There’s a difference between how we know something to be true (epistemology), and what makes that something true (ontology). Keeping this distinction in mind would illuminate many debates. For example, atheists often claim that one doesn’t need God to know morality and act morally. That’s true, but it misses the point. Just because one can know moral truths and behave morally without believing in God does not mean God is not necessary to explain morality. As Greg Koukl likes to say, that’s like saying because one is able to read books without believing in authors, authors are not necessary to explain the origin of books (author-of-the-gaps). In the same way books need authors, moral laws need a moral-law giver.
While both atheists and theists can have knowledge of what is good/right and act morally independent of belief in God (epistemology), atheists cannot make sense of why there is such a thing as morality apart from the existence of God. While belief in God is not required to have moral knowledge, the existence of God is required in order for there to even be moral truths in the first place. See the following blog posts I authored for more information on this topic:
http://bit.ly/MTjORv
http://bit.ly/Nb0VIs
http://bit.ly/xbHXCG
http://bit.ly/NE25tG
http://bit.ly/NlotJS
Thinking to Believe 
July 13, 2012 at 10:26 am
“In the same way books need authors, moral laws need a moral-law giver.”
And the atheist says, “In the same way books need authors, moral laws need moral law-givers, of which there are billions.”
Morality is metaethically subjective. It is contingent on evaluating agents, of which God is one among many. But God is universally wise and also has our global interests at heart, which means it’s in our rational interest to listen to him.
This is the lesson of Ecclesiastes. Nothing is *trancendentally* meaningful. There is no objective morality, metaethically. But there are all sorts of beautiful things that we value and appreciate, and since God loves us and is powerful and wise (and even rehabilitative punishment sucks), following him is rational.
The argument from morality (like most so-called “God proofs”) doesn’t work and is a rubber-legged stool.
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July 13, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Those, like yourselves, who claim that morality is subjective baffle me since the objectivity of morality is so self-evident that even atheists, who have no place for objective morality in their worldview, often have a difficult time dispensing with the idea because the notion is so basic. That’s why at least half of philosophers who are atheists are also moral objectivists.
On theism, God is not just a person who gives good advice, but the ontological grounding and source of the Good itself. As the metaphysical ultimate, there is nothing that stands outside of God.
Jason
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July 13, 2012 at 5:24 pm
The moral objectivists among atheists are objectivists on the *applied-side only*, after values are defined. I’m also an applied-side moral objectivist.
I was talking about metaethics (and was careful to explicate). Metaethically, morality is subjective. That’s because it’s value-contingent, and values proceed from subjects, and are *imputed upon* objects.
Here’s an essay about this subject made for a project I put together:
http://thetruthproblem.info/morality.html
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July 13, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Let’s be clear on what is meant by objective. Objective means it is true of the world independent of our minds. If moral laws are objective, they must exist independent of human minds. So even if humans never came on the scene, moral values would still exist. And view of morality that falls short of that is not objective, but subjective.
Jason
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July 14, 2012 at 1:27 pm
No, objective means it is true independent of *all* minds. Moral values require evaluators. Before humans came on the scene, there were moral values only because God has values and interests. An atheist would rightly say that, if there is no God, there were no moral values before evaluating agents evolved.
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July 14, 2012 at 1:44 pm
“Just because one can know moral truths and behave morally without believing in God does not mean God is not necessary to explain morality.” That’s absolutely right, however, this distinction doesn’t mean that God is necessary to explain morality. A sense of objective morality could easily be based on the fact that there are things which promote human well-being and other things which are harmful. Our opinions about these things could be explained by evolution. That may go:
1. Humans are social animals,
2. Social animals live together (by definition),
3. A collection of social animals will reproduce more successfully if they have attitudes which promote their well-being than if they have attitudes which harm them.
4. If a belief in objective morality promotes the well-being of social animals then natural selection will favour those with a belief in objective morality.
If morality is about well-being then, although it can’t be said that (human) morality would exist even if human beings didn’t, there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. This would allow atheists to treat morality as if it was objective, at least in the sense that moral sentences can be true or false independently of anybody’s opinion. There is no conflict between atheism and believing that moral questions have correct answers (possibly a range of correct answers).
This does require the belief that human beings came into existence due to natural selection and entails that any social animal which is capable of high level reasoning will have some kind of belief in morality. What these beliefs are would depend on what promotes the well being of the animals in question.
Support of a divine command theory of morality requires either that evolution is not true (or at least cannot favour certain types of attitude, so tigers can’t be aggressive, social animals can’t be social) or that morality is nothing to do with human well-being.
If morality is nothing to do with human well-being then why should we pay any attention to it?
