Thinking to Believe

I just received an email from Greg Koukl, president of Stand to Reason ministries.  He penned a short article (what I like to call a “shorticle”) clarifying the sense in which moral relativism is relative, and the sense in which it is not.  His insights are worth producing in their entirety:

“Moral relativism is a kind of subjectivism. When it comes to moral rules-principles of right and wrong-it’s up to the subject, the individual, to decide because there are no true, universal, ethical obligations or moral principles that apply equally to all people. Since no universal standard exists to govern all groups, each decides right and wrong only for itself without judging those that hold other values.

“Even with this brief description, I think you can see a problem beginning to emerge.  A relativist is not going to be able to get any traction if he wants to condemn (in any ultimate sense) any behavior, regardless how evil it seems to be.

“Since this is the relativist’s fatal weakness, I’m not surprised when I get pushback on this point.  “No relativist believes that anything goes,” I’ve been told.  “You’re twisting our view.  Every culture has its own framework of right and wrong.  Even if there are no universal standards of morality, that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all within a given group.”

“Fair enough.  Let me answer this charge with a simple illustration.  Let us pretend that you want to play the classic board game, Monopoly. Like every other game, Monopoly has rules. There are standards, a framework of right or wrong of sorts that works within the Monopoly “community.”  According to the rules of the game, for example, you cannot have houses and hotels on the same piece of property. That would be wrong. Parker Brothers, the inventors of the game, said so.

“Relativism is like Monopoly. In one sense, it’s not the case that “anything goes.” Rather, standards set by the community (Parker Brothers, in this case) govern behavior.

These laws are “true,” though, in an entirely different way than, say, the laws of gravity are true. They are not true because of the way the world is structured, but because of the way human beings (subjects) have arranged the game. If you don’t like the rules, you can change them (variations that are sometimes called “house rules”), or play a different game, or play no game at all. It’s completely up to you.

“You can’t do that with gravity. If you don’t like the laws of physics, too bad. Adapt or die. Reality will punish you if you don’t take it seriously.

“Yes, even in relativistic systems you can get punished by the group if you break the rules and get caught. But I think you can see this is a contrived sort of “punishment” based merely on human conventions (“Go directly to Jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”), not on transcendent standards.

“In the end, as I said, anything goes.  That’s always the case with relativism.

If you are a moral realist (objectivist), you think moral rules are real things, not individual whims or social conventions created by culture.  They are like gravity, not Monopoly.  If you are a relativist, you are playing Monopoly with right and wrong.

Of course, this would not make relativism false.  It might be that, given the nature of the world, all we are left with when it comes to ethics are human conventions. But if that’s the case, then an intellectually honest relativist will have to admit that, given his view of the world, ultimately, anything goes.”

Philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson devised a moral thought experiment called the Trolley Problem. It goes like this (in the words of Steven Pinker):

On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five?

Most people say yes. But consider a slightly different scenario:

You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you—the same man who was laboring on the spur in the previous scenario. Should you throw the man off the bridge?

Most people say no. The question is why. In both scenarios (1) one person must die to save the five, (2) the fat man is the person who must die if the five are to be saved, and (3) your action is required to save the five. So why is it ok to flip the lever but not toss the fat man? Is it due to the relationship of physical proximity to humanization? That is to say, the closer we are physically to someone, the more we regard their person (similar to the way seeing someone die personalizes the concept of death, much different than mere knowledge that people die). Are we repulsed by the idea of tossing the fat man because his increased physical proximity (actually having to touch the man that is about to die because of our direct action) increases our perception of him as a valuable human being (whereas seeing him from afar and touching a lever does not), raising the emotional stakes too high for us to act as we know we should? If so, then the difference in response is merely emotional, not moral. If you think there is a moral difference between the two, however, what is the moral principle involved?

Now consider another, similar scenario:

On your morning walk you see a trolley car hurling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley is Osama bin Laden and Mother Theresa. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving them both. But doing so would cause the train to run over five murderers. Should one throw the switch (killing the five murderers, and sparing Mother Theresa and bin Laden), or should they do nothing (letting the train kill bin Laden and Mother Theresa?

This one is more complex. Unlike the first and second scenarios, here we have a choice between a group of evil people, and a group consisting of both good and evil people. On the one hand, sparing the most people would require that an innocent person be killed, and evil people live. But we would also kill an extremely evil person in the process. On the other hand, acting to spare one innocent person results not only in the death of five evil people, but also the continued life of a person whose evils add up to more than all the evils of the five murderers combined.

