Moral Scepticism and Why It is Wrong

[lovett]

Some actions are right and some actions wrong. Some situations are good and others are bad. These properties are objective; they do not depend on social mores or norms. They are not ‘constructed’ by the society of which one is a member not are they dependent on the conventions within that society. They are as real as the properties of scientific enquiry. They are as real as light, or weight or colour. In short, objective values exist.

These are the propositions I will, in this post, be concerned to defend. I shall be advocating a position called ‘moral realism’. Neatly summed up, I shall be arguing that

1) Moral judgements are judgements of facts, and

2) Some such judgements are true.

Along the way I shall argue for several other important propositions. I shall argue that:

3) All moral facts are natural facts.

This means moral facts consist of natural facts (natural facts are those facts which are the subject matter of the sciences). Moral facts do not exist in a mysterious ‘third realm’. Moral realism does not commit us to non-naturalism. Further, I shall argue:

4) We can know moral facts.

I shall argue that we, as rational human beings, can gain knowledge of moral facts; we can know what is good and bad and what is right and wrong. Specifically, I shall argue that this knowledge is available through rational reflection; it can be had a priori (but this is not necessarily the best way to get it).

I shall make several other important claims besides. But these will constitute the body of my argument. My argument shall proceed thus: I shall first state the prima facie case for moral realism. I shall say why, if there are no defeating objections to realism, we should accept it. I shall then attempt to deal with objections to realism. I shall focus on those that seem to be most persuasive. I shall focus first on the alleged queerness of moral facts; how we have been unable to give any account of such facts which adequately captures their objectivity and motivational nature. I shall give such an account, in terms of normative reasons. I shall then show how an account of moral epistemology flows naturally from this; I shall show how we can know moral facts. Finally, I shall consider the argument from moral disagreement; I shall show why the existence of moral disagreement does not constitute a convincing case against moral realism.

It is useful to define my aims by reference to that which I oppose. I oppose the negation of those things for which I have said I will argue. I oppose the position broadly known as ‘moral scepticism’. It is the position that moral facts do not exist. It is the position that, because there is no ‘objective source of morality’, all talk of morality can (and must!) be interpreted as either false or a description of some sort of societal norm. Moral language, if it has any (true) sense, is a description of social convention. If it is not such a description it is all false. It is this sort of idea which is expressed in statements like ‘all morality is ultimately arbitrary’ and ‘because there’s no such thing as right and wrong, I can do what I want’. It is this view I intend to refute.

Hopefully this is clear. This will be a relatively long essay, but I hope it is all rewarding. I have added headings for ease of reference; feel free to browse at leisure. At the end of each section is a summary of said section (although do try not to post without reading some of the actual argument). Anyway enough introduction. I shall begin as I have said I would.

The Prima Facie Case

In this section I will outline why we should, absent strong objections, accept moral realism. My discussion shall focus mainly on the existence and character of moral judgements and discourse. I shall argue such judgements and discourse can only be adequately explained by realism. Moral realism is the simplest explanation of our moral lives.

We make moral judgements all the time. We judge that murder is wrong and charity right. We judge that the lives of ten men are saved then Bob the firefighter have be able to continue dinner with his wife (I am sure Bob himself makes this judgment). Ethical decisions and judgements play a considerable role in our life.
Moreover, we believe these judgements are judgements on issues of fact. When I say ‘Jill was right to leave Jack and take the Kid’ and you disagree, we do not take ourselves to be just expressing our different attitudes. We think there is a truth of the matter. We argue rationally about it. You bring up the fact that children are better raised in a two-parent household and that Jill won’t make a great mum. I bring up the fact that Jack was hitting Jill. For all the world, it looks like we are marshalling different piece of evidence to support our argument. It looks like we are trying to come to some conclusion on an issue of fact.

Things go further than this. When communities disagree about morality, we do not take this disagreement to be an expression of each one’s arbitrary values. We think one is right and one wrong. We genuinely do believe that it is wrong for Saudi Arabia to oppress women. We think it right that the Western world does not. The Saudi’s believe the opposite; they think their actions towards women are perfectly permissible. But everyone takes it to be a disagreement, and disagreement happens only if the issue is factual.

I think these considerations suffice to make the case for my first proposition; moral judgements are judgements of facts. The discourse which surrounds moral judgements treats them precisely as judgements of facts. It is this treatment which allows us to have genuine disagreements about them which we think are possible to resolve. Note that a judgement like ‘I like icecream’ is not (necessarily presented as) a judgement of fact. It is an expression of my attitudes. But I can’t have disagreements with you when you say ‘I don’t like iceream’ in at all the same way moral disagreements play out. Difference in attitude like this are not subject to rational argument and don’t involve ascriptions of correctness. Moral judgements, so it appears, do. For this reason they are not attitudinal; they are factual.

But what of the second proposition? A lot of the work in supporting this proposition will be done in the succeeding three sections. However this description of our discourse does some work already. We would hardly have arguments about moral facts if we thought no such thing existed! The fact that the vast majority of people are committed to the existence of moral facts – the idea that some moral propositions are true- is prima facie evidence that these things are true.

I’ll draw out this point. Moral judgements suffuse our life and they are judgements on issues of fact. If we deny moral facts exists we are committed to ‘error theory’; all such judgements are wrong. But this is far from the simplest way to account for the existence of said judgements. The simplest way to account for their existence is by accepting moral realism. Just like the simplest way of accounting for the existence of weight, speed and colour judgements is by positing the existence of weight, speed and colour facts the simplest way of accounting for the existence of moral judgements is by positing the existence of moral facts.

This is a prima facie case for the existence of moral facts. The argument is that the simplest way to (causally) explain the existence of widespread moral judgements is by positing the existence of moral facts. If we do not do this, we need to tell a complicated story which explains said judgements. If we wish to go by the idea that the simplest theory should be preferred, there is a prima facie case for moral realism. In the same way the simplest explanation of our judgement ‘That is a table in front of me’ is that there is a table in front of me the simplest explanation of our pervasive judgements ‘Murder is wrong’ is that murder is wrong.

In some cases this argument is especially vivid. Take, for instance, Apartheid in South Africa. Millions of people protested against Apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps we can put down much (surely not all) of the motivation behind black people protested as self-interested. It is against one’s interest to be oppressed and demeaned by the state in which one lives. But tens of thousands of whites protested as well. They risked life, limb and liberty to fight the Apartheid government. They had no self-interested reason to protest. Indeed, if Apartheid fell it was they who were to lose their position of racial privilege. The simplest conclusion, at least for many cases, seems to be that they protested because Apartheid was wrong. The injustice of Apartheid caused these people to protest. And of course, that conclusion can be true only if moral realism is true. ‘Apartheid is SA was injust’ is a moral fact.

There is a final feature of our moral discourse on which I shall briefly touch. Our belief in moral progress. We believe that the America of the 2000s is better than the America of the 1950s regarding its treatment of its black population. The end of segregation and decline of racial oppression constitutes moral progress. We believe that the end of slavery is a good thing; that places were better place once they had banned the trafficking of human beings. We believe that the acceptance of rules in war is good; that the decline of a ‘rape the women and kill the children’ mentality is for the better. In general, we believe that we can and have progressed morally as a species. We are morally better now than we were before.
This belief is explicable only in terms of moral realism. If there are no moral facts than there is no sense to moral progress. Segregation was not morally worse than desegregation; there is no such thing as ‘moral worseness’! A society which practice slavery is not worse than one which has abolished it, so on and so forth. Moral comparison necessary for judgements of moral progress would not be possible if statements of moral facts were all false (or non-factual). Moral comparison in general requires moral realism.

This point is meant to buttress my earlier discussion. There are numerous features of moral judgement and discourse which pre-suppose the existence of moral facts. That this is so provides a prima facie case for moral realism. I do not mean to imply that this case is indefeasible, but absent significant objections we should accept it; we should accept realism.

But Moral Facts are so Queer!

The sceptic, of course, believes that there are powerful objections. Perhaps the most powerful is the assertion that we can give no adequate account of the nature of such facts. The sceptic says that there is nothing in the world which would count as a moral fact. We simply can’t say what kind of thing a moral fact is. And because we can’t give an account of what a moral fact is, we shouldn’t just accept the existence such facts. If we can (and we can) we should describe the world without them.

To this end I will now turn. I shall give an account of moral facts. I shall say what moral facts are. To this end, I shall stick with naturalism. I shall argue that moral facts consist of the natural facts about the world; those facts which are (or can be) the subject of scientific disciplines (physics, biology etc). This is why the moral supervenes on the natural; when nothing in the natural world changes nothing in the moral world changes. Nonetheless, and importantly, I shall also stick with an account of moral facts as motivational; I shall explain why moral judgements motivate people, why ceteris paribus judging that X-ing is right motivates one to X.

An Account of the Nature of Moral Facts

My account shall take moral facts to be facts about our normative reasons. Our normative reasons are those reasons which rationally justify our actions. They are the reasons which feature in our deliberations regarding how to act; they are what we consider when we consider things rationally.

For instance, that ‘I am hungry’ gives me a normative reason to buy Ice-cream. It rationally justifies my buying ice-cream. That ‘The house we saw is cheaper, bigger and in a better location than the house we saw last’ give me and my partner a normative reason to buy the house we saw first. It is a reason which will rationally justify that action.

What do we have normative reason to do? We have normative reason to do (so I contend) those things we would desire if we were in a situation that eludes rational criticism. Henceforth, I shall say that our normative reasons are those things which we would do if we were fully rational. Full rationality means that an agent has no false beliefs, all relevant true beliefs and deliberates correctly. This is a position in which we are not subject to rational criticism.

Intuitively, this idea makes perfect sense. Our normative reasons are those reasons which rationally justify our actions, and therefore precisely what we are going to want to follow when we are fully rational. If we don’t do what we have reason to do we are not behaving fully rationally.

I can be a little more precise here, but I do not think it matters to the general account. If you want more precision, I would say that that we have normative reason to create a gain and avoid a loss of value. We have overriding normative reason to maximize value. A situation X is more valuable than a situation Y just in case our fully rational selves would prefer X to Y. This account allows our normative reasons to conflict, whilst still grounding them in facts about our rationality.

It should be clear where plan to take this account. I believe moral reasons are normative reasons. That which is moral is that which is valuable, or that which we would prefer under conditions of full rationality. Moral facts are counterfactual; they consist in facts about what we would desire under counterfactual conditions (those of full rationality). The proposition ‘X-ing is right’ is a description of our normative reasons. It is a description of what we would prefer under conditions of full rationality. We would prefer X-ing.

Refinements are needed but the broad approach is, I think, compelling. Moral facts are facts about our reasons. Moral requirements are requirements which flow from our reasons. They bind universally because everyone has the same reasons (in the same circumstances). They are non-arbitrary because they are what we would converge upon in conditions of full rationality. Normative reasons are an appropriate source of morality.

This also explains why morality is action-guiding; why making a moral judgement that ‘X-ing is wrong’ tends to motivate one not to X. It is so just to the extent that we are rational; moral judgements declare facts about what it is rationally justifiable to do. If we are rational we do only what is rationally justifiable. The reason we should consequently do as morality commands seems hardly seems stating; the dictates of morality are those of reason. If we behave immorally we are at risk of abandoning our nature as rational, reflective creatures.

Moreover, on this account we can see that moral facts are not non-natural. They are counterfactual; they consist in facts about what we would do in certain conditions (those of full rationality). But counterfactual facts are the subject matter of science; many natural facts are counterfactual (that salt is soluble, for instance, surely just mean it dissolves in certain counterfactual conditions). The natural fact in which moral facts consist are facts about our rational psychology, and how we would behave under certain counterfactual conditions.

I shall not attempt to argue much for this account. I just demonstrate it as one, very plausible, account of the nature of moral facts. Moral facts are facts about our normative reasons, which are themselves facts about our behaviour under conditions of full rationality. That one such account exists is sufficient to meet the sceptical problem; at least one plausible account of moral facts can be sketched. This is an account which shows where the source of moral obligation lies in a non-arbitrary way; it lies in our nature as rational beings.


But how do we know Moral Facts?

This is a question which is often brought up by the sceptic. If moral facts were non-natural it poses a particular problem; we could never know what moral facts existed. Or at least, we would have severe difficulty coming by such knowledge. This is a problem because the prima facie case for moral realism was based on the idea that moral facts caused our moral judgements. If moral facts were unknowable, this case is undermined (we can gain knowledge of the causally efficacious fairly easily).

Given the above account, I think it fairly clear how we can gain knowledge of moral facts. We gain knowledge of moral facts by reflecting on how we would act if we were fully rational. To this end we attempt to consider things in depth and avoid common forms of practical irrationality (emotionally driven irrationality, for instance). We reflect on what our normative reasons are. This can be a social process; other people would share our normative reasons in the same situations and thus their input is useful. Their reflections can inform our own.

This amply explains how moral discourse works. We can come to moral knowledge (my fourth proposition) and come to it a priori. But we are advised to consult others and doing so enriches our moral insight. The debate described in the first section occurs because we are trying to decide what our normative reasons would be. Although Jill surely has normative reason to act in her child’s interest she also has normative reason to avoid Jack’s violence. Our rational discussion of the issue is a discussion of what Jill’s reasons are, which is a discussion of what she would do if she were fully rational. There is no epistemological problem for morality, on this account.

It is worth noting here what I take the ‘deliberates correctly’ condition to mean in my account of full rationality. It means something like having a maximally unified and coherent set of beliefs and desires. Such a set is not rationally criticisable (especially when one has no false beliefs and all relevant true beliefs). Unity is a mark of rationality (not the only mark, nor an overriding mark). We thus can come to moral knowledge by deciding what we would desire if our desire-set was more rational; more unified and coherent.

The Argument So Far

So far I have argued that there is a prima facie case for morality built on facts about our moral behaviour. Such behaviour is best explained by accepting moral realism; the existence of moral fact. However, our inability to account for the nature or our knowledge of such facts would be a major blow to realism. But we can account for both things. Moral facts are facts about our normative reasons, or our behaviour under conditions of full rationality. We can know things about such reasons because we can achieve insight into our behaviour under full rationality through reflection.

Another Objection: Moral Disagreement.

I shall deal with one final objection. This is the objection which stems from moral disagreement. The idea is that there are pervasive, deep and irresolvable disagreements over moral issues. There are not pervasive deep andirresolvable disagreements over issues of fact. Consequently, moral issues are not issues of fact.

This argument is essentially an attempt to turn the prima facie case on its head. Examples like attitudes towards death are often used; famously whilst the Greeks burn their dead the Persian find funeral pyres atrocious. They leave their dead to be picked clean by vultures on top of high towers 9or so say, I believe, Herodotus) . A more contemporary spin might point to attitudes regarding abortion or gay marriage; ethical discourse is, so it is contended, characterised at least as much by disagreement as by agreement. Because discourse regarding fact is not subject to pervasive, deep and irresolvable disagreement, ethical discourse can’t be based on fact.

I shall deal with each premise in turn. Simply put, I shall reject both. Let us start with ‘There are pervasive, deep and irresolvable disagreements over moral issues’. Any treatment of this issue must start by pointing out the pervasive moral agreement against which disagreement is backgrounded. It is not just that we all believe things like ‘We should respect the dead’ and ‘Murder is wrong’. There are a host of ‘thick’ moral concepts in our language. These are concepts like courage, loyalty and honesty which have both descriptive and normative content. Universally, we think those three to be good and treachery, cowardice and duplicity to be bad. In this case, agreement is so deeply rooted that it is evident in linguistic divisions. This, I think, largely saps the force from the objection. Moral disagreement exists, certainly, but it is against a background of agreement. The prima facie case stands. There is not pervasive disagreement, but pervasive agreement, in moral judgements.

We can go further as regards this premise. There is no need to believe moral disagreement is irresolvable. Indeed, that we engage in rational debate and argumentation implies we do not so believe. The wielder of this argument needs to make some case for this premise, and he lacks one.

This is important. It is only the irresolvability of moral disagreement which would really damage moral realism. That is because disagreement itself ( obviously) does very little to show that there is no fact of the matter. Scientists disagree about all sorts of things; economists disagree about whether stimulus will increase employment, physicists disagree about whether the universe consists of string-like objects, so on and so forth. Even mathematicians disagree (Hobbes, and his belief he had squared the circle). Clearly, disagreement itself does not show that there is no fact of the matter.

The second premise is largely is false. Disagreement is not pervasive and need not be deep. But if irresolvable disagreement existed that would be damaging. If irresolvable disagreement exists means we can never know the fact of the matter; there are no reasons to decide one way or another. This does not prove there isn’t (an inscrutable) fact of the matter, but it indubitably but doubt on it. But as it happens we have no reason to believe disagreements in ethics are irresolvable. In fact, they tend to be resolved exactly as we would expect; by rational discussion.

It is worth making some remarks relevant to this. Non-religious ethics is a remarkably young project. It is only very recently secularism has come to dominant any society. I have assumed that disagreement is resolvable through rational debate, but rational debate of ethics is severely curtailed by religion; ethics are taken on authority. One can rationally debate religious ethics, but the two are not the same. That we see widespread disagreement in ethics can be put down to, at least partly, the fact that non-religious ethics is so new a project.

In short, the argument from moral disagreement is not convincing; its premises are false. The mere existence of disagreement does nothing to show moral facts do not exist. In fact, the extent and depth of disagreement is greatly exaggerated; disagreement happens against pervasive agreement. Moreover, there is no reason to believe disagreement is irresolvable. That it has not been resolved as of yet can be put down to, at least partially, the youth of non-religious ethics. Certainly, we behave as if it is resolvable; we discuss ethical issues rationally.

Conclusion

That concludes my defense of moral realism and, thereby, attack on moral scepticism. I have shown that there is a considerable prima facie case for realism. I have met the arguments most often used by the sceptic. I have given an account of the nature of moral facts and the source of moral obligation. I have show how we have knowledge of such facts and argued that the existence of moral disagreement does nothing to make us doubt moral realism.

 

[Global Skeptic]

You have to explain what you mean by the sciences?

 

[Ayatollah So]

There is no epistemological problem for morality, on this account.

Better to say that there is no special epistemic problem for morality. But moral judgments depend on highly complex empirical judgments (e.g., how would the Kid be affected by witnessing Jack's violence against Jill) so they are by no means unproblematic!

Which brings up the point that moral knowledge is not a priori. The only thing we arguably could know a priori is the equivalence between moral claims and counterfactual claims about what we would prefer if fully rational. And even that, I believe, is a posteriori - an inference to the best explanation - but I won't try to argue for that. Anyway, to get from there to even as much as "murder is wrong" takes some empirical facts - albeit totally obvious ones.

Also worth noting: some people (and some philosophers) use the word "moral" more narrowly than you do, confining it to interpersonal norms. On your usage, every evaluation one makes, even of behavior affecting only oneself, is a moral one. Not that there's anything wrong with your usage; there's a strong tradition behind you, too. But this ambiguity to the scope of "morality" should be noted in order to preempt any confusion that might be had by those who are used to the narrower meaning.

As you can see from my mild criticisms - I think you're basically right where it really counts.

 

[Berzerker]

Moral facts are facts about our reasons. Moral requirements are requirements which flow from our reasons. They bind universally because everyone has the same reasons (in the same circumstances). They are non-arbitrary because they are what we would converge upon in conditions of full rationality. Normative reasons are an appropriate source of morality.

nobody wants to be murdered

 

[Lone Wolf]

I think that we can indeed have a rational discussion about the morality of a specific action, and that this discussion is indeed resolvable, providing that we have the same basic moral premises - in fact, I would even call them "moral axioms". But if two people don't share their moral premises, then the discussion becomes unresolvable. If person X considers only things that benefit his narrow social group to be moral, he is unable to resolve any discussion with person Y who defines morality as "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" or some such.

 

[Souron]

I think that we can indeed have a rational discussion about the morality of a specific action, and that this discussion is indeed resolvable, providing that we have the same basic moral premises - in fact, I would even call them "moral axioms". But if two people don't share their moral premises, then the discussion becomes unresolvable. If person X considers only things that benefit his narrow social group to be moral, he is unable to resolve any discussion with person Y who defines morality as "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" or some such.

But the correctness of those "axioms" is itself a subject of moral discussion. Which suggests that they aren't really axioms.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I used "axioms" to place emphasis on the "unprovable" aspects. I think that eventually, an attempt to discuss them will come down to "no-it-isn't-yes-it-is".

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Great stuff lovett, this is what I was looking for in the other thread. I shall give your post thorough consideration

 

[Ayatollah So]

I think that eventually, an attempt to discuss them will come down to "no-it-isn't-yes-it-is".

No it won't

 

[Souron]

I used "axioms" to place emphasis on the "unprovable" aspects. I think that eventually, an attempt to discuss them will come down to "no-it-isn't-yes-it-is".

But that's my point. It doesn't. The basic principles of ethics and their relative priosities are things that can be dicussed. The first example you provided could be debated by appealing to the person's sense of empathy. The second could be contested by pointing out that ultilitarian ethics don't always agree with out own ethical intuition.

 

[GoodGame]

Some actions are right and some actions wrong. Some situations are good and others are bad. These properties are objective; they do not depend on social mores or norms. They are not ‘constructed’ by the society of which one is a member not are they dependent on the conventions within that society. They are as real as the properties of scientific enquiry. They are as real as light, or weight or colour. In short, objective values exist.

Just rename this thread "Moral Absolutism".


I'm still digesting the wall of text, but somehow "We can know moral facts" is the same as saying "You can't study morality conceptually?" or you can not develop a set of morals? (i.e. you state "society can not construct morals"). Just because something is "natural fact" (lets accept that you grew up some way and were exposed to some factual moral system of behavior) does not mean it can not be judged, criticized, or the subject of theory. In short, just because something is tagged "moral fact" does not mean it can not be refuted in other contexts.

And ultimately rational individuals are capable of analysis of "moral fact" and choose their own system of morality. So to say that person A's "moral fact" exist does not nullify person B's legal/human right to define person B's system of morality.

Back to the first concept in the OP (i.e. Society does not "construct" a system of morals, they are simply facts).
Do you realize that several system of morality in Western civilization are known to have evolved over time?
Are you stating that such evolution was without rational input by human beings?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I think that we can indeed have a rational discussion about the morality of a specific action, and that this discussion is indeed resolvable, providing that we have the same basic moral premises - in fact, I would even call them "moral axioms". But if two people don't share their moral premises, then the discussion becomes unresolvable. If person X considers only things that benefit his narrow social group to be moral, he is unable to resolve any discussion with person Y who defines morality as "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" or some such.

Yes, but this is not a unique problem for ethics.

 

[Traitorfish]

Interesting essay, but I'm afraid that I don't find the Prima Facie argument very convincing. You claim that because people make moral choices, they must be doing so in reference to moral facts, but how do we know that they are in fact making moral choices? We can say is that it is percieved as such, but we don't have any reason to believe that this is a objectively so. Is there a justification for this assumption that I am missing?

 

[Winston Hughes]

If we take all questions of value as factual questions, can we avoid taking all notions of value as purely subjective in nature?

 

[Perfection]

I'm not sure I can see how one decides what a moral fact is with this "We gain knowledge of moral facts by reflecting on how we would act if we were fully rational". For instance, in my view if I were fully rational I might still find it amusing to enslave humanity and have everyone erect giant monuments in my greatness under great suffering (When it comes down to it, I'm sort of a dick). How would your scheme overcome that pitfall?

Additional challenge for lovett: Can you state a moral fact and present why one should believe it is one?

 

[AdamGM]

Stating that all moral judgments are judgments of facts based on the reaction of people is very weak.
A psychopath could have a moral dilemma between two completely fictional, self-created ideas.

Given the above account, I think it fairly clear how we can gain knowledge of moral facts. We gain knowledge of moral facts by reflecting on how we would act if we were fully rational. To this end we attempt to consider things in depth and avoid common forms of practical irrationality (emotionally driven irrationality, for instance). We reflect on what our normative reasons are. This can be a social process; other people would share our normative reasons in the same situations and thus their input is useful. Their reflections can inform our own.

We gain rational knowledge by imaging ourselves as perfectly rational?
Wouldn't imagining perfect rationality require us not to be irrational in some way?
Put another way, can an irrational person imagine perfect rationality?
You gave no argument that this is possible.

By what standard would you measure the morality of something?

If we are rational we do only what is rationally justifiable. The reason we should consequently do as morality commands seems hardly seems stating; the dictates of morality are those of reason. If we behave immorally we are at risk of abandoning our nature as rational, reflective creatures.

Where did you take your standards for reason and morality?

I can't even begin.. I'm sorry but this needs a lot of work.

 

[lovett]

Thanks Sill, I look forward to your comments.

Better to say that there is no special epistemic problem for morality. But moral judgments depend on highly complex empirical judgments (e.g., how would the Kid be affected by witnessing Jack's violence against Jill) so they are by no means unproblematic!

Which brings up the point that moral knowledge is not a priori. The only thing we arguably could know a priori is the equivalence between moral claims and counterfactual claims about what we would prefer if fully rational. And even that, I believe, is a posteriori - an inference to the best explanation - but I won't try to argue for that. Anyway, to get from there to even as much as "murder is wrong" takes some empirical facts - albeit totally obvious ones.

Interesting point. Nonetheless, I am willing to stick with the claim that moral knowledge contains important a priori elements. Certainly you are right to say that our particular moral judgements are rarely entirely a priori, but I think we can come to some moral knowledge (perhaps the most general sort) in an a priori manner.

To see why, we need a pretty careful understanding of what it is for something to be a priori. It is not easy to come by such an understanding. But roughly, that a piece of knowledge is a priori does not imply it is obvious, that one can come to it without any experience, or that one cannot garner it in an a posteriori manner. Mathematical knowledge is a good example; mathematical knowledge is a priori. But it is surely not obvious (consider any complex mathematical proof) nor can one come to (much) of it without experience. One needs the experience of learning maths before one can gain any mathematical knowledge. One needs to know the operations used in mathematics, the techniques used so on and so forth. And mathematical knowledge can be gained a posteriori; I know that 118*27=3,186, but only because I have just used a calaculator to find that out, and calculator's are, in my experience, reliable.

Nonetheless, mathemtical truths are a priori in some way. I don't know if we can get a much more precise way of characterizing this a prioricity than by saying that, once we have the appropriate conceptual knowledge (regarding what maths is), we don't need to 'go out into the world' and 'look at things' to increase our mathematical knowledge.

Much moral enquiry works in the same way. Normative ethics involves thought experiments about trolleys and workers, it does not involve any actual trolleys and workers. Some moral truth (and not all, as you point out, not particular judgements) do not seem amenable to discovery by 'going out into the world'. Rather, it seems we discover them by thinking about the concepts we have about morality and what judgments we would make about hypothetical situations. We decide, for instance, that side-constraints can't constitute a moral fact not by looking at actual cases where people have destroyed the world because they thought there was an absolute injunction not to murder, but by considering hypothetical cases.

I won't say much more on this issue, and certainly what I have said does not constitute an open-and-shut case. But I hope I have given you an understanding of the sense in which I say moral knowledge (can be) a priori.

Interesting essay, but I'm afraid that I don't find the Prima Facie argument very convincing. You claim that because people make moral choices, they must be doing so in reference to moral facts, but how do we know that they are in fact making moral choices? We can say is that it is percieved as such, but we don't have any reason to believe that this is a objectively so. Is there a justification for this assumption that I am missing?

I claim that people make moral judgments. In this context, 'Moral judgment' merely refers to all those judgments of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice so on and so forth which suffuse our lives. I don't think there is much of an argument that these judgments don't exist, they clearly do!

The argument is precisely whether these judgments, or choices, are based on facts. I have argued that it is simplest to assume they are, because if we do not we are committed to an extravagant error theory. We are committed to the claim that all moral discourse is wrong, and fundamentally so. My argument is rather like, as Ayatollah insightfully perceives, an inference to best explanation.

I am not trying to argue that, analytically, the existence of moral judgment necessitates the existence of moral facts. Such an argument would be unsound, and clearly so. I am arguing that the existence of moral judgments provides (defeasible) evidence for moral facts. Because that evidence is not in fact defeated, we should be moral realists. Perhaps you have mistaken the form of the prima facie argument.

An illustration may be helpful. The existence of 'temperature judgments' provides considerable evidence that temperature exists. That people judge certain things to be warmer than over things provides some evidence that that first set of things is in fact warmer than that second set. This explanation is simpler than telling an elaborate story about how we all fall into temperature-judgment error (maybe there is an evil temperature-deceiving demon about, who features in this story). Thus, we have defeasible evidence that temperature judgments do, in fact, exist.

This evidence is not merely evidence that people perceive temperature to exist. If our judgments only ever provided evidence of our own perceptions, rather than of the external world, knowledge would be unattainable. We woud be locked in a sceptical cage. Because we are not, they don't. They do provide evidence (albeit defeasible) of the external world. As regards temperature, that we can characterize it further (as mean kinetic energy) compliments, rather than defeats, the original judgment. Temperature does, indeed, exist.

That's a short clarification of how the prima facie argument works. It is, perhaps, made more compelling by deeper explanation, especially as to why simplicity is an epistemic virtue. Although, note that such an explanation is not necassary if we do accept that simplicity is a virtue.

Such an explanation is best cashed out in coherentist terms. Coherentism is the view that beliefs (and desires) are justified to the extent they cohere. The most justified belief is that which belongs to a maximally unified and coherent belief set. Such a set is no rationally criticisable. Unity is not just lack of inconsistence, but the presence of explanatory links. That certain beliefs explain other beliefs is a mark of their coherence (hence why the empty set is not the most coherent). If beliefs are unconnected, they are less coherent.

Simplicity is a virtue because it means we have more, and stronger, explanatory links. We are less likely to have superfluous beliefs which fail to add anything. The belief 'Temperature exists' bears considerable explanatory relation to all our particular beliefs about temperature. Moreover, it allows us to retain the explanatory links within such beliefs (for instance, if X is hotter than Y and Y is hotter than Z X is hotter than Z). Temperature scepticism ('temperature does not exist') would require us to abandon all our temperature judgments (or, even worse, be logically inconsistent). This would make our belief set less coherent than if we were temperature realists.

The same is true in morality. We have moral beliefs. Those beliefs evidence significant coherence. Moreover, the belief 'Moral facts exist' would bear considerable explanatory relation to such beliefs. Concurrently, because those relations are fairly simple moral realism is less likely to incurr superfluous beliefs than any other few. On coherentist grounds, moral realism is to be preffered to moral scepticism. It makes for a more coherent belief set.

Note that I have not used coherentism as an account of knowledge, here. It does not work as such an account. It is an account of justification. This is permisisible simply because it is the best such account.

You have to explain what you mean by the sciences?

I do. 'Physics, biology, etcetera'. Not every explanation need by a lexical explanation which references distinguishing features. Ostensive explanation can be perfectly exact(think how one defines 'red'). For my purposes, ostensive explanation is all I need. I am interested in arguing against the view that the subject matter of these disciplines is real in some way that that of ethics is not. To do that, I do not need to give a rigorous account of the foundations of science nor a general metaphysical account of reality. All I need to do is broadly indicate with what it is I mean to compare the subject matter of ethics. All I need to do is say that moral facts are composed of natural facts; those facts which the sciences take as their subject matter. Our intuitive understanding of the nature of scientific facts can do the rest.

If you feel that you misunderstanding of what the sciences are is getting in the way of this argument as I have put it, I am afraid that you will need to be a little more precise as per what it is that you do not understand.

Just rename this thread "Moral Absolutism".

I'm still digesting the wall of text, but somehow "We can know moral facts" is the same as saying "You can't study morality conceptually?" or you can not develop a set of morals? (i.e. you state "society can not construct morals"). Just because something is "natural fact" (lets accept that you grew up some way and were exposed to some factual moral system of behavior) does not mean it can not be judged, criticized, or the subject of theory. In short, just because something is tagged "moral fact" does not mean it can not be refuted in other contexts.

And ultimately rational individuals are capable of analysis of "moral fact" and choose their own system of morality. So to say that person A's "moral fact" exist does not nullify person B's legal/human right to define person B's system of morality.

Back to the first concept in the OP (i.e. Society does not "construct" a system of morals, they are simply facts).
Do you realize that several system of morality in Western civilization are known to have evolved over time?
Are you stating that such evolution was without rational input by human beings?

You have misunderstood.

Certainly, the position I am espousing is not morally absolutist. Absolutism is a normative doctrine, not a meta-ethical doctrine. I happen to think that it is false, but that has no bearing on this discussion. It is a doctrine possible to expound within any meta-ethical view apart from scepticism (in which no doctrine is possible to expound).

Nor does my analysis imply that there the rational input of human being is in some way irrelevant to morality Indeed, quite the opposite! Morality (on my view) consists precisely of the rational input of human beings. Moral obligation depends on how we would behave under conditions of full rationality. This account, of course, implies precisely that we can study morality conceptually. This is what we are doing when we have moral debates.

Moreover, it is the aforementioned natural facts which mean there is an objective morality, not those which flow from the way one grew up or the moral system to which one was exposed in one's formative years. Such facts, being arbitrary, are morally irrelevant. Those facts which a relevant are exactly those facts about our nature as rational beings.

As I have said, you have misunderstood. In fact, it seems you have understood me in roughly the opposite way to that which I had intended. In the light of this, I think I will wait for you to finish digestion before remarking more.

 

[Global Skeptic]

Hi lovett

Natural facts it is then. Please use science (psychics, (bio-)chemistry and neurology primarily) to describe the relevant facts involved in the following examples and note similarities and differences:

• Take a billiard table, two billiard balls and push one ball into another.
• For certain species of zoo-plankton we can observe that the individual organisms will move downward in the water, when the ultra-violet radiation from the sun reaches a certain level.
• Two humans are watching a cat and they both note that the cat is black.
• Two humans debate whether killing another human is right. One states that all killing is wrong and the other that there is a difference between killing and murdering.

Well, you don't have to, as long as you accept that there can be subjective, internal natural facts and objective, external natural facts. In other words just because everything is a fact as it takes place/happens/exists, doesn't mean that all facts are totally equal and the same type/kind of facts.

 

[lovett]

Global Skeptic,

I do not know from where it is you get the impression that I believe there are no differences between moral and scientific facts, or that all facts are exactly the same. Unless I think the latter are deducible by rational refection, I pretty obviously think there are differences!

My main argument is that moral facts exist. Subsidiary to this argument is that moral facts are composed of natural facts. They consist in how a rational psychology behaves in certain circumstances (those of full rationality). They are thus dispositional facts.

My reasons for emphasized they are composed of natural facts is to emphasize that one is not committed to any sort of dualism in moral realism. I compare moral facts with natural facts because we accept a sense in which natural facts are objective. I am arguing moral facts are objective in the same sense.

I do see how anything you have said explicitly engages with this.

I'm not sure I can see how one decides what a moral fact is with this "We gain knowledge of moral facts by reflecting on how we would act if we were fully rational". For instance, in my view if I were fully rational I might still find it amusing to enslave humanity and have everyone erect giant monuments in my greatness under great suffering (When it comes down to it, I'm sort of a dick). How would your scheme overcome that pitfall?

We gain rational knowledge by imaging ourselves as perfectly rational?
Wouldn't imagining perfect rationality require us not to be irrational in some way?
Put another way, can an irrational person imagine perfect rationality?
You gave no argument that this is possible.

You both seem to see problems with the idea that we could come to knowledge about our normative reasons –what we would desire if we were fully rational - through rational reflection. Nonetheless, I think it fairly clear that we could come to such knowledge. We do so all the time.

In the heat of anger, when we pause and think ‘What would I do if I weren’t so angry’, we are trying to obtain knowledge about what we would do if we were more rational. We identify that we are currently victim of a form of practical irrationality –passionate anger- and reflect on what our behaviour would be if we weren’t so angry.

When we have that extra chocolate pudding we can know that doing so was irrational, given our general dietary goals. We have fallen victim to another form of practical irrationality; weakness of the will. Nonetheless, on reflection we realize that our gluttony was irrational. We realize that, if we had had a stronger will we would not have eaten the extra pudding.

These are typical examples of us deciding what we would do if we were more rational. To the extent that we are in fact rational, our belief that our current intended action is irrational changes our intentions. But we are not fully rational, which is why it does not always change our intentions.

I see no principled objection to extending such cases to knowledge of full rationality. At worse we must take the idea of ourselves as fully rational to be an ideal, only to be an approximation. But even then, we are quite aware of those things which tend to impinge on our rationality and, through reflection, we can imagine how we would act if they did not so impinge. Even if we never capture the ideal in reflection, it is the ideal towards which we are reaching.

Perfection makes another, more interesting, point. He believes that, weren he fully rational, he would be perfectly happy enslaving his fellow man and making them suffer greatly. Obviously such action is deeply immoral, so he argues that one can be immoral despite being fully rational.

Simply, the manner in which I must respond to this is to deny his premise; I do not agree that were he fully rational he would enslave his fellow man and inflict on them great suffering. Simply, I do not believe that it would be rational for him to do so. It would, at least, be harmful for his own well-being.

This is a fairly bold claim, but an eminently plausible one. We do not think people’s lives are improved when they inflict pain and suffering. That they enjoy inflicting such suffering matters not a whit. We can make this intuition as vivid as we like. Consider Erik the Jew-hunter. A Nazi during WWII he took great pleasure in tracking down those of Jewish descent, torturing them mercilessly and finally killing them. It is a chase he greatly enjoys and one that stretches all his capacities. But we are loathe to say it adds value to his life. Rather, our intuitive response is that Erik would be better off if he had never become a Nazi and never taken part in such an abominable pursuit. We think that his life goes worse for him because of the nature of his projects. Morally inadmissible pursuits do not make our lives better; we do not become better off by torturing and killing, even if we ike it.

The same claim can be made about Perfection and his putatively rational dictatorship. Acting in the oppressive way he describes does not make his life go any better. It makes it go worse, in the exact same way that Hitler’s life was not made more valuable by the successful prosecution of the final solution.

Perfection’s life as a dictator woud be inestimably better if he were a benevolent dictator; if he engendered in his state the well-being of his subjects and great achievements in the arts and sciences. This is the best life he could lead.
If that is the case, it is hardly rational for him to behave immorally; to enslave and hurt his fellow man. Doing so would be leading a worse life than he could, and that is obviously irrational. This is one way to conceive of the irrationality in Perfection’s proposed dictatorship, but not the only one. I’ll leave it there for now; it would not be rational to act as Perfection suggests. This conclusion is straightforwardly demanded by my argument.

This allows me to move on to the final point; Perfections request that I:

State a moral fact and present why one should believe it is one

Understandable, I am fairly reluctant to do so. Not because I do not have considerable normative views, but because dealing with normative and meta-ethics in one thread is far too much. The proposition I shall pick shall not, then, be particularly revelatory to anyone (I hope!). It is one that should gain broad assent. Consider the following:

“It is generally wrong to commit genocide”

It is a proposition which, I think, we can all accept. I would be shocked if someone disagreed (although of course, the moral sceptic must!). Moreover it is one I think we can accept through ‘mere reflection’; once we know what ‘genocide’ is and once we know (not necessarily as a form of propositional knowledge) what ‘wrong’ is we invariably agree with said proposition.

I choose this one in particular because it links well with my arguments above. Were we ever in a reason to commit genocide we would have considerable reason not to do so. Part of this reason is because we do not make our own lives go better through the destruction of ethnic groups. Our lives go worse when we engage in such acts. That’s not the only reason, and the other reasons are part of what I leave unsaid above. To sketch one here, it is plausible that other people’s good is partly constitutive of our own good or we can only talk of good in an unqualified sense. In either case, assuming it is rational to maximize our good it will not be rational to engage in the programs of destruction characteristic of genocide.

I suspect some people will dislike the fact that I put ‘generally’ in that statement. But for the purposes of this argument there is no reason to object to that. General facts can be facts. It could be the case that ‘Generally, increasing the money supply increases inflation’ was a fact. In fact, it probably is a fact and one we should believe. That it is a general fact does not mean economic facts can’t be facts. That there are some general ethical facts does not mean moral facts aren’t facts. Indeed, it seems odd that one would demand a precision in ethics one does not demand in the other sciences that take human conduct as their subject matter (psychology, for instance). General facts are perfectly admissible as facts.

Note that this is not to say there is no precision in ethics possible, or no facts of a more categorical nature. But I shall not defend any, precisely because such facts are contentious, and to deal with normative and meta ethics in one thread is a tall order. At east, I hope to have illuminated how it is that rational reflection can lead to moral knowledge and met Perfection’s objection and challenge.

 

[Global Skeptic]

Okay, lovett, what do you mean by objective?
Please give an example of a non-moral natural fact and a moral natural fact.
Further how do you know that you and other humans are rational?