Fifteen years ago I was asked to give a lecture to Christian high school students on “the ontology of morality,” which I did using clips from movies and television shows to illustrate the physical instantiation of moral facts in interacting human systems. They did remarkably well in understanding the subject. I then wrote up my points on my old blog, which I am reproducing here with revisions as part of my project to port over to my own server the best articles from my old blogspot. Enjoy!
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Ontology is the study of “being,” i.e. what it means for something to “be” or “exist.” I’ve discussed on other occasions the ontology of time and logic and mathematics and qualia and awe and beauty and consciousness and propositions and imperatives and more (see Sense and Goodness without God, pp. 119-34). And I discuss some aspects of the ontology of morality in How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True? And my starting point here will be Moral realism, the view that there are moral statements that are meaningful and true—and true independent of your opinion or culture. I am a moral realist. Which means I must be able to ontologically ground the existence of moral facts, and do so in things other than popular opinions or merely cultural facts. In other words, when I say they “exist” I should be able to explain what I mean by that: in what sense, and in what way, do they “exist,” particularly as I am a first-order physicalist—I believe everything that exists is solely and entirely caused by physical things and events (see Defining Naturalism). So I must be able to reduce moral facts to physical facts in some way.
Bear-Scariness Realism
To get from A to B on this I have to drive by several destinations in the middle. Take, for instance, the scariness of an enraged bear: a bear is scary to a person (because of the horrible harm it can do) but not scary to Superman, even though it’s the very same bear, and thus none of its intrinsic properties have changed. Thus the bear’s scariness is relative, but still real. It is not a product of anyone’s opinions. And it is not a cultural construct, but a physical fact about bears and people. Thus the scariness of an enraged bear is not a property of the bear alone but a property of the entire bear-person system. And it is a physical property. It reduces entirely to the physical facts about bears and people and what the one can physically do to the other, and the physical desires and feelings of each. Obviously, as in this case, physical systems can have properties that their parts alone do not, yet that are entirely reducible to those parts and their physical arrangement.
This scariness is also not merely subjective (for distinctions like objective vs. subjective, and relative vs. universal, see my breakdown in Objective Moral Facts). Our emotional experience of fear is subjective. But the ability of the bear to harm us is an objective fact of the world. We can say “the bear does not scare me” if, for example, we don’t feel fear. But our emotion would then be misinforming us about the physical fact that the bear can seriously harm us regardless of what we feel—and therefore, in that sense, an enraged bear is objectively scary. It would then be right to say “the bear ought to scare me,” and therefore the bear actually is scary and in this case we just don’t recognize this fact (we are, in other words, ignorant of the physical facts) or we recognize it (and thus acknowledge the bear is indeed scary) but do not feel the physiological signals that are supposed to signal that recognition to us.
Even if we said the bear was not scary to us because we actually want more than anything to be horribly mauled to death, that is then a different physical system: like the bear-Superman system, in which different physical facts result in the system not having the property of “scariness” anymore, a physical system containing a brain actually in that state. That physical state of wanting more than anything to be horribly mauled to death, and also of not feeling even an instinctively caused fear, would also lack the property of bear-scariness. But most other bear-person systems would have that property. And that is objectively true about those systems, regardless of what we subjectively feel about them. And our subjective feelings are supposed to signal objective realities to us (see Sense and Goodness, index, “emotions”). Because emotions are the pre-rational evaluators that evolutionarily predate the add-on of a reasoning center in the brain. So we can legitimately talk about them failing or giving you false information. As here.
Complex Ontologies
So we can understand the ontological status of a bear’s scariness and how it derives not solely from the bear but from the whole physical system it is in (though still including the bear). What, then, is the ontological status of moral values?
To ask for something’s ontological status is to ask for what actual features of the universe a word or phrase refers to. For example, the ontological status of cows is pretty straightforward: to say that cows exist is to say that there are actual atoms and cells arranged in a particular way somewhere that conforms to the minimal defining properties of a cow. In other words, a cow physically exists, and we can go point to one, kick it, gut it, weigh it, eat it, genotype it, or launch it over the wall of a castle stuffed with dead monkeys, or whatever (“Fetchez la vache!”). Of course, we decide what patterns will correlate with which words (essentialism is bogus, as I explain in Thomism: The Bogus Science). But the patterns we label still exist or not, and they all reduce to nothing more than a physical arrangement of matter-energy in spacetime. This is true of what general properties make up “cows” in general (see Why A Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism Is Probably True) and what particular properties make for a particular cow (see A Quick Brief on Identity Theory).
The ontological status of dragons, however, is more complex. Of course in an obvious sense you would say dragons don’t exist. And yet everyone can describe one, pictures of them are everywhere, as are stories about them. Everyone knows their physical properties (scales, wings, tail; usually breathe fire). So dragons clearly do exist in some sense. But in this case they exist only as a fiction: their ontological status is that of physically residing in human brain patterns, and books and films and tattoos and doodles in high-school textbooks. And in that sense we say dragons are not real. So “dragon realism” would be false. But dragons do still in a sense exist.
It gets more complicated when we start asking things like what is the ontological status of democracy. It’s not like democracy is sitting in a field in Idaho somewhere and we can go kick it, weigh it, and fill it with dead monkeys. And yet democracy clearly exists. Moreover, when we mean “democracy exists” we don’t mean a particular form of it (e.g. “American democracy exists”) but that democracy exists in the abstract. What is the ontology of that? That is more like bear scariness: democracy refers to certain generic properties of a physical system. And as with cows, it refers to the properties shared by all democracies, just as “being a cow” refers to the properties shared by all cows, and not just one of them.
For example, a monarchy is a physical system that is arranged differently than a democracy, and those physical differences are precisely what democracy consists of. For democracy to exist, there must be a system that is physically arranged in that distinctive way. But any system will do, e.g. it doesn’t have to use private voting booths and anonymous ballots, but can employ a public show of hands, or any other thing, as long as it shares the same properties in common with those things (for which we label them democratic). And even if democracy doesn’t exist (if it isn’t “real” but is only an idea, like dragons, such as one could say was the case in, say, 2000 B.C.), it potentially exists, insofar as any physical system exists (or could exist) that can be physically rearranged into a democracy—just as real dragons potentially exist, because we could create real dragons with elaborate genetic engineering or other technologies. Indeed dragons can exist by degrees: a dragon in a virtual world we digitally live in (see How Not to Live in Zardoz and We Are Probably Not in a Simulation) would be more real than a dragon in a mere movie or doodle, but not as real as a dragon straightforwardly made of atoms who somehow organically spews ignited napalm from some newfangled gland (assuming that’s even possible: see The God Impossible).
The Ontology of Monetary Value
Now to go from complex ontologies to moral ontology we have to stop at another station in between: other kinds of values (other than “moral” values specifically). For example, monetary value. What is the ontological status of monetary value?
