resources = war, genocide and famine.
She argued, from a consequentialist position, I guess, that abortion simply prevents many millions of people from dying at some point in the future, when they *are* sentient and sapient. That if embryos are killed before they can grow up and start being killed in genocides, or dying from famine, that there will be less misery all around.
The disagreement, in regards to the moral wrongness of abortion, appears to be over direct vs. indirect action, which is why Savita Halappanavar died. That to purposely kill someone now, vs throw them to the sharks, in which case they may or may not live, is morally impermisslble.This is there the trolley thought experiment is applicable, I suspect.
By Catholic morality, the fact that Savita died was morally permissible, because she was ‘given a chance’. She lost. Tough titty!
A brilliant commenter made the point that the earth’s resources are finite, and that more people = scarcity of resources = war, genocide and famine.
Why does this sound like one step away from the slippery slope of eugenics…
I see what you mean.
But really, is infinite reproduction really a good thing? Is having a child just to watch it starve a moral thing?
I like to think of the deer in Yellowstone Park, who, with the wolves removed, started to eat themselves to death. No predators = explosion in deer population = death of plants = the deer starve to death.
Yeah, it’s horrible and nasty that innocent deer have to die to ‘mean’ wolves, but the predators are what keep the population healthy vs the alternative, which is starving themselves to death because they have exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment.
Sam doesn’t seem to ignore this issue at all. He acknowledges the complexity, he acknowledges that in practice we may not be able to figure it out. He describes it as a landscape with peaks and valleys of probabilities.
I am largely sympathetic to Sam’s ideas about morality. Having read most of what he has written about morality, some multiple times, I can’t decide if he is arguing that morality is purely objective, or merely that it is much more objective than most others argue it is. He seems to acknowledge that determining what “well being” is involves at least some subjectivety.
In any case, I certainly do. But I also think that many people misunderstand and misrepresent what Sam has written about morality. I have listened to / read conversations with Sam and philosophers where it really seemed that the philosophers didn’t read anything he wrote and were merely responding by rote to what they assumed he said. I have often been surprised at the apparent lack of reading comprehension among many academics when it comes to Sam’s writings on morality. And disheartened by the resistance from so many academics who should damn well know better to the argument that science (broadly construed and formal) should be utilized much more than it is in working on moral and ethical issues.
I really liked The Moral Landscape, and I’m pretty sure I agreed with everything Harris said, except for the first step, where he simply hops over the is/ought gap. I don’t blame him as it’s not really relevant to his central thesis, but I think that irked the philosophers. I couldn’t much care what they say generally but I think they were right that he failed in that specific sense.
I agree with you, it seems that Sam’s moral landscape gets injected with the illusion of mirage by everyone he encounters. No-one will argue against the peak or valley but want to pin him down on some part of the landscape in between… most of the terrain might be difficult to objectively know if you are stepping towards the peak or towards the valley. That doesn’t mean that the next step is subjective or that your vision of the terrain isn’t diluted. There may be in fact no way to know for certain but the next step is either neutral, up hill or down.. at the end of the day I suppose I am a consequentialist that thinks the valleys and peaks are objective and so then must be everything in between but our vision of the terrain is impaired with all sorts of problems..
The funny thing is I have actually used Sam’s approach to morality on Catholic message boards when arguing against Divine Command Theory type of philosophies. That is, in principle, objective morality can exist sans supernatural deities.
I’m just not sure I can go all the way for the reason that the parameters that define morality seem to be subjective (even if by mutual agreement on definitions). Once you settle on the definition of morality, I agree science in principle can determine whether an act is moral, even if other acts land at equal peaks on the landscape. This is of course also conceding that morality can be in some way ranked, which isn’t necessarily clear: e.g. what is a unit of well being?
Nevertheless, for most cases, I think Sam is right. Science can easily distinguish what increases or decreases suffering in many instances.
I agree that McBrayer’s argument for moral facts is flimsy at best, and he writes as if a whole literature defending the opposite view did not exist — which strike me as a bit disingeniuos.
That said, I’m also horrified that kids are taught stuff about the fact/opinion distinction that is so obviously wrong or confused or both. Where to begin … yeah, “Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat” is a value claim. Whoever drafted this worksheet should get some education first.
I wonder how these days someone might be a philosophy professor at the university and cannot distinguish between ‘opinion’ (belief), a ‘fact’ (knowledge) and an ‘opinion on a fact’.
If someone says: “I believe George Washington was a president of USA” it is the same as to say “I have opinion that it is true that G.W. was president of USA”.
My morals are facts, yours are opinions; this seems to be most people’s basis for these decisions.
If we decided to base our system of government and decision making on reality and equity rather than ideology and selfishness, I’m sure we could decrease the amount of suffering in the world. But since right-wingers have no interest in reality, and care only about their own suffering, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.
Jerry, I’m so glad you found this. I thought of you when I read it yesterday.
No time to read your take-down yet–I will savor it later this evening!
Ah, moral philosophy. So much comes down to how you define the terms. So here are mine and why.
I consider my self a moral desirest vice a consequentialist because I think motivation matters. But, those categories exist only because of the common definitions that have been given. The definition that I accept for a consequentialist implies intent doesn’t matter (picture an assassin trying to kill a young child, missing and hitting a rapist instead). But, I’m sure that most consequentialists would actually argue that intent in that case does matter, so it comes down to so much semantics.
However, when it comes down to “an objective moral truth,” I’m firmly in the “no” camp. I accept a definition of objective reality that implies the event would be the same to all observers or if there were no observers at all. I would challenge anyone to come up with a scenario that an alien race could not be invented that would consider the act moral, although (the majority at least) of humans would find it gruesome. And, if there are no observers, does morality have any meaning at all?
Just to play devils advocate, not to argue for or against “an objective moral truth.”
Being that the aliens are not humans it seems plausible that there could be OMTs that apply to them but not to us, and vice versa.
If there are no beings then there is no meaning since by definition meanings are something that require beings. That doesn’t seem to bear on the question of the existence OMTs unless you have already conceded that morals are subjective. Given that there are beings then regardless of meaning it seems plausible that among the myriad objective properties associated with them that OMTs could exist.
“Just to play devils advocate”
Definitely, don’t feel bad about that position; that’s how we all get smarter!
“Being that the aliens are not humans it seems plausible that there could be OMTs that apply to them but not to us, and vice versa.”
That is my point about the definition of “objective reality.” It should be the same for all sentient beings. From Copernicus, through Newton, through Einstein; the most accurate testable predictions have always come from making the situation the same for all observers; If aliens have a different moral outlook(s) (and I would emphasize the “s” there) that only reenforces the subjectivity of it. Unless there is a way to make moral decisions the same for all observers (human or alien), I just can’t find a way that they would be called objective. Add to that that humans throughout history, and even today, can’t agree on them and there is no way I can call them “objective.”
“If there are no beings then there is no meaning since by definition meanings are something that require beings.”
From all that we can tell, the universe existed for some 13by before humanity arrived here on this humble planet earth. Humanity is likely to go extinct within the next few billion years. I have absolutely no reason to think that the universe will stop existing and functioning when that happens. Unless, some really great evidence comes along to counter that, then yes, meaning (including morality) for us will stop, but that doesn’t mean it will stop for all sentient beings (who may have a drastically different version of morality than our common consensus).
I was unclear. I meant, literally, that what I was going to write should not be taken as an argument for or against objective moral truths, as in I was not interested in discussing that. I merely wanted to comment on the arguments you were employing.
Re objectivety, I see now that you mean platonic ideals, such as William Lane Craig might argue for. Fair enough. I wasn’t thinking of anything so ridiculous. What I had in mind is described well by Sastra above.
Re your last paragraph, I can’t make sense of what you are saying in the context of a response to my statement that you quoted.
darrelle,
For the DA position, I don’t think you were unclear (however, my response obviously failed the clarity test). I was just expressing my general appreciation for those who are willing to play that part (especially when the DA is neutral or generally opposed to the argument they are presenting).
“Re your last paragraph, I can’t make sense of what you are saying in the context of a response to my statement that you quoted.” Yes, I just re-read it and it definitely missed the mark I was shooting for. My intention was to show that a word like “meaning” can have ambiguous interpretations. An example would be, “When a sufficient mass of H2 particles come in close enough proximity, gravity will become the dominate force; “meaning” stars will be formed.” The use of the word “meaning” can mean “implies” or personal significance. Additionally, I meant to propose that possibly billions of sentient beings existed before humanity and billions more will probably exist after humanity, who would no doubt place different “meanings” (the personal significance version)on events; so how could a moral judgement be “objective”. I failed miserably at getting that across. Thank you for the well thought out critique.
If our biology produces (and continues to reproduce) all the necessary brain bits and circuitry and chemicals that yield this sense of what we collectively call ‘reciprocity’, then it seems to me that judgements related to infractions against this sense are not categorically subjective and relative.
Because so many of our evaluations about fairness and what’s just and why equality matters (biologically stimulated not just in us but many species in response to perceived infractions of what appears to me to be an innate sense) underscore value judgements of behaviour (and evaluating the moral consequences that eventually follow), then it seems to me that there is some scientific merit to the ‘objectivity’ position concerning moral values.
It’s objectively true that humans evolved with particular moral intuitions, and that as a result, human societies tend to promote particular moral norms. But the intuitions and norms themselves are not “objective moral facts” that are necessarily true for any conceivable moral agent; they’re the contingent result of our particular evolutionary trajectory.
By analogy: it’s a fact that humans have five fingers on each hand. But “five” is not a fact; it’s just a number.
Is it ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’ that humans are born with fingers?
Is it ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’ that humans are born with reciprocity?
As I wrote earlier, this intuition plays a central role when it encounters an infraction. Human societies extend this sense with all kinds of rules and punishments particular to certain populations in the same way that we can label the number of fingers with a wide variety of numerical words and symbols particular to certain populations.
What I’m trying to say is that the underlying moral value of balanced reciprocity is as biological (and therefore objective) as is the fingers in your example.
I think we divert ourselves from this understanding when we focus on the different expressions of reciprocity and not on the root cause for it: our shared biology (perhaps strongly linked to the usefulness of mirror neuron activity). And that is a pursuit of knowledge much more suitable for science (and I think productive) than we may gain utilizing some kind of nebulous moral philosophy and metaphysics.
Gregory,
“But the intuitions and norms themselves are not “objective moral facts” that are necessarily true for any conceivable moral agent; “
The moral realist theories that I’ve seen generally don’t use “objective” in the way you are using it. What you are talking about seems closer to what is often distinguished as Absolute
Moral Facts – where X Action is wrong at all times in all situations for all moral agents.
(Abrahamic Religions often purport to deliver such Absolute Morality…even though we know they are inconsistent).
Wheres “objective” in the moral realist theories I’m aware of amounts to the more standard concept of objective: Mind-independant facts – that is facts about which you can be right and wrong about, and which don’t change with your opinion.
In this sense, the problem of relativity does not undermine the objective status of a fact. Facts can change, relative to different states of affairs. Height is relative, yet objective.
Once it was objectively true to say “I am shorter than my mother” and now it is objectively true to say “I am taller than my mother.” That those facts can change does not undermine the objectivity – anyone disputing those facts would be “objectively wrong.”
If we, for instance, accept Sam Harris’ bedrock assessment of morality relating to facts about which actions are most likely to promote our well-being, then for instance what is “wrong” can change due to circumstances, yet in each case what is “wrong” is objectively “wrong.” In a time of severe drought it could amount to a moral
crime to toss that pot of water down the sewer.
Objectively so, given it’s deleterious effects on
the well-being of people who needed it to survive.
But when water is plentiful, or over-plentiful, then the moral calculous changes, and there is no problem throwing the water out.
So relativity…and even subjectivity to a degree…don’t undermine objectivity, at least in the theories I’m aware of.
That doesn’t appear to be the sort of objectivity McBrayer is talking about. He’s simply asserting that (for instance) cheating is wrong, period, always and for everyone, and that children should be taught morality in those absolutist terms.
For myself, I agree with you that there can be objective facts about what actions are likely to achieve a given social goal such as maximizing well-being (assuming one can define a suitable metric). But I would consider those to be pragmatic facts of sociology, not objective moral facts.
sub
McBrayer’s piece is terribly muddled, because he swings between “moral facts”, “moral claims”, “value claims”, and “moral truths”; between “true” and “correct”; and so on.
It’s very sloppy writing, even once you get past the hyperbolic nonsense like “It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter that cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on”.
(1) I’m not sure that there is rampant cheating; and (2) I really doubt that what cheating there is is due to a lack of teaching that one should not cheat. I cannot think of a teacher who has not taught that cheating is wrong, and generally assessed penalties for cheating. McBrayer’s writing “if we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter that cheating is wrong” instead of the simple “if we haven’t taught our students for 12 years that cheating is wrong” makes it clear how he’s pushing “fact” into a place where it doesn’t belong by most people’s sense of “fact”.
