I’m thrilled to see moral psychology here on Substack. I loved the Atlas of Moral Psychology (especially the Machery and Stich articles, which I use in my classes). I also teach moral psychology, but I specialize in a fairly uncommon area: the psychology of metaethics, and, in particular, in the question of whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or antirealists.
Given my interests, I was surprised to see the conversation move straight to a discussion about metaethics. I was also surprised that your students seem more drawn to realism than has been my experience. I suspect it may depend a lot on what they’re presented with in class and how the topic is introduced and framed. I usually get an overwhelming majority staunchly committed to some type of antirealism.
In the interests of clarity, I use the terms “realism” and “antirealism” to refer to the positions that there are stance-independent moral facts, and that there are not, respectively. I typically include most common forms of relativism as a type of antirealism, since such views typically hold that there are moral truths, but that their truth depends on the stances of different individuals or cultures (hence, there are moral truths, but they are stance-dependent). I am an antirealist myself, even though as you may know moral realism is the most common position among analytic philosophers (the 2020 PhilPapers survey found that 62% of respondents endorsed moral realism). So I’m sympathetic to what seem like antirealist leanings in the article.
However, I’m a lot less confident that nonphilosophers are especially inclined towards realism or antirealism. You say:
>>"All of us—even moral psychologists who argue for moral relativism—tend to feel that the answers to morality are etched in stone."
This does strike me as a little different from saying people are moral realists; one could feel morality is this way, even if one rejects this on reflection. This remark is also qualified with the term “tend,” and the use of “all” may be nonliteral (after all, we could presumably find at least some people with unconventional psychology). However, even with these qualifiers in place, I’m not convinced most people feel that morality is “etched in stone,” if, by this, you mean that people tend to feel that there are stance-independent moral truths (i.e., that moral realism is true).
You say something similar here:
>>"The potential existence of objective morality—of true answers to questions of right and wrong—is alluring to everyone [...]"
Once again, I’m not sure this is true. It’s not alluring to me at all. The extent to which it’s alluring to anyone in general strikes me as an open question. If I had to wager, I’d wager that this is not the case.
You’ll rarely see me come to defense of analytic philosophers, as I’m almost always critical in practice, but I also think this conclusion is a bit quick:
>>"That we can’t put our trust in the ethical absolutes of philosophers argues against objective morality, at least from philosophy."
It’s not clear to me how the rejection of absolute moral rules argues against objective morality. Moral absolutism is a feature of normative moral principles, and has very little to do with metaethics. A moral antirealist could endorse absolute moral rules just as readily as a realist could. Likewise, the mere existence of biases influencing philosophers doesn’t strike me as a good reason to think morality isn’t objective.
I also worry that you’re a bit inconsistent with your use of terms like “objective” and “subjective.” These terms have very specific technical uses among philosophers. When it comes to metaethics, “objective” often refers to stance-independence, while “subjective” often reverse to a way in which the truth of moral claims is indexed to the standards of individuals, allowing the truth status of a moral claim to vary, typically in a stance-dependent way. Yet several of your uses of these terms differ from these technical uses, e.g.:
>>"But despite how clear cut these rules may seem, religious morality—at least in practice—is far from objective. "
One problem is that religious texts require human interpretation, which is inherently subjective. People must make inferences about the meaning of ambiguous rules—does “do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery”
That something must be judged from the point of view of individuals and is thereby subject to whatever biases or predispositions they have is a different sense of “subjective” than the use of “subjective” in the metaethical sense.
Likewise for your use of the term “objective” which is presumably intended to serve as a contrast to this use of “subjective.” It’s not clear whether you intend to use these terms in their metaethical sense or not. If you do, then these uses of the terms are inappropriate. If not, then it could mislead readers to use non-technical uses of terms like “objective” and “subjective” in the middle of a discussion about metaethics, where those terms have different, technical uses.
I’m also a bit puzzled by this reference to relativism:
>>"You can also see evidence for moral relativism in the change of official religious stances over time."
