Ethics without God
May 9th 2007 03:00
This will be a five-part series about moral intuitions, listen to your heart, the heart knows the truth, etc.
I mainly want to make one or two very obvious, very simple claims about utilitarianism, but will first spend four posts sketching out some background.
Descriptive ethics vs normative ethics
* Descriptive: You can take sociological, anthropological, evolutionary approaches to why people believe what they believe; you can take an analytic approach to how moral language is used; and you can take a psychological approach to why people make the decisions they make.
* Normative: You can think out a system that people could or should follow.
* I'll be talking about normative ethics.
God and correspondence
* It's common to believe in the correspondence theory of truth. On this theory, what makes a sentence true or false is its correspondence to a state of affairs in the world. What makes "The doughnut is on the table" true is a state of affairs whereby the doughnut is on the table.
* It's common to treat "Murder is wrong" and "Friendship is good" as "truth evaluable", as capable of being true or false. If someone asserted that thievery was okay, a lot of people's gut reaction would be "No, no, you're wrong", as if there were a fact of the matter.
* And it's common to think that a large number of our everyday moral claims have some basis, are more than conditioned responses.
* But if you believe all these, then what states of affairs do moral claims reference, and how did we learn those states, perceive them?
* A common answer -- one type of normative system -- is divine command theory: -- that moral claims refer to God's orders, just like "murder is illegal" refers to a human-made criminal code.
* And seeing that nature is perfectly orderly, and God is benevolent, then these divine laws are certain, and are knowable by reason or intuitions or revelation (all three are in accord).
Death of God
* The death of God is the end not of a single belief, but of many beliefs. After all, pick a church, and there will likely be many things taught by it, books and books of theology.
* It might not even be possible to just believe in a deity -- perhaps one needs supporting beliefs about what that being is or how the world must be for the deity to exist.
* Above all, the death of deity represents an unravelling -- of all of your metaphysics. If you can't rely on that mega belief, then what can you rely on? Everything comes into question. Is there still an up and a down, says Nietzsche.
* Most secular normative systems will be a rescuing of some part of the old certainties.
Queer laws
* What if the rules of the game were that we had to argue in secular terms? Or what if, for whatever reason, you didn't believe in God, or couldn't rely on or use Him/Her/It/Them?
* On either scenario, if you still wanted to hold fast (a) to correspondence theory, and (b) to the idea that moral claims can be true, then you'd have to find something else for the moral claims to reference.
* And if you wanted to hold (c) the well-groundedness of much of our everyday moral talk, then presumably you'd have to point to some way of knowing the moral truth that's within a lot of people's grasp.
* One position is that moral laws are somehow "floating", are out there. (Fox Mulder: "The truth is out there.") Right and wrong are built into the fabric of the universe and exist in some weird sub-dimension of their own (living next door to numbers and to universals like "redness").
* There are plenty of people who believe this (or at least, who say or think they believe). And you can even believe something like this while remaining a theist. For you might take the position that God isn't omnipotent, but is constrained. Perhaps God can constrain himself, or perhaps there's no possible universe in which 2 x 2 = 5, nor any possible universe in which murder is right.
* Of course, there's also plenty of people who are skeptical of free-floating laws. If free-floating moral laws did exist, they would be very "queer" sorts of things. They would be unlike laws of physics, which bind you whether you believe in them or not. And we would also need a queer sort of faculty to become aware of them.
Normative ethics (mostly) without queerness
* Queer laws tries to junk God, but to save everything else. Other options go down the route of discarding more of everything else. For instance, you don't have to assume that ordinary claims are largely well-founded and/or correct. Perhaps they're mostly wrong. You can take more radical approaches to re-investigating or re-creating a normative moral system.
* There were a whole slew of metaphysical commitments that stuck together in the old order. And these all come apart in the new (similar, perhaps, to the way that concepts like "self" or "purpose" come apart when you try to apply them in contexts where they don't belong).
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Stanford prison experiment, Ten Commandments. The image of JL Mackie came from this website. The donut table came from this site.
I mainly want to make one or two very obvious, very simple claims about utilitarianism, but will first spend four posts sketching out some background.
***
Descriptive ethics vs normative ethics
* Descriptive: You can take sociological, anthropological, evolutionary approaches to why people believe what they believe; you can take an analytic approach to how moral language is used; and you can take a psychological approach to why people make the decisions they make.
* Normative: You can think out a system that people could or should follow.
* I'll be talking about normative ethics.
An image from the Stanford prison experiment. Guards force one prisoner to do push-ups, while another is made to stand and sing.