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July 15, 2012 at 12:36 am
“3. A collection of social animals will reproduce more successfully if they have attitudes which promote their well-being than if they have attitudes which harm them.”
I think your claim (or rather, the claim you say evolutionists would/could make) breaks down here.
This assumes that reproduction of the species is a driving force. I beg to differ. Humans, especially now, are, the more developed they become, less and less inclined to reproduce. Demographics for Japan, for example, indicate that they will not be able to sustain their own population. They are extremely top-heavy and do not have a replacement population once those in that top-heaviness die off. The U.S. and parts of Europe are teetering toward the same fate.
Gender preference also plays a part. In China and India, were millions of female babies have been aborted or killed outside of the womb, the populations of those countries are terribly one-sided, meaning their chances of successful reproduction is limited. In some parts of China, it’s a staggering 10 to 1 ratio of males to females. This strongly indicates that humans, though they may be social animals, have a willingness to hinder their own reproduction, which, if what you say is true, will harm their well-being, thus breaking down the very morals you say originate in the social nature of the animals in questions.
Secondly, though humans are social by nature, they can, and often do, against this nature, isolate themselves, or do things to fundamentally break down the very society to which they belong. Let me explain. Humans are notorious for crime, exploitation, slavery, genocide, general wickedness to their fellows, and quite frankly, completely responsible for their own societal decline, both from without and from within.
Regardless of our level of “sociableness”, which should require a higher morality to promote well-being, the historical record stands firm against this. We are more inclined to destroy ourselves and hurt our progeny than anything else. So, if evolution is true, it’s only as, as Freud might say, a death drive. The survival of the fittest requires the death of all the weakest, and so, the only morality in an evolutionary paradigm is kill or be killed. But this is contrary to the historical record as well, because in the midst of such human against human devastation, there is tremendous good, even altruism. (And this, if evolution is true, is a paradox.)
And that goodness or altruism is not informed by evolutionary processes, but rather by an objective morality that humans, as C.S. Lewis argued, see as a law which they know to obey, even when they do not, which is the thrust of Jason’s argument above.
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July 15, 2012 at 12:43 am
Altruism not at all a paradox for evolution. Altruism can potentially be quite beneficial for a gene’s propagation. Fitness is relative to selective forces. That’s why evolution is not confounded that we have eyes, but cave newts don’t.
Furthermore, evolution does not have a morality. Biological evolution does not tell us “should,” it only tells us “what” and “how.”
Morality requires two things: an understanding of how things work in terms of cause and effect (evolution helps here), and valued interests (evolution does not help here). Evolution doesn’t tell anyone that surviving is “good.”
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July 15, 2012 at 3:14 am
First of all, don’t worry about calling it my position, although I’m not the only person to believe that evolution can explain why we have a concept of morality I do believe it.
Moving on, 3 doesn’t require that reproduction is a driving force, it merely requires that previous generations must have reproduced in order for the current one to exist.
With China and India, I don’t think anyone would seriously defend infanticide on moral grounds but there are aspects of the cultures which make it much more desirable to have sons than daughters so there is an explanation. Although this next point is kind of irrelevant I don’t think that you can argue that China and India have any significant problems with reproduction. They are the two countries with the largest populations (1.3 billion and 1.2 billion)!
Just because successful reproduction is part of evolution it does not follow that any attitudes favoured by evolution are about reproduction. Take the pretty much universal attitude that it is wrong to use your own population as a food source. Nothing to do with reproduction in itself but it is at least initially plausible that a population which uses itself as a food source will be less successful than one which doesn’t. We can certainly pull apart attitudes about well-being and reproduction. One cause of falling populations is that women are now more educated and more likely to pursue careers than decide to stay at home and raise children. That seems to me like something which promotes their well-being!
The fact that some sort of ideas have been selected for by evolution does not mean that they are beyond criticism. As Stan said, morality requires values. I believe that evolution selected for the capacity to value and it goes without saying that there must be some shared values in order for any moral discussion to proceed. If we have some value X and we discover that moral belief Y tends to work in opposition to X then we must decide whether to modify Y or decide that we were wrong to value X. The fact that values can be modified and that people can value the wrong things does not mean that the ability to have values was not selected for by evolution. This does, however, explain why some people do things which we can judge as wrong.
Stan has already addressed your claim that if evolution is true then morality is “kill or be killed” and that evolution can select for altruism so I’ll leave those.
The claim in the original post was that atheists cannot explain why we have a concept of morality. My arguments may not be perfect (I admit I haven’t done any serious research on the evolutionary origins of morality but I am feeling rather inspired to by this conversation!) but I believe that I have given an initially plausible answer to the origins of morality.