What form of relativism are you referring to? There are at least three major distinctions to make:
Metaethical relativism: The claim that the truth of moral claims is indexed to and can vary in accord with different moral standards, typically those of individuals or cultures
Normative relativism: The claim that one ought tolerate other individuals or groups with different moral standards
Descriptive relativism: The claim that there are differences in people’s fundamental moral beliefs and values
There are subcategories within these positions, as well, e.g., agent and appraiser metaethical relativism. Generally speaking, changes in moral standards over time would not be good evidence of metaethical relativism. Nothing about nonrelativist moral positions would suggest that moral standards wouldn’t change over time, nor is change over time especially or clearly more consistent with moral relativism than with various realist positions.
As such, I’m not sure what you mean when you say things like this:
>>"Our aim here is not to be critical of religious foundations of morality, but only to show that no matter where you get your morals—from faith or secular principles—your values are less objective than you might believe."
Why would evidence that moral standards have changed over time indicate that a person’s moral standards are less objective than they might believe? What does that mean?
Next, you say this:
>>"This can be a scary realization, because the alternative—moral relativism—seems to provide a slippery slope"
When you use the phrase “the alternative,” this implies one’s only options are to believe morality is objective or relative. This is not the case. There are a variety of antirealist positions other than relativism, e.g., error theory, expressivism, and views like my own. If anything, relativism may be fairly unpopular among analytic moral antirealists.
Next, you say:
>>"The psychologist Will Gervais has spent much of his career showing that people intuitively agree with this trope, and consequently mistrust moral relativists—especially atheists, who disavow God’s moral law."
I can look over the study a bit more carefully, but does it assess whether people mistrust moral relativists in particular? At a glance, the emphasis seems to be on atheism, not people’s metaethical views, but I didn’t look carefully and may have overlooked something.
Later on, you say:
>>"Our moral minds dictate our subjective perception of morality, and they also compel us to see those subjective perceptions as objective—and to attack and dehumanize the "other side"."
I’m still unclear on what you mean by “subjective” here, but I am even more puzzled by the claim that our minds compel us to see our perceptions as objective: is this an empirical claim? On what empirical literature is this claim based?
There are a few other points of concern, but I’ll confine my questions and concerns to these. My more general worry is whether the terms “objective,” “relative,” and “subjective” as they appear here are being used in a clear and consistent way.
I study whether nonphilosophers regard morality as “objective” or “relative” (I usually eschew these terms) or something else, and the way you use the terms in this article doesn’t seem to correspond to their use in the empirical literature.
If it’d be of interest I’d be happy to direct you to some of that literature to see if the way these terms are used in that literature do strike you as what you’re aiming at, or if they’re just addressing different concepts altogether using the same name. Either way, thanks for the article and it’s great to see discussions at the intersection of metaethics and psychology.
Wow, thank you for such a well-articulated and thoughtful reply. It's nice to hear that we're helping fill a moral psychology niche on here and to see people engaging so thoroughly. You're right, of course, to point out that our use of terms like "objective morality" and "relative" is less precise than that of the philosophers steeped in these debates. One point we're trying to convey is that although it can feel like our intuitive moral judgments reflect some capital T truth about morality, moral psychology shows just how flimsy, short-sighted, and weird these judgments actually are (in practice they are relative and context-driven). The idea that the flimsiness of these judgments should make us doubt that there are any stance-independent moral truths is more controversial, which is why we allude to the possibility but try not to defend it too strongly. This is a big question, for example, in the psychology of religion: some would argue that as we arrive at a more complete understanding of why we believe in God, it becomes less plausible that our belief in God is true. Please do send along any relevant papers, we'd be curious to read and I'm sure other readers would benefit from it as well!
There's a growing literature on the psychology of metaethics but it doesn't seem to have become very popular. There's quite a few articles worth having a look at, but I think this is one of the best ones and I routinely recommend it:
Cool essay, but you’re on one side of a big meta-ethical antinomy: there must be reasons; there can’t be reasons. You’re defending “there can’t be reasons.” But you’re doing it with reasons. And so you’re really defending “there must be reasons.” In any case, the way to resolve this antinomy, believe it or not, isn’t with subjectivity or objectivity but by realizing that there’s no such thing as the subjective/objective distinction. I mean, think about it. Why would evolution want you to question your own appearances?
Thanks for reading! I think we're actually defending something closer to "there are reasons for our moral intuitions, but these reasons (psychological and evolutionary reasons) might be different from our lay beliefs about our morals (that they reflect some objective truth)"
Excellent, we are re-reading Binmore’s Natural Justice in our reading group, and he makes very similar points (Chapter 3). I have several posts scheduled on his views. I am bookmarking your post for that time.
His book is about providing a naturalistic foundation to fairness norms (and why we care about them). A very nice complement to the psychology literature you discuss in the post.
Why not view moral truths akin to how one would view the biological/objective truths?
For example, when describing a human hand, what's true? To describe it as having 4 fingers, or having 5 fingers?
Yes, a congenital defect may result in someone being born with 4 fingers, but would the statement "hands have 4 fingers" be considered true?
I think not. Continuing with the analogy, just as genetic deviations away from the biological norm are 'exceptions that prove the rule', I would say that moral deviations away from the moral norm prove the rule.
This view allows us to say things like "lying is wrong" as a moral norm (and I would argue an objective moral truth - I'll save that argument for another time), and at the same time say things like, "lying is right to save the life of another" (like Kant's "murderer at the door" moral contradiction).
That "need" to break the rule is not a "congenital defect" of the person lying. The "need" to break the rule is a "congenital defect" of the circumstances surrounding the person: what a defective world it would be if there were murderers knocking on our doors, requiring us to lie in order to save a life.
P.S. if at any point you wanted to say: "hands can have 4 and 5 fingers", fine, but you'll find that claim would quickly run into the continuum-fallacy rebuttal.
As you know, this is an ancient debate. Setting aside those who think objective morality is from God, what drives those who philosophically embrace objective morality (e.g., the Stoics) with those who embrace relativist morality (e.g., the Pyrrhonists)?
The Stoics said that morality was part of nature, and thus objective. The Pyrrhonists said it was not part of nature, and thus relative. What do you make of the Stoic view? I know the Stoic Massimo Pigliucci bases his view on Phillipa Foot's "Natural Goodness."
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, it’s a great thought. I’m admittedly less familiar with the Stoic vs Pyrrhonist view on morality, but it brings to mind some more modern debates on objective morality. David Hume argued that our morals come mostly from emotions and human nature, and less from reason or God. From there, some existential philosophers (e.g., Nietzsche) turned hard against objective morality, swinging all the way to moral nihilism (God is dead!) but arguing that we should create new values in the absence of these moral absolutes. I think an interesting perspective is the idea that moral truths can co-exist with natural explanations of morality (maybe rings of Stoics?). Sam Harris, for example, argues that virtually all humans prefer happiness to suffering, and there should be objective answers to which things promote happiness over suffering (and so which things are morally good). Of course, the idea that happiness/well-being is morally good hinges on us having the types of minds that naturally prefer well-being, and so even then the question of what counts as a moral truth (and who decides) becomes thorny. I think in this piece we land somewhere in between the Stoics and the Pyrrhonists: morality is a natural phenomenon, but that doesn’t require that we slide all the way to moral nihilism. A healthy skepticism of dogma and moral absolutes can be good.
"This can be a scary realization, because the alternative—moral relativism—seems to provide a slippery slope. If morality is a product of human feelings and not God’s eternal law then—people wonder—what’s to stop us from committing abuse, adultery, or even genocide? There seems to be something deeply suspicious about moral relativism and those who endorse it. "
There is another frame here, if what we call morality/religion/art/polity/socius-making are aspects or outcomes or derivatives of another process then it may account for for the disjunct or conflict between our intuitions in these their contexts— and the experience of how others form/maintain/argue-for their intuitions.
Between the strictures we make/agree on and the feeling we have, as an positive urge, [not secondary 'emotional state'] to should the world around each and all of us, which is mostly based on empathy for the world. then here we can begin to see that… —the world is part of that self that is not us.
Psychology which focusses on the individual, or social psychology which focusses on the individual among others, or collective prescriptions which treat the group as an individual, lack a frame of reference for the world which is none of these things (individuals). The (world/self) is a ratio of negotiation between ourselves, ourselves and others, and the pathology which highlights this is narcissism and psychopathy in which the self/world is not distinguishable. These peeps are self=world or _sweorlds_ .
__________________
We feel we should so we do that. Or we encourage others to do so. And discover the world "around us".
This worlding urge create things we do as peeps, so we can make mistakes and learn, evolution selects those who do better, it does not care about morality/art/religion but does select those who do these things. That's why we should.