For example, what is the ontological difference between a $100,000 diamond ring and a fake? It’s not simply that the one is comprised of atoms in the chemical arrangement called a diamond, and the other is not, though that is indeed an actual physical difference between them, in fact a key difference. But like the scariness of an enraged bear, a diamond by itself has no monetary value at all (certainly no more than a fake ring does). A diamond only has value insofar as there are people who will give you things for it. Therefore the ontological status of a diamond ring’s monetary value is a property not of the diamond alone but of the whole physical system in which the diamond resides (in which there are people who will give you things for that diamond).
It’s important to note the distinction, however, between monetary value and moral value: monetary value is less real, in that it derives solely and entirely from the subjective opinions of people (things like “diamonds have monetary value” simply because people choose to value them, or have been culturally taught to). Which is why, when people stop valuing money, its value collapses, causing an economic depression: there is no other fact, apart from people’s opinions, on which or any money can retain monetary value.
And yet money and diamonds always retain their utility value (you can wipe your butt with money, and cut glass with diamonds), which is obviously just nothing more than their physical properties in relation to human needs. But even to say these properties have a utilitarian value is still to refer to what people want (to wipe their butt, or cut glass) and thus this value is, like bear-scariness, not a property of the objects themselves but of the whole physical system in which they reside. However, this value, unlike monetary value, is not merely an opinion (that diamonds can cut glass does not become false simply because you believe it is false or because your culture teaches that). It derives not from what other people think, but entirely from what you want to achieve—and what, in the present example, diamonds can actually do.
Value Realism
Moral realism is more akin to utility value than monetary value. The feature that moral values and monetary values share is that both derive not just from what’s in someone’s mind (it’s not just “what you like” or “what you think” that determines the value), but from the whole physical system in which they live (regardless of what you like or think, there is a real physical system that will give you $100,000 for your ring). These values are properties of the system, not of the person alone, nor of any object alone. But unlike monetary value, which is a product of mass opinion or cultural construction, moral value is more like utility value: it is a product of what you need and what can achieve that. Which are both objective facts of the world (that when rational and informed you will want a particular outcome, and that a certain item or behavior will obtain it).
Of course, that you desire a particular outcome is subjective, in the sense that it resides in your mind and comes from you and not from outside of you. But it is not an opinion. For example, that you want to cut glass is not an opinion about the utility of diamonds, but something you actually want. That diamonds can be used to achieve it is an objective fact of the world. That you desire that end is also an objective fact of the world. We can even locate the physical structure in your brain that that desire consists of, and confirm it exists just as we would a cow (though hopefully not by trying to stuff dead monkeys into it). Thus as long as your desire is real, the utility value of diamonds is real. And like dragons, even when the desire is not realized, the value that would follow if it were realized still potentially exists.
You might say that the same is true of opinions. They, too, are physically real and can be located in the brain. But that the opinions exist (that they are ontologically real) does not entail that monetary value exists apart from being simply a collage of opinions. Like dragons: dragons are “real” in the sense of existing in people’s minds and media, but not real apart from that. Likewise monetary value is “real” in the sense of existing in people’s minds and media, but not real apart from that. And so desires are also “real” in the sense of existing only in people’s minds, but you can still have an incorrect opinion or belief about what desires you have or really would have (if you thought more about it), without changing your actual desire (these are thus not the same things). Likewise you can have an incorrect belief about what dragons look like or how much a diamond is worth, by not knowing the cultural facts of the matter, and yet dragons are not actual in the way your desires are. Dragons don’t exist. Your desires do. Thus desires are neither like opinions nor like dragons.
If everyone suddenly believed diamonds had no monetary value, they would have no value. Thus their value was never “real” but solely a product of opinion. But if everyone who wanted to cut glass suddenly believed diamonds couldn’t cut glass, diamonds would not lose any of their utility value for cutting glass. We would then simply be mistaken about their utility value. Whereas if no one monetarily valued diamonds, there wouldn’t be any sense in which they are “mistaken” about the monetary value of diamonds. We could be mistaken about what value everyone else places on diamonds, but if we are not mistaken about that, but correct in believing that no one monetarily values diamonds, then diamonds simply have no monetary value.
Of course, the monetary value of diamonds is a product of “wanting” diamonds, and the utility value of diamonds is a product of “wanting” to cut glass. But the difference is key: in the one case, the value of a diamond derives solely from wanting diamonds (and not from you wanting them, but other people wanting them—you might have no interest in diamonds yourself apart from the fact that other people want them and you can thus trade them for what you do want); whereas in the other case the value of a diamond derives from your wanting something else (to cut glass), which is not itself a diamond, and the objective fact that diamonds can do that for you (cut glass).
Accordingly, money (and thus the monetary value of diamonds) does have its own utility value: we only really want money for what we can use it for. But its utility value is derived from its monetary value (the fact that people will trade us for it). Thus as soon as no one believes dollars are worth anything, dollars cease to have that utility value (even if they retain another, such as toilet paper)—whereas people believing diamonds “can’t” cut glass in no way causes diamonds to stop cutting glass. Their opinion thus has no effect on a diamond’s utility value. If you want to cut glass, opinions don’t matter. Diamonds will have an objective utility value for you, regardless.
That is the difference between purely subjective values and partly objective values. Ultimately, all value reduces to what you want, such that if you no longer want something, it no longer has value for you. But if you value cutting glass, it remains objectively true that you would want to value diamonds for that end, and you are just in ignorance of this, which is curable. Thus there is a difference between what you happen to want right now, and what you would want if reasoning without fallacy from true information, and the latter is an objective fact (because it remains true even if you don’t believe it). Individual desire remains therefore the ontological root of all value: just as real dragons only exist when atoms are arranged in such a way as to produce a living dragon (or electrons in such a way as to produce a virtual dragon), so values only exist when people’s brains are arranged in such a way as to produce desires for certain outcomes. But there can be objectively truths about what desires you would have if rationally informed, and thus what desires you should have (see The Objective Value Cascade).
In Christian theology the same holds: if no one values x, not even God, then x simply has no value. Therefore value always reduces to desire (such as “what God wants”). And if only God values x, there is no sense in which x is of any value to anyone else—unless they can be shown that they already value something else (such as y) that they would be more likely to obtain if they also valued x (and therefore they ought to value x, because they already want y, and valuing x gains y). But that’s true even if God does not exist. For there can always be many things you would want if you became suitably informed and rationally ordered your desires.
This means that to rationally persuade anyone to adopt a particular value system, you can only do so by appealing to some desire that they already have. Even God would be incapable of rationally persuading someone to adopt his values, unless he could appeal to desires they already have. So he had better have programmed them with those desires—for if he did not, it would be irrational of him to expect his people to want what in fact he never programmed them to want (see my analysis of the imaginary case of persuading Nazis in Sense and Goodness without God, pp. 336-37). I discuss another example, of actually wanting to go to hell, in Darla the She-Goat.
Thus that all values reduce to desires does not eliminate value realism. That we have an opinion (that we believe something is valuable) is not the same thing as that we have a desire (to achieve some particular end). A value that derives solely from the one is not “real” in the same way that a value that derives from the other is. If it is objectively true that you would value x if you reasoned without fallacy from true premises, then value realism obtains. They aren’t just made up. And statements like “you ought to value that” can be true about you even when you don’t believe them to be.
