There are a few moral ideals that are common to all social groups, such as not stealing or committing senseless murder. These have lead to many people, both religious (theist and deist alike) and nonreligious, supposing the existence of moral absolutes.
These generalized moral ideals are picked up on keenly, but little attention is paid to the fact that other than these few things, all other moral ideas are blurred, subjective, and mutually exclusive. For example, some cultures seen cannibalism as a moral duty, and other see it as the worst imaginable crime.
The common morals (not stealing, not fruitlessly murdering) can be traced logically back to evolution via natural selection, and that is the reason that they are the only ones truly common to all social groups. They are the morals that help people live together as a group, which in turn helps them to survive as a species. It boils down to basic common sense: if you want to have a successful group, you can’t have people stealing from one another and you can’t have people killing at random.
All other morals enter the realm of subjectivity. Every culture agrees that a baseless random murder is wrong, but they disagree severely over definition of “baseless,” when it is okay to take a life and when it is not. Just a few hundred years ago it was socially acceptable for a brother to murder a man who had sex with his sister out of wedlock. Many countries today still practice honor killings where it is morally justifiable for a husband to kill is adulterating wife, or a father to kill his disobedient daughter. Among the Asmat in New Guinea, before they were influenced by Western society, it was not only considered correct, but a moral and religious obligation to kill and cannibalize your enemy. Our culture today says that murdering the man who had sex with your sister is wrong, but killing another man during a war is alright. What a culture defines as “baseless” can change from era to era and culture to culture, but the idea that baseless murder is wrong remains. However, baseless killing, although universally agreed upon by human cultures, is not a moral absolute because of the way it fluctuates–that ever-changing definition of when it is okay to kill and when it is wrong. There are no moral absolutes, just generalizations.
Theists who look at these evolutionarily generated common moral traits see them as a sign that there must be an absolute source of morality, and posit that God is that source. They supposes something extreme about the nature of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong”. From this standpoint, morals should be black and white, and universally applicable (supposing that humans are unique moral beings, separated from the animals) with very little room for subjectivity, yet that goes directly against our experience. Instead of there being many apparent absolutes and few areas of subjectivity, there is a wealth of subjectivity and such a lack of absolutes that it is wrong to even call them that.
The moral wiring imparted by evolution does not transverse very far into daily life and the majority of moralistic concerns, because the only thing evolution cares about is survival. It only affects morals that in turn affect survival and positive group interactions, and those are few and far between. For example, it doesn’t matter for the survival of the species if someone wears clothing that covers their entire body or wears hot pants and tube tops; that is why there are so many different moral ideas about modesty and attire. All other moral ideals are social constructs–-products of a specific culture and its practices.
Outside of a theistic world-view, one could argue that evolution itself has created a set of moral absolutes. It is logical to say that the very bare bones of morality come from evolution, but evolution is not the absolute creator of morality. It creates a little bit of morality some of the time, and it leaves a great big giant space for relativism and subjectivity, such as various moral social constructs. I can say that baseless killing is wrong, but that only applies to species that evolved to exist in groups. That same moral principle doesn’t apply at all when one considers solitary animals who benefit by killing any and all competition. Since evolution as a system places no importance or specialness on humans (unlike religious systems), if it contained moral absolutes, they should apply to all of the animal kingdom, not just one species. What is “good” for humans, orangutans, and horses is not the same thing as what is “good” for polar bears and snakes.
In the natural world we can see that there is not one right and one wrong, but many rights and many wrongs all contingent upon many varying factors, including species, environment, society, and culture. Evolution determines a few of those (the ones that relate directly to group species survival), but that is it. This idea that there are moral absolutes in the world is an illusion caused by the common moral generalities derived from evolution.
September 30, 2008 at 3:12 pm |
Actually, Israeli Beduins (yes, we have those up here in Israel, some of them serve in our army!) kill their women even if they were raped! Honor killings can get really wacky.
December 16, 2008 at 4:21 am |
Ordover, I dig your intelligent, well written blog. I happened to stumble upon this post as I was browsing through blogs on religion and I think you’ve committed an error in your reasoning. It’s summarized well in this passage:
“However, baseless killing, although universally agreed upon by human cultures, is not a moral absolute because of the way it fluctuates–that ever-changing definition of when it is okay to kill and when it is wrong. There are no moral absolutes, just generalizations.”
Throughout this post you several times make the argument that there can be no moral absolutes in light of the stark differences in moral standards ad behavior between cultures. You seem to hold that, because the moral codes of different cultures are contradictory, there must not be any moral absolutes. I hope you don’t mind thorough engagement here (if you do, feel free to delete my comment; it’s certainly your blog), because I’d like to respond and show where I think your reasoning goes astray, because it seems that, when reason is followed through, you might find that 1. even if the moral codes of societies were all fundamentally at odds with each other, it wouldn’t follow that there is no objective morality, and 2. the deep moral codes of societies actually aren’t different.