Excellent perspective. I remember my advisor Dan Wegner wrote a chapter called "the self is magic" and he makes the same point (about conscious will too).
I deeply resonate with the idea "Both the self and world are not real but we carry on regardless." Even if we all think about the unreality of our lives, we still have to make dinner!
'The prospect of moral relativism seems to destroy the very foundations of right and wrong, an idea captured nicely by Dostoevsky’s famous line “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” '
in 'Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor recounts a Buddhist monk saying the exact same thing about karma rather than god, so the urge to should runs deep (even in traditions which are wary of attachments/Duḣkha/suffering/imbalance/dogma).
'akarmic' seems not to be a word. 'akarmic buddhist has a good ring to it
By this route I come to stand near the neo-Pyrrhonists....
Suppose we were to adopt an idiosyncratic definition of virtue (a subspace of morality -- but let's start there): "A behavior is 'virtuous' if its communal adoption leads to an increase in communal flourishing." While the epistemic status of such virtue may be relative, its ontological status is certainly objective. Do we have any reason to think that morality is not similar in this respect?
This is great, and I agree with a lot of the points here. would argue, however, that this does miss some important features of what moral philosophy is attempting to do.
1) Even if morality isn’t objective, that doesn’t mean that doesn’t imply that the only correct end is following one’s own self interest (which I think is what people intuitively think when they hear that objective morality doesn’t exist)- the same points about evolution and psychology can be made for one who argues that they ought to follow their self interest/ desires vs someone elses. I often think this caveat diminishes the disgust blow people get after you tell them that “moral facts don’t exist.”
2) Some things, like pain and pleasure, seem good and bad irrespective of any explanation, at least to us. One can give any such reason to explain why believing them is just a bias, evolutionary developed, or other descriptive explanation, but that wouldn’t motivate anyone away from following it/ feeling rational when they say that they ought to. What does psychology have to say about this? Perhaps we can ground concepts of goodness and badness in types of phenomena that are not debunked-apt?
I’m thrilled to see moral psychology here on Substack. I loved the Atlas of Moral Psychology (especially the Machery and Stich articles, which I use in my classes). I also teach moral psychology, but I specialize in a fairly uncommon area: the psychology of metaethics, and, in particular, in the question of whether nonphilosophers are moral realists or antirealists.
Given my interests, I was surprised to see the conversation move straight to a discussion about metaethics. I was also surprised that your students seem more drawn to realism than has been my experience. I suspect it may depend a lot on what they’re presented with in class and how the topic is introduced and framed. I usually get an overwhelming majority staunchly committed to some type of antirealism.
In the interests of clarity, I use the terms “realism” and “antirealism” to refer to the positions that there are stance-independent moral facts, and that there are not, respectively. I typically include most common forms of relativism as a type of antirealism, since such views typically hold that there are moral truths, but that their truth depends on the stances of different individuals or cultures (hence, there are moral truths, but they are stance-dependent). I am an antirealist myself, even though as you may know moral realism is the most common position among analytic philosophers (the 2020 PhilPapers survey found that 62% of respondents endorsed moral realism). So I’m sympathetic to what seem like antirealist leanings in the article.
However, I’m a lot less confident that nonphilosophers are especially inclined towards realism or antirealism. You say:
>>"All of us—even moral psychologists who argue for moral relativism—tend to feel that the answers to morality are etched in stone."
This does strike me as a little different from saying people are moral realists; one could feel morality is this way, even if one rejects this on reflection. This remark is also qualified with the term “tend,” and the use of “all” may be nonliteral (after all, we could presumably find at least some people with unconventional psychology). However, even with these qualifiers in place, I’m not convinced most people feel that morality is “etched in stone,” if, by this, you mean that people tend to feel that there are stance-independent moral truths (i.e., that moral realism is true).
You say something similar here:
>>"The potential existence of objective morality—of true answers to questions of right and wrong—is alluring to everyone [...]"
Once again, I’m not sure this is true. It’s not alluring to me at all. The extent to which it’s alluring to anyone in general strikes me as an open question. If I had to wager, I’d wager that this is not the case.
You’ll rarely see me come to defense of analytic philosophers, as I’m almost always critical in practice, but I also think this conclusion is a bit quick:
>>"That we can’t put our trust in the ethical absolutes of philosophers argues against objective morality, at least from philosophy."
