IMHO it is a fact that good and evil do not exist as independent, objective things.\u00a0 If they do not exist, then the moral properties that depend on them, such as “permissible,” have no objective existence, either.\u00a0 It follows that it is not even rational to ask the question whether something is permissible or not as an independent fact.\u00a0 In other words, if there is no such thing as objective morality, then it does not follow that “everything is permissible.”\u00a0 It also does not follow that “everything is not permissible.”\u00a0 As far as the universe is concerned, the term “permissible” does not exist.\u00a0 In other words, there is no objective reason to obey a given set of moral rules, nor is there an objective reason not to obey those rules.<\/p>\n
I note in passing that if the above were not true, and the conclusion that good and evil do not exist as objective things actually did imply that “everything is permissible,” as some insist, it would not alter the facts one bit.\u00a0 The universe would shrug its shoulders and ask, “So what?”\u00a0 If the absence of good and evil as objective things leads to conclusions that some find unpleasant, will that alter reality and magically cause them to pop into existence?\u00a0 That hasn’t worked with a God, and it won’t work with objective good and evil, either.<\/p>\n
I just read a paper by Matt McManus on the Quillette<\/a> website that nicely, if unintentionally, demonstrates what kind of an intellectual morass one wades into if one insists that good and evil are real, objective things.\u00a0 It’s entitled Why Should We Be Good?<\/a> \u00a0<\/em>The first two paragraphs include the following:<\/p>\n Today we are witnessing an irrepressible and admirable pushback against the specters of ‘cultural relativism’ and moral ‘nihilism.’ …Indeed, relativism and the moral nihilism with which it is often affiliated, seems to be in retreat everywhere.\u00a0 For many observers and critics, this is a wholly positive development since both have the corrosive effect of undermining ethical certainty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The author goes on to cite what he considers two motivations for the above, one “negative,” and one “positive.”\u00a0 As he puts it,<\/p>\n The negative motivation arises from moral dogmatism.\u00a0 There are those who wish to dogmatically assert their own values without worrying that they may not be as universal as one might suppose… Ethical dogmatists do not want to be confronted with the possibility that it is possible to challenge their values because they often cannot provide good reasons to back them up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He adds that,<\/p>\n The positive motivation was best expressed by Allan Bloom in his 1987 classic The Closing of the American Mind<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, I wouldn’t exactly describe Bloom’s book as “positive.”\u00a0 It struck me as a curmudgeonly rant about how “today’s youth” didn’t measure up to how he thought they “ought” to be.\u00a0 Be that as it may, the author finally gets to the point:<\/p>\n The issue I wish to explore is this:\u00a0 even if we know which values are universal, why should we feel compelled to adhere to them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To this I would reply that there are no universal values, and since they don’t exist, they can’t be known.\u00a0 This reduces the question of why we should feel compelled to adhere to them to nonsense.\u00a0 In fact, what the author is doing here is outing himself as a dogmatist.\u00a0 He just thinks he’s better than other dogmatists because he imagines he can “provide good reasons to back up” his personal dogmas.\u00a0 It turns out his “good reasons” amount to an appeal to authority, as follows:<\/p>\n Kant argued, very powerfully, that a human being’s innate practical reason begets a universal set of “moral laws” which any rational person knows they must follow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Good dogma, no?\u00a0 After all, who can argue with Kant?\u00a0 “Obscurely” would probably be a better word than “powerfully.” \u00a0 Some of his sentences ran on for a page and a half, larded with turgid German philosophical jargon from start to finish.\u00a0 Philosophers pique themselves on “understanding” him, but seldom manage to get much further than the categorical imperative in practice.\u00a0 I suspect they’re wasting their time.\u00a0 McManus assures us that Kant read Hume.\u00a0 If so, he must not have comprehended what he was reading in passages such as,<\/p>\n We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason.\u00a0 Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, ’twere in vain to take such pains to inculcate it: and nothing wou’d be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts, with which all moralists abound.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be deriv’d from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already prov’d, can never have any such influence.\u00a0 Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions.\u00a0 Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.\u00a0 The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What Hume wrote above isn’t just the expression of some personal ideological idiosyncrasy, but the logical conclusion of the thought of a long line of British and Scottish philosophers.\u00a0 I find his thought on morality “very powerful,” and have seen no evidence that Kant ever seriously addressed his arguments.\u00a0 We learned where the emotions Hume referred to actually came from in 1859 with the publication of The Origin of Species<\/em>, more than half a century after Kant’s death.\u00a0 It’s beyond me how Kant could have “argued powerfully” about a “universal set of moral laws” in spite of his ignorance of the real manner in which they are “begotten.”\u00a0 No matter, McManus apparently still believes, “because Kant,” that we can “know” some “universal moral law.”