I do not think it overly incautious to say that most people view morality as something that exists apart from themselves. I take no position between the various ways in which this is explained (whether as the Will of God, or of the law of karma, etc.) but I would be willing to go far enough out on a limb to say (without providing any strong evidence in support of the claim, mind you) that the perception of moral valuations as existing ‘out there’ as properties adhering to acts and objects, just as ‘red’ adheres to a fire-engine, is probably innate, the default setting of the human mind. While it could be the case that this is so (who am I to say?), it strikes me as unlikely that this should be the case. After all, despite many years – our entire species-history since we attained sapience, in point of fact – of believing in morality, of arguing morality, and enacting (however poorly) morality, we have failed to achieve any robust species-wide agreement upon the content of morality. Granted, there are such platitudinous agreements that, for example, we ought not to kill, but when we dig deeper into how different cultures and different individuals within those same cultures understand and operationalize such principles, we find that there exists hardly any common ground at all, even relating to such arguably fundamental positions. Given our extraordinary successes in expanding human knowledge in other domains (e.g. astronomy, physics, medicine), it seems improbably that we might nevertheless have failed to achieve some degree of success in the moral sphere if, in fact, moral properties are obvious and actually existing features of the external world. [1]
Still, we feel very keenly (at least, most of us do) the strength and pull of morality and moral reasoning and we strive with mixed success to act within the boundaries these define. Quite obviously, morality is a real phenomenon and we experience it as such. Equally obviously, if morality is not an aspect of the external world, it will necessarily be a feature of the human mind. The goodness that we observe in kindness and the evil from which we recoil in cruelty are not properties of the acts themselves, but are valuations that we have made and projected (instantaneously) onto the happenings themselves. Thought the universe may be amoral, we most certainly are not.
Now, perhaps this doesn’t strike some of those reading this as plausible, which is fine – it is not really my intention here to change anyone’s opinion on this count. Indeed, a good many will be sure to remain unconvinced because they know (or claim to) that it is perfectly obvious that there is a moral order independent of ourselves. There will be others, however, perhaps fewer, who resist the view because they are unsure that they want to accept what they believe to be its consequences. After all, if we lose the objective moral order, don’t we thereby fling to doors wide open to relativisms of all sorts, not to mention losing the basis of justification for our own actions? [2] Such concerns, however, lively as they may be, have much less substance than they appear to, for two reasons. First, and most importantly, there is no danger whatsoever that we are at risk of collapsing into barbarism and immorality/amorality on an account of morality as non-independently existing – what we take to constitute acting morally might change, but we do and shall retain our moral compass (whichever way it points) until evolution has stripped it from us. Second, although there may be no such things as moral properties, out there and ready-made to guide our actions, it nevertheless remains the case that there are morally relevant properties of objects and states-of-affairs to which we may turn for grounding our moral reasoning.
In order to determine what properties might count as morally relevant, we will necessarily need to first determine what exactly morality concerns itself with. This, as any who has tried can attest, is a maddeningly difficult thing to do, at least to everyone’s satisfaction, but one or two tentative and broad definitions are available. A minimally acceptable definition of morality obviously has something to do with guiding/constraining our actions, but this is too vague to serve as a definition since it says nothing about the reasons why we may declare certain acts impermissible in the absence of objective moral properties. There is one family of accounts – one which I find compelling – that claims that morality exists as a way of constraining the acts of members of groups of particular species of social animals in order to bring about and maintain a modus vivendi necessary for their flourishing. Some will find this to be too restrictive however, arguing that it misses out on the universality of the moral imperative – we generally, they would claim, extend the sphere of moral concern beyond the (sometimes very) narrow confines of our social groups. Instead, morality is about acting appropriately toward everything. There is something to this objection/definition, but I don’t think that it disproves the evolutionary account – I think, rather, that it serves as an interesting expression of the particular moral make-up of the human animal. [3] I don’t see these two as incompatible as it is surely possible that our in-group moral sense is, like our intellect, far more powerful than strictly required for our survival and reproductive success and, like our intellect, has been applied to problems beyond those it arose to cope with. But if this account does replace the other which I have given above, then morality will simply be concerned with the prescription of those actions which are of benefit to others and the proscription of those that are detrimental. For the time being, then, I shall use this benefit/harm criterion as it arguably is a more broadly applicable standard (e.g. how we deal with a biting mosquito has little if anything to do with social cohesion) and is, in any case, widely assented to, even among those who don’t believe it to be the whole of morality. [4]
In order for some property of an object or situation to be morally relevant, therefore, it must be some property whereby an object (whether this object is the one which possesses the property or is some other thing) of moral concern may be brought to harm or benefit. Unfortunately, this introduces a further complication into the matter – how do we judge whether an object has been harmed or benefitted? I propose simply that for any action to count as a harm or benefit, it must have been done to an object which possesses some property whereby it can come to harm or benefit and would (had it the ability) judge itself to have been so affected. This last bit is critical, since this is what allows moral action to be meaningful and coherent. For example, we are not harming chimpanzees by refusing to educate them in mathematics since chimps’ natures are such that they do not consider themselves to be harmed by such withholding – indeed, they cannot even understand what it is that we are withholding. