Is Morality Objective?
Is Morality Objective?
A faint buzz resounded throughout the entire house. The sound was so quiet that no German soldier standing on the outside could hear what everyone else heard on the inside. The moment the buzzer went off, everyone inside flipped their mattress, hid their things, and ran straight to the top of the house into a tight spot. Corrie Ten Boom made all the Jews in her house practice that drill over and over again (Boom, 2020/1971).
Rewind time about a hundred years and head to Baltimore where we find Fredrick Douglass as a little boy playing around his master’s stables. There, Fredrick Douglass witnessed something that would be seared on his memory forever. Colonel Loyd, Fredrick’s master, was going out horseback riding that day (Douglas, 2003/1855). He went outside to take a look at his horse and check to see if she was ready to go out. Upon noticing a minor defect, Colonel Loyd called for Mr. Barney. Out came an elderly black man whose years of toil could be seen in his face and hands. Mr. Barney stood before Colonel Loyd. Colonel Loyd commanded him to lay his back bare. With no hesitation and no excuse made for himself, Mr. Barney took off his shirt as Colonel Loyd reached for the horse whip. Mr. Barney received 30 lashes.
It is crystal clear that what Corrie Ten Boom did at the risk of her own life by hiding Jews in her own home was morally incredible, even though the Nazis thought that what she was doing was wrong. In like manner, what Cornel Loyd did to Mr. Barney was wicked, even though the white community around him thought that what he was doing was good.
Moral Relativism
The view that I am expressing can be rolled up into a single thesis called moral objectivism. Moral objectivism is the view that some actions are right and some actions are wrong, regardless of how anyone or any culture thinks or feels about them. This means that some actions are wrong, full stop, rather than just being wrong for some people or for some culture. But there is a competing view that has become entrenched in the way our culture thinks about morality: moral relativism.
Moral relativism comes in two forms: subjectivism and cultural relativism. Subjectivism says that morality is just a matter of personal taste or preference. So, an action might be wrong for you but fine for me. Cultural relativism says that morality is just a matter of cultural taste or preference. So, an action might be wrong for some culture but fine for another.
I submit to you that Corrie Ten Boom and Fredrick Douglass would want moral relativism to be completely refuted, as well as the two forms of subjectivism and cultural relativism that undergird it.
In this article, I argue that moral objectivism is the only viable position for humanity to possess. It should be our default position.
Epistemology
What is the epistemology of default positions? Epistemology—that’s a word you should know for our purposes. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy. It specifically studies knowledge and rationality. It addresses the questions like do we know anything at all? And if so, how? Any epistemological concept is going to be one that is related to knowledge or rationality. “Default position” is one such concept.
A default position is a position that we should stick to, unless we have a reason to give it up. Example: you and a factory owner walk into her factory. You see vases coming down the assembly line and, for whatever reason, you point out, “Those vases are red.” The factory owner replies, “No, actually, there is a red light shining on the vases.” The default position is that the vases are red, simply because they look red, yet the factory owner gave you a reason to give up that original position, so you should give it up.[1]
What I am arguing in this article is that moral objectivism is the default position we all need to hold. But I am also going to argue something further. I am going to prove that there is no good reason to give it up. So, what I will do is look at the best arguments for moral relativism (essentially, arguments for moral relativism are by nature arguments against moral objectivism). We will analyze those arguments and see if they hold water.
Before we start looking at any arguments, we need to define moral relativism. “But wait,” you might interject. “We just talked above about what moral relativism is: morality is a matter of cultural or individual preference. That’s it, right?” The need to take a closer look at what moral relativism is reveals something important about the discipline of philosophy. Philosophers have been arguing for a very long time. One thing they have learned is that it is tremendously easy to misinterpret one another. To avoid that, we want to get as clear as possible on each other’s views.
Moral Statement
To understand moral relativism, we need to understand what a moral statement is. A key feature of moral statements is that they are prescriptive. They say how things ought to be rather than how things are. Descriptive statements, by contrast, say how things are rather than how things ought to be. They state the facts. Moral statements in some way move beyond the facts. They say how the facts should be.
An example of a moral statement is: People should not lie under oath.
An example of a descriptive statement is: Some people do lie under oath.
Now, cultural relativism says that moral statements can vary in truth value from culture to culture. To get the idea, think about the statement ‘Driving on the left-hand side of the road is illegal’. Unless we explicitly or implicitly make clear which society we are talking about, this statement varies in truth value from society to society. It is true in the United States, but false in England. Cultural relativism says that moral statements behave the same way. For example, think about the moral statement ‘Sex before marriage is okay’. It is pretty much true in our Western culture. However, go to Sadi Arabia and it is emphatically false. Yet, importantly, cultural relativism is saying that all moral statements are culturally relative. This means that even uncontroversial moral statements like ‘Torturing babies for sheer fun is wrong’ could be false for a culture. It may be that no culture in fact has ever held that it is okay to torture babies just for fun, but if there were a culture that did, the statement would be false—for that particular culture.
Subjectivism
Subjectivism says that moral statements can vary in truth value from individual to individual. Just like ‘Spinach is tasty’ is true for some people and not others, so ‘Lying is always wrong’ can be true for some people and not others. Just like cultural relativism, subjectivism applies to all moral statements.
Arguments for Moral Relativism
What are the best arguments for moral relativism? One comes from moral psychology. I insisted to a friend once that morality is objective. He said, “No, morality is about what you value. It is about how you feel about what other people do.” It turns out that what he is saying is heavily backed by psychology. Cognitive psychologists have shown that when you make a moral judgment, that little part of your brain that controls your emotions lights up. It seems that a natural conclusion to draw is that morality is just a matter of personal taste. This is an argument specifically for subjectivism.
Here is my reply: I own a heating pad. When I turn my heating pad on, it gets hot and it feels hot to the touch. I know what it is for the heating pad to feel hot, but what is it for the heating pad to be hot? The scientific answer is that the kinetic energy is higher than usual. The feeling I have is my temperature gauge on whether the pad is hot or cold. Isn’t it possible that the feeling I have toward an action is my temperature gauge on whether that action is right or wrong? In other words, maybe there really is something right or wrong about an action and we detect it through our emotions, just like there really is such a thing as heat and we detect it through how an object feels. As long as that story is possible, the moral psychology objection doesn’t hold up.
The other argument for moral relativism is disagreement. This is the classic argument for moral relativism. Societies have drastically different views on morality. For instance, the Aztecs in the 16th century thought that they should sacrifice men, women and children to some god. Today, Americans in the 21st century find this morally disgusting, an example of pure evil that should never have happened on the face of this planet.
What precisely is the argument? All we have said so far is that there are, in fact, differences between cultures’ moral beliefs. Here is how I would cash out the argument more precisely in 3 succeeding Premises:
(1) If two cultures disagree on a moral statement x, then x must be true for one culture and false for the other.
(2) American culture and Aztec culture disagree on ‘It’s wrong to sacrifice children to a god’.
(3) Therefore, ‘It’s wrong to sacrifice children to a god’ is true for American culture but false for Aztec culture.
Which premise looks most suspect?
My objections fall on premise (1). What premise (1) is saying is that disagreement on the cultural level implies cultural relativism. This line of reasoning fails in the case of descriptive statements.
Consider the statement ‘The earth is flat’. American culture rejects this statement, but other cultures in the past accepted it. Does it follow that the statement is true for some cultures but false for others? No.
So, why would it follow in the case of moral statements? There seems to be no reason to think it would.
Yet there is another reason to think (1) fails. Look carefully at the conditional. Premise (1) is a conditional statement. Conditional statements have two parts, an if-part and a then-part. Look carefully at the then-part in (1): ‘then x must be true for one ______ and false for the other’. One what? One culture? One group? One individual? Of course, this conditional is talking about cultures.
Here’s the rub: But if disagreement on the cultural level implies relativism on the cultural level, then wouldn’t disagreement on the individual level also imply relativism on the individual level? It seems it would.
But what that would mean is that you can have moral statements that are true for an entire culture but false for an individual within that culture. This would be utterly incoherent. Ultimately, Premise (1) is fatally flawed.
I can rest my case; my job is done. I adequately showed that moral objectivism is the default position. I also showed that all the seemingly cogent arguments in favor of moral relativism do not hold up. In other words, there is no reason to give up moral objectivism, so we should stick to it.
However, I must indulge myself because philosophy is too much fun. It turns out that the argument from disagreement can be turned on its head. The same premise which we thought supported moral relativism actually supports moral objectivism. It all has to do with rational disagreement. There is no point in arguing about whether pecan pie is better than apple. It is a matter of personal taste. Sure, people can have a disagreement about which one is better, but it would not qualify as a rational disagreement.
By contrast, it seems very clear that, for example, the debate over abortion is a rational disagreement. There would be no point to debating abortion, unless one side of the debate is correct and the other incorrect. Therefore, the mere fact of rational disagreement in ethics proves that there is a correct answer to ethical questions. Meaning this: moral objectivism must be true.
REFERENCES
Corrie Ten Boom. (2020). The Hiding Place. Baker Book House. (Original work published 1971)
Frederick Douglass. (2003). My Bondage & My Freedom. Penguin Books. (Original work published 1855)
Alvin Plantinga, & Michael Tooley, (2009). Knowledge of God. John Wiley & Sons.
[1] Plantinga and Tooley (2009) uses this example in a different context. They use it to distinguish undercutting defeaters from rebutting defeaters.