Finally, a point about how I’ve interpreted the original argument. I’m interpreting the statement “atheists cannot make sense of why there is such a thing as morality apart from the existence of God” as a statement about us having a concept of morality rather than morality existing entirely separately from humanity as asking atheists to explain some kind of morality which exists whether humans exist or not would be begging the question! If I interpret it as “morality is independent of humanity, atheists cannot explain the origins of morality if morality is independent of humanity, therefore morality is independent of humanity” then the argument falls down immediately. There could also be the issue that a different interpretation of that statement asks atheists to explain something that we do not believe. Atheists, in general, do not believe that there would be any morality if there were no people so asking them to account for morality if there were no people makes no sense.
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July 16, 2012 at 11:44 am
theworldsstrongestphilosopher wrote, “A sense of objective morality could easily be based on the fact that there are things which promote human well-being and other things which are harmful.” No, it can’t. First, this would not be objective morality, but merely an objective test to determine what we will consider moral. The fact remains that what we consider moral based on this objective test would still be subjective morality because the existence of such moral rules depends on the existence of humans. Second, this can’t be what constitutes morality because one has to first presume that whatever promotes human well-being is good. You are presuming morality to start with, and thus begging the question.
Jason
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July 16, 2012 at 11:47 am
Stan, you wrote “No, objective means it is true independent of *all* minds. Moral values require evaluators. Before humans came on the scene, there were moral values only because God has values and interests. An atheist would rightly say that, if there is no God, there were no moral values before evaluating agents evolved.”
There is a difference between a mind causing something to be true, and a mind knowing something to be true. If any mind, human or divine, causes something to be true, then it is truly subjective. But in the case of God, it is not that His mind causes morality. Morality is caused by His nature. Of course, God knows what is moral. That knowledge, however, is not the cause of morality.
Jason
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July 17, 2012 at 5:07 am
Jason, by “a sense of objective morality” I meant the attitude, or feeling, that morality is objective. I even pointed out that “it can’t be said that (human) morality would exist even if human beings didn’t”. Although you are right that basing morality of well-being would provide us with objective tests to determine what is moral. I fully accept that what we determine to be moral depends on humans (or any other creature capable of moral reasoning) existing.
As for your charge of begging the question, this is incorrect. I am starting from an assumption that our concepts of morality are based on what promotes human well being. There is nothing circular in identifying moral concepts with any natural property or collection of properties. There is still the open question argument to deal with but no circularity. On the other hand, your insistence that morality existed before humans is question begging.
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July 17, 2012 at 2:02 pm
I’m glad you have clarified what you mean by “objective,” but your definition is a distortion of the word. Objectivity has nothing to do with our attitudes or feelings. “The earth exists” is an objectively true statement regardless of how I feel about it. If morals are objective, then they must be objective in the same way. What you are doing is defining objective so as to mean subjective.
As for begging the question, if you define morality as “whatever causes human well-being,” then I have a follow-up question. Why is human well-being good? The mere intelligibility of the question demonstrates that “well being” is not equal to “moral.” They are two different concepts. While what is moral will produce well-being, well-being is not the essence of the good. And that’s why your moral system begs the question.
How am I begging the question to say that morals, if they are objective, existed prior to humans? That’s not begging the question. The only question is whether or not morals are objective. Given our moral intuitions, and given the abundance of problems associated with subjectivistic versions of morality, I think it is clear that morals are objective, and thus existed prior to humans.
Jason
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July 17, 2012 at 3:00 pm
I was not defining “objective”, I was defining “a sense of objective morality”, in other words, the fact that we think of morality as objective.
Your question “why is human well-being good?” is an example of the open question argument, not a demonstration of question begging. To answer it I would first have to convince you that moral sentences are intended to express beliefs (moral cognitivism) then convince you that the correct approach to moral epistemology is reflective equilibrium (which relies on producing consistency between moral intuitions and principles). If moral sentences express beliefs and testing what is entailed by the proposition “human well-being is good” (along with whatever modifications are necessary, additional rules, perhaps adding other properties which we might be referring to when we say something is good) produces reflective equilibrium then it is correct.
In terms of moral epistemology I have only given any serious thought to the debate between coherence theories and foundational theories (basically reflective equilibrium vs intuitionism), if there are other options I may have to abandon my support of reflective equilibrium and may even end up with a more Kantian approach to morality, however unlikely this seems to me at the moment!
The question begging part of your argument is based on your original assertion that “atheists cannot make sense of why there is such a thing as morality apart from the existence of God”. If this just refers to the fact that we have moral concepts then this is fine, but I have given a very rough outline of how an atheist actually can make sense of why we have these concepts, so it is incorrect. If you actually mean that atheists cannot make sense of why morality existed before humans then your argument seems to be.
