Revision as of 08:43, 17 February 2018

Work In Progress.

Objective morality is often the subject of straw-manning, whereby, it is claimed that moral objectivism purports the existence of the moral properties, such as rightness and wrongness, that exist independently of the natural properties of the world. This results from a misunderstanding of what objective morality means, and works against rational morality and moral discourse. In this article we will consider distinction between the well defined philosophical positions of moral universalism (moral objectivism) and moral relativism, and between moral realism and moral subjectivism. It's worth noting that due to the way these positions are defined, it is possible to have a subjectivist position that is also universal (objective), such as divine command theory. Whereby morality is universal (objective) and depends on a mind (the mind of God).

Moral Universalism vs Moral Relativism

The distinction between moral universalism and moral relativism, is that moral universalism holds that morality is universal, meaning that moral principles apply to everyone and apply everywhere. Put simply, what is wrong for me here and now is also wrong for you. Moral relativism, in contrast, holds that there are moral principles that do not apply to everyone or everywhere and are dependent on the opinions of a person (individualist subjectivism), culture (cultural subjectivism) or similar.

Pro-Universalist argument

The dominant view in philosophy is that morality is universal.

The primary argument in favour of universalism is semantic in nature: holding that morality is by definition universal, and as a consequence, if a rule is not universal then it is not a moral rule. Proponents of this line of reasoning appeal to the traditional use and meaning of morality, such as that found in religions, whereby moral rules apply universally. Moreover moral universalism aligns with the commonsense perception that when discussing conflicting moral statements, e.g. ‘torturing children is good’ versus ‘torturing children is not good’, (uttered by two different individuals), only one of these assertions could possibly be right.

However, semantic arguments are often not very convincing, and arguments against non-subjectivist moral relativism are much more powerful:

Arbitrary subjectivist-relativist spectrum

There is commonly understood to be something of a spectrum between individual mind-level subjectivism and larger scale cultural relativism.

However, non-subjectivist moral relativism runs into problems where the boundaries that define morality are very easily broken down and rely on subjective interpretation. For example, culture breaks down into subcultures until the individual level is reached, and there's no clear method by which to establish an objective culturally relative reference frame.

This problem (which is to date without solution) forces realists into a universalist position to avoid contradiction or appealing to arbitrary social boundaries (or forces them into subjectivism). This is not to say that the context of society can't be relevant to realists e.g. with respect to consequences of actions in a consequentialist system, but morality can not be defined based on social rules in themselves.

Moral Realism vs Moral Subjectivism

Moral realism and moral subjectivism are defined by commitments to the following theses (where proposition means a statement suitable for truth or falsity):

Moral realism

1. moral statements express propositions
2. some moral statements are true
3. moral statements are true or false in virtue of mind-independent properties of the world

Moral subjectivism

1. moral statements express propositions
2. some moral statements are true
3. moral statements are true or false in virtue of mind-dependent properties of the world

Mind Independence

It's important to appreciate the broad range of interpretations of mind-dependence/mind-independence, and that to a substantial degree those interpretations blur the line between these categories, which is unhelpful.
Meaningful interpretations create a sharp line, which is what we use here. When we speak of mind dependence, we mean it is the opinion of a mind, one not otherwise intended to reflect objective facts outside that mind, that makes something moral or not. That is a belief; one without inherent truth value beyond the fact of the belief itself.

• The belief "Chocolate is delicious." is an opinion.
• The belief "Bob thinks Chocolate is delicious." is a fact belief which purports to represent the objective fact of the opinion Bob holds.

This is crucial to understand in order to comprehend the functional boundaries of mind-dependence. If we regard the belief "Bob thinks Chocolate is delicious" to be mind-dependent despite there being objective truth value to the claim outside the mind that believes it on the grounds that a mind is involved in the scenario being described, then everything becomes mind-dependent: not just psychology, but all of science which is based on some level on observation or interpretation by minds.

People may believe that morality is or is not mind-independent, but the claim that morality can NOT be mind-independent on the grounds that it is thought of, analyzed, affects, or is measured by its affect on minds is inherently linked to a deeper factual subjectivism about reality and the universe (often magical thinking).

Implications and limits of universalism

Now if we are going to commit to a form of moral universalism, we must either adopt moral realism or an ideal observer form of subjectivism. Where an ideal observer theory, is a theory in which the moral actions are determined by an ideal observer such as a God, or a fictional ideally rational agent.

However, where those ideal observers are NOT non-naturalistic/magical in some way (possessing souls or free will that are uncoupled from determinism or reason) because naturalistic ideal observers function on certain rules that are mind independent (e.g. an ideally rational agent behaves in accordance with logical and mathematical concepts like game theory), these views collapse back into realism.

Therefore, the only way to commit to universalism without adopting realism (naturalistic or not) is by adopting a non-naturalistic ideal observer form of subjectivism -- this is broadly something theistic apologists are right about, although it does not necessarily have to be a god, it is incompatible with materialistic atheism.

Consensus

There is little overwhelming consensus among philosophers on any topics, and a common problem in academic philosophy is a anti-status-quo or originality bias. Philosophers have a tendency to argue themselves into unusual positions for novelty.

However according to a survey by philpapers [1] most philosophers subscribe to a form of moral realism.

William Lane Craig & Skeptic Community Strawman

Naturalistic Realism

Naturalistic realism refers to moral realist theories in which moral properties such as right and wrong refer to natural properties, such as well-being. These are split into two main categories, theories in which moral properties are reducible to natural properties and ones where they are not (i.e. where moral properties are irreducible to natural properties.). In the following sections we will describe the leading contemporarys views of Railton realism (reducible) and Cornell realism (irreducible).

In the following sections we will be using material from Miller's Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics [2]

Railton Realism

Railton Realism holds that moral properties are reducible to a set of natural properties, N (e.g. brain states that are equivalent to happiness and suffering). He proposes the following reductions of moral terms

non-moral good: An individual’s good consists in what he would want himself to want, or to pursue, were he to contemplate his present situation from a standpoint fully and vividly informed about himself and his circumstances, and entirely free of cognitive error or lapses of instrumental rationality.

Moral rightness: x is morally right if and only if x would be approved of by an ideally instrumentally rational and fully informed agent considering the question ‘How best to maximize the amount of non-moral goodness?’ from a social point of view in which the interests of all potentially affected individuals were counted equally.

Cornell Realism

Cornell realism holds that moral properties such as right, wrong, good, bad etc. are natural properties but are not reducible to non-moral properties.

But first: what would it mean for moral properties to be natural properties if they are not reducible to non-moral properties? According to non-reductionists, moral properties ‘are constituted by’, or ‘are multiply realized by’, or ‘supervene upon’ non-moral properties, but they do not reduce to non-moral properties. To illustrate the difference consider the moral property of rightness:

We can imagine an indefinite number of ways in which actions can be morally right. [Non-reductionists] think that, in any one example of moral rightness, the rightness can be identified with non-moral properties (e.g. the handing over of money, the opening of a door for someone else, etc.). But they claim that, across all morally right actions, there is no one non-moral property or set of non-moral properties that all such situations have in common and to which moral rightness can be reduced.

For example, one might argue that certain natural kinds like ‘intelligence’ or ‘organism’ are not obviously reducible to natural kinds in physics, and that mental types like being in pain is not necessarily reducible to neurological types like being in a state of C-fibre stimulation.