I think he is at least partially right about the fact v. opinion worksheets – the pieces of a couple that I read were miserable.
There’s another takedown, by Adam Laats, at http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/tag/justin-p-mcbrayer/.
McBrayer has also written a defense of (a revised) Pascal’s Wager: http://smithandfranklin.com/current-issues/The-Wager-Renewed-Believing-in-God-is-Good-for-You/9/1/40/html. Bottom line – well, read the title, otherwise known as “fake it till you make it”.
2nd paragraph, last part:
‘McBrayer’s writing “if we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter that cheating is wrong” instead of the simple “if we haven’t taught our students for 12 years that cheating is wrong” makes it clear how he’s pushing “fact” into a place where it doesn’t belong by most people’s sense of “fact”.’ AND, his writing “if we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter that cheating is wrong” instead of the simple “if we’ve taught our students for 12 years that it isn’t true that cheating is wrong” makes it clear how he’s skewing the story, since I just don’t believe that’s what teachers do.
3rd paragraph:
Should be split into two at “There’s another … “.
He does address several objections but avoids the most important one: if theism is false, theistic belief improving quality of life does not therefore mean that a deity is the cause. It is something else, in fact it must be something else. And if naturalism is true, an assumption for which there is no evidence against there are natural causes for any increased happiness for theists, which could be in principle applied without the supernatural crap.
BF Skinner — bless his heart — asserted that if a kid hasn’t internalized ethics by age 5, it’s too late.
You don’t learn a list of rule, any more than you learn all the possible sentences in your language.
You learn how to work and play with other people. It’s a language.
I’m curious to know whether the people here who assert that there are no objective moral facts believe that there are objective mathematical facts.
The problem is the word “belief”. You can remove this word from the statement about Washington and solve the issue.
I find the word “belief” is more trouble than it’s worth. It can apply to facts, opinions, or articles of faith. Better not to use it and be explicit about the level of certainty in a statement.
McBrayer mistakes moral norms — how people think people ought to be behave — for objective moral facts. The only facts of the matter are anthropological, documenting what sort of norms people and societies commonly hold. But the fact that a norm is widely held does not promote it to the status of an objective fact in its own right; it merely suggests that there’s some strong selective pressure (be it social or biological) favoring such norms.
This is a point McBrayer completely sidesteps in his article. It apparently never occurs to him to ask why people think cheating is wrong. He just tautologically assumes that since right-thinking people do think that, it must be objectively true in some sense.
First define ‘cheating’. One person’s ‘cheating’ is another person’s ‘gamesmanship’. (And I don’t mean that term in any pejorative way, if part of the game is to outwit the opponent then finding an original twist that still complies with the letter of the rules is quite legitimate. Of course the person who didn’t think of it will still say it’s cheating or ‘not in the spirit of the game’ or some equally flexible and hard-to-define criteria).
I guess most people do think cheating is wrong, I’m just pointing out the slipperiness of the concept.
I agree about the main point, by the way – just ‘cos everybody thinks it, don’t make it necessarily so. I think bigamy – and polyandry – is fine*. Prove to me by logic that that ain’t so.
(*for the sake of argument, anyway).
(And I’d better concede that cheating on a test is definitely outside the rules, and wrong, for McBrayer’s particular example).
I disagree. Both moral absolutes and moral truths are not that difficult to show. See for example these two related recent reddit posts:
1. http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/2xvvj2/cmv_there_is_no_intrinsic_truth_to_morality/cp4569x
2. http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2xoet7/why_our_children_dont_think_there_are_moral_facts/cp2jber
As both point out, you need to clearly define what morality is, and how circular or vague most people seem to leave it. Morality only has meaning as a set of rules for social transactions, i.e., an individual being that never interacts with others has no need for defining morality. Morality has to do with defining rules that are objective best interests, meaning not personal self-interest but rules that maximize the overall demonstrable value regardless of which person you are.
The links both show the Prisoner’s Dilemma, how the solution is an absolute truth, and the absolute morality that derives from it. The 2nd one especially describes how this drove evolved moral behaviour, moral judgment, and aligns with cognitive calculations as well. It also shows how relative morals are due to derivitive content and hijacking of these absolute morals which rely on judgments of intent and expected outcomes, so are easy to hijack.