1. Morality existed before humans
2. Atheists cannot explain why morality existed before humans
3. Therefore morality existed before humans.
If I have misinterpreted your line of reasoning then I apologise but any attempt to get an atheist to explain a morality that existed before humans is, at worst question begging and at best asking atheists to explain something that they don’t actually believe. It is as if I asked you “If there’s a God then why is there no God?” You believe that there is a God and so it makes no sense for me to ask you to explain why there is no God. I do believe that we treat morality as if it was objective but I do not believe that it is objective in the sense that it existed before we did. I do believe that, if morality is about well-being then moral beliefs can be true or false but this is only because there are right and wrong answers to what promotes well-being, not because morality existed before people did. Morality being subjective (meaning only non-objective, or that it did not exist before humans did) is not the same as morality being relative. This may be a problem for expressivists (or other forms of moral non-cognitivist) but not necessarily and not for cognitivists. The only reason I say not necessarily is because I find non-cognitivism implausible and, as such, have not done any work to show whether non-cognitivism leads to relativism or not.
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July 18, 2012 at 3:54 pm
theworldsstrongestphilosopher
Regarding your use of “objective,” I now see better the point you are trying to convey. You are trying to explain why people think morality is objective, even though it is subjective. Fair enough. The way I originally read your original statement (the one I initially responded to) it sounded like you were saying that human well-being makes morality objective.
I didn’t necessarily intend for you to explain why human well-being is good, but was merely pointing out that the very fact that such a question can be intelligibly asked shows that goodness and well-being are not synonymous terms. So “what is good” cannot be reduced to and is not synonymous with “whatever produces human well-being.” Since goodness is more basic than human well-being, human well-being cannot be the essence of what good is, and cannot define the good, and cannot ground the good (moral ontology). At best it can be a good principle for determining what is good (moral epistemology).
But since you answered the question, let’s review your answer. I agree that moral sentences express beliefs, but that alone tells us nothing about the objectivity or subjectivity of the propositions entailed by those moral sentences. Moral semantics and moral ontology are two different questions.
You go on to say that the “correct approach to moral epistemology is reflective equilibrium.” Whether I agree or not does not matter because from my perspective, this isn’t the right question to ask. The question of why some X is good is a question of moral ontology, not moral epistemology. I am asking what makes X good (ontology), not how do we know that X is good (epistemology). Of course you avoid the ontological issue because you are a moral non-realist. That also explains why you misread my words when I wrote “atheists cannot make sense of why there is such a thing as morality apart from the existence of God,” and why you think that your syllogism accurately depicts my argument. My whole post assumes that moral realism is true. I was talking about atheists’ inability to explain why moral truths exist, not why moral beliefs exist. The atheists I have in view, then, are not all atheists, but specifically atheists who espouse moral realism. Of course moral non-realists have theories about how humans came to have moral beliefs, but they presume that there are no moral truths to begin with.
At the end of the day, what you are talking about and what I am talking about in this post are two entirely different things. You, as a moral non-realist, were not my intended audience. My intended audience for this post is atheists who are moral realists. While they can know morality and act morally, they do not have a good explanation for why moral truths exist in the first place. Since you deny the existence of moral truths, my point does not apply to you. For you, I have to write a post critiquing moral non-realism and the relativism (that I am convinced) inevitably follows from that.
Jason
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July 18, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Yes, we are talking about two completely different things then! My intention throughout this was certainly not to suggest that all atheists can make sense of all possible theories of morality, merely to show that atheists can account for our concepts of morality. I’m glad that we agree on this!
It’s also worth pointing out that I reject the notion that there is a special meaning to the word “good” when used to mean “morally good”, I’m pretty much a straightforward Aristotelian in this sense.
I look forward to your post showing that moral non-realism necessarily leads to relativism. I certainly think you’ll have a great deal of success showing that non-cognitivism leads to relativism (although you’ll probably need to engage with Horgan and Timmons “Expressivism, Yes! Relativism, No!”). I also think you’ll have at the very least a degree of success with cognitive views, I haven’t yet looked at whether an Aristotelian approach can really be defended against a Nietzchean approach (in other words should I be a good person or just a good me?). Even an Aristotelian approach allows that if the circumstances in which we live were different or human beings became different then morality would end up being different, the question is how different or what degree of relativism this would allow. The only significant difficulty I think you’ll have is, assuming that you show that moral non-realism leads to relativism, how to show that an account of morality which leads to relativism is false. If anyone could do this without assuming that moral realism is true from the start it would be a significant result!