It’s not clear to me how the rejection of absolute moral rules argues against objective morality. Moral absolutism is a feature of normative moral principles, and has very little to do with metaethics. A moral antirealist could endorse absolute moral rules just as readily as a realist could. Likewise, the mere existence of biases influencing philosophers doesn’t strike me as a good reason to think morality isn’t objective.
I also worry that you’re a bit inconsistent with your use of terms like “objective” and “subjective.” These terms have very specific technical uses among philosophers. When it comes to metaethics, “objective” often refers to stance-independence, while “subjective” often reverse to a way in which the truth of moral claims is indexed to the standards of individuals, allowing the truth status of a moral claim to vary, typically in a stance-dependent way. Yet several of your uses of these terms differ from these technical uses, e.g.:
>>"But despite how clear cut these rules may seem, religious morality—at least in practice—is far from objective. "
One problem is that religious texts require human interpretation, which is inherently subjective. People must make inferences about the meaning of ambiguous rules—does “do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery”
That something must be judged from the point of view of individuals and is thereby subject to whatever biases or predispositions they have is a different sense of “subjective” than the use of “subjective” in the metaethical sense.
Likewise for your use of the term “objective” which is presumably intended to serve as a contrast to this use of “subjective.” It’s not clear whether you intend to use these terms in their metaethical sense or not. If you do, then these uses of the terms are inappropriate. If not, then it could mislead readers to use non-technical uses of terms like “objective” and “subjective” in the middle of a discussion about metaethics, where those terms have different, technical uses.
I’m also a bit puzzled by this reference to relativism:
>>"You can also see evidence for moral relativism in the change of official religious stances over time."
What form of relativism are you referring to? There are at least three major distinctions to make:
Metaethical relativism: The claim that the truth of moral claims is indexed to and can vary in accord with different moral standards, typically those of individuals or cultures
Normative relativism: The claim that one ought tolerate other individuals or groups with different moral standards
Descriptive relativism: The claim that there are differences in people’s fundamental moral beliefs and values
There are subcategories within these positions, as well, e.g., agent and appraiser metaethical relativism. Generally speaking, changes in moral standards over time would not be good evidence of metaethical relativism. Nothing about nonrelativist moral positions would suggest that moral standards wouldn’t change over time, nor is change over time especially or clearly more consistent with moral relativism than with various realist positions.
As such, I’m not sure what you mean when you say things like this:
>>"Our aim here is not to be critical of religious foundations of morality, but only to show that no matter where you get your morals—from faith or secular principles—your values are less objective than you might believe."
Why would evidence that moral standards have changed over time indicate that a person’s moral standards are less objective than they might believe? What does that mean?
Next, you say this:
>>"This can be a scary realization, because the alternative—moral relativism—seems to provide a slippery slope"
When you use the phrase “the alternative,” this implies one’s only options are to believe morality is objective or relative. This is not the case. There are a variety of antirealist positions other than relativism, e.g., error theory, expressivism, and views like my own. If anything, relativism may be fairly unpopular among analytic moral antirealists.
Next, you say:
>>"The psychologist Will Gervais has spent much of his career showing that people intuitively agree with this trope, and consequently mistrust moral relativists—especially atheists, who disavow God’s moral law."
I can look over the study a bit more carefully, but does it assess whether people mistrust moral relativists in particular? At a glance, the emphasis seems to be on atheism, not people’s metaethical views, but I didn’t look carefully and may have overlooked something.
Later on, you say:
>>"Our moral minds dictate our subjective perception of morality, and they also compel us to see those subjective perceptions as objective—and to attack and dehumanize the "other side"."
I’m still unclear on what you mean by “subjective” here, but I am even more puzzled by the claim that our minds compel us to see our perceptions as objective: is this an empirical claim? On what empirical literature is this claim based?
There are a few other points of concern, but I’ll confine my questions and concerns to these. My more general worry is whether the terms “objective,” “relative,” and “subjective” as they appear here are being used in a clear and consistent way.
I study whether nonphilosophers regard morality as “objective” or “relative” (I usually eschew these terms) or something else, and the way you use the terms in this article doesn’t seem to correspond to their use in the empirical literature.
If it’d be of interest I’d be happy to direct you to some of that literature to see if the way these terms are used in that literature do strike you as what you’re aiming at, or if they’re just addressing different concepts altogether using the same name. Either way, thanks for the article and it’s great to see discussions at the intersection of metaethics and psychology.
