Moral and natural laws.

Introduction

An investigation of natural laws, and, in parallel, a defence of ethical objectivism.The objectivity, to at least some extent, of science will be assumed; the sceptic may differ, but there is no convincing some people).

What are Subjectivism and Objectivism?

Subjectivism, about ethics or anything else, is the idea that inidivuals assign different truth values to the same beliefs, and that they do so properly — that is, that their attitude makes the belief in question true or false, that they have the last word on the subejct. That condition is an important one because objective beliefs can vary as well, but their variation is due to mistakes. Someone who thinks Police Academy 5 is preferable to Battelship Potemkin has a valid opinion, because they have the last word as to what they like; someone who thins the world is flat is wrong. Another way of explaining the difference is that ideal rational agents, who by stipulation never make mistakes, would not differe about objective questions, but might still differ about subjective ones.

Subjective claims, whether about ethics,or anything else, have a different logical or grammatical form to objective ones, in that they have to be indexed to the individual or group who hold them. Thus subjective things are good-according-to-John, Ugly-according-to-Mary, etc.

Why Objectivism?

At first glance, morality looks as though it should work objectively. The mere fact that we praise and condemn people's moral behaviour indicates that we think a common set of rules is applicable both to us and to them. We can say that something is good-to-Mary but evil-to-John, but we cannot act on that basis, because someone is either in jail or they are not. To put it another way, if ethics were strongly subjective anyone could get off the hook by devising a system of personal morality in which whatever they felt like doing was permissible. It would be hard to see the difference between such a state of affairs and having no morality at all. The subtler sort of subjectivist (or relativist) tries to ameliorate this problem by claiming that moral principles are defined at the societal level. Although this constrains individuals to societal norms (as do legal systems), similar problems the get-out-of-jail objection re-occurs at the societal level; a society (such as the Thuggees or Assassins) could declare that murder is OK with them.

The foregoing assumes a rational or explicable relationship between the doing of right and wrong, and the subsequent allocation of praise and blame, reward and punishment. It could be argued that we can do without this, and just punish arbitrarily, and not bother reasoning things out. Since are not all in agreement on a singleobjective kroality, that is to some extent the case. In democracies, punishment and reward are decided by an averaging out of opinion, and in other societies by the whim of the powerful. However, this is no a desirable state of affairs even if it is an inevitable one. It is desirable that people behave well based on their own understanding. rather than threats, and it is desirable that justice should be explicable and not arbitrary. That neither standard can be completely fullfilled is not justfication for abandoning them; some reasoing-based ethics is better than none.

These considerations are of course an appeal to how morality seems to work as a 'language game' and as such do not by themselves put ethics on a firm foundation. They make a prima facie case for the objectivity of morality, but the "language game" could be groundless. The epistemology and metaphysics of the issue need to be considered as well.

Objections to Objecivism

I will argue that morality is objective in principle (although not for any particualr moral code) but first a number of contrary arguments need to be considered., ie.

1. No One Agrees on One System of Morality.
2. Not Everyone Will Accept One System of Morality
3. You Want to Force Your System of Morality on Everyone Else.
4. There is no Source for Objective Morality
5. Values Exist Only in the Mind
6. The Is/Ought Gap.
7. Queer Objects

The First Four Objections Quickly Refuted

It is indisuptable that morality varies in practice across communities. But the contention of ethical objectivism is not that everyone actually does hold to a single objective sysem of ethics; it is only that ethical questions can be resolved objectively in principle. ( In philosophical jargon, normative ethical relativism does not folow from descriptive ethical relativism.) The existence of an objective solution to any kind of problem is always compatible with the existence of people who, for whatever reason, do not subscribe. The roundness of the Earth is no less an objective fact for the existence of believers in the Flat Earth theory. Moreover, the assertion is only that morality is objective in principle. That is a meta-ethical position, that is, a claim about the nature of morality in general. Defense of a meta-ethical claim doesn't necesseraily require the production of any actual moral code, let alone the recognition or enforcement of a universal one.