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July 19, 2012 at 1:32 am
“Altruism not at all a paradox for evolution.”
Except if the altruism in question is self-sacrificing.
“Altruism can potentially be quite beneficial for a gene’s propagation.”
I agree. For the good of mankind, and other such sentiments, etc. allows for beneficial harmony between peoples, which tends to lend itself toward bonding and mating within the species.
But being altruistic (a potentially subjective term) is a moral choice made on account of some, perhaps not even quantifiable, factor. There isn’t anything innate in our biology that causes us to be altruistic. You said it yourself: evolution has no morality. So, it’s not like our DNA has some mind of it’s own, causing the person to do something conceived as good for others so as to propagate itself into future generations, and thereby be(come) the real recipient of its own good deed. Because, if that were the case, it wouldn’t be very altruistic, then, would it?
So while beneficial, it’s not required, meaning that since survival of the fittest is simply about that: survival, and that some can and do choose against that paradigm to allow for the survival of the weakest, or as the fittest, to sacrifice self for others’ good, indicates that evolution is neither the cause nor the benefactor. The real benefactor are people in need of others altruism, and not their genes because, should the theory of evolution be true, the survival of their genes is detrimental to the species as a whole.
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July 20, 2012 at 5:44 pm
TWSP
Yes, we do agree that atheists who are moral non-realists can come up with theories of morality that account for specific acts of what most agree are either good or evil. The problem with all of these theories is that they lack authority for dealing with those who disagree. These moral systems are no different than the rules of Monopoly: You can come up with a set of rules for everyone to follow, but you have no objective basis or authority to complain about those who choose not to follow your rules, and invent their own “house rules” for the game. Everything is just preference, whether it be the preference of the individual or the group. Why should I follow your preferences? In the name of what should I do so? You have no basis to persuade other than raw power or self-interest.
As for your comments regarding the meaning of the word “good,” I’m not sure I understand your point. Do you mean to say that the word “good” has no moral content or quality to it; that it just refers to whatever has utility for the ends that humans desire?
As for moral non-realism leading to moral relativism, I don’t plan on doing a post on that (I plan on doing a post on why moral relativism is a false moral theory). It seems evident to me that moral non-realism doesn’t merely lead to moral relativism, but that it is synonymous with moral relativism. After all, if moral values are not objective features of the world—but inventions of the human mind—then they are subjective and relative to the human mind who contemplates them. You could invent your moral values and I could invent mine. That is moral relativism.
I’m thinking that perhaps you are using moral relativism as a synonym for moral debauchery, wherein everyone is doing whatever they want, acting in ways that are destructive for the self and society. If so, that’s a different issue (and “moral relativism” is not the appropriate word to describe it). I don’t think that moral non-realism necessarily leads to wide-spread social chaos. Most people still have enough reasons to act in ways that conform to the moral system, such that the moral system will not collapse. But that just shows that a non-realist system of morality is capable of producing desired results. For those who presume that morals don’t exist, that’s enough for them since it’s all about utility. For those who recognize that morals are objective features of the world, however, it’s not enough. They won’t be satisfied with you saying that torturing children for fun is wrong because your community says it’s wrong, but it may not be wrong for other communities. Why? Because they know that torturing children for fun is wrong regardless of what any community says about it. And the only thing that can account for such moral intuitions is the existence of objective moral values. And then we’re back to the grounding issue of where those moral values come from.
Jason
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July 20, 2012 at 9:24 pm
Responding to Aaron,
“You said it yourself: evolution has no morality.”
Don’t take this to mean “evolution produces no morality.” Evolution can plausibly instill all sorts of propensities toward fit behavior in the brains of its participants, and those propensities would be called “values” and “interests,” and their morality (shoulds, oughts, etc.) would proceed therefrom.
“So, it’s not like our DNA has some mind of it’s own, causing the person to do something conceived as good for others so as to propagate itself into future generations, and thereby be(come) the real recipient of its own good deed. Because, if that were the case, it wouldn’t be very altruistic, then, would it?”
Altruism isn’t “a deed with no origination from an individual’s interests.” It’s “a deed originated from an individual’s higher-order interests in another’s lower-order satisfaction over his own lower-order satisfaction.” Nothing we willfully do comes from something in which we aren’t at some level interested (this is tautological, if you take the time to unravel it).
“The real benefactor are people in need of others altruism, and not their genes because, should the theory of evolution be true, the survival of their genes is detrimental to the species as a whole.”
Well, evolution isn’t about species, it’s about genes. Species are a byproduct, and a fuzzy and ill-defined byproduct at that. It just so happens that, incedentally (and in no more significant way than incidentally), gene propagation is often correlated with species propagation.