\u00a0 He continues,<\/p>\n While we might know that these “moral laws” apply universally, why should we feel compelled to obey them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to McManus, the 19th century philosopher Henry Sidgwick made some “profound contributions” to answering this question, which he considered “the profoundest problem in ethics.” Not everyone thought Sidgwick was all that profound.\u00a0 Westermarck<\/a> dealt rather harshly with his “profound” thoughts in his The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 In the rest of his article, McManus reviews the thought of several other philosophers on the subject, and finds none of them entirely to his liking.\u00a0 He finally\u00a0peters out with nary an answer to the question, “Why should we be good?”\u00a0 In fact there is no objective answer to the question, because there is no objective good.\u00a0 McManus’ “dogma with good reasons” is just as imaginary as all the “dogmas without good reasons” at which he turns up his nose.<\/p>\n The philosophers are in no hurry to wade back out of this intellectual morass.\u00a0 Indeed, their jobs depend on expanding it.\u00a0 For those of us who prefer staying out of swamps, however, the solution to McManus’ enigma is simple enough.\u00a0 Stop believing in the ghosts of objective good and evil.\u00a0 Accept the fact that what we call morality exists because the innate mental traits that give rise to it themselves exist by virtue of evolution by natural selection.\u00a0 Then follow that fundamental fact to its logical conclusions.\u00a0 One of those conclusions is that there is nothing whatsoever objective about morality.\u00a0 It is a purely subjective phenomenon.\u00a0 That is simply a fact of nature.\u00a0 As such, it is quite incapable of rendering “everything permissible,” or “everything not permissible.”\u00a0 Furthermore, realization of that fact will not change how the questions of what is permissible and what is not permissible are answered.\u00a0 Those questions will continue to be answered just as they always have been, in the subjective minds of individuals.<\/p>\n Acceptance of these truths about morality will not result in “moral nihilism,” or “cultural relativity,” or the hegemony of postmodernism.\u00a0 All of these things can result from our attempts to reason about what our emotions are trying to tell us, but so can moral absolutism.\u00a0 On the other hand, acceptance of the truth may enable us to avoid some of the real dangers posed by our current “system” of blindly responding to moral emotions, and just as blindly imagining that the result will be “moral progress.”\u00a0 For example, if morality is a manifestation of evolved behavioral traits, those traits must have been selected in times that were very different from the present.\u00a0 It is highly unlike that blindly following where our emotions seem to be leading us will have the same effect now as it did then.\u00a0 In fact, those emotions might just as well be leading us over the edge of a cliff.<\/p>\n If morality is a manifestation of evolved behavioral traits, then arbitrarily isolating moral behavior from the rest of our innate behavioral repertoire, sometimes referred to as human nature, can also be misleading.\u00a0 For example, we have a powerful innate tendency to distinguish others in terms of ingroup and outgroup, applying different versions of morality to each.\u00a0 This can delude us into seriously believing that vast numbers of the people we live with are “bad.”\u00a0 In the past, we have often imagined that we must “resist” and “fight back” against these “bad” people, resulting in mayhem that has caused the death of countless millions, and misery for countless millions more.\u00a0 From my own subjective point of view, it would be better to understand the innate emotional sources of such subjective fantasies, and at least attempt to find a way to avoid the danger they pose.\u00a0 Perhaps one day enough people will agree with me to make a difference.\u00a0 The universe doesn’t care one way or the other.<\/p>\n Nihilism and chaos will not result from acceptance of the truth.\u00a0 When it comes to morality, nihilism and chaos are what we have now.\u00a0 I happen to be among those who would prefer some form of “moral absolutism,” even though I realize that its legitimacy must be based on the subjective desires of individuals rather on some mirage of “objective truth.”\u00a0 I would prefer living under a simple moral code, in harmony with human nature, designed to enable us to live together with a minimum of friction and a maximum of personal liberty.\u00a0 No rule would be accepted without examining its innate emotional basis, what the emotions in question accomplished at the time they evolved, and whether they would still accomplish the same thing in the different environment we live in now.\u00a0 Generalities about “moral progress” and “human flourishing” would be studiously ignored.<\/p>\n I see no reason why the subjective nature of morality would prevent us from adopting such an “absolute morality.”\u00a0 There would, of course, be no objective reason why we “should be good” according to the rules of such a system.\u00a0 The reasons would be the same subjective ones that have always been the real basis for all the versions of morality our species has ever come up with.\u00a0 In the first place, if the system really was in harmony with human nature, then for many of us, our “conscience” would prompt us to “do good.”\u00a0 Those with a “weak conscience” who ignored the moral law, free riders if you will, would be dealt with much the same way they have always been dealt with.\u00a0 They would be shamed, punished, and, if necessary, isolated from the rest of society.<\/p>\n I know, we are very far from realizing this utopia, or even from accepting the most simple truths about morality and what they imply.\u00a0 I’ve always been one for daydreaming, though.<\/p>\n