Moral Ideas

Can moral concepts be meaningful? This seems to be a particularly acute problem because (as the Enlightenment philosopher Hume and others have contended) there is no connection between facts and values, no way to reason from an "is" to an "ought". But this sceptical panic obscures the fact that we all make moral judgements all the time without any such difficulties at all, and we actually have just as much difficulty establishing certain facts as we do explaining values.

Moral notions like 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'evil', 'lying' and 'murder', are clearly meaningful to us since we readily understand how these words are used in language. There are some ambiguous edges, to be sure, but it is important to recognise that these issues are problems with language, not problems with ethics. We can apply purely descriptive terms like 'game', 'table' and 'rain' most of the time despite them being equally unclear in their borderline cases. A little fuzziness at the edges transpires to be something all language suffers from.

This difficulty comes in part from early twentieth century philosophers becoming muddled about ethics while being overly enthusiastic about science. The very idea that there is a problem reasoning from facts to values presumes that factual observations take precedence – granting pride of place to scientific reasoning. This error is widespread today. But moral reasoning has very little to do with science. As Julius Kovesi observed: the process of evaluation in moral judgements is a parallel to the process of assessment with descriptive judgements, but they are not dependent upon one another at all.

Part 4 of 23 in the Pentenary series.

Comments

[Jeena]

And therefore "Technocracy" wouldn't be such a good Idea to adopt as a form of government.

[malene]

I am not sure I agree with you. On the other hand I am feeling a bit feeble minded about more or less anything on this blog (which is why I continue to come back for more), so I'm just going to write what's on my mind and allow you to enlighten me further, one way or the other.

Surely you can make a moral judgement without having all the facts. Since it is an emotional reaction to what is perceived, you are right in saying that it works independently of science.
But if your awareness increases in relation a particular subject, your perception changes, and so does your moral judgement (unless it proves what you already suspected)

We had a case here in Denmark, where a documentary showed horrible movie clips of geese being stripped off their feathers, with the result that suddenly nobody wanted pillows with goose feathers in. I was working at a shop selling these, and so I asked my boss what to say in case I was confronted with it.
He told me to tell them that the geese normally likes it. That it had the same pleasant feel to it as scratching a mosquito bite.

Whether or not this is true I don't know, actually, but I could tell the change in attitude with the customers.
In this example there is a moral change from:
"Goose feather pillows are great, for me, for my family - I need a goose feather pillow."
To:
"This is horrible, I will boycott goose feather pillows, this is outrageous!"
And end with:
"Well, it is a nice pillow. Maybe the media has gone a bit too far in their documentaries... I'm taking two of these."

This is just for the perception alone. If you then add science to the matter, then there is a deep connection between science (as perceived, of course) and moral judgement.

To counter argue myself, I do realize that there is also a matter of rejecting science to protect ones own morality.
Most religions seem to have a certain patent on this.

So in the end I guess it might be a grey zone, where groups/individuals either adjust their moral to the perceived science, or, adjust their perception of science to fit their moral.

[Chris]

Jeena: "And therefore "Technocracy" wouldn't be such a good Idea to adopt as a form of government."

Quite. :)

malene: "...I am feeling a bit feeble minded about more or less anything on this blog (which is why I continue to come back for more), so I'm just going to write what's on my mind and allow you to enlighten me further, one way or the other."

Just because I write with confidence doesn't make me right. :) I am often greatly enlightened by the discussions I have with people in the comments. I like to bring things to the table, but I don't presume to have all the answers in advance - although I sometimes write stridently in order to encourage discussion. Believe me, I appreciate it when people such as yourself wade in on these topics as it helps me "kick the tyres" of what I'm writing about! :)

"Surely you can make a moral judgement without having all the facts."

Sure, but the point here is not that facts have no role in moral judgement, but that one cannot construct a moral judgement from nothing but facts. There must always be process of evaluation which, while taking into account the facts, is not based wholly upon them. The mistake of Ayer, Moore et al in the early twentieth century was that they wanted something akin to "scientific morality" - they wanted to reach moral judgement *solely* from the facts. And it is that I'm saying (following Kovesi) that is quite impossible.

The goose pillow example is a good one - the evaluative criteria (the well-being of the goose) did not change, what changed were the alleged facts of the situation. It is in this way that facts have a role in moral judgement, but the evaluation of moral situations takes place in a domain distinct from that of the description of facts.

"I do realize that there is also a matter of rejecting science to protect ones own morality. Most religions seem to have a certain patent on this."

It's not as widespread as it might seem. It's true that people who reject scientific evidence are often motivated religiously, but it is not true that most people who are religiously motivated reject scientific evidence. I would say it's a minority that happens to get a lot of press because the weirdest things naturally get the most attention. :)

"So in the end I guess it might be a grey zone, where groups/individuals either adjust their moral to the perceived science, or, adjust their perception of science to fit their moral."

I think this give-and-take is always going on. Even the dedicated materialists still have their own biases which skew their perspective on various issues. Dawkins famously called Gaia theory "wrong and dangerously wrong" because he predicated his beliefs concerning the implications of the gene-centric view over evidential concerns in this specific case. There's an irony here: he saw that calling the theory "Gaia" could have a non-scientific influence on how people dealt with the scientific elements of the theory, but failed to see that calling the gene-centric view "the selfish gene" would bring up exactly the same problem! :)

This kind of thing is very common among scientists - any given scientific perspective inevitably skews perspective on all the others. In fact, I'd say this is basically the norm, because there is not one "science" so much as there are as many versions of science as there are scientists and science-minded people.

Thanks for commenting!

[Peter Crowther]

We readily use "big" in language, and it appears to convey meaning. "It is big." "It is good." From your point of view, does that "big" convey meaning in the same way as "wrong"?

(I guess I'm interested in your definition of "meaning")

[malene]

Chris, thank you for clarifying!

I just had an interesting read this evening about self hypnosis (the author Lars Zwisler), which brought me back to this discussion. What I've gathered from that as well as from this exciting discussion, is that the moral must work independently of science. So I guess I am changing my point of view here... Or, in more humble terms; I think I get it now.

In our sub conscious mind we have our life values, experiences and so on, and I guess our moral is programmed somewhere down here too. As you say, we don't think consciously about it when making a moral judgement, we just do it.

The sub conscience responds to images, symbols, stories and so on, anything you can imagine I suppose, but it doesn't respond as well to facts and logic.

Which means that in order to make science our moral guide line, we would first need to transform the science into some kind of sub consciously eatable image or story we can interpret or relate to somehow. Or put out the scientific message with such tremendous authority, that it will have an impact on the subconscious mind.

In other words, science itself can never form the basis of our moral. The scientific message would need to be conveyed in such a way that the subconscious mind would accept it and allow for the existing moral to be changed.

[Chris]

Peter: "Big" is a comparative, while "wrong" is an evaluation with respect to an ethical system. So I'd have to say "wrong" was more akin to a comparative such as "ugly", which also draws from a system (in that case, an aesthetic system).

"Big" is closer to how we use "good" or "bad", though, which are less systematic and more intuitive/instinctual in their basis. A "big" bird is a bird with greater size than what we typically expect for a bird. A "bad" bird is a bird which behaves in a manner we evaluated as worse than typical for a bird.

Does that shed light on my notion of meaning?

malene: I agree with what you say here; logic and facts are reasoned about at a conscious level, using part of the brain called the orbito-frontal cortex (I call it "the decision centre"), which also happens to be involved in solving difficult puzzles and devising strategies - no wonder gamer nerds love science. ;)

But although we may make rational judgements about ethical decisions, most moral judgements are much more effortless, in part because they rest on our capacity for empathy which is intuitive in nature.

Scientific perspectives can affect moral values, though - the Victorians looked at non-human animals as mere biological machines, justifying cruelty towards them in this manner. Now that this perspective has reduced in influence, our moral values in respect of animals have also changed.

Moral values may also affect science, but this is perhaps too much of an aside to go into now. :)

Have fun!

[Theo]

I am not well-read in ethical theories, and much of what I think I know has come second hand through the radio, so perhaps you can tell me where these things fit in -

Firstly, I have heard attempts by the religious to force their religion on the general public on the grounds that without this you cannot have morality. Ayer et al rightly saw that morality cannot be given a scientific foundation, and what these particular relgionists want is to supply an absolute foundation in their religion. I have not seen this worked out in detail, but I presume that this would work, i.e. that you could on this basis have a coherent ethical system built on religious/scriptural foundation. What do you think of this?