Feel free to avoid Dawkins in his attempts at theology and philosophy, but he’s essential reading on matters of evolutionary biology. I recommend his “The Selfish Gene.”
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July 20, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Hi, Stan
After I posted, I had a thought that you and I were using the word altruism differently, or at least through a different filter. Your approach, as proven by your latest post, has to do with understanding altruism from an evolutionary biologist’s view. My use of the word was confined simply to a moral choice that humans make, not based in or on one’s genes, as it were.
As far as evolution producing morality (or not), I would say proving that is a mighty tall order. Since, as you said, we are really only talking about genes, we would have to prove that a gene, first as single unit, and then genes, acting collectively, have some impulse (dare I call it cognition or sentience?) to lead the biological entity in question toward some (altruistic or selfish) choice or another.
I don’t think we can say that genes just want to propagate, and so, do whatever is necessary to do so. Are genes sentient? Do they have a choice in their own propagation? Or is there is some other factor at play here?
Naturalism would suggest that genes, being fully natural, material, etc. must be the source of all input in life. Somehow or another, my genes, and the biological entity they’ve come together to create, i.e. me, must somehow be responsible for everything that I am, if naturalism is exclusively true.
That means who I love, my other emotions, whom I marry, my personal affection for or lack thereof for certain things. One could really ponder the whole gamut of life and come away with anything. Love, hate, friendship, marriage, affection, depression, joy, social relationship, and any other intangible quality of life and mind must be explained by, and only by, my DNA code.
If my genes are selfish, and are somehow causing me to make moral or not choices so as to propagate themselves, then why do I eat Taco Bell? Why do I sit on my butt and live a fairly unhealthy lifestyle, knowing full well that do so weakens my health, my well-being, and my chances of successful propagation? Why did and do I commit myself to a monogamous marriage as opposed to sowing my wild oats far and wide since this is the best way to selfishly propagate my genes as much as possible?
To me, that is a paradox. Some part of my conscious mind is willfully denying my genes their ability to propagate as they see fit. This tells me that something outside of naturalism, outside of my genetic material is or can be in charge. This I think of as my mind, as influenced by my moral code, which is derived from my religious beliefs which originate in the God of my faith, i.e. the supernatural.
I know many are against this idea, think I’ve got blinders on, etc. But to be honest, ask yourself, just how much control/sovereignty do you give to your genes when it comes to your life and who you decide to be?
I mean, at what point do we just tell the world “I’m sorry, my genes made me do it” and become completely unaccountable for all actions, up to and including heinous evil?
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July 21, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Aaron said,
“If my genes are selfish, and are somehow causing me to make moral or not choices so as to propagate themselves, then why do I eat Taco Bell? Why do I sit on my butt and live a fairly unhealthy lifestyle, knowing full well that do so weakens my health, my well-being, and my chances of successful propagation? Why did and do I commit myself to a monogamous marriage as opposed to sowing my wild oats far and wide since this is the best way to selfishly propagate my genes as much as possible?”
First, some of the interests you have are vestigial, and no longer have a direct tie to survival.
Imagine that a city commissions a bridge over a large waterway that divides its two districts. Lots of ships use this waterway, and so they have to build the bridge such that it accommodates. Accordingly, they build a lift bridge.
A decade later, the city redirects the waterway around the city in a major canal project. The former waterway is now little more than a creek, and no ships or boats can travel along it.
Now, the bridge is still useful for carrying traffic over the large ditch that was once a waterway. But there’s no longer any reason for it to be a lift bridge. The “environment” has changed, and the lift mechanisms are now “vestigial.”
There are vestigial organs, like the appendix, but there are also vestigial behaviors, like our inordinately strong cravings for sugary and fatty food.
Second, the choices you make are not necessarily in service of your genes. That’s because there are innumerable complexities between the the development of your body and mind from your genes, and the things you undergo thereafter. Life experiences and taught lessons all affect our worldviews and behavior. Now, these things have a powerfully changing effect on us *because* we are dopamine-driven pattern-recognizers, which finds its origination in evolution. But those pattern-recognizing faculties exploded in relevance as civilization developed, and there’s now a dramatic indirection between our base impulses and our higher-order goals (but indirection does not mean complete causal disconnection).
Finally, evolution often produces diametrically opposing features, because evolution is about both environment (which includes geography, weather, and other plants and creatures, including of the same species) AND the reliance on inheritance. Humans have eyes; cave newts do not. Ducks mate for life; black widows kill their mates. These are “paradoxes” of a sort, but it’s the *resolvable* sort, and are all explainable in terms of gene propagation.