For the first point, your argument seems to be that we can know that there is no objective morality because there is no agreement on what morality is. Imagine though that that line of reasoning were applied to any other area of inquiry. I read that you were once an evangelical protestant, so I’m sure sure familiar with young-earth creationism. There’s tons of people out there who believe in it (I’m not one of them, btw), which means that there is no universal consensus regarding the age of the earth. Some believe it’s 6,000 years old, some think it’s around 4 billion. Does that lack of consensus indicate that there is no fact about the age of the earth, that it’s a matter of subjectivity? Or what about the quandaries about gravity caused by ‘dark matter’. There’s certainly no consensus on the cause or processes involved there. Would you say that that is then a matter of subjective opinion, and nothing more? Of course not. So why does this line of reasoning hold for morality? It seems that the only reason one would have to accept this line of evidence is if they already assumed there were no moral truths in the first place, which hasn’t been shown.
Secondly, you point to differing moral codes among people groups as evidence for the subjective nature of morality (which doesn’t seem to be it’s nature really, I don’t think). Other examples, in addition to your cannibalism examples, and your killing ones, there are also African tribes who think it is a moral duty to feed their babies to hippos on certain occasions, and Eskimos who thrown their daughters into the freezing ocean at birth to kill them. So, you’re right that there are some serious apparent moral differences among cultures, but I think that these differences are merely apparent, and that you might agree. Consider:
Though these cultures have wildly different (and horrifying practices), when one approaches a member of the culture and asks what their reason for such grotesque behavior is, they give pretty startling answers. For instance, when one asks the tribesman why he throws the baby to the hippo, the tribesman replies that the hippo is a god (and so owns the baby, and so has a right to it), and has demanded that it be given to him as a sacrifice. Now, we know that there is something different going on there, but it’s not with the person’s moral code, because, underlying this wild practice is a foundational moral belief that exists in all cultures: that if someone has a right to something, and demands it, it must be rendered to them.
Take the Eskimo example too. The eskimos throw female children to the sea, but why? Because females are not hunters in their culture, and so cannot gather food, so if the female population strongly outnumbers the male, they will consume more food than they bring in, and everyone will starve. Underneath this lies a foundational moral principle that all cultures share: we ought to save life when we can, and the obligation to the many is greater than the obligation to one.
So, in the examples you mentioned, there is certainly a severe disagreement between cultures, but it’s not an ethical disagreement, it’s a metaphysical one. We don’t disagree with the tribesman about whether we ought to render unto people their rights, but about whether the hippo is a god, and we don’t disagree with the eskimo about whether we should save the many, but about whether women are capable of being providers. By your reasoning above though, such disagreement about these issues must mean that the issues are ones about which there is no objective truth, so there’s no truth at all about whether hippos are gods who demand child sacrifice, or whether women are suitable for hunting. But that certainly isn’t the case, so why should it be the case with morality?
December 16, 2008 at 5:33 am |
Thank you for your very thought provoking comment, Michael.
First of all, let me say that I agree with your general criticism, that objective truth is not contingent upon how many people agree.
I agree that my argument is not air-tight for arguing against the general existence of moral absolutes, or one moral truth, because as you say, a lack of congruence does not equate to a lack of objective truth. Is there an objective way to qualify moral truth? I don’t know. I certainly don’t know of one. We can’t research it scientifically. I know of no way to establish the truthfulness of any moral system except through the evocation of the supernatural, “I know this moral system is right because my God says so.” In an attempt to make the judgement about moral absolutes a bit more scientific, some people point to the moral similarities between varied cultures, suggesting that humans have in innate blueprint for morality within. In this post I was specifically arguing against that line of reasoning, and submitting that there is no clear way to infer from observation that there are moral absolutes, as some religious people claim, due to the fact that great disparities exist between cultures and the few similarities are perfectly explained through evolution.
You do not agree with me that such disparities between cultures exist, calling them semantic differences rather than moral ones. I both agree and disagree. The cultures that you and I both reference have a different moral systems, but those moral systems are dictated by their culture (i.e. religion). If we take a naturalistic worldview, this is what we would expect to see from isolated cultural groups. Each would develop their own ways of understanding and relating to the world. Some would see hippos as gods requiring blood sacrifice because they live near rivers populated by the dangerous animals. Anyone from a different place would find that belief horrific. I believe that these distinct (and often geographic) cultural differences strongly suggest the fact that morality is not absolute, because if it was, the disparities would not be so stark and specific to location.
As I mentioned in the main post, there are some similarities that exist, such as disallowing senseless killing and stealing. Your final paragraphs add one more similarity to that list: the belief that the standard and agreed upon beliefs of your religion or culture group are correct and to be respected. But really, that’s just a fancy way of saying, “Let’s all be altruistic and agree to minimalize conflict,” isn’t it?
My original argument was that there exist these baseline moral similarities, but that they are not absolutes, rather generalities because their details are so varied. As I said, it isn’t clear enough to just say, “Killing is bad.” Killing must be considered in context, according to culture. If there was the sort of absolute morality suggested by the Biblical 10 Commandments, then just saying “Thou shalt not kill” should be specific enough. All of the baseline moral generalities (i.e. stealing is bad) are directly related to altruism which benefits the survival of the species. This points not to a set of moral absolutes established by a god, but rather a set of moral generalities that relate exclusively to evolutionary survival.
Both of the examples you gave, giving up of what is owed and sacrificing one for the greater good of many just boil down to altruism. But what altruism mean specifically to one culture and specifically to another can vary. Catholics say EVERY life is sacred and deserves to be protected. Eskimos say male life is more valuable than female life, and female babies should be killed to keep a proper balance. Both views help the survival of their specific populations. Both can be seen as altruistic.
Again, my main argument is that the things considered moral absolutes by the religiously-minded are actually moral generalizations, not hard-fact truth.
December 16, 2008 at 6:45 am |
Two things you said pique my interest.
The first:
“Is there an objective way to qualify moral truth? I don’t know. I certainly don’t know of one. We can’t research it scientifically. I know of no way to establish the truthfulness of any moral system except through the evocation of the supernatural, “I know this moral system is right because my God says so.”
There are certainly excellent questions contained here, but some of the things in this statement make me wonder, do you believe that the only way to know something is through empirical observation and scientific testing? If so, how do you know that? (i.e. that the only way of knowing is through science) It certainly can’t be either empirically verified or scientifically tested. If you don’t believe that empirical observation is the only way of knowing something, why do you assume that the only way of arriving at moral knowledge is through those routes? It seems that we can know all sorts of things through other routes such as intuition. There is no scientific way of determining what number you’re thinking of right now, but you can still know that you’re thinking of, say, the number thirty. There is also no scientific way of determining whether you have an actual interior life, or are just a cleverly constructed organic robot that seems to have one, yet you know that you have thoughts and beliefs and such. Why can’t we come to moral knowledge through the same, non-scientific route? I, for instance, think that I really do know that raping babies for fun is absolutely wrong, and I don’t think I need any sort of external scientific or religious verification for that. I think I just know it in the same way that I know I have an interior life.
Now you might reply that that’s just an evolutionary disposition I have to think that. Even if I were to grant that (which I might actually do), that doesn’t prove anything whatsoever about it’s objective truth. To think it does is to commit a fallacy of reasoning whereby one hold a statement to be false because of its origin – never a sound conclusion.
You mention that you’d like to come to some sort of certainty about morality apart from religion, but don’t find any promising route. (And please forgive me for sounding pretentious here) You might try looking into Aristotle, and his modern followers, Rosalind Hursthouse, Philipia Foot, and Alasdair MacIntyre, who all do normative ethics from a non-religious standpoint.
The second thing you said:
“Your final paragraphs add one more similarity to that list: the belief that the standard and agreed upon beliefs of your religion or culture group are correct and to be respected. But really, that’s just a fancy way of saying, “Let’s all be altruistic and agree to minimalize conflict,” isn’t it?”
That’s not quite what I meant. What I was getting at is that the most foundational MORAL beliefs of all cultures are really the same, but are worked out differently in light of their other, competing beliefs about the nature of the world, which are not the same category as their moral beliefs, but which I think you’re not quite distinguishing rightly. My thesis here is that, if you take some morally significant action in any culture, and ask the person doing it “why do you do that?” until they arrive at their most basic, undergirding moral principle (assuming he is acting out of his moral principles, rather than acting in a way he himself would consider morally wrong), you will find that that principle is shared by all cultures. So, if you ask certain Africans why they mutilate their women’s genitals to decrease their sexual appetites, they will INITIALLY say that they do it because women are insatiable and uncontrollable in their sexual desires (which is false a belief about the WORLD, not morality, which directs the outworking of their deep moral beliefs) and that they must do this to the women because, if they don’t, the women will go after men in other tribes, and cause war between the tribes, risking everyone’s life (or something like this). If you ask them why they must prevent war, they will eventually have to tell you that they believe that war is terrible and death and destruction should be avoided whenver possible. That is the foundational, undergirding moral belief that every culture shares. So our beliefs about morality and the world form these successive layers, with only the very top being visible, which gives the illusion of difference in the foundations, but that’s only an illusion.
So, to return to your second comment above, I don’t think you initially got me right there, but imagine if you did. What if every culture believed that we ought to minimilize conflict? Wouldn’t that count as a universal moral belief? If so, wouldn’t your original idea weaken even more in light of it, especially under the realization that even if you explained it via evolution, that doesn’t necessarily explain it away; so morality could maintain its objectivity even if we were to make sense out of where it came from.