Personally, it makes me shudder. I don't think we need an ethics that is coherent in this sense. And this is something that bothers me about the whole discussion. Going back to my response to an earlier post (when some Nazis entered the room wearing black leather trench coats, wire-rimmed spectacles and speaking in atrocious accents), what happens when we evaluate an ethical system? In the case of Russell's utilitarianism, I check that his ethical system condemns the holocaust, plus a few other things I find morally repulsive. Presto, it comes up with the right answer! Excellent! But wait, what is going on here? I am checking an ethical system against a set of deeply held moral intuitions. The intuitions come first, not the ethical system. Then why do I need an ethical system? Why do I need morality? This is not just an objection to utilitarianism, but all attempts to create a coherent ethics. Why not do away with the whole lot?

[malene]

Theo, I've had similar thoughts. (sorry for bursting in, knowing I'm not the one you asked)

Lately I've been thinking that the lack of an overall 'ethical system' might create a more ethical society in the end. (which then again perhaps forms into some other coherent ethics, that I am not aware of) I wonder if people would be less interested in breaking the rules, if there were no rules. If we all had to define the limits of our actions, we might seek answers a bit further than "what is against the rules?".

In terms of religion as the moral guideline, I think it's bollocks. I respect that the stories told within the religions can create a great moral foundation, but these stories could just as well be told without any attachments to deities or any threats of after-death punishment.

[Chris]

Theo: Because a particular religionary's relationship with a scripture begins with faith in that scripture, it's very easy to found a coherent ethical system in this way. But of course, as Kierkegaard and Nietzche both recognised, what you would really be founding it on is faith. This isn't so much of a problem, as you have to have faith in something to believe in anything - the problem comes when people mistakenly think that one kind of faith has priority over others.

What I find fascinating about foundational attempts at Christian ethics is that it's not that easy to use as diverse a text as the Bible as a solid basis... what is the status of, for instance, the Ten Commandments vs. Deuteronomy vs. Jesus' "eleventh commandment"? Despite the fundamentalist battlecry, interpreting the Bible literally doesn't eliminate the ambiguities. Interpretation is the inescapable condition of ethics, and this has to be recognised in the plural world we now live in.

"The intuitions come first, not the ethical system. Then why do I need an ethical system? Why do I need morality? This is not just an objection to utilitarianism, but all attempts to create a coherent ethics. Why not do away with the whole lot?"

The distinction between right and good - between moral instincts and ethical systems - will come up in four weeks. But a brief answer to "why bother with ethical systems?" is that we currently operate on a rule-based social order i.e. a legal system. There may be other approaches, but for now this is what we have, and this being so it is necessary to have systematic approaches to morality as a basis for determining law. But law and morality are distinct, and cannot be made to align perfectly. The gap between the two looks to some like a loose stitch - to others a gaping hole! :)

malene: cross talk is welcome in my comments - feel free to respond to anyone you like... they won't mind, and all the regulars here enjoy additional viewpoints. :)

"I wonder if people would be less interested in breaking the rules, if there were no rules."

Nestor Makhno attempted something like this with his "Black Anarchists" in the early twentieth century... what seems to be the case with anarchy is that it only works under strong leadership - and strong leadership is harder and harder to secure the more and more people need to be brought under that umbrella. That makes this kind of anarchist appeal (which I have some sympathy with) difficult to make fly in practice.

Also, a surprisingly large number of people gain existential security from knowing they are acting "inside the rules". Now to be sure, most of the people who would be commenting here at my blog aren't of this kind, but it's important to recognise that some people need to "call a spade a spade" and aren't comfortable with the degree of ambiguity that you and I might find unavoidable.

"In terms of religion as the moral guideline, I think it's bollocks. I respect that the stories told within the religions can create a great moral foundation, but these stories could just as well be told without any attachments to deities or any threats of after-death punishment."

This, of course, was essentially Joseph Campbell's take on religion; he read them as valuable for spiritual and emotional reasons, but he read it from wholly a psychological perspective.

But don't forget, despite the disproportionate amount of airtime given to Abrahamic faiths, there are plenty of religions which do not deploy a God-concept (roughly half of the Buddhist traditions, for instance) and threats of "after-death punishment" originate in Plato and just seem to creep into Christianity when Rome co-opted the religion.

I do not support attempts at metaphysical blackmail, but it's important to remember that religion is not characterised by this rather ugly facet - it's just that, as a pernicious problem the Abrahamic faiths have picked up along the way, it can tend to obscure the wood from the trees.

Best wishes!

[Peter Crowther]

As a not-quite-aside: http://xkcd.com/774/

[Chris]

Peter: *chortle* You should be getting a commission for your cross-linking to webcomics. ;)

[Peter Crowther]

'Plagiarise. But please to be calling it "research".'

-- Tom Lehrer (shamelessly plagiarised)