If I can make another recommendation of Dawkins, it would be his “Greatest Show on Earth,” which goes into many of the complexities of biological evolution, and why it betrays simple statements like, “X doesn’t make me survive, so how can I have X if evolution is true?”
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July 21, 2012 at 10:40 pm
Thanks for the recommendations. Like I have time to read, though! I understand what you are saying, and your analogy to the bridge to explain vestigial properties of my DNA is comprehensible. However, does it really apply?
I realize that all analogies are imperfect by nature, but no offense, this seems like a big stretch. Some are more imperfect than others, as it were.
For instance, I once heard a preacher talk about how certain birds sing when they are placed in a darkened cage (i.e. have a blanket or towel placed over their environment). He went on to explain that sometimes God puts people into “dark” situations to teach them to sing.
And I thought, really? Humans are now birds, or birds inform our particular spiritual and emotional circumstances?
See what I mean? They sound nice, can even be poetic, and might seem, on the surface, to explain much. But such an analogy, like the ones used to describe the reasons for vestigial body parts start to break down under some critical scrutiny. As such they lack real power to explain anything. They might point us in the direction of a truth, but they are not the truth themselves, and as such, can be dismissed.
That’s how I see it anyways.
Apart from that, you said it yourself: it comes down to choice. That freedom to choose is the variable that makes humans different than all other creatures. I do not believe that that power is derived from some evolutionary device millions of years in the making. We may agree to disagree, which is fine. No hard feelings on this end.
But if I understand it correctly, a theory must be able to account for as much of the data as possible in order to be considered a valuable theory. No matter how much it’s talked about, I don’t buy the theory of evolution as the one that accounts for the most amount of the data/evidence. I realize science is going to limit itself to the natural world only, which is fine. But by nature, the question evolution attempts to answer is beyond the abilities of science. Only in the realm of the philosophical or the rational can these answers be sought after. Since no one was here when the first act of life occurred, no one can speak authoritatively on the subject. From our vantage point, it’s all a bunch of academic guesses and think-so’s. The heights of human intellect notwithstanding, we’re just not there yet.
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July 21, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Aaron, you said:
“Apart from that, you said it yourself: it comes down to choice. That freedom to choose is the variable that makes humans different than all other creatures.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but I see no reason to believe that animals (particularly other relatively intelligent mammals) don’t make choices in any fundamentally different way than humans make choices. That is, they weigh the value of various imagined possibilities and elect to actualize the one that seems optimal, and this process is done either consciously or subconsciously.
The danger that I’m trying to subvert is the danger of appealing too quickly to supernatural explanations for things we observe that need no supernatural explanation at all. By this I mean attributing as miraculous events that are natural, and as spiritual things that are material. It is this tendency that prompts folks to say things like, “That is complicated, and thus it is supernatural,” or “That is ill-defined, and thus it is supernatural,” or “That is mysterious, and thus it is supernatural,” and it’s the very thing against which science’s methodological naturalism is built. It is not very prudent and frankly rather reckless to come to *conclusions* about what makes us distinct from animals, when the Bible says we aren’t very distinct at all (Ecclesiastes 3:18-20). Just as we shouldn’t rush to appeal to the “God of the gaps” of our origins, we shouldn’t rush to appeal to the “supernatural of the gaps” of our natures.
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February 4, 2013 at 10:55 am
[…] Morality and the Epistemology-Ontology Distinction […]
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October 1, 2014 at 7:34 am
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March 9, 2015 at 3:37 pm
[…] Morality and the Epistemology-Ontology Distinction […]
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April 2, 2015 at 8:09 am
Stan, regarding your use of Ecclesiastes 3:18-20, You may or may not be aware, but you are misusing the verse. The meaning of the it is that like animals die so do people.
See also
Psalm 49:12 Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish.
Psalm 49:20 Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.
Also Psalm 73:22 I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.
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May 5, 2015 at 5:20 pm
Jason, there are very simple explanations to objective moral ontology that do not require any theistic or deistic backing. All that objective morality requires, is that one accepts that in any specific case of an ethical dilemna, there is an objectively right action (objective morality =/= universal morality). The reasoning that makes this right action right can be understood similarly to what makes a logical argument valid. Based on the premises (context and criteria) the conclusion (moral judgement) neccessarily follows.
For example, when a Utilitarian examines whether one ought to eat factory-farmed meat.
(P1) the suffering caused by the creation of this meat is significantly more than one’s pleasure in eating it. (context)
(P2) The principle of utility (criteria)
(Conclusion) one ought to stop eating factory-farmed meat (moral judgement)
This situation shows that what makes a right action right is the context in relation to the criteria. The criteria can be understood as descriptions of reality, they do not need to be related to some higher power.