***
God and correspondence
And then, sometimes, the table is on the doughnut...
* It's common to treat "Murder is wrong" and "Friendship is good" as "truth evaluable", as capable of being true or false. If someone asserted that thievery was okay, a lot of people's gut reaction would be "No, no, you're wrong", as if there were a fact of the matter.
* And it's common to think that a large number of our everyday moral claims have some basis, are more than conditioned responses.
Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt (1659)
* A common answer -- one type of normative system -- is divine command theory: -- that moral claims refer to God's orders, just like "murder is illegal" refers to a human-made criminal code.
* And seeing that nature is perfectly orderly, and God is benevolent, then these divine laws are certain, and are knowable by reason or intuitions or revelation (all three are in accord).
***
Death of God
* The death of God is the end not of a single belief, but of many beliefs. After all, pick a church, and there will likely be many things taught by it, books and books of theology.
* It might not even be possible to just believe in a deity -- perhaps one needs supporting beliefs about what that being is or how the world must be for the deity to exist.
* Above all, the death of deity represents an unravelling -- of all of your metaphysics. If you can't rely on that mega belief, then what can you rely on? Everything comes into question. Is there still an up and a down, says Nietzsche.
* Most secular normative systems will be a rescuing of some part of the old certainties.
***
Queer laws
* What if the rules of the game were that we had to argue in secular terms? Or what if, for whatever reason, you didn't believe in God, or couldn't rely on or use Him/Her/It/Them?
* On either scenario, if you still wanted to hold fast (a) to correspondence theory, and (b) to the idea that moral claims can be true, then you'd have to find something else for the moral claims to reference.
The 'argument from queerness' is famously put in 'Ethics: inventing right and wrong', 1977, by JL Mackie; but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find earlier versions in Hume, Kant, and Mill
* One position is that moral laws are somehow "floating", are out there. (Fox Mulder: "The truth is out there.") Right and wrong are built into the fabric of the universe and exist in some weird sub-dimension of their own (living next door to numbers and to universals like "redness").
* There are plenty of people who believe this (or at least, who say or think they believe). And you can even believe something like this while remaining a theist. For you might take the position that God isn't omnipotent, but is constrained. Perhaps God can constrain himself, or perhaps there's no possible universe in which 2 x 2 = 5, nor any possible universe in which murder is right.
* Of course, there's also plenty of people who are skeptical of free-floating laws. If free-floating moral laws did exist, they would be very "queer" sorts of things. They would be unlike laws of physics, which bind you whether you believe in them or not. And we would also need a queer sort of faculty to become aware of them.
***
Normative ethics (mostly) without queerness
* Queer laws tries to junk God, but to save everything else. Other options go down the route of discarding more of everything else. For instance, you don't have to assume that ordinary claims are largely well-founded and/or correct. Perhaps they're mostly wrong. You can take more radical approaches to re-investigating or re-creating a normative moral system.
* There were a whole slew of metaphysical commitments that stuck together in the old order. And these all come apart in the new (similar, perhaps, to the way that concepts like "self" or "purpose" come apart when you try to apply them in contexts where they don't belong).
* It might be possible, therefore, to take dimensions of this old order, and to categorize secular ethical systems relative to them. You could ask such questions as: --
- Ontology? If not queer and free-floating, then what? What kind of thing are ethical laws? Is ethics discovered, or, like a formal axiomatic system, invented? Can your system change? -- and if so, what are the variables? Does your system purport to provide a complete way of life, a guide to exactly what to do in any circumstance? Or is there not a "right" choice in all situations (perhaps hard questions need not have correct answers)?
- Objectivity? Are there ethical truths at all (or only ethical problems)? Were the existentialists and Dostoevsky right that when God is dead, everything is permitted? Furthermore, does your system purport to be binding (and if so, why?), and in what way is it binding (do you need to make an is/ought jump)? Or is it like a toy, an amusement, a logical puzzle you set yourself?
- Universality? What's the range? On whom, if anyone, is your system binding? On all creatures (can lions do good or bad), on rational creatures, on free creatures, on social creatures, on contemporary humans, or on just you?
- Knowledge? What are the epistemological values in your system, as you think it out? Do you embrace such things as reasonableness and non-contradiction and simplicity? And what are the epistemological starting points, and do they themselves (can they themselves) have a justification? If there's a "right" choice in any situation, and if this choice is knowable, how is it knowable? How is it knowable what's morally relevant and irrelevant? Are reason, intuition, and revelation still in accord? And can you have truth without correspondence?
* Note that secular ethics can still embrace one or all of these in a traditional way. For instance, ethics without God still holds out the possibility of some form of objectivity. "Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement": Derek Parfit, Reasons and persons, 1984.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Stanford prison experiment, Ten Commandments. The image of JL Mackie came from this website. The donut table came from this site.
| 69 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Damo
It is deep.
I am still trying to work out whether there has been any differentiation made between:
Habits
Customs
Laws
Ethics
or Morals.
The ancient greeks believed that a man could sin unknowingly. Oedipus Rex unknowingly killed his father and married his mother then tore out his eyes so that he could not see the results of his sin: His daughter. The implication was that even if you unknowingly break the moral code it is still the same sin.
The question of social conditioned morals was explored by William Golding in the book 'Lord of the Flies'. Without knowledge of right and wrong being instructed the society breaks down and turns upon itself. The conditioning to act civilized can even be destroyed in some people.
Dostoeviski is a very sharp character who utterly detested Nietchze's concepts and thought that they were the ravings of vitriolic madman. A dream sequence in 'Crime and Punishment' featuring a horse mimics one of Nietchze nervous break downs. The entire theme of the book followed what occurs when people follow their own moral laws to thier logical conclusion. The student murders to become equal to Napoleon (hinting at the Superman defense for new morality) The final dream in the book that has everyone in the world killing each other as they follow their new moralities to their ruthless conclusion is meant as a vivid warning to the furture.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Re the difference between habits, customs, laws, morals, ethics...
Well, "ethics" and "morals" I use interchangeably (I think it's actually less confusing that way). This is one common usage -- that they're perfectly synonymous -- but some people do draw distinctions. I posted a couple of quotes on this once.
Laws vs morals -- well, I suppose when you write about laws, you make me think of things like "Do not piss in elevators. Penalty: $200." Explicit prohibitions and orders, etc. Well, morality needn't involve laws, and needn't be codified like any ordinary legal system (though it frequently is in religious ethics). Alternatives to law-based morality might include: (1) people who believe you can get by simply with virtues or values, and that you don't need laws (and the difference between a rule and a value is that rules are things that can be obeyed or disobeyed, followed or broken, whereas values are things like "happiness" -- some sort of maximizable quality); (2) people who believe that there are no hard-set laws, but only rules of thumb (feminist "ethics of care" claims to believe this); and (3) people who believe that there are neither laws nor rules of thumb (like existentialists).
Re habits and customs vs morality... Well, in origin "ethics" and "morals" both mean something like "customs", habitual practice, traditions. But I think the words "ethics" and "morals" have developed to embrace more than that. So, for instance, it makes sense (I'm not breaching any rules of language) if I say to you that removing your shoes before you enter a house is an amoral, non-moral, value-neutral matter, even though it's a custom.
The question remains, though, whether all morals are nothing but customs, even if not all customs are morals (in the same way that though the concepts of "happiness" and "pleasure" are distinct, one could ask whether all happiness really is nothing but pleasure when you examine the matter). And this is sort of a meta-ethical dispute. The moral relativist believes some version of the claim that morals ARE nothing but customs. Whereas other people would want to say that morals also have... a factual basis, a rational basis, etc.
Some other random thoughts: --
Yep, and so do many other societies. Whereas Catholicism seems to be divided on the issue. On the one hand, it places a lot of emphasis on the intention rather than the act. So, the crime is committed even if the act is unsuccessful. On the other hand, it believes in "original sin", the taint passed down from Adam. So you can be responsible, or guilty, or tainted, even if you yourself didn't do anything wrong.
In law, I can't quite remember the phrases (something like "strict" responsibility), but, in negligence for instance, there's a difference between being held to be accountable purely by virtue of the act, and being held accountable on the basis of motive.
As to which is better full stop, or whether both sorts of responsibility are useful in a society, I don't know...
It's true that morality is a sort of "social artifact", that develops independently of human biological evolution...
Don't know if it's true that society literally breaks down if morals aren't taught. So, for instance, you might doubt that apes teach morals to their young, ape societies still function.
But maybe apes do teach morals. Children grow up in a "life-world" of meanings. Even before they learn language, they learn an order to things. This is a topic that's more complex than I can go into here, but maybe the teaching of morals isn't explicit, but more a matter of being acquired through imitation and observation, etc.
I don't remember the book that well, but I'd suggest that if murderworld really is the outcome of people following their own moral laws, and if murderworld is undesirable, that the only basis you have for finding it undesirable is following your own moral laws...