The Ontology of Values
Values exist in two senses. Values of either kind are persistent desires (Sense and Goodness, pp. 194–97, 313–16, 324–27). Values “of the first kind” exist as physical arrangements of synapses in your brain which cause you to assign value to something (we can call these “present values”). Dragons exist in the same sense. Values “of the second kind” exist as a physical relationship between “present values” and the actual arrangement and behavior of the physical world (we can call these “entailed values”), such that “present” values can be said to be “incorrect” if they do not align with those external facts, while “entailed” values can be said to be what you ought to value no matter what you believe at the moment. They do derive from present values. But that does not make them any less real or any less demanding of rational adoption.
In the “present value” sense, a diamond ring’s value is only a physical state of your brain: actual synapses in your brain are arranged in a physical pattern that you then “feel” as a measure of the value you assign to the ring (or believe others do). We’ve recently located these synapses and observed their operation during brain scan experiments (they are located in the amygdala, as reported in The Journal of Neuroscience).
But this value is based on your belief that the ring is made of diamond and is not a fake. So there is also an “entailed” value sense in which the ring has value: the value it would actually have if you were aware of all the facts (like whether the ring was a fake). The ontological foundation of this “true” value for the ring is markedly different from the ontological foundation of the existence of your own personal value for the ring (which, being a mere “present” value, is simply a physical feature of your brain).
Like the scariness of bears, the ring’s “true” value is a physical fact not about the ring alone but about the entire physical system in which the ring resides (namely, whether the ring is genuine, and whether you reside in a system that will pay $100,000 for a genuine diamond ring). Thus the “ontological status” of the true value of the ring is the physical fact of what other people will actually give you in exchange for that ring. And that is its “entailed” value, which is what gives the ring its monetary value and what makes such a monetary value useful to you.
Defining Moral Facts
Before proceeding to the punchline, I have to pause to explain what I’m even talking about. Moral facts consist of imperatives, and imperatives are statements about what we “ought” to do (or who or what sort of person we ought to be). What does “ought” mean? That which we would do if we were reasoning logically and knew and understood all the relevant facts of our situation.
For example, “you ought to change the oil in your car” means “if you knew your car was running low on oil, and you don’t want your car’s engine to seize up, then you would change the oil in your car (as long as you were able to without harm).” If you want your car’s engine to seize up, then “you ought to change the oil in your car” is false. But if you don’t want that, then “you ought to change the oil in your car” would be objectively true, i.e. it would be true even if you believed it was false. Your opinion of the matter, what you liked or thought, would be irrelevant to its being true. In that case if you said it was false you would simply be mistaken about what you ought to do.
What distinguishes a “moral” imperative from other imperatives, like changing your car’s oil? Moral imperatives are imperatives that supersede all other imperatives. In other words, the moral thing to do is whatever it is that you ought most to do. So by definition the moral thing to do on any occasion is what you ought most to do above all else (on that occasion). Putting these definitions together we get two senses of “moral value” whose ontology I’ll now discuss:
Present moral values are the moral values we actually have (which constitute descriptive ethics: that which we believe we ought to do above all else, e.g. Muslim moral values, Christian moral values, Communist moral values, Secular Humanist moral values, etc.), which are just structures in the brains of people sharing a common moral culture or worldview. But entailed moral values are the moral values we ought to have (which constitute prescriptive ethics: that which we ought to do above all else, regardless of what we believe that is, i.e. the true moral values). Which are like bear-scariness: they are not just structures in our brains, but structural properties of the whole system in which those brains reside.
Given the definition of “ought,” the “true” moral values are those you would actually have if and when you were reasoning logically and understood all the relevant facts of the world. So if you aren’t reasoning logically, or are ignorant or in denial of key facts, the actual present values in your brain will differ from the entailed values, which are the values you would agree you should have adopted (had you known better). In which case you would agree your present values were mistaken, and not in the sense that you misapprehended which values were programmed into your brain (you can be entirely correct about what those values are or were), but in the sense that (a) those values are out of alignment with the external facts of the world, and (b) you will replace them with entailed values as soon as you perceive this fact and really act on it.
The Ontology of Moral Values
The ontological basis of moral values is thus exactly the same as ordinary values, only by definition moral values supersede all other values, so we are then just talking about the sub-category of “supreme” values. This means we have two kinds again. Present moral values exist as physical arrangements of synapses in your brain which cause you to assign a supreme value to something. But entailed moral values exist as a physical relationship between one or more of those present values and the actual arrangement and behavior of the physical world.
Therefore, to say that compassion is a moral value is to say that when you are reasoning logically and understand all the relevant facts, then you will assign compassion a supreme value. It will be more valuable to you, for example, than the monetary value of a diamond ring. And there may be other moral values that supersede each other in hierarchies of supremacy, all when rationally ordered, such as perhaps reasonableness over compassion: e.g. in any conflict between reasonable compassion and unreasonable compassion, you would conclude the former would supersede the other (because, on full and sound reflection, when you have to decide between them, you want the one more than you want the other), and this would then be the true order of moral values.
Entailed moral values are thus the “true” moral values, if your brain pattern (which is assigning supreme value to something) correctly reflects the real nature of things external to your brain—such as the actual, physical consequences of assigning that value. And that means consequences not just externally, but internally as well, their consequences upon your own satisfaction with who you are or have become (see Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same). If those actual consequences are the consequences you would want above all other consequences that you can obtain (if these are the consequences you would want most when you are reasoning logically and understand all the relevant facts), then, by definition, a value for the things that have those consequences will supersede all other values. And such values are by definition moral values (for example, see The Real Basis of a Moral World and Your Own Moral Reasoning: Some Things to Consider).
So just like the imperative to change your car’s oil, which is a true fact of the world, ontologically grounded in the physical facts of cars and physics and your desire to have a functioning car (and therefore it is a physical property of the whole car-person system), moral imperatives are true facts of the world, ontologically grounded in the physical facts of the way the world works (including the way people and societies work) and your desire to live in this system efficiently and happily. And thus moral facts are a physical property of the whole world-person system.
Examples
In my lecture I used clips illustrating all this:
- A scene from Firefly (“Serenity” Part 2), asking the students whether shooting a police officer in the head was moral and why. They all agreed it was, and for the same reason: the complex physical situation of precisely that moment entailed no more rational or compassionate action (hence moral facts emerge from the physical system).
- A scene from Pulp Fiction, asking the students what (if anything) Butch Coolidge did right in a bout of emerging domestic violence. They all agreed it was how he rationally talked himself down: his spoken stream of thought is a physical description of the actual physical circumstances and its disentailment of his behavior (a rational alignment of desires and facts).
- A scene from Bladerunner, asking the students why Roy Batty saved a child-murderer’s life when he had every justification not to, and whether it was right. They all agreed it was, and that Batty’s dying speech describes the physical facts of the situation that entailed no other proper action (a rational desire to be who he expected of others).
- A scene from Beautiful Mind, asking the students how the physical facts entailed Nash’s depicted dating advice in a bar was rationally correct. They did not get this one right. They all thought I was asking about biological mating strategies, when in fact I was asking about Game Theory and how it derives from the physical system. They failed to abstract away the incidental particulars to see the general physical system at work.
- A scene from Fearless, asking the students why it was morally right of the main character to drive an innocent woman headlong into a brick wall at ninety miles an hour. They struggled with this one but did work out that it may have been, because of the unusual physical circumstances only he was privy to as to how it would morally help her. Change nearly any physical fact from what was depicted, and that would not be the case.
In every example, what made a decision moral or not always hinged on physical realities of the situation, and derived solely and entirely from those physical realities, whether any observer or participant was aware of that or believed it. Any question like “why should we have these values?” is answered by the depicted physical system, when comprehended by a rational agent. What are the consequences of one choice over another to one’s own self-contentment (Bergman), to the society they then have to live in (Rawls), and to the achievement of any other desires they have (Axelrod).
Conclusions
There are many facts about morality that are ontologically grounded in the way that social and psychological systems physically work. Game Theory, for example is a physical fact of any system of interacting social agents (it is true of every such system, being entailed by the organization that defines such a system), and moral facts are in part Game Theoretic facts. How we get along within society, and what we can rationally expect of the society we participate in creating, entails objective constraints on what makes sense for us to do or be.
Likewise, the psychology of self-acceptance vs. self-loathing, of realizing the values you want there to be in the world rather than realizing the values you don’t want there to be in the world, of cognitive dissonance, of the possibilities of happiness and joy and profound fulfillment vs. escalating paranoia and disappointment and alienation and loneliness, and more, are all a physical fact of evolved conscious brains.
For example, the Golden Rule, like fire and language and tools, was universally invented by all cultures because adhering to it is the only way to maintain social and psychological homeostasis: if you become the sort of person you hate, you will perpetually hate yourself, or else subject yourself to self-defeating delusions and behaviors in the effort to deny or avoid that self-loathing, whereas if you become the sort of person you like, then you will be self-contented and clear-minded. You will also more readily accept and get along with other Golden Rule followers, and thus others will more readily accept and get along with you if you are one, too. Which is why all cultures gravitate toward declaring this good advice.
Moral facts are thus facts about the behavior of physical systems, in particular social and neurological systems. Since these and other facts are objective facts of the world (and thus not just opinions), our moral emotions and intuitions can be in error. We can feel guilty for something that wasn’t in fact wrong, or feel righteous for doing what is actually vile. Moral facts are thus not opinions. Moral facts are facts about what is and what we really want, regardless of what we believe those are. The morality of an act is therefore a property of a physical system: it refers to the physical relations among the components of that system, including (a) the things you want most in the world, which desires are physical structures in your brain, (b) the way the world works generally (such as the way technologies and economies and societies and brains work), and (c) the actual physical circumstances you find yourself in (the “moral context” of a given decision).
But above all, morality is ultimately about what sort of person you become in any given act. What you ought to do is therefore about what sort of person you want to be. When you think rationally and are informed of the true facts of the world, you will want, above all things, to be a genuinely fulfilled and happy person, or as close to that as you can come. To confirm this, just compare that state to any other state you can obtain but in which you will be neither fulfilled nor happy, and see which you would rationally prefer. The answer will always be the same, for every conscious agent, in every possible universe (hence Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes).
Except, of course, for the irrational and the ignorant. But irrationality and ignorance are contrary to any interest you might have, and are therefore always what you ought to avoid, i.e. in no possible world is it wise to take the advice of the irrational and the ignorant, and that is as true of giving yourself advice as taking it from anyone else. It follows that the sort of person you rationally and informedly would want to be is by definition what a moral person is. Because that is always what everyone will want most to be. And when we work that out in light of the facts of the world, we end up with conclusions such as that the moral person to be is the one who embodies, for example, a well-ramified Golden Rule.
Consider an example.
John Loftus quoted a conversation we had on this point in The Christian Delusion (p. 101). He first quotes Victor Reppert as saying, in effect, that a sixteenth-century man would not deem democracy morally right, and certain Middle Eastern Muslims even today would deem rape morally acceptable in culturally sanctioned circumstances. So why is our cultural perspective (which just “happens” to emphasize knowledge and rationality) objectively preferable to theirs? This was in the context of discussing the Outsider Test for Faith that Loftus developed: is there any “outside” point of view from which to judge all cultures?
I then answered:
Any rational sixteenth-century man who was given all the information we now have (of the different outcomes of democratic vs. nondemocratic nations over a long period of time) would agree with us that democracy is better. Hence, democracy passes the Outsider Test for Faith. Similarly any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong.
And exactly the same can be said of the superiority of rationality and knowledge, since abandoning either is detrimental to anyone’s interests, regardless of what culture they find themselves in. Appealing to external interests, it’s obvious that retaliation for rape and enduring the misery of a society besieged with a fear of rape—and all its many resulting dysfunctions—are already reason enough to refrain. Rape-opposing societies are simply always better for everyone to live in. Rape thus does not conduce to a world even the rapist would be as content to live in if they rationally knew better.
While a conversation about their internal interests might proceed something like this:
Q: Why is it wrong to rape a woman?
A: Because it hurts a woman.
Q: Why is it wrong to hurt a woman?
A: Because it’s uncompassionate.
Q: Why is it wrong to be uncompassionate?
A: Because by being an uncompassionate person, your life will suck, more than it would suck if you were a compassionate person. You will have less access to available joys, and suffer more misery from your own hate, malice, and self-loathing. And it is irrational to choose what will make your life suck more, than what you could have chosen instead.
That your life will suck more, ceteris paribus, is due to all the consequences and repercussions of all the things that being uncompassionate causes you to feel and to do (quite apart from what the consequences of any single act will be), which consequences consist not only of external repercussions (personal and social: see Everything Is a Trolley Problem), but internal as well, such as the absence of the fulfillments and joys that can be had only from feeling compassion, and the presence of all the miserable feelings that result from the absence of love and compassion, including self-loathing—as you become what you hate in others, or occupy yourself with hating or despising others for attributes that even you yourself possess (or even wish you did).
And those are all physical facts, about you and the world. As are all the facts of how your own society will turn on you, or degrade around you, if you participate in polluting and debasing it.
Although I have here met the challenge of reducing my moral system to its underlying ontology (and that is all I aimed to achieve here), one might still have objections to my moral theory (such as whether the moral simply is what we ought most to do, or whether that follows from what we most desire when fully rational and informed). I address all of those (even with formal deductive proofs) in my other work (linked variously above, but a good place to start is my latest peer-reviewed study). But granting my theory that moral facts follow from the consequences you will most desire when rational and informed, I have demonstrated the ontological basis of those facts, which in part consist of the consequences of being a certain sort of person.
As these consequences are objectively unavoidable, regardless of one’s beliefs or culture, moral facts are as objectively true as the fact that you ought to change the oil in your car to prevent your engine seizing up, or that you usually ought to fear enraged bears. If you need a working car, the properties of cars entail the conclusion, regardless of what you believe or what your culture tells you. That conclusion is therefore a physical property of the system, just like bear-scariness: a person desiring a working car has to maintain that car by regularly replacing its oil; and a person desiring not to be horribly mauled ought to fear enraged bears. In just the same way, a person desiring a life that sucks the least among all the lives available to them physically has to be a certain kind of person. And it is only ignorance and irrationality that prevents people from discovering this.
Is it possible that some person would, if asked, report that they do not want to be mauled by a bear, yet, have a physical construction such that they in fact are not capable of exhibiting a fear response to an enraged bear that is present to them?
Yes. There are several diseases like that, including sociopathy. Certain kinds of brain damage can also have that effect: a diminished fear response (which means not feeling fear, or mildly at best, not just “exhibiting” it, which one could do by acting).
That’s covered under the case of the fear reaction being false (incorrect for the situation, misreporting the objective facts of the matter), and fear being an entailed response rather than a present one. Although a mild fear reaction (as opposed to an absent one) would still suffice for the purpose and possibly optimize the reporting status.
“a diminished fear response (which means not feeling fear, or mildly at best, not just “exhibiting” it, which one could do by acting).”
An important distinction. Thanks for responding.
Perhaps it’s because I’m narrow-minded, but I still don’t understand why one should behave morally. For example, in the case of rape: What if the man says, “I know I’m hurting her, and I don’t care”? “I know society will hate me, and I don’t care”? “I know I’m irrational, and I don’t care”? What should be done with monsters?
The reason a person is moral (not should be moral, but be moral) is that to be moral is his natural characteristics.
A moral person cares for his life and the lives of others, and he is not harmful in any way.
Underdeveloped or mentally ill persons (“monsters”) need help to develop personally and become aware of their true identity.
But, in a society of mostly unaware, in which the Law uses legal violence to punish illegal violence, that is not possible.
The progress will happen with the awakening of individuals, one by one, forming groups and communities who will get enough political and economic power to change the Law.
Morality or amorality is a question of identity: who you are, and what you do as who you are.
If you are an aware person and being of Pure Awareness, then you know that there is no Evil in Pure Awareness. As an aware person, you express natural and Good characteristics of PA: truthfulness/rationality/transparency/honesty/integrity, calmness/fearlessness/stability, wisdom, love, etc.
If you are an aware person, you care. If you are oblivioned, you don’t care. Then others must take care of you.
There’s a lot of weird language in that comment, which thus suffers from being frequently unclear even as to what is meant, much less whether it’s correct. But I suppose a very generously charitable “interpretation” can get a correct statement out of it.
Those would be irrational statements, and moral truth is about rational agents, not irrational agents.
In the terms used in this article, “I don’t care” would be their present value but a false entailed value: because they actually would care if they were reasoning without fallacy from true facts about themselves and the world (hence The Objective Value Cascade and Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes).
It’s exactly like a flat earther: that they “don’t care” about all the evidence against them they just “want” to believe the earth is flat would not make the earth flat. It would still be true that the earth was round. So that people can believe false things does not change what is actually true about those things. Moral truth remains true regardless of who knows or believes it. And it is true insofar as it is nothing more than “what a rational and informed agent would agree should be done.” And that is true even when no one is rational or informed. Just like whether the earth is flat or spheroidal.
And in addition to my previous comment (after reading about the goat), there’s the issue of power:
“What if I rape that woman? I have the resources and influence to always get away with it. I could even put her in prison with some effort.”
But the point is the same; there’s really no force, not even compassion, that compels me to do good. Although, on the other hand, I suppose that’s what will always happen in this world if God doesn’t exist.
You don’t need force to be moral, or in other words, no one can force you into being who you really are: an aware being of Pure Awareness. You need to personally develop from the unaware being of unconscious instincts, impulses, and urges, selfishly harming everything to fulfill your ego’s wishes, to an aware being who lives from Pure Awareness.
Obviously, an imaginary god does not help you or/and religious believers to be moral.
Quite contrary: when you think that god exists, everything is allowed. You are free to be Evil, because god will never punish you for it. God has already punished Jesus for your sins, so you are free to sin as much as you want. While raping or killing, you can claim that Jesus is your Saviour, and you are redeemed and saved.
Existence or nonexistence of imaginary beings like gods (in my new 4-part book series, “It’s Finally PROVEN! God Does NOT Exist The FIRST Valid EVIDENCE in History”, I present four valid pieces of evidence that god does NOT exist because that is not possible) will never make you Good.
You have to awaken and become an aware being of Pure Awareness – by yourself, and for yourself first, and then for others. When all are awakened, there will be no Evil as all will be naturally Good.
God didn’t help you become moral; try without god.
Ah. I see. You are selling something. Which thing, it seems, is as weird as your language.
Answering questions like how to get people to be more truly moral rather than falsely moral is really a matter of empirical science. I don’t think some armchair woo is going to succeed at it.
Yes, I am writing articles about personal development and atheism, and selling books, like you. 3 webpages, more than 400 articles, and 12 books. Legal and legit.
What is weird in presenting valid evidence for non-existence of god?
My AIPA (Awakening Into Pure Awareness) method is new. If you feel more familiar and comfortable with scientific terms, here you go: AIPA is a cognitive- phenomenological model based on introspective analysis, dissolving identification with the artificial narrative self, and identity reconstruction.
With scientific research and evidence-based findings, it will become a new science of awareness (PA has three forms: awareness, consciousness and attention) and identity.
I will not let you use this site as a free advertising network for your dubious self-help slop.
My comments policy is here.
1) You can’t “get away” from your own conscience. If you are rational you will always know you are a piece of shit who deserves to be imprisoned or killed. And that’s hard to live with. Certainly not a satisfying way to live. The escape of irrationally avoiding that realization entails literal mental illness, which will damage everything else in your life and deprive you of real love and relationships and friendships and everything else. As I cite the science in my study, we know sociopaths are miserable. And we know why.
2) You can’t get back the opportunity cost (all the joys and pleasures you lose in life from being hollow rather than caring; all the miseries that an uncompassionate nature inflicts on you in terms of constant paranoia and disappointment and anger and hate; and so on).
3) And society can punish you in every way it can find a way to. There is no such thing as “enough” wealth and power to be immune. Trump is lucky he isn’t dead. Hussein’s luck ran out. So did Hitler’s. And those were some of the wealthiest and most powerful criminals in history. But killing you isn’t the only way society can bring justice to a fugitive gangster like them. People can screw your deals, sour your friends, wreck your family ties, frustrate and frighten you, drive you into rage, isolation, and paranoia in a continuous halo of actual failure. Which actually describes most wealthy scoundrels even today. No rational person would want Putin’s miserable besieged terrifying life. And there’s a reason why that is.
4) What you fear is “what will always happen in this world if God DOES exist,” since you can point to it happening everywhere all the time. So obviously God’s existence has no effect on this concern. You might be thinking at least God can fuck them up in the afterlife, but there is no real evidence to believe he will even if he does exist (and little reason to believe he exists). Human assertions are not evidence of any god’s plans or will, but merely their own.
But here is the most important takeaway (as I point out in my cited study):
Even if it were true that all villains will with 100% certainty end up in a celestial prison in the outer planes of the Lord, they clearly still don’t believe they will, and so they irrationally go on doing what they do. That a rational agent would change that behavior once aware of its outcome is what it means for a moral fact to be true even when the agent irrationally doesn’t believe it. And that’s exactly the situation they are all in whether God exists or not. So the problem is not getting God back in. The solution is getting people to behave rationally. Which circularly can’t be done by appealing to their rationality, because the problem is that they don’t have that yet.
The question of how to get people to act rationally is a separate question from what is true (what they would do when rational). That has more to do with emotion and education theory, and may be impossible in cases on irrecoverable insanity, and so then it just becomes a question of what to do about recalcitrantly irrational people. And that’s what we build political and legal systems for. But that someone can never be convinced the earth is round does not make the earth flat. The truth stays the truth even if the insane can never accept it. So, likewise, any other truth, moral or otherwise.
I would love to hear more about education theory and how we build legal systems. We need a place for the irrecoverably irrational but we also need a compassionate system to determine who fits that description and how can rehabilitate those that don’t. Just as important is how we treat each other day to day, allowing for freedom of expression of irrational thoughts and the freedom to speak up in opposition to them.
Thank you. But surely adherents of a divine command system would reject rationality or factness as grounding for morality out of hand.
I have in mind the Abraham-Isaac/Ismaēl story, of course.
Wrongness or rightness is known by Revelation eg in the Ṣarē’ah – the pudenda of a wife belong to the husband as usufruct hence he can take what is his by force if necessary – so what we rationally call marital rape is morally right, sanctioned by God.
That would not be relevant here, since the question here is not whose moral facts are true, but what physically (or, at least, ontologically) makes them true.
So, for example, a Divine Command Theorist would say that that is the ontological nature of god (his actual existing essence or whatever) and the physical facts about what he will do about disobedience to his commands (like, say, send people to hell, or magically torment their consciences, or send them bad luck, or whatever superstition any given theist clings to).
The problem of course is that in the absence of any evidence for any of these claims, DCT collapses into ethical naturalism anyway (see The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory), and theists end up having to agree with me, only asserting instead that the natural facts realizing (and thus entailing) moral facts were put there by God. Which is a redundant and thus unnecessary hypothesis even were it true (as I discuss in my Religions study).
I have gotten into discussions on morality on more than one occasion. Typically it devolves into the assertion that “good” is simply something that is. And then I am told that God instinctively favors the good, so that is what we must do. And how does one know what is good? Supposedly God tells us. But why can they say I ought to do what God defines as good, simply because that is what got defined as good?
By contrast, “That which we would do if we were reasoning logically and knew and understood all the relevant facts of our situation,” is a better definition, and does not devolve into “this is good because God says so.”
And indeed, the God Says So approach is demonstrably self-defeating: you can direct people on that to The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory.
The It Just Is approach is what I refute in my recent study: for that you can direct people to Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes. It breadcrumbs to everything else.
I like the definition of a moral fact as “That which we would do if we were reasoning logically and knew and understood all the relevant facts of our situation.”
Some might argue that this does not fully define morality. For instance, it is good that I limit my alcohol, and it is also good that I allow an old lady with a walker to have the last seat on the bus. Getting buzzed barely qualifies as evil, but deliberately grabbing the last seat on the bus from an old lady is clearly evil. Actions that hurt other people are evil in a sense that is far more serious than actions that hurt me. If I eat too much of the wrong foods, we can surely say that is unwise, but if I do things that needlessly harm others, that can more easily fit the definition of moral evil.
So, when we are dealing with the concept of good as the opposite of evil, it depends on who is being harmed. If the action harms others, even though it is limited, we can argue that it is evil. If the action harms only ourselves, it is generally not considered evil, at least not to the same degree.
So, though I like that definition of moral facts, it seems there is a good that is the opposite of moral evil, and another that is the opposite of an unwise personal decision. And when it comes to moral arguments, we need to be able to explain why actions that needlessly harm others generally carry a greater moral weight than actions that harm ourselves.
Further layers/cascades to consider are how self-harm will damage one’s ability to treat others well/fairly —e.g. supposing a rule to treat everyone with decency, how one rationalizes making oneself an exception to that rule, and how such rationalization would (presumably inevitably) cloud one’s judgment…
You are talking about the derivation not the definition.
The difference is explained in my recent formal study Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes (which breadcrumbs to everything else).
In short, that moral facts are “imperatives that supersede all imperatives” is true of all proposed moral systems; when we try to ascertain which moral system is therefore “true” (rather than simply “exists”), then we find it is “that which we would do if we were reasoning logically and knew and understood all the relevant facts of our situation.”
But what that actually is (what is it that we would then do) is a downstream question, no longer a question about the definition of morality but a question of what then is moral. In my study I use the example of “morality is concerned with others,” which cannot be true by definition; if it’s true, it has to be true in consequence of the facts of the world. It would be one of the things we find when we go looking for what meets the criteria for being moral (I have a whole section on what that likely is in that study, and discuss more in my previous peer-reviewed study in End of Christianity); but the criteria for being moral cannot circularly presuppose what will be found that meets them.
In short, what counts as moral is not the same thing as what is moral (what we find is true when we apply the definition of what is moral). For example, the definition of what is a mammal is not a list of mammals (“mouse, cat, lemur”). Those are what you find when you go looking for what meets the definition of a mammal. Likewise the definition of morality is not a list of what is or isn’t moral. That is what you find when you go looking for what meets the definition of moral.
I also don’t think the use of the words “good” and “evil” are helpful in a discourse like yours. They have emotional valences that obscure more than inform. Generally they are reserved for extreme morality and immorality, not mild or token morality or immorality. But that’s just a semantic issue.
Let’s move on to practical examples. In my country, Navalny suffered and fought for freedom. And died. Is that reasonable? Fight for others and die? And then there’s the tyrant Putin. He kills and lives happily in villas with women. Which is more reasonable?
You actually probably can already work out the answer. Because it’s the same answer people have been giving for the difference between those cases for centuries.
Putin is not happy. It’s very clear that like all dons and tyrants in history he’s extremely paranoid and angry and dissatisfied all the time. He lives in a gilded prison as a hunted animal fearing his own body guards will slit his throat at the soonest provocation. Any woman in his bed could stab him in his sleep. He is cut off from a good life of genuine love and friends and fulfilling rather than hollow pleasures.
This is the fate of all sociopaths. Psychology has well established that when you can get them to tell the truth they always admit to being lonely and miserable and envy people who have lives of compassion and profound joy. I cite some of the science on this in my referenced study. And rational agents always work this out.
By contrast, good people are good because they feel better being good, because they reflect on themselves and what sort of person they would love or loathe, and know which they’ve become; and they can do math: the reciprocal opportunity cost of not being good is greater than not being bad. I cite the science on this in that study as well. Then when good people are cornered they have options: to become a person they loathe or risk signing out. If those are the only two options left to them, rational actors choose the risk. I cover all that in The Real Basis of a Moral World.
That’s a wonderful answer! I also think atheism isn’t at odds with spirituality, because modern religions are outdated and don’t meet the needs of modern people. Perhaps you have some insight into the best spiritual path to choose? You were once a Taoist; what do you recommend for modern people?
I have something to say about that in Sense and Goodness without God.
But in short: philosophy should be everyone’s religion (critically thinking about the truths and realities of life to accumulate the wisdom of it: see How to Be a Philosopher) and spirituality should be a reverence, passion, and love of life, companionship, experience, and knowledge (see The Objective Value Cascade).
In a scene from Young karl Marx (2017) the industrialist is explaning to marx the virtues of capitalism for which marx responds – and who exactly does the system work for ?
when you repeat people want to be good i ask good for who? When the poster writes Naverlny fought for freedom – freedom for who ? Surely not russian workers. Naverlny was a right wing nationalists much like putin but he dispised immigration and hated muslims. Good people ? Good for who ?
“Putin is not happy. It’s very clear that like all dons and tyrants in history he’s extremely paranoid and angry and dissatisfied all the time. He lives in a gilded prison as a hunted animal fearing his own body guards will slit his throat at the soonest provocation. Any woman in his bed could stab him in his sleep. He is cut off from a good life of genuine love and friends and fulfilling rather than hollow pleasures.”
could i ask why did you use putin here instead of netanyahu or even both? Was it a conscious or sub conscious decision? Has your whole spiel about what is good and what is bad played a part ?
Because the conversation thread was explicitly about the example of Putin.
I then generalized it to all cases. I would agree Netanyahu is another instantiation of the generalization, yet another paranoid psychopath, and thus morally insane. But why derail this conversation with that example rather than Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un or Ali Khamenei or Yahya Sinwar?
This interjection seems like disingenuous thread hijacking to me.
FYI: In Christian apologist Gregory Koukl’s book “Street Smarts: Using Questions To Answer Christianity’s Toughest Challenges” (Zondervan, 2023) is a chapter entitled “Good without God?” where he tries to argue that objective goodness without god is impossible. Although you hit the nail on the head pretty hard in your 2005 “Sense and Goodness Without God”, nowhere does Koukl’s book deal with your arguments, despite the likelihood that a person with Koukl’s credentials and knowledge likely knew of atheist responses to the moral argument for god.
Not really sure whether the fact that Koukl’s book is a “popular treatment” defends his neglect. If it does, this might signal a need to raise the standard of “popular treatment”, or else such standard can be blamed for facilitating persistent ignorance.
Any apologetical book titled “Street Smarts” is guaranteed to be trashilicious drivel. This sounds like more of the enshittification of apologetics that I addressed as a phenomenon in Addressing the New Christian Apologetics.
Can we say the wrongness of rape or theft owes to its consequences not the act per se? That’s when wrongness supervenes?
There is obvious nothing wrong with the penile molecule meeting a vaginal one.
So wrongness is an emergent property just as wetness is, could we say?
Yes. Really, most things in life are emergent properties. So that’s not even a remarkable thing to say. But I am wary of over-using “technical” terminology in philosophy, because that often comes with baggage fallacies, so it’s dangerous to start waving around words like “emergent property” when too many people have conflicting ideas in their heads as to what that means.
But on at least one construction of every word you use, your statements are all correct.
All morality is consequentialist (and disputes really only exist over which consequences matter—when of course, they all do), and so “changing the consequences” could (in principle) reverse immoral acts into moral ones (I use the example of murder in my most recent formal study). Some things might not be reversible, or not so in the way someone is trying to get, but that’s case by case.
For example, it can be rational to be irrational, e.g. when playing a game that calls for it, but that does not justify being irrational when matters are serious—there may be no logically possible way to get that outcome. So, similarly, we already know rape can be moral under conditions of consensual non-consent as practiced in the kink community, but that does not justify any other kind of rape—there may be no logically possible way to get that outcome, or ways only hyper-bizarre and thus rarely or never applicable in real life, which reflects logical constraints on how changing consequences can change morality.
And logical constraints are transworld properties, i.e. they are true in all possible worlds. IMO that’s because logically impossible conditions are always physically impossible. But that gets into the ontology of logic.
This is a powerful statement.
I grew up in a fundamentalist background. When I did wrong, I understood it was because I was a bad person (and thus needed somebody to die on a cross to make up for it). I have long gotten away from that, but it is still sometimes hard to shake the shame after doing wrong.
I find this statement helpful. Whenever I do wrong, it is generally because I was not thinking of all the facts of the situation, or was not reasoning logically from those facts. And the correct response seems to be to recognize what facts or arguments I was missing. I can then make a note to myself that, if I am ever faced with a similar situation, I will try to keep these facts and these logical arguments in mind. And that makes me feel good about myself. For I can now recognize that, though I did wrong, I can see myself as a person who understands why it was wrong, and that I am now the kind of person who seeks to be aware of those facts if it ever comes up again. Even if I will forget again, I can know in this moment that I am the kind of person who is committing to being aware of these facts if I am ever in that situation again.
Methods that essentially instruct Christians facing self-loathing to engage in intentional self-deception are quite common in the church. Christians suffering with self-esteem issues are instructed to continuously “meditate” on verses like, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”, or “I can do all things through Christ.”. I critique a sermon by author Jimmy Evans who expounds this view. What if his listeners realize that these verses are at least partially wrong? Evans instructs them to force such doubts out of their minds and force these verses back into their minds. To me, that is intentional self-delusion.
The resulting insistence that certain verses and morals are true comes across as hubris when seen from the outside. But from the inside, one has a direct link to the throne and simply lives one’s life based on that link to infinite moral knowledge.
I know what this is like both from the inside and from the outside. I have been to both places. I can tell you, from the outside, that a life that modifies its beliefs as needed based on new information and then seeks to live by that new information is far more satisfying than the life that needs self-delusions to verify that one’s chosen path is correct.
Indeed.
I appreciate your perspective here. It adds an important example.
And yes:
The difference between true and false moral facts is the difference between true and false things about yourself, the world, and the knowable consequences of your actions.
Thus, a cult can exploit the fact that self-respect and self-loathing modulate moral behavior by connecting them to completely false facts about yourself in the world, thereby manipulating human behavior by conning them into thinking they are evil or good when they are not, and offering a solution to all the ensuing conflicts with reality that this causes.
Hence most evil is delusional (people tell themselves fake stories about how they are always the good guy). The rest is sociopathic and thus dishonest (the sociopath knows they are the bad buy and just pretends not to be). Some is both.
At places, the Bible actually treats such self-loathing as normal (e.g., Job 42:6)
As I see it, the story of Job was written by the religious hierarchy to illustrate that good people do whatever the religious hierarchy says God wants them to do, even if it leads to misery. The hero, Job, does exactly that, loses everything, and ends up loathing himself. But not to worry, the story implies, all will be well.