By the way, I’m jealous that you go to UC Berkeley. I’m applying to grad schools right now and am coming from a very unprestigious school. I’m sure I would have better luck had I been a classmate of yours, and probably would have had richer conversations along the way, judging from your blog.
December 16, 2008 at 7:09 pm |
“There are certainly excellent questions contained here, but some of the things in this statement make me wonder, do you believe that the only way to know something is through empirical observation and scientific testing? If so, how do you know that? (i.e. that the only way of knowing is through science) It certainly can’t be either empirically verified or scientifically tested.”
I do believe that the only way something can be objectively known is by testing its empirical qualities. Science itself can indeed be scientifically tested, which is why it is reliable. The entire practice is open to peer testing and review, it is self-correcting and self-monitoring. Because of this build-in system of checks, which weeds out errors, I can know that the scientific process is sound. If it wasn’t, it would have been weeded out, and something better would have taken its place. (And no, this doesn’t require faith in the scientific method, it requires seeing it in action and observing its outcomes.)
“It seems that we can know all sorts of things through other routes such as intuition.”
I strongly disagree.
“There is no scientific way of determining what number you’re thinking of right now, but you can still know that you’re thinking of, say, the number thirty.”
You can make a blind guess, but your intuition will never guarantee that you come up with the right answers. Mentalists uses a series of tricks to direct attention and then infer what someone is thinking by what they have basically tricked them into thinking about, but that isn’t intuition, it’s a detailed process that takes advantage of the way the mind works (which we know through science).
Science can’t read minds. That isn’t to say it is an impossible task. In fact, science is getting closer all the time. But aside from that, science doesn’t purport to be able to do everything. It has limits. It has things that it admits it cannot do. For example, knowing what came before the Big Bang. It doesn’t say it won’t ever know, but with current technology it is scientifically impossible. Some things are not open to empirical testing, and that’s okay. But I do not believe that anyone can make a value judgement that holds water about things which can not be established as truth through objective analysis.
“There is also no scientific way of determining whether you have an actual interior life, or are just a cleverly constructed organic robot that seems to have one, yet you know that you have thoughts and beliefs and such.”
So basically, “What if the Matrix is real?” That is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Science can’t prove a negative, and it certainly can’t have anything to say about something as undetectable as a flawless virtual reality system engineered by a race with supreme technology.
If I am understanding you correctly, you believe that you know that the Matrix isn’t real, because you “feel” intuitively that your thoughts are real and genuine and your own. But couldn’t that just prove the awesomeness of the robots? They’re using their technology to convince you that your thoughts are genuine and your own, so that you don’t grow suspicious. Your intuition is a construct. What then?
Such a thought experiment is basically pointless. Its the same as trying to prove or disprove the existence of Bertrand Russell’s teapot. If something can’t be detected, it can’t be detected. You haven’t shown how your intuition would help.
And intuition can be very wrong. I hate being home alone, and sometimes I am overcome with the paranoid feeling that there is someone in my house. I just can’t shake it. I can feel eyes staring into the back of my head. I think I can hear subtle movements. It usually gets to the point where I have to turn on every light and look in every room, under the bed, in the closet, and in the bathtub. But no one is ever there. My intuition always leads me astray, and a bit of real empirical investigations sets it right again.
“Why can’t we come to moral knowledge through the same, non-scientific route? I, for instance, think that I really do know that raping babies for fun is absolutely wrong, and I don’t think I need any sort of external scientific or religious verification for that. I think I just know it in the same way that I know I have an interior life.”
First of all, I don’t think you have effectively proved that there is a non-scientific way (i.e. intuition) to gather sound knowledge. Second, you believe that raping babies is wrong for two reasons: the biological impetus for altruism, and social conditioning. If we are to use intuition to establish objective morality (it was hard to even type that out, since “intuition” and “objective” and contradictory terms), then what about sociopaths? What about the other cultural practices we mentioned? According my culture, it is wrong to kill a baby. It doesn’t matter if it will benefit the many by its loss. You just don’t kill babies. I “just know” in my “heart” that killing babies is wrong, but that is because I have been socially conditioned to believe that. The Africans who sacrifice their babies to hippos, regardless of their moral justifications, do not have that same believe that killing babies is always wrong. My intuition screams, “NO! DON’T THROW THAT BABY TO THE HIPPO!” and their intuition says, “We must throw the baby to the hippo because the baby is the property of the hippo, and the hippo requires a sacrifice.” So who’s intuition do we trust? Who is objectively correct? I believe that we both are, because I believe that morality is not objective, but rather relative.
“What if every culture believed that we ought to minimilize conflict? Wouldn’t that count as a universal moral belief? If so, wouldn’t your original idea weaken even more in light of it, especially under the realization that even if you explained it via evolution, that doesn’t necessarily explain it away; so morality could maintain its objectivity even if we were to make sense out of where it came from.”