Besides Socratic dialogues nullified this argument over 2000 years ago.
The Theist must answer: Is something good because it is loved by god, or does god love things that are good. If it is because it is loved by god, then you have a subjective, authoritarian view of ethics. If it is that god loves things that are good, you are admitting that ethical truths exist independently of god.
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May 5, 2015 at 11:10 pm
Adam,
You start off by saying there are other non-theistic accounts of moral ontology, but then you proceed to talk about moral epistemology. The question is not whether one can know what is right unless they believe in God, but how they can account for the existence of objective moral values.
Also, utilitarianism is not a theory based on objective morality. It is based on utility. It is a view in the camp of moral non-realism. If under conditions X, action Y has the greatest utility, then Y is good. But if under conditions Z, action Y has little utility, then Y is bad. That is not objective morality.
The Euthyphro Dilemma is a false dilemma because there is a third alternative that Euthyphro never considered: God is the good; i.e. it is His very nature. God does not create the good nor is He subject to the good. He is the good.
Jason
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May 12, 2015 at 8:52 am
In the history of human sacrifice, it’s astonishing that almost any culture you can name had a tradition of human sacrifice and I actually don’t doubt that people went willingly and eagerly to their deaths because if you have the requisite beliefs, it makes sense. It was believed that you could engage this one way dialogue with the ancestors by just going to meet them; you could cure the King of his venereal disease and save all the people you love from the wrath of God by being sacrificed.
Now of course other people were sacrificed involuntarily as well but one of the embarrassing things about Christianity is, it actually stands astride this truly contemptible history, not as any kind of departure from it; Christianity is not a religion that rejects human sacrifice; it’s a religion that celebrates a single human sacrifice as though it were fully effective. And people tend to condone this bizarre commitment. Unless you have an argument against these clear cases it seems to me you don’t have an argument at all for moral relevance. All you have is a position, like a noose around the neck, trying in vain to square the circle.
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June 17, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Jason,
This whole argument is ridiculous – No matter what we as people depend on moral epistemology. You claim you got your commandments from an objectively moral god. That’s great… however you got them from a book (epistemology) that states that god is the law giver, therefore he’s perfectly objectively moral.
Umm… no. There’s dozens of reasons why this argument is fallacious.
1) it’s circular reasoning.
1. There are objective morals.
2. Objective morals require a lawgiver.
3. Therefore god the lawgiver must exist because there exists moral objectivity.
1. there are objective morals. – you PRESUME there are objective morals. There doesn’t necessarily need to be.
2. objective morals require a lawgiver – again, you PRESUME they need a lawgiver… The definition of objectivity:
“not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.”
Nowhere does it necessitate a lawgiver. And if i define lawgiver, nowhere in that definition will it say that a lawgiver is always objectively moral.
If you’re a christian, the bible claims that god made some judgments because he was jealous or angry. That, in definition, is OPPOSED to objective morality. Which states decisions CANNOT BE MADE based on personal feelings.
By your own book, god cannot be defined as objectively moral. He can only be defined as a jealous angry lawgiver. Hardly ‘objective’ and hardly ‘moral’.
Thanks for trying though,
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June 18, 2015 at 12:08 pm
But with righteousness He will judge the poor,
And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth;
And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
Isaiah here is talking about a person, who will champion the cause of the downtrodden, the poor, the afflicted, the oppressed, the disabled, the sick, the hungry, the homeless.
“Listen now, you who know right from wrong, you who hold my teaching inside you: Pay no attention to insults, and when mocked don’t let it get you down. Those insults and mockeries are moth-eaten, from brains that are termite-ridden, but my setting-things-right lasts, my salvation goes on and on and on.”
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December 2, 2015 at 9:31 pm
[…] A discussion on objectivity of morality and moral definitions on comment section of post here: […]
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February 27, 2016 at 2:22 am
As I like to say, that’s like saying because one is able to read books believing a bucket wrote it, the bucket is all that is necessary to explain the origin of all books . In the same way books need a bucket, moral laws need a moral-bucket law giver. Inventing a bucket to underwrite a human invention to excuse any number of ‘sins’ – moral failures subjectively determined by ‘Man’ is rather sickening.
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February 27, 2016 at 9:34 pm
FrationalFearofTerror
Your position and your reasoning is not clear to me.
Jason
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July 6, 2019 at 11:31 pm
@Stan
You write:
Well, no. If something is caused by the mind, then it is subjective. God didn’t cause “Good”; He is infinite Good. The word “value” is subordinate to the Good. Good is good whether or not we value it. To define goodness as a value to the conclusion that it is subjective is textbook question-begging.
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