Another objection is that an objective system of ethics must be accepted by everybody, irrespective of their motivations, and must therefore be based in their self-interest. Again, this gets the nature of objectivity wrong. The fact that some people cannot see does not make any empirical evidence less objective, the fact that some people refuse to employ logic does not make logical argument any less objective. All claims to objectivity make the background assumption that the people who will actually employ the objective methodology in question are willing and able. We will return to this topic toward the end. To adopt a moral attitude, one must want to do so. However, that does not mean it has to be in ones interest to do so, since there is no evidence that people are 100% selfish.

Some people insist that anyone who is promoting ethical objectivism and opposing relativism must be doing so in order to illegitimately promote their own ethical system as absolute. While this is problably pragmatically true in many cases, particularly where political and religious rhetoric is involved, it has no real logical force, because the contention of ethical objectivism is only that ethical questions are objectively resolvable in principle — it does not entail a claim that the speaker or anyone else is actually in possession of them. This marks the first of our analogues with science, since the in-principle objectivity of science coincides with the fact that current scientific thinking is almost certainly not final or absolute. ethical objectivism is thus a middle road between subjectivism/relativism on the one hand, and various absolutisms (such as religious fundamentalism) on the other.

The argument that morality must have a Source is conditioned by the way most people encounter moral exhortation, thtough religion. The idea is that moral principles are compulsions or obligations, which means, in turn, that they are something like edicts or commandments. Whilst there are lots of humans who can offer opinions on what is compulsory, they are all subjective opinions: no-one can lay down an objective edict. However, the basic idea of a "source" merges two separate ideas: who tells you about some item of knowledge, and what makes it true. The mathematical truths relayed to you by your teachers are objectively true, not because teachers are Objective Sources, but because of the ways they are proved an justified — which is usually not by the teacher personally. The set of things that are true just because someone says so is small. Eye witness testimony, personal reminiscences, reports of subjective states: not many things work on the Source system, and there is no reason to assume ethics does.

Moral and ethical values may exist in the mind, but that does not make the subjective in the relevant, epistemic sense defined above. Objective beliefs about the shape of the Earth and the sum of two and two are in the held in the mind as well.

The Is/Ought Divide and Analyctiy

Another objection is from Hume's is/ought argument:-

"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 ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all 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 last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it."

It does not follow from the is/ought dichotomy alone that there are no objective ethics or values; the further assumption needs to be made that the set of facts contains nothing that is not also in the set of objective truths, that is, the further assumption needs to be made that there are no evaluative or "ought" statements which are objectively true in themselves, rather than deriving their truth from factual truths. (By "fact" I mean a state of affairs obtaining in the real world, and by "truth" I mean a true statement"). A example of an objective truth that is not a factual truth is a mathematical truth, or, more generally, an analytical truth. So one way of rescuing objective ethics from the I/O distinction is to found it on analytical truths. However, it is difficult to derive analytical moral claims directly from axioms, and the results tend to be too general. De Facto morality reflects particular facts about human society and biology, which need to be included somehow.

In one sense, the resolution of an is/ought problem is straightforward: a syllogism of the form:-
X is true as a fact
If X is true as af act, someone ought to do Y
Therefore, someone ought to do Y
is a valid modus ponens. However, the argument is not sound unless the bridging statement is true. But the bridging statement is itself an derivation of an "ought" from an "is", so at first glance there is a kind of circularity there. It is as if the argument assumes there is ought-from-is problem has been solved in order to solve it. However, the bridging premise is not exactly the same thing as a moral argument: it is usually more of a general statement along the lines of "if X increases well being, it should be done" But what were we just saying about analytical derivations of 'ought' principles being too broad and general? If we can plug a specific fact into our syllogism, and if we can justify the general bridging principle using an analytical argument, we are home and dry.

We wil return to the subject of bridging laws and maxims later.

The Queer Objects Argument, and Natural Laws

The final objection is the objection on that moral rules need to correspond to some kind of 'queer fact' or 'moral object' which cannot be found.

Natural laws do not correspond in a simplistic one-to-one way with any empirically detectable object, yet empiricism is relevant to both supporting and disconfirming natural laws. With this in mind, we should not rush to reject the objective truth of moral laws on the basis that there is no 'queer' object for them to stand in one-to-one correspondence with.

