This is the most fundamental question of human existence. To think that one can figure out the answer on one's own is ignorant and arrogant. Fortunately people have been studying this question for thousands of years, and some have even written down their thoughts, contributing to the branch of philosophy known as ethics.
Ethics is the study of morality. At the heart of morality in relation to our agency is the word “should” or “ought”: ethics addresses how we should act and how we should live. But if we are to rely on morality as a guide for living, we should know what morality is. We must engage in meta-ethics.
This post is about determining whether morality is real and objective. Do ethical statements (like “you should do X”) actually express truth, or are there no objectively right and wrong ways of behaving? Before beginning, I want to say two things. First, this entry involves only a subset of meta-ethics, so it is far from comprehensive. But I think the coverage is sufficient to address what I see as the central problem in ethics and various ways of responding to that problem. Second, the fact that this topic is philosophical in nature should not deter readers from considering it seriously. We often dismiss philosophy as high-minded and irrelevant to real living, but philosophy is simply the study of those questions most central to our existence that have not been answered. The reason philosophy makes little progress is that the answerable questions have been delegated to other academic fields, like the natural sciences. That said, let us begin.
What reason do we have for thinking that morality is real (a position called moral realism)? The primary reason seems to be our shared moral intuitions, like the intuition against murdering. But evolutionary psychology can likely account for these intuitions. Moral instincts are part of an evolutionarily stable strategy to cooperate in ways that seem disadvantageous to ourselves, because doing so aids our survival. (Oversimplified game theoretical description: cooperating is better than defecting in repeated iterations of a prisoner’s dilemma.) Genes coding for cooperative behavior (the “golden rule”) increased survival for organisms in which those genes resided, so those genes were passed down to us. In the end, then, what compels us to behave altruistically is merely an evolved instinct that arose via random processes to enhance genetic fitness. As a result, we need some other reason independent of our intuitions for being moral realists.
Here lies the central problem that plagues moral realism: if morality is real, where does it come from? Realists don’t have a good explanation for where normative grounding comes from. David Hume highlighted this difficulty when he said we cannot derive an ought from an is. If all we can dependably believe are propositions about existence (derived from our empirical observation and reasoning), how can we argue for the validity of normative claims?
One way to respond is to take the anti-realist position: there are no moral truths. It is never the case that we should or should not do X, because normativity does not exist. Anyone who believes otherwise is deluded. What motivates the anti-realist are the presumption that we should not believe in things whose existence we lack evidence for, and the apparent absence of evidence of moral facts. We seem to be justified in believing only material facts, like those describing the observable universe, so if there is no bridge from material facts to moral facts (Hume's is-ought problem), we must conclude that moral facts do not exist.
The opposite position is moral realism, which states that ethical sentences are either true or false. Thus there are objective moral facts. (One might be: “inflicting unnecessary suffering is wrong.”) Moral realism is intuitively appealing because it lets us say that some actions are simply wrong in themselves. But we should be careful not to conflate intuition with reason, especially since our moral intuitions are evolutionary in nature and therefore not evidence for realism. With that in mind, I present three defenses of moral realism.
Robert Nozick gives an interesting and plausible explanation for where morality comes from, one that rests on the concept of value. He argues that entities can have intrinsic value, and the degree of intrinsic value is measured by the degree of “organic unity” exhibited in those entities. Two things contribute to organic unity: the diversity of the material present, and the degree to which that diversity is unified. The greater the diversity, and the more unified that diversity is, the greater organic unity and thus value that entity contains. What makes this theory believable is that its conclusions are quite consistent with our intuitions of what is inherently valuable. For example, it says humans have greater value than other animals, which have greater value than plants, which have greater value than rocks. An entire ecosystem might have great value because some of its components (animals, plants, etc.) do; nonetheless, the ecosystem’s relative lack of unity among its constituents reduces its value (compared to, say, the unity among neurons in a brain). Nozick’s theory also explains how intrinsic value can arise without the existence of “value atoms,” or foundational bits of intrinsic value. Calculating the value of a whole requires accounting for the sum of the values of each of its parts as well as the degree of unity exhibited: V(X) = O(X) + ∑ V(parts of X), where X is the whole, V is the value function, and O(X) is the degree of organic unity exhibited by X. Thus even if all parts of X have no value, the relationship among those parts create O(X) value, giving X nonzero value.