The 2nd link lists the things it shows:
1. The definition of morality as objective best interests.
2. The mathematical / game theoretic nature of absolute morality.
3. The evolution of instinct for moral behaviour.
4. The evolution of instinct for moral judgment (of others).
5. The cognitive risk calculations for moral behaviours that augment the instinct.
6. The instinct for rationalizing the difference between our moral judgments and our own behaviours via the free-rider problem.
7. The complexity of applying these instincts and cognitive calculations based on expected outcomes.
8. The hi-jacking of moral instincts based on conditioning different expected outcomes.
9. Moral relativism resulting from the hi-jacking of moral instincts for absolute morality.
I think the details in the links are pretty solid arguments from a scientific stand-point, as in Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and game theory economics.
In both examples you still have to agree what is a positive outcome.
Speaking personally, I find Jerry’s position somewhat strange.
I do my best (don’t always succeed mind) to live my life amorally. I have not turned into some what others call an immoral monster. (Not that I can tell anyway).
A lack of belief in free will together with a belief in some kind morality gives me a headache.
For me it is a non sequitur.
oops misread the OP
my apologies
I read that headline and said to myself, that has got to be a lot of B…
I have to give credit to Prof Ceiling Cat who took the time to point out just what odors of B…
It seems to me that there are many moral axioms that are objective in the same way all things are objective: they are inter-subjectively verifiable.
Ask any persons in the world–any age, nationality, religion, gender, culture–if they would like to have their houses burned down, have all their possessions stolen, be killed because of their religious beliefs, be discriminated against because of ethnicity or gender, have lies spread about them, have their children stolen and sold into slavery–the list goes on–the most likely answer would be a resounding no, even from ISIS members.
If my conjecture is accurate then nearly everyone, including young children, innately knows a great deal about what is right and wrong from the very fact of being human.
Of course, that does not preclude people from applying a liberal dollop of intellectual dishonesty. For example, an ISIS member might reply that if he were a woman he would want to be held in submission or if he were an apostate he would want someone to cut his head off. But, of course, if he really were either a woman or an apostate he would perforce have a quite different point of view.
Alas, the deeply religious seem not to have the foggiest notion of how to behave themselves without commands from above.
If like some thing then it is moral and if I dislike something then it is immoral?
I am probably missing something. You could say the same about prison, but I think that most of us find imprisonment of those we consider criminal fundamentally wrong ( though we may argue about what makes a criminal, how to run the justice system etc.).
I do not understand how your examples are different in principle.
I would certainly agree that my examples do not cover the gamut of human behavior but they and others like them would seem to show there is a wide agreement on many issues that are considered right and wrong.
A person not liking to be imprisoned for armed robbery is an example of the intellectual dishonesty I referred to. If that person were the one being robbed they would likely find it quite appropriate that the perpetrator be punished. No one likes to be robbed at gun point. Not even a robber who robs at gun point. Tacitly the robber agrees that robbery is wrong.
Fact is a state of affairs that obtains. This is the way Wittgenstein defines “fact” and is often meant by contemporary philosophers. So on this definition, facts doesn’t necessarily imply being objective nor scientifically verified. Some philosophy people speak about qualia inversion as a subjective fact, although no one can verify it. There are a lot of unknown facts about origin of biological entities, birth of the universe that people speak about, though they are not established. Facts are truth evaluative, so according to moral realist view, moral claims can be either true or false based on moral facts. This does not conflict with the consequentialist view that act should be judged right or wrong based on its consequence. It seems to me a bit too hasty to claim that “at bottom all discussions of right or wrong come down to what result one prefers”. If there are strategies that humans commonly employ (regarded as good by them) for building sound relationship with others, that may well be explainable based on evolutionary, neuroscientific grounds, or social grounds. I think that is better than simply reducing all moral claims to subjective psychology.
Reblogged this on The Troll Cave and commented:
The article dealt with in this post also bothered me when I read it. I can’t see how the classroom, especially as the primary school level, is even a healthy place to discuss anything other than objective truths.
I also think there is a degree to moral claims. To put aside the difficult moral questions such as abortion, think for instance about the following order.
“Kill all members of your family and your closest friends.”
Now I assume this is a very difficult order for even ISIS to follow. It is probably better to regard people who follow this order as psychologically challenged individuals rather than as following their subjective moral order.
There is a differing degree of endorsement to moral claims, and I expect lowest degree of moral claims such as “don’t destroy your neighbor and friends” may well be endorsed as right almost unanimously by people for good evolutionary reasons.