Wow, thank you for such a well-articulated and thoughtful reply. It's nice to hear that we're helping fill a moral psychology niche on here and to see people engaging so thoroughly. You're right, of course, to point out that our use of terms like "objective morality" and "relative" is less precise than that of the philosophers steeped in these debates. One point we're trying to convey is that although it can feel like our intuitive moral judgments reflect some capital T truth about morality, moral psychology shows just how flimsy, short-sighted, and weird these judgments actually are (in practice they are relative and context-driven). The idea that the flimsiness of these judgments should make us doubt that there are any stance-independent moral truths is more controversial, which is why we allude to the possibility but try not to defend it too strongly. This is a big question, for example, in the psychology of religion: some would argue that as we arrive at a more complete understanding of why we believe in God, it becomes less plausible that our belief in God is true. Please do send along any relevant papers, we'd be curious to read and I'm sure other readers would benefit from it as well!
There's a growing literature on the psychology of metaethics but it doesn't seem to have become very popular. There's quite a few articles worth having a look at, but I think this is one of the best ones and I routinely recommend it:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-019-00447-8
Happy to discuss this research any time.
Cool essay, but you’re on one side of a big meta-ethical antinomy: there must be reasons; there can’t be reasons. You’re defending “there can’t be reasons.” But you’re doing it with reasons. And so you’re really defending “there must be reasons.” In any case, the way to resolve this antinomy, believe it or not, isn’t with subjectivity or objectivity but by realizing that there’s no such thing as the subjective/objective distinction. I mean, think about it. Why would evolution want you to question your own appearances?
Thanks for reading! I think we're actually defending something closer to "there are reasons for our moral intuitions, but these reasons (psychological and evolutionary reasons) might be different from our lay beliefs about our morals (that they reflect some objective truth)"
Would you trust someone who openly denied the existence of reasons (all reasons)?
Excellent, we are re-reading Binmore’s Natural Justice in our reading group, and he makes very similar points (Chapter 3). I have several posts scheduled on his views. I am bookmarking your post for that time.
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know! I haven't heard of Binmore and will have to look now!
His book is about providing a naturalistic foundation to fairness norms (and why we care about them). A very nice complement to the psychology literature you discuss in the post.
Why not view moral truths akin to how one would view the biological/objective truths?
For example, when describing a human hand, what's true? To describe it as having 4 fingers, or having 5 fingers?
Yes, a congenital defect may result in someone being born with 4 fingers, but would the statement "hands have 4 fingers" be considered true?
I think not. Continuing with the analogy, just as genetic deviations away from the biological norm are 'exceptions that prove the rule', I would say that moral deviations away from the moral norm prove the rule.
This view allows us to say things like "lying is wrong" as a moral norm (and I would argue an objective moral truth - I'll save that argument for another time), and at the same time say things like, "lying is right to save the life of another" (like Kant's "murderer at the door" moral contradiction).
That "need" to break the rule is not a "congenital defect" of the person lying. The "need" to break the rule is a "congenital defect" of the circumstances surrounding the person: what a defective world it would be if there were murderers knocking on our doors, requiring us to lie in order to save a life.
P.S. if at any point you wanted to say: "hands can have 4 and 5 fingers", fine, but you'll find that claim would quickly run into the continuum-fallacy rebuttal.
As you know, this is an ancient debate. Setting aside those who think objective morality is from God, what drives those who philosophically embrace objective morality (e.g., the Stoics) with those who embrace relativist morality (e.g., the Pyrrhonists)?
The Stoics said that morality was part of nature, and thus objective. The Pyrrhonists said it was not part of nature, and thus relative. What do you make of the Stoic view? I know the Stoic Massimo Pigliucci bases his view on Phillipa Foot's "Natural Goodness."