There is, therefore, a semi-detached relationship between natural laws and facts — laws are not facts but are not unrelated to facts — facts confirm and disconfirm them. But, as another of Hume's arguments reminds us, you cannot derive a law from an isolated observation. Call this the fact/law problem. Now, if the morality is essentially a matter or ethical rules or laws, might not the fact/value problem and the law/value problem be at least partly the same ?

Sceptics about ethical objectivism will complain that they cannot be exactly the same because moral rules like "Thou shalt not kill" contain an 'ought', an irreducibly ethical element. Let's look at what sceptics about natural laws say: their complaint is that a law is not a mere collection of facts. A law cannot be directly derived from a single observation, but it is not constituted by a collection of observations, a mere historical record, either. A historical record is a mere description; it tells you what has happened, but a law tells us what will and must happen. A description gives no basis for expectation — the territory does not have to correspond to the map — yet we expect laws to be followed, if we believe in them at all.

I do not propose to answer this challenge in its own terms — that is I do not propose to show that a collection of mere facts does provide all by itself the required lawfulness. On my analysis, all individual laws depend on a general assumption — a meta-law or ur-law — that the future will follow the same general pattern as the past. The sceptic will object that this has been assumed without proof. My reply is that each individual law is tested on its own merits. Since at least some laws are thus shown to be correct a-posteriori, the lack of a-priori proof of the meta-law is not significant.

My further contention is that there is a different meta-law that needs to be posited for ethical rules. Just as someone who is engaged in the business of understanding the natural world needs a basic commitment to the idea that nature has regularities, so someone needs a basic commitment to moral behaviour in order to be convinced by ethical arguments. Ethical arguments do not and cannot be expected to convince psychopaths, any more than mathematical arguments can be expected to convice the innumerate. Whilst it is essentially correct that an evaluative conclusion cannot be drawn directly from a factual premiss, such a conclusion can be drawn with the aid of a bridging prinicple, (which is of course just our meta-law), eg.

1. I do not want to be murdered
2. I should do as I would be done by
3. I should not murder.

(2) is an example of a meta-law (or bridging principle or moral maxim), As ethical objectivism is a work-in-progress there are many variants, and a considerable literature discussing which is the correct one.

More On Analycity: Where Does the Obligation Come From?

You are not compelled to be rational, to be moral, or to play chess. But if you are being rational, you should avoid contradictions — that is a norm. If you are being moral, you should avoid doing unto others what you would not wish done unto you. If you are playing chess, you should avoid placing the bishop on a square that cannot be reached diagonally from the current one. No-one makes you follow those rules, but there is a logical relationship between following the rules and playing the game: you cannot break the rules and still play the game. In that sense, you must follow the rules to stay in the game. But that is not an edict coming from a person or Person.

If you vary the way games work too much, you end with useless non-games (winning is undefinable, one player always wins...) If you vary the way rationality works too much, you end up with paradox, quodlibet etc. If you vary the rules of meta ethics too much, you end up with anyone being allowed to do anything, or nobody being allowed to do anything. "The rules are made up" doesn't mean the rules are abitrary.

The rules of physics have a special quality of unavoidability, you don't have an option to avoid them. Likewise people are held morally accountable under most circumstances and can't just avoid culpabability by saying "oh, I don't play that game". I don't think these are aposteriori facts. I think physics is definitionally the science of the fundamental, and morality is definitionally where the evaluative buck stops.

Analysing "Ought"

Ought means owed, means you have a commitment to behaving in a certainty way, and that you accept the rewars and sacntions that go with that.

How not to do Scientific Metaethics

Evolutionary psychology tells us that our evolutionary history has given us certain moral attitudes and behaviour. So far, so good. Some scientifically minded types take this to constittue a theory of objective morality all in itself. However, that would be subject to the Open Question objection: we can ask of our inherited morality whether it is actually right. (Unrelatedly, we are probably not determined to follow it, since we can overcome strong evolutionary imperatives in, for instance, voluntay celibacy). This not a merely abstract issue either, since EP has been used to support some contentious claims; for instance, that men should be forgiven for adultery since it is "in their genes" to seek muliple partners.