It is logically fallacious to infer from the claim that not all moral claims are decidable to the claim that all moral claims are undecidable, and I believe at least some moral claims can be judged right or wrong based on facts about how we are made up.
I hate that word ‘moral’. What it usually means is ‘the embodiment of my prejudices’.
I’m almost equally suspicious of things that are done ‘on principle’ – it usually means we have no immediate defensible practical reason for doing them but we’re going to do them anyway. Usually to the detriment of somebody else.
I don’t think the “both fact and opinion” description aim to be so deep.
It looks to me like the Accommodationist Gambit of ‘religion is compatible with science because some people are both accepting some facts and supporting some religious opinion’. Here religion is hidden behind the curtain, and it is enough for this variant of the Gambit that some exclusively make opinion while others aim to look at the facts.
But it is the same tool for religion.
[The ‘moral’ variant is akin to the older root AG, when religious claims were taken to be as strong as science theories.]
Jerry, you should challenge Sam Harris in a public debate on morality. That would be really interesting to follow and a refreshing change for the same old debates between bronze age mythology and modern scientific world view (which, though important for the society, can, after a while, get intellectually unrewarding for the educated audience).
So far the only challenges I’ve encountered on the thesis Sam laid out in The Moral Landscape have fallen into two categories: 1) those who either misrepresent Sam’s views or 2) just play a different language game, i.e. present differences that are purely semantic. If there’s a third category, based on sound evidence and reason, I would like to see the arguments spelled out as clearly and concisely as I know you can.
There is a nice discussion between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins about the topic on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeJrcVhtzYo but they hardly disagree on anything.
Second
To rearrange the order of two OP quotes:
JAC: “I simply don’t believe that one needs to tell kids that there are moral facts” (yet earlier you say) “without rules we can’t have harmonious societies”
This whole Post hinges on that word “fact” and its ambiguity of meaning.
1. The sun will rise tomorrow.
2. The sun will not be seen from the north pole on Dec.25th.
3. Clouds will obscure my sun rise tomorrow.
4. I shall see the sun rise tomorrow.
1. & 2. We assume are “facts” (99.99…..% probable).
3. Factuality would rely on reliable weather “forecasting”.
4. ditto me being awake and able to see it.
These 4 statements are all factual but with varying objective “truth”.
Are not all “scientific facts” the same? That is they all have different probability in their relative likelihood “tomorrow”. None are “philosophically” absolute.
JAC: “I think that what one sees as “right” or “wrong” ultimately rests on a set of subjective preferences that can’t be adjudicated scientifically.” (but later you say) “I judge actions as “right” or “wrong” based on their consequences to society”
5. All-out global nuclear war would be humanly (planetary?) disaster. The consequences in material damage and radio-activity for everybody and everything would completely outweigh any human advantage.
Based on the consequential physical evidence of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc, I contend that 5. is 99.99…..% probable and as “wrong” scientifically and therefore “objectively immoral” as 1&2 are “facts”.
Similarly based reasoning from past data it is possible to give a “truth” value to “moral facts” -by forecasting the consequential results of behaviour. But tthese forecasts will not be absolute nor universally applicable and will always depend on an event’s contemporary circumstances. To deny this I think de-values the concept of morality and the word’s useful everyday meaning, even making the word effectively meaningless.
Darwin suspected that evolved behavioral traits were the “root cause” of morality, implying the impossibility of objective morality. A bit later, in 1906, Edvard Westermarck did a slam dunk on objective morality in his “Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas,” which can be read free online at:
http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=txktAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb_hover
For example:
“That moral concepts are ultimately based on emotions either of indignation or approval is a fact which a certain school of thinkers has in vain attempted to deny.”
“…to name an act good or bad ultimately implies that it is apt to give rise to an emotion of approval or disapproval in him who pronounces the judgment.”
“While the import of the predicate of a moral judgment may thus in every case be traced back to an emotion in him who pronounces the judgment, it is generally assumed to possess the character of universality, or “objectivity” as well.”
“We are not willing to admit that our moral convictions are a mere matter of taste, and we are inclined to regard convictions differing from our own as errors.”
“This objectivity ascribed to judgments which have a merely subjective origin springs in the first place from the similarity in the mental constitution of men, and, generally speaking, the tendency to regard them as objective is greater in proportion as the impressions vary less in each particular case.”
Westermarck was really just stating the obvious in light of Darwin’s great theory. He was then promptly forgotten. Since our survival depends on accurate self-knowledge, it might behoove us to go back and have another look.