Because some entities have inherent value, the natural corollary is that we should preserve and respect value, and perhaps even work to create value. Thus an “ought” is created once we have the capacity to affect, create, and destroy value. One might point out that Nozick’s ethical theory requires an additional axiom that says, “Value should be respected;” thus normative grounding actually comes from this axiom, not from value. Nonetheless, the nature of value already subsumes this axiom: we can define intrinsic value as that which should be respected for its own sake. This definition does not contradict our use of organic unity as merely the measure of intrinsic value.
Therefore, one way to be a moral realist is to subscribe to Nozick’s ethical model built on value. The existence of intrinsic value grounds all other value (intrinsic and instrumental), thereby creating normativity and giving truth to ethical propositions like, “You should do X.” We can even choose another metric for measuring value (besides organic unity) while maintaining the use of value as foundational for ethical behavior.
Other moral realists lack a comprehensive meta-ethical model while still arguing that the case against moral realism isn’t closed. Here are two more explanations for how “ought” statements can be true. Although these explanations sound plausible, strikingly absent is any reason or evidence for believing that they are actually true.
The first explanation deals with emergence. No one can deny that something amazing happens when sentience arises in a universe of elementary particles, each unaware of its own existence. If emergence can account for sentience, which didn’t exist for billions of years, then perhaps emergence can account for normativity. In other words the apparent gap between is and ought—the gap between nonmoral and moral claims—is not a conclusive refutation of moral realism, because it might be explained by emergence. This same inferential gap is present in many other fields of study: SEP says that we feel comfortable making biological or psychological claims even though we cannot derive these claims from nonbiological or nonpsychological premises. Perhaps once we understand how life, consciousness, and agency emerge from bits of matter that have none of these properties, we can see how obligations to exercise that agency in certain ways can similarly emerge.
The second explanation argues that we should treat ethics as we treat mathematics and logic. Math and logic, unlike science, can make true and false statements, but their connection to truth is a priori, not empirical. That is, we look within the system for truth, not outside the system for independent evidence or grounding. Nevertheless it’s difficult to identify what makes math true, because we don’t really understand the metaphysics of math. Platonists will say that a triangle is an eternal, unchanging, abstract but real entity. Logicists say that math is reducible to logic; but then the question becomes, “What is logic?” Empiricists say math is real, but its truths are obtained only via empirical observation, not deductive logic. (Other schools of thought in philosophy of mathematics refute the realism of math.) The point, however, is that IF morality is more like math than science, then it’s reasonable to be a realist about morality insofar as it’s reasonable to be a realist about math.
How do we make sense of the arguments and evidence before us? As stated earlier, evolutionary psychology poses a real threat to moral realism, because it says that our initial reason for believing in moral objectivity—our intuitions—is not a good reason. But there are other ways of defending moral realism, including the model proposed by Nozick and the two (less ambitious) explanations given above. Nonetheless, Nozick does little to justify the existence of value, and other explanations sound promising but remain too nebulous. Does this mean we must defer to being anti-realists?
I don’t know. It’s very difficult to analyze how convincing and how warranted the various positions presented in this post are, and what conclusion we should draw when putting them together. We must better understand the history, methods, biases, and assumptions involved in the human pursuit of truth. Figuring this out is a tricky matter, and our situation is nothing short of an epistemic crisis.
We have three things to do. First: we must continue studying the question of moral realism in hopes we might find a plausible answer. Second: we must take a step back and contemplate how we should pursue truth in life. It seems that adopting an empirical approach to truth leads to naturalism (the view that nature is all that exists), and that naturalism leads to physicalism (the view that only physical things exist). Within these viewpoints is a diversity of thought, but admittedly such theories feel constraining. Empiricism leads only to truths we can sense, but what if there are other kinds of truth relevant to our existence? How can we discover them in a reliable manner? Third: we must explore where the various realist and anti-realist positions lead (assuming each is correct). For example, as an anti-realist I might decide that the aim of my life will be to maximize personal happiness. Or as a realist, I might decide that value inheres in individuals, and as a result I should treat others as ends in themselves. Perhaps the roads of realists and anti-realists will converge, leading proponents of both to the same behavior.
I hope that no one underestimates the gravity of our situation or the work that remains to be done. Finding these answers is the single most important thing we can do, given our current situation (in which we understand almost nothing about ourselves or the life we should be living). This is precisely what our education was for. Let us not waste it.