No. Minimalizing conflict is altruism, and I already threw that one is as a given (or a baseline). Evolution does explain it “away,” in my opinion. What does it leave behind? Evolution says that social species will develop traits that help them to live as a united group, in other words, altruism. What is lacking from that? What hasn’t been explained?
December 16, 2008 at 9:42 pm |
I think we’re starting to understand each other better (or, at least I think I understand better now how you understand me). I think that, in a few places I’ve been vague or used terms that have very specific meaning for me, but don’t have that meaning for you. This probably has to do with our respective disciplines in which we concentrate (history and art for you and philosophy and religion for me). For instance, the term ‘intuition’ in philosophy has a very special meaning. It means ‘the act of directly perceiving’. For instance, when I see a tree I don’t see it directly. My experience of seeing the tree (awkwardly phrased in philosophy as ‘being appeared to treely’) comes through several means. Lightwaves bounce off the tree, reflecting some (but only some) of its surface onto my retina, which eventually makes its way to my brain, which interprets it to my mind in the form of a visual image. That is an indirect seeing. Intuition on the other hand is a direct seeing. For instance, I can directly see that two plus two equals four once I understand the concepts. I don’t need any means to convey that fact to me, whereas I do need means to convey facts about the external world to me, such as the fact that there are four apples on the table.
So when I say that I intuitively know some things apart from scientific verification, I mean that I directly see their truth in a way that verifies it to me as fact, not mere opinion, and that I don’t need any further verification for that truth in order to legitimately claim that I know it. I know that raping babies is wrong no matter which culture you’re born in the same way that I know that two plus two is four without needing to test it. I just know it.
That said, I have a few questions for you:
1. You say that scientific, empirical observation is the only way of knowing anything. My question is, do you KNOW that? Do you know that science is the only way of knowing? If so, what experiment was done to prove this? Where was this fact empirically observed?
I hope you see where I’m going. No such experiment could ever work, and no empirical event could ever occur that, upon observation, would verify this claim. Sure, science can verify itself as A way of arriving at knowledge. That’s an uncontroversial claim. But, science could never validate itself as THE ONLY way of coming to knowledge, because such a claim is terminally question-begging, circular, unverifiable, and unfalsifiable. It’s akin to the claim ‘the bible is true because it says it is’. It’s the same sort of nonsense claim (and this position is, to my knowledge, quite uncontroversial among philosophers of science).
If you disagree, please just point me to the scientific experiment that firmly concluded that science itself is the only way that anyone can know anything. ;-)
2. Having talked about the precise meaning of ‘intuition’ in philosophy, let’s talk about the matrix thing. You sort of get me right above, but not quite. The matrix example that you bring up (I never in fact mentioned it) raises the question of whether or not we know that the EXTERNAL world is real or illusory (we don’t know; plain and simple). The question I’m raising is much more relevant to the discussion. It’s what we’ll call the ‘deceiving robot’ question.
Imagine that there is an organic robot that resembles a human completely. It has a brain and skin and no silicon chips whatsoever. It has also been programmed with all the same evolutionary programming as a normal human so it responds to external stimuli like you and I do and we could hook it up to an fMRI or whatever and its brain would light up just like yours. But it differs in one important way, it has no mind – it is not conscious. So, while it jerks its hand from the flame, and responds socially, it has no internal mental experience whatsoever. No emotions, no feeling, no sensation (though the brain responds to pain sensors, it has no subjective, personal FEELING associated with that event), no thoughts, etc. It’s not a person. It’s a machine. Certainly such a machine COULD exist right? It’s not impossible, so let’s ask a question. Are you such a machine? Are you a mindless robot that only appears to have an internal SELF, a mind? Or are you a real, mental being?
Certainly you have a mind, right? But how do you know that? Can you test that empirically? Think about it – any test would only test your physiology – not your interior self – and that robot thing is just like you, physiologically. So, all the tests would come up the same, and science would conclude that you two are the same exact sort of thing, insofar as their tests go. But you’re not, because you have a mind, and a subjective self unlike this robot. But such a conclusion could never be arrived at scientifically. But that’s not a mark against science, because science isn’t the only means of arriving at truths, and doesn’t actually claim to be (to see it simply, consider that claims about how things are KNOWN is a philosophical claim, not a scientific claim). So how do you know you’re not a deceiving robot? You know it through intuition. You directly perceive it and you don’t need any mitigating process to aid you in your knowing.
Doesn’t it seem like, in light of all this, science is great, but isn’t the only method of knowing out there? Don’t you know you’re a person, and not merely an organic robot? If you disagree, saying science is the only route to knowledge, then you will have to relinquish your claim to know that you’re a person and not a robot, since I’m sure you haven’t tested that claim scientifically and found it to be true (because no such test can ever be constructed). But you don’t want to give that up, and you shouldn’t because you know it’s true, and you know it without need for science, even though science is a wonderful route to many other truths.