That pattern of accepting self-loathing is followed in many other scriptures and in church history. See The Bible and Self-Esteem.
Modern Christianity, by contrast, is committed to fighting self-loathing including the dubious methods of Jimmy Evans. Hence, when I do a google search for Christian psychologists, I get hundreds of hits.
Self-esteem issues are complex and often require professionals. But I think you hit on something that will help many people: Using good reasoning from true moral facts, find out what you ought to do above all else. Then do it.
One question that comes up is what about the person who really has a constitution that is so completely different from ours, such that a cruel, unjustified, illegal murder/suicide would be the thing that would most bring self-satisfaction to that person? Would that act be “morally wrong”?
We can argue that, if the person was thinking logically from true moral facts, they would most likely not arrive at this conclusion. And for the vast majority of humanity, this is true. Perhaps it is even true for all humanity. But we cannot prove categorically that there would never be a person for whom sound reasoning from true facts based on that person’s ultimate desires would lead in this direction.
And even if no human would ever be this sort of monster, one might ask if an extraterrestrial or future sentient AI monster might be such that sound reasoning led to this result.
Of course, for the rest of us, we would reach the obvious moral conclusion that the proper thing for us to do would be to preemptively prevent the murder/suicide if possible. And, if the murder happens but the murderer survives the suicide attempt, it would be morally necessary to do whatever we could reasonably do to make sure it did not happen again, such as lifetime imprisonment.
But can we say that what this person did was morally wrong? We can — and should — say that, from our perspective, this is a morally despicable act. We can — and should — say that we need to take steps to ensure such acts do not happen. We can — and should — say that this person was most likely not acting in a way that ultimately fulfilled his own self-interest and thus is morally wrong from that person’s perspective.
But can we know that what this person did was morally wrong?
Ultimately, this is just an argument of the definition of “morally wrong”, so it ends up being a question of semantics.
For, when it comes to what we should do about such a person, we can easily all agree.
I don’t understand what scenario you are describing.
But I discuss moral suicide in Sense and Goodness (index, “suicide”). Perhaps that would answer your question.
Or if you mean to ask about people acting irrationally or in ignorance, and how to judge them, then it comes down to questions of negligence or intent, which can only be determined case by case. I have footnotes governing those conditions in my formal peer reviewed chapter on moral theory in The End of Christianity.
I guess I didn’t make my question clear.
You write:
And you write elsewhere
So, there could be different objective moral facts for different rational beings. You seem to be saying that, for a space alien, for instance, it might actually be that a cruel murder/suicide of humans would be an objective moral fact, for that is what makes him genuinely fulfilled. If that made him genuinely fulfilled, would it be morally right for him to do it?
We can say it would be morally wrong for most people to do that kind of murder/suicide, and that all good people would oppose it. But can we say that this space alien is morally wrong?
Similarly, what about some human whose basic wants are so different from ours that even when reasoning soundly from true facts of the situation, he would correctly conclude that a cruel, unjustified murder/suicide is that which would make him most genuinely fulfilled?
Again, we can all condemn and resist the act, but can we say that the person is morally wrong?
The question keeps coming up as to whether those who initiated the Holocaust were morally wrong. Yes, we can say that, for almost all people, if not actually all people, that this act would not lead to genuine fulfillment and would thus be morally wrong for them.
But what about the person whose basic wants were so different from ours that the facts relative to that individual lead to his best genuine fulfillment coming from committing such atrocities? In such an unlikely situation, we could say we should do everything we can to prevent it. But can we say that such a perpetrator was morally wrong?
Noting that “could be” here is an analytical fact (it refers to a logical possibility), not an empirical fact (whether there are any such moral facts can only be discovered from empirical studies; it can’t be known from the armchair).
In my Religions article I outline how this might dissolve under circumstantial factuality, such that there is always a universal truth that even relative truths derive from according to circumstance. A traditional example is murder vs. self-defense. The moral fact of the matter depends on circumstances unique to each individual (whether your killing someone is self-defense and not murder); but there is a universal fact determining that (the facts that decide, in conjunction with your circumstances, whether it’s murder or self-defense). So there is always a universal moral fact and relative moral facts really aren’t different moral facts but the same moral facts applied to different circumstances.
This may be true all the way down, such that not only are there universal moral facts in our universe that diverge only in contact with circumstances, but those universal facts hold true in all possible universes. The example I give is of murder always being moral owing to a complete change in its effects (e.g. if it always causes resurrection into a healthier state and no other negative outcome). That may be true in a possible world (not one we live in now). But that really isn’t a relative difference in moral facts but an application of the same moral facts to the new circumstances (e.g. the transworld universal moral fact may be “it is wrong to cause needless harm” or some such forumula, which in contact with an entirely different physics than ours simply produces a different answer there regarding whether “murder” is moral “in that circumstance,” such that if you ever find yourself in that circumstance, that would also be the case, and therefore this is really in fact a “universal” fact).
I don’t claim to have conclusively resolved this question, and it may be a merely analytical (semantic) distinction that doesn’t matter to “what you ought to do” given any particular set of circumstances (those circumstances including your individual abilities, limitations, resources, properties, etc., and not just those external to you). So I keep the qualifier in. I give an example of the alternative possibility in my chapter in TET. If there really is an empirical distinction that doesn’t collapse this way, it could be the case that, for example, one set of moral facts is true for us, and a different set of moral facts is true for the aliens in Alien. But that would not change what the moral facts were for us. So it isn’t relevant to whether there are true moral facts for you. It could be that there is no rational argument (and no evidence) you could ever produce that even logically could “convince” even perfectly rational aliens to behave differently. But that would then entail how you ought behave toward them, which may be “it is a moral imperative to kill them all without negotiation.” And the same may be a moral fact for them.
I actually think this state of affairs is likely to turn out to be impossible (I discuss the Game Theoretic reasons and the rational agent satisfaction reasons in various places, but a good place to start is The Objective Value Cascade). But I have not proved that. So I mention, and thus cover, the other case so I have all possibilities covered. The end result is that the same moral facts remain true for all current human beings. So the possibilities of other species having other true moralities makes no difference to that.
Note that that isn’t an analytical question but an empirical one. This is why justifiers of the Holocaust have to come up with and push wildly false claims about reality to justify it: they cannot establish it to be moral on actual facts; they need to invent fake facts to get there.
In actual empirical reality, Jews aren’t a sociopathic alien species. When Ripley says “nuke them all from orbit” she is absolutely morally right and everyone can see that. But that’s because in that fictional scenario, she was dealing with the actual thing that the Nazis falsely accused the Jews of being. So the problem you are referring to was not whether “holocausts are moral if x is true” but whether “x is true.” Are Jews relevantly like XX121 Xenomorphs? The answer is, as a matter of objective fact, no.
And that’s basically the end of that line of thinking. Which does get to a different kind of universal fact: Nazis are always liars.