Morality as a Given

Morality as a Given
by Joseph Rowlands

One problem that is all too common is for people to try to explain morality while taking the contents of it for granted. The issue comes up frequently in atheist circles because they don't accept the traditional view of morality as something created by God and learned from religious texts. So they try to come up with a more secular, maybe scientific, explanation of morality.

The problem is that they start with the assumption that what they generally feel is moral or immoral is essentially correct, and then they go about trying to explain it. They want to explain it in terms of objective or secular terms so they can show that morality is possible without religion. But because they start out assuming their vision of morality is correct, their explanations are flawed.

To see why this is the case, we can start with one example. One proposed justification/explanation for morality is evolution. They can suggest that evolution has guided our moral development. Actions or behaviors that were destructive would have lost out, and only a moral system that was the fittest would survive. It can explain why people have the moral feelings that they do. They are a product of evolution and built into our DNA.

It may sound plausible, and there may even be elements of truth in it, but the method is flawed. They start off assuming that what they think is moral is actually the way people "should" behave. They are convinced that a person's "moral intuitions" somehow produce a correct result. And then they feel it is their job to explain how it is that our moral feelings provide such insight. The vague evolution explanation gives a plausible explanation.

But what if their "moral intuitions" are wrong? What if they don't provide some inexplicable insight into the truth. What if they are arbitrary? If that were the case, the evolution idea stops making sense. You no longer have a set of moral intuitions that lead inexplicably to the truth. And so you no longer need an explanation for how it is done. The evolution explanation loses all of its credibility because it wouldn't be expected to lead to completely arbitrary results.

One response might be that since evolution would lead to beneficial attributes winning over destructive ones, that should indicate that the evolutionary morality is actually beneficial. But this is begging the question. The credibility of the evolution explanation hinged on morality needing a justification for being correct. You can't then turn around and say that it proves morality is correct.

But the primary issue is that starting with an assumption that morality is correct and needing an explanation corrupts any answer you give. Your explanation will be based on the assumption that morality is inexplicably true. You'll be assuming an incredibly important fact, and your explanation will be built relying on that assumption.

Consider another "explanation" of morality. Some people have noticed that their sense of morality hinges on interactions with other people, and sometimes even animals. They then make a connection that it involves harm. But plants don't warrant such concern. So they modify it to be about suffering. And now they have a summary of their moral feelings. Now they can add some explanation, like we have natural sympathy for the suffering of others. Or that in order to live peacefully in the world, we should care about the suffering of others.

The details don't matter too much. What's important is that they take their own moral feelings as some kind of automatic form of knowledge, they go on to summarize what the pattern seems to be, and then try to come up with an explanation. Any explanation assumes the validity of the morality, and has to explain how the valid morality came to be or why it properly explains how we should act.

Of course, if you look at moral beliefs more closely, it's hard to believe that they give some kind of evolutionary advantage. Altruism, the dominant moral system, is all about self-sacrifice. That's not exactly advantageous.

But still, proposals are made to explain or justify it. Maybe it's kin-selection, where your altruistic acts don't help you procreate, but lets your family procreate allowing similar genes to pass on. Or maybe altruism was evolutionarily valuable when we lived in small tribes, but now any problems are because the moral intuitions are out of their proper context.

Even these views that moral intuitions are flawed assume that there is a common moral vision that is somehow ingrained in our very being. They too take their moral beliefs for granted. They assume that if they aren't useful now, they must have been at some point. There is still that belief that moral beliefs are well-founded.

But what if we dismiss that view entirely? Why should we think that moral beliefs or intuitions are anything but arbitrary? If you believe you should sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others, what reason do you have to think that this is anything but arbitrary?

Typically there are three reasons given for thinking these aren't arbitrary. The first is that you believe they are true. The second is that you feel they are true. And the third is that many other people believe they are true. None of these are actual arguments, but they do explain why people assume their own moral beliefs are true.

If people's moral beliefs are in fact arbitrary, the kinds of explanations possible are very different. Why do you believe they are true? Because you were taught it. Why do you feel they are true? Because your feelings tend to reflect your beliefs. Why do other people believe they are true? Because they also were taught it.

Other minor explanations may be added. Particular moral beliefs could be accepted out of confusion, over-simplification, out of context arguments, etc. Instead of looking for a mysterious explanation for why we are right so often, we could easily view the problem as explaining why we are wrong so often and not even aware of it.

The whole question of being correct or incorrect in morality is a challenge. Usually people view correct or incorrect in terms of agreement with what they already believe or what they feel. Other than that, they ignore the lack of definition or standard for determining if morality is right or wrong. They just assume they are right and go on to try to explain why they are right with vague explanations.

My own view is that your own life should be the standard for how you live your life. Are your actions benefitting your life? Are they harming it? Which choice better benefits you, all things considered? A morality like altruism, which demands that you sacrifice for the sake of others, fails this standard.

So when people start off with such outrageous assumptions, like that their moral beliefs are a direct insight into the truth, the steps they take after that are completely unsupported. They may think that their explanations are reasonable, but the fact that they are explaining a very unreasonable and unsupported premise shows how unreasonable the explanations are.

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