December 16, 2008 at 9:45 pm |
May be helpful: to clarify the intuition thing further, consider:
A is taller than B, and B is taller than C.
Which is true?:
1. A is taller than C
2. C is taller than A
3. C and A are the same size
Certainly you know the answer without scientific verification, and without any mitigating, experimental means which verify your answer. You don’t have to go out and line up three differently sized things to test and see that 1 is true. You know it directly, through intuition.
December 16, 2008 at 10:38 pm |
“So when I say that I intuitively know some things apart from scientific verification, I mean that I directly see their truth in a way that verifies it to me as fact, not mere opinion, and that I don’t need any further verification for that truth in order to legitimately claim that I know it. I know that raping babies is wrong no matter which culture you’re born in the same way that I know that two plus two is four without needing to test it. I just know it.”
If there was a culture that practiced baby raping, they would not agree with your intuitive deduction. Again, whose intuition to we trust to provide us with objective knowledge of morality, mine, or the African hippo baby feeders? They are at odds.
What if something like, say, the force of gravity at sea level on earth could not be verified through repeat measurements? What if every culture measured the force of gravity at sea level, using the same instruments and calibrations, and somehow came up with different results? Do we take one measurement? Do we take the mean? I would submit that the force of gravity at sea level cannot be determined objectively, because it is either in constant fluctuation or is being manipulated by cultural bias. Some things, like the force of gravity at sea level on earth, are open to objective qualification. No matter where you go on earth or what culture operates the tools, it says the same. Not so for morality, although there are similarities.
The point that I am trying to make here is that, sure you can use your intuition to make some judgments or decisions, but your intuition may be in disagreement with another, especially if we are talking about something as subjective as morality. You can make deductions based on intuition, but they are open to all sorts of flaws coming from cultural bias or religious bias or whatever else.
“Doesn’t it seem like, in light of all this, science is great, but isn’t the only method of knowing out there? Don’t you know you’re a person, and not merely an organic robot? If you disagree, saying science is the only route to knowledge, then you will have to relinquish your claim to know that you’re a person and not a robot, since I’m sure you haven’t tested that claim scientifically and found it to be true (because no such test can ever be constructed). But you don’t want to give that up, and you shouldn’t because you know it’s true, and you know it without need for science, even though science is a wonderful route to many other truths.”
If I was a flawless organic robot, I would have no way of verifying that I was or was not human. I have no way to objectively prove to you that I am not such a robot. I do not objectively know that it is untrue. The best that I can do is use reason and empirical evidence to examine the claim and come to a conclusion, but not an absolute conclusion, just a realization of what is most likely.
If I was a robot, how would intuition help? Wouldn’t my intuition tell me that I am a human, in order to maintain the farce. Have you read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?? In that book, there is a character, Phil Resch, who can’t tell if he is an android or not. He tries to use his intuition to establish his identity, but he realizes that is pointless because androids can be fitted with false memories that affect their consciousness. He feels like he’s a human, but he realizes he could be wrong. The issue is only put to rest after he is put through an objective test to measure his capacity for empathy which established if he was a human or not.
That being said, I don’t know that I am not a robot. Neither do you, and neither did Phil Resch. I can be pretty sure that I am not based on observation, evidence, Occam’s razor, and even based on the fact that I “feel” like a human, but I can never prove it objectively, 100%. I can use my intuition to get me closer to the conclusion that I am not a robot, but that doesn’t count as objective truth because it relies upon my subjective experience.
“I hope you see where I’m going. No such experiment could ever work, and no empirical event could ever occur that, upon observation, would verify this claim. Sure, science can verify itself as A way of arriving at knowledge. That’s an uncontroversial claim. But, science could never validate itself as THE ONLY way of coming to knowledge, because such a claim is terminally question-begging, circular, unverifiable, and unfalsifiable. It’s akin to the claim ‘the bible is true because it says it is’. It’s the same sort of nonsense claim (and this position is, to my knowledge, quite uncontroversial among philosophers of science).”
I have yet to see any other way of arriving at knowledge that works constantly and consistently. But I think I should add that went I say “knowledge,” I’m referring exclusively to objective knowledge. I don’t believe that intuition is a valid way for procuring knowledge, because it is not objective enough. It relies too heavily on personal opinions and biases.
For example, I “know” intuitively that I love my cat, because I feel inside my heart the love that I have for her. That inner feeling is enough evidence for me. But what if we are trying to establish my feelings for my cat objectively? Obviously my emotions and intuition go out the window, because I could be lying or I could be deluded or mistaken any number of things. In order to objectively determine that I love my cat, some empirical evidence is needed. The fact that I feed her daily, clean up her waste, groom her, pet, her and kiss the top of her head is evidence that points toward the conclusion that I care about my cat. Going one step further, analyzing my brain chemistry could show that petting her releases happy chemicals like endorphins, the biological markers of love.
December 16, 2008 at 10:59 pm |
“Which is true?:
1. A is taller than C
2. C is taller than A
3. C and A are the same size
Certainly you know the answer without scientific verification, and without any mitigating, experimental means which verify your answer. You don’t have to go out and line up three differently sized things to test and see that 1 is true. You know it directly, through intuition.”
I know the answer not intuitively, but based on the evidence given, and based on what I already know through observation and past experience. I know through observation that one thing might be bigger than another, and I know that you told me that one thing is bigger than another. I’m using my skills of observation of physical qualities. I don’t have to pull out to-scale models because I’ve already done that before, or because I can imagine it in my mind.
I can see one tree and know that it is bigger than another tree. I know based on observation, or even based on intuition (my brain understanding that one thing is bigger than another), but I can’t trust my own observations to say that the tree I think is bigger than the other is actually, truthfully, bigger. I need verification from others, or an objective form of measurement like a ruler. My lone observations and conclusions could be wrong based on any number of variables, including my keenness of depth perception, my distance from the objects, and other objects surrounding them.
Take, for example, this optical illusion.
Intuitively, the top line looks much longer than the bottom one, but if you put a straight edge up, if you use an objective form of measurement, you see that the two are the exact same length.
That’s just one example of why I don’t go with my intuition, but rather always use a slide rule :)
Intuition can tell us how things seem to be, but it is not solid enough to establish objective truth and thus objective knowledge.
December 17, 2008 at 1:43 am |
Always getting closer to consensus! I like it.
I think we’re still failing to connect our ideas in a way on this intuition thing. For the robot instance, you ask this question:
“If I was a robot, how would intuition help? Wouldn’t my intuition tell me that I am a human, in order to maintain the farce.”
This highlights an area where we’re not on the same page. You seem to think that I’m asking how one would know if they were just a robot or not. That’s part of it, but not all of it. The question is really if you know that you have AN INTERRIOR LIFE. Do you have a MIND, or not? That is, are you really a conscious being, or do you just appear to be one from the outside? A cleverly constructed robot would look like a human from the outside, but it would just act out of programmed responses so that it seemed conscious.
Are you a conscious being or just a robot that SEEMS conscious? That is a matter about truth, but which can never be arrived at through empirical observation, only through intuition.
Another area where I don’t think I’ve quite gotten my meaning across is with the ABC tallness issue. Now here’s what the question isn’t asking
*Is it true that A is taller than B? (We’re granting that, not trying to establish it’s truth. It’s just granted for the sake of the question.)
Here’s what we ARE asking:
* If we already knew that A is taller than B and B taller than C (even scientifically), could we know anything else?
The answer is, sure we could. We could know that A is taller than C. And we could know that without the least bit of experimentation or observation. We wouldn’t have to see anything at all. We would know it through intuition.
Another issue to clarify. It seems that, in your argument, you’re conflating several concepts that should be kept distinct. For instance, you seem to believe that something can’t be objectively true if there are people who won’t consent to it, or can’t. For instance:
“”What if something like, say, the force of gravity at sea level on earth could not be verified through repeat measurements? What if every culture measured the force of gravity at sea level, using the same instruments and calibrations, and somehow came up with different results?”"
Okay, let’s suppose that were the case. There is no consensus that, say, the force of gravity is 9.8 m/s(2). Some say it’s 9.4, some 3.2. Does it at all follow that there’s no truth of the matter? Of course not. Does it follow that, because there is no consensus that we should just give up the argument and agree that it’s merely a matter of culture? Nope. Does it follow that there can never be consensus? No. So, why does your line of reasoning that because there is no consensus, morality is merely a cultural feature hold, when it wouldn’t hold for anything else? It seems that it’s only because you’ve assumed your conclusion because you’ve learned some things about evolution and neuroscience, which scientists (who often know absolutely zero philosophy) often assume destroys morality, but it just doesn’t follow at all.
Also, you ask what if there was a society that practiced infant rape? You have to appreciate the complexity of that question. First we would ask the members why they did that. You seem to assume that everything a person does, they do it because they think it’s morally right. That’s just plainly not true, and it accounts for a lot of the moral difference between cultures. Cultures grow into their own habits of pervasive wickedness all the time. It’s perfectly conceivable that this would be such an instance, so the person would eventually have to explain that they do it because they like it, or it’s fun, but not because it’s the RIGHT thing to do.
If such a culture did say that they did it because they thought it was right, we could ask why, and they would likely give a religious reason. Then their reason would be based on a false belief about the world, not a false moral belief. But they would certainly never say “just because we believe we have a moral duty to rape babies”. That’s almost inconceivable. But if they did, why wouldn’t we just say that they’re WRONG, rather than throw our hands up and say “Look, there’s no such thing as morality!”?