This scenario forces us to think about whether it is permissible to hurt the innocent to punish the evil, and whether the cumulative evil of lesser evil people adds up to more evil than a singular, extremely evil man. What do you think? What would you do?

A view of morality I am hearing more and more about in the public circle is the social contract theory. Contractarianism holds that “morality rests on a tacit agreement between rationally self-interested individuals to abide by certain rules because it is to their mutual advantage to do so.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> There is nothing intrinsically wrong with murder, rape, or torture, for example, but since rational self-interested persons do not want these things being done to them, they agree to extend the same courtesy to others.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[2]<!–[endif]–> Philosopher, Edward Feser, offers at least six helpful criticisms of Contractarianism:

1. It’s really not a moral theory at all. It is a truce from Hobbes’ “war of all against all.”<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[3]<!–[endif]–> It is a replacement of morality for practicalities. Ultimately, contractarianism is the opposite of morality because morality often involves the denial of one’s self-interest. Contractarianism is the enshrining of selfishness.

2. One need only pretend to abide by the social contract. Since one behaves “morally” only in their own self-interest (not because they have an objective moral obligation to do so), then if they can secretly behave in ways that are opposed to others’ self-interests and get away with it, they have done nothing wrong.

3. There is no moral justification for claiming one ought to abide by the social contract.

4. Cannot say anyone is immoral. At best, they are being foolish for breaking the social contract, for in doing so they are working against their own self-interest.

5. Cannot provide any meaningful boundaries/restraints for punishing those who go outside the social contract. Why not kill those who steal? Why not torture them? What would be wrong with these punishments? We may choose not to, but contractarian theory offers no reason why we can’t should we choose to.

6. Fails to invoke moral duties to those outside the social contract, such as the mentally retarded. These people cannot assent to the contract, and since they cannot harm someone else, there is no reason to make a contract with them. Why not just kill a retarded person because we had a bad day at work?

Just like moral relativism (a close cousin), social contract theory is bankrupt as a moral philosophy.

Moral relativists have the difficult position of grounding their moral persuasions. Why should one do x and not y, given the relative nature of morals? For example, why should person p not murder person q when it is not in their interest to do so? A standard response is that murder is wrong because society has collectively determined it is wrong. This response invites three questions:

(1) What if a majority of society determined murder was acceptable? Would the relativist change his position to affirm that murder is morally acceptable? If not, why not?

(2) Why is person p obligated to abide by the dictates of the majority? After all, morals are just personal tastes. A cultural consensus is nothing more than the sum of individuals’ personal tastes. Why should person p be concerned about the personal tastes of the group? Why not assert his own interests over those of the group? Where does the moral obligation to follow the dictates of the majority come from?

(3) If morality is determined by the collective majority, is the moral relativist prepared to acknowledge that all minority views are, by definition, immoral? This would include such views as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and cloning—all of which do not enjoy the support of a majority in society. A moral relativist cannot argue for the morality of homosexuality within a relativistic framework of morality in which society determines what is right.

The fact of the matter is that moral relativists have no grounding for morality. They try to ground it in the consensus of the public whole, but cannot ground the moral obligation to follow the public consensus in anything but thin air. Finally, they are inconsistent in their application of moral relativism. They try to argue that things such as same-sex marriage are good, even when the public consensus disagrees. They can’t have their cake and eat it too.

As another example of poor thinking consider the following story (thank you Max for bringing this to my attention).

The management group (One Management) of a senior apartment complex is banning a group of tenants from having Bible studies, singing hymns, and displaying nativity scenes in the common areas of the complex because they say it may violate the Fair Housing Act. Vice-president of One Management, Jenny Petri, described the rationale for the policy change as follows: “Allowing religious ceremonies or displays of religious items in the property’s common areas may create the appearance that Heritage Court prefers or limits one religion over another, or even that it prefers residents who are religious over those who are not. To comply with Fair Housing laws, Heritage Court must remain religiously neutral.”

So let me get this straight, to avoid the appearance of discrimination against any one particular religion they discriminate against all religions by banning all things religious from the common areas of the complex? In the name of religious neutrality they are being anything but neutral, and yet they fail to see how self-contradictory their policy is. To ensure religious freedom it is believed we must ban the expression of religion in the public square. Such is the deception of political correctness.

The rationale isn’t even legitimate. Allowing a group of Christians to practice their faith in the common areas of the complex does not discriminate against other religions. The only way discrimination would be involved is if the complex allowed Christians to use the common areas for religious purposes, but not other religious groups.