- December 5th, 2023, 8:59 am
#450728
Thanks for your response Good_Egg.
I agree that our deep-seated moral sentiments are not all we have. For one thing, as I mentioned above, they are usually refined in lots of ways - by teaching by parents, learning at school, advice from friends and family, by cultural influences such as religion, knowledge of the law, etcetera.
I think by “moral intuition" you mean more or less the same as I mean when I refer to our (mostly) evolved “moral sentiments”.
You mentioned empathy, another sentiment or feeling, which I think also has origins deep in our evolutionary history. Evidence for this is that we see empathy as well as “proto-morality” in other animals, too.
I'm glad you brought up the is/ought problem. As far as I know it was Hume who first dealt with it effectively, so I’ll quote him at length,
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author
proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes
observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the
usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with
an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the [utmost] consequence.
For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should
be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seem
s altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely
different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend
it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems
of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the
relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.
In short, what Hume is saying here is that you can’t get ought from is. And he is right.
“Ought” is a very interesting word which most of us don’t really feel the need to analyse because we think it’s meaning is obvious. But I think it needs analysing. And I think that once we do analyse it, we may see that it is a word that gets to the heart of what we are doing when we moralize. So I’m going to try to get clear on what “ought” actually means.
What does it mean when someone makes a moral assertion using the word “ought”? Let’s say, for example, that Joe says to Bob,
"You really ought to do X."
To my mind, the only thing “ought” can mean here is that if Bob doesn't do X, Joe, someone else, or perhaps Bob himself, is going to feel bad about it. Similarly, if someone tells Mary,
"It's morally right to do Y",
it must mean that the speaker, or someone else, will approve of Mary doing Y and disapprove if she doesn’t do Y.
If this is right, then it makes morality subjective, that is, based in our subjective sentiments, in our feelings. There’s bad feeling when people don’t do what they, or others, think they are morally bound to do. Our feelings are real enough, and very important - we could hardly operate as a cooperative species without them. But they are subjective and not objective.
If moral assertions are indeed based in our subjective sentiments, in our feelings, as Hume says, then they cannot be assessed as being true or false because they are value judgements. There is no moral-o-meter against which we measure whether a moral assertion in objectively true or false. Moral claims are not truth apt, and they cannot be so because they are based in human feelings which, whilst real, are not the sort of things that can be true or false. Moral sentiments are a bit like aesthetic sentiments in this way – it is not possible to prove objectively that someone is wrong to like a particular work of art or to loath another. Aesthetic feelings are not the type of thing that can be true or false. I think moral values are like that. But that does not mean our moral sentiments are unimportant, arbitrary or disposable, as I’ll explain below.
What is does mean is that, if we discount Divine Command theory, and the idea that our moral feelings track some spooky ideal moral truth (epistemic access to which moral realists cannot explain) then it’s hard to see that one is left with any basis from which to argue for moral realism. But this is not as bad as it might at first seem.
It doesn’t mean that our moral sentiments are not real, that one person’s judgment is as good as another’s or that we are wrong to think that torturing babies for fun is despicable behaviour that should be punished. The fact is that while there can be some disagreement about details (about clothing for example) human moral sentiments are remarkably consistent across pretty much all cultures. Murder, incest, rape, theft, double-dealing, breaking promises, etcetera are all almost universally condemned whilst care for the young, the sick, the elderly, fairness, justice, keeping promises, giving to the poor, etcetera are all almost universally approved of. Why should this be so?
This brings us back to evolution. Can you imagine human societies being able to function if most people did not have strong feelings about torturing babies for fun, or about murder, incest, rape, theft, double-dealing, breaking promises, or about care for the young, the sick, the elderly, fairness, justice, keeping promises, giving to the poor, etcetera. Can you imagine that we’d have gotten through the Pleistocene without feelings about these behaviours. We had to be able to stick together harmoniously in small groups. Can you imagine how difficult it would be if we’d had to think, intellectualize about every singe act, do some sort of calculation, conduct surveys before we did anything. We didn’t need to do any of this because our deep-seated feelings provided quick and easy guidance (in most cases) and even today, we all generally do what our conspecifics will approve of and avoid doing what is going to cause ill feeling towards ourselves or generally cause trouble. We do all this pretty much without thinking. We just feel it right, morally right, to act in certain ways and not others. Evolution instilled these feelings in us because it worked better if we didn’t have to intellectualize about every act and it ensured that most of us acted in ways that fostered cooperation and not conflict within our group.
The fact is that we still rely heavily on our moral feelings that were instilled in us by evolution. They got us through the Pleistocene and they are as useful, indeed, necessary today as they were back then. They are so embedded in out psyches that, for the most part, we cannot jettison them or change them. And we wouldn’t want to. That’s how good a job evolution did. Not perfect. But good enough for the job at hand.
La Gaya Scienza
- By tonylang
- By iamstephanieejike