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, it’s a great thought. I’m admittedly less familiar with the Stoic vs Pyrrhonist view on morality, but it brings to mind some more modern debates on objective morality. David Hume argued that our morals come mostly from emotions and human nature, and less from reason or God. From there, some existential philosophers (e.g., Nietzsche) turned hard against objective morality, swinging all the way to moral nihilism (God is dead!) but arguing that we should create new values in the absence of these moral absolutes. I think an interesting perspective is the idea that moral truths can co-exist with natural explanations of morality (maybe rings of Stoics?). Sam Harris, for example, argues that virtually all humans prefer happiness to suffering, and there should be objective answers to which things promote happiness over suffering (and so which things are morally good). Of course, the idea that happiness/well-being is morally good hinges on us having the types of minds that naturally prefer well-being, and so even then the question of what counts as a moral truth (and who decides) becomes thorny. I think in this piece we land somewhere in between the Stoics and the Pyrrhonists: morality is a natural phenomenon, but that doesn’t require that we slide all the way to moral nihilism. A healthy skepticism of dogma and moral absolutes can be good.
"This can be a scary realization, because the alternative—moral relativism—seems to provide a slippery slope. If morality is a product of human feelings and not God’s eternal law then—people wonder—what’s to stop us from committing abuse, adultery, or even genocide? There seems to be something deeply suspicious about moral relativism and those who endorse it. "
There is another frame here, if what we call morality/religion/art/polity/socius-making are aspects or outcomes or derivatives of another process then it may account for for the disjunct or conflict between our intuitions in these their contexts— and the experience of how others form/maintain/argue-for their intuitions.
Between the strictures we make/agree on and the feeling we have, as an positive urge, [not secondary 'emotional state'] to should the world around each and all of us, which is mostly based on empathy for the world. then here we can begin to see that… —the world is part of that self that is not us.
Psychology which focusses on the individual, or social psychology which focusses on the individual among others, or collective prescriptions which treat the group as an individual, lack a frame of reference for the world which is none of these things (individuals). The (world/self) is a ratio of negotiation between ourselves, ourselves and others, and the pathology which highlights this is narcissism and psychopathy in which the self/world is not distinguishable. These peeps are self=world or _sweorlds_ .
__________________
We feel we should so we do that. Or we encourage others to do so. And discover the world "around us".
This worlding urge create things we do as peeps, so we can make mistakes and learn, evolution selects those who do better, it does not care about morality/art/religion but does select those who do these things. That's why we should.
https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
https://whyweshould.loofs-samorzewski.com/the-world.html
https://whyweshould.substack.com/
Both the self and world are not real but we carry on regardless.
Excellent perspective. I remember my advisor Dan Wegner wrote a chapter called "the self is magic" and he makes the same point (about conscious will too).
https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/DANWEGNER/pub/self%20is%20magic_wegner.pdf
I deeply resonate with the idea "Both the self and world are not real but we carry on regardless." Even if we all think about the unreality of our lives, we still have to make dinner!
thanks for replying and the glow I'm getting.
'The prospect of moral relativism seems to destroy the very foundations of right and wrong, an idea captured nicely by Dostoevsky’s famous line “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.” '
in 'Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor recounts a Buddhist monk saying the exact same thing about karma rather than god, so the urge to should runs deep (even in traditions which are wary of attachments/Duḣkha/suffering/imbalance/dogma).
'akarmic' seems not to be a word. 'akarmic buddhist has a good ring to it
By this route I come to stand near the neo-Pyrrhonists....
Suppose we were to adopt an idiosyncratic definition of virtue (a subspace of morality -- but let's start there): "A behavior is 'virtuous' if its communal adoption leads to an increase in communal flourishing." While the epistemic status of such virtue may be relative, its ontological status is certainly objective. Do we have any reason to think that morality is not similar in this respect?
This is great, and I agree with a lot of the points here. would argue, however, that this does miss some important features of what moral philosophy is attempting to do.
1) Even if morality isn’t objective, that doesn’t mean that doesn’t imply that the only correct end is following one’s own self interest (which I think is what people intuitively think when they hear that objective morality doesn’t exist)- the same points about evolution and psychology can be made for one who argues that they ought to follow their self interest/ desires vs someone elses. I often think this caveat diminishes the disgust blow people get after you tell them that “moral facts don’t exist.”
2) Some things, like pain and pleasure, seem good and bad irrespective of any explanation, at least to us. One can give any such reason to explain why believing them is just a bias, evolutionary developed, or other descriptive explanation, but that wouldn’t motivate anyone away from following it/ feeling rational when they say that they ought to. What does psychology have to say about this? Perhaps we can ground concepts of goodness and badness in types of phenomena that are not debunked-apt?