I’m also interested in how your belief that there is no objective morality works out in your own life. Do you cheat when it suits you? Do you deceive people to get what you want (not that I imagine such a person would answer honestly here necessarily)? And do you think that rapists should be punished? If there are no moral wrongs, then rape isn’t wrong, and we don’t have any obligation to punish rapists or murderers. Do you condemn such people? (Of course you are programmed to, but part of consciousness is about transcending our programming, so wouldn’t you rather live in light of the truth that there is no morality, and DEFEND rapists from being punished, since punishment is enacted on the chemical illusion that rape really is objectively wrong?)
December 17, 2008 at 2:31 am |
“The question is really if you know that you have AN INTERRIOR LIFE. Do you have a MIND, or not? That is, are you really a conscious being, or do you just appear to be one from the outside? …
Are you a conscious being or just a robot that SEEMS conscious? That is a matter about truth, but which can never be arrived at through empirical observation, only through intuition.”
I was using your robot analogy to answer your question. I’ll do it again more directly. I cannot prove objectively that I am a conscious being with an interior life. I seem to be conscious, but that is as far as my intuition gets me. I can made a deduction from that seeming reality that I am a conscious being, but that deduction is not objective truth. If there is no way for science or any sort of objective test to help me find the answer, then I admit defeat. Well, not defeat exactly, but I admit the limitations of the kind of “facts” that can be deduced through intuition alone. I would conclude that I seem to be alive, but that I have no objective measure with which to verify that statement.
“If we already knew that A is taller than B and B taller than C (even scientifically), could we know anything else?
The answer is, sure we could. We could know that A is taller than C. And we could know that without the least bit of experimentation or observation. We wouldn’t have to see anything at all. We would know it through intuition.”
You call that intuition, I call that making a logical deduction based on empirical data. A computer could do that without any intuition or consciousness or internal data. I don’t know it intuitively, I know it because my brain is a computer that is able to interpret data. Not to mention that this simple analogy contains a right or wrong answer, and is therefore objective. The reason it contains a right or wrong answer is because it is physically quantifiable.
“…you seem to believe that something can’t be objectively true if there are people who won’t consent to it, or can’t.”
I knew I shouldn’t have used that analogy. My point wasn’t about consensus, but about measurement. Some things can be objectively measured, some can’t. For example, when you thought I was making this error before you mentioned the age of the earth. That is something that can be measured. You can use many methods. Some people use the timeline in the Bible to date the earth to 6,000 years. That is problematic because there are other cultures that don’t agree upon the Bible. Religious creation stories aren’t the same in every culture. But geology is, and so is radioactive decay. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re in, sedimentation happens the same way and can be quantified the same way. So again, some things can be objectively measured, and some cannot. Morality is the later, in my opinion.
“…they would certainly never say “just because we believe we have a moral duty to rape babies”. That’s almost inconceivable. But if they did, why wouldn’t we just say that they’re WRONG, rather than throw our hands up and say “Look, there’s no such thing as morality!”?”
I’m not saying there is NO morality, I’m saying that morality is relative and dependent upon culture. For example, it would not be fair to charge an Eskimo for infanticide according to western moral standards.
“I’m also interested in how your belief that there is no objective morality works out in your own life. Do you cheat when it suits you? Do you deceive people to get what you want (not that I imagine such a person would answer honestly here necessarily)? And do you think that rapists should be punished? If there are no moral wrongs, then rape isn’t wrong, and we don’t have any obligation to punish rapists or murderers. Do you condemn such people? (Of course you are programmed to, but part of consciousness is about transcending our programming, so wouldn’t you rather live in light of the truth that there is no morality, and DEFEND rapists from being punished, since punishment is enacted on the chemical illusion that rape really is objectively wrong?)”
Since you’re a philosophy guy I’m sure you are familiar with Sartre. I agree with his existential philosophy: that man is condemned to be free and must be burdened to constantly create their own moral system. I also believe in the philosophical concept of the social contract. I enjoy the benefits of my society, and in exchange I agree to follow their laws. I’m also a humanist, so I treat other people the way I wish to be treated. In short, I hold myself to my own standard and to the standard of my society.
You’re confusing my statement that morality is not absolute (or objective) with the belief that there is no such thing as morality. There are such things as “right” and “wrong,” but they are social constructs and vary from culture to culture. In my culture, rape is wrong. So is feeding your baby to a hippo. Therefore, if someone born and raised in San Francisco, a member of my culture and society, went to the zoo and fed their baby to the hippo, they should have their civil liberties (the government’s end of the social contract) revoked.
You talk about overcoming social programming. That is what westerners have to do to understand the moral systems of other people and not judge them by their own standards. I would defend a rapist if, according to his own (not his personal, but cultural) standards, raping was not a “wrong” or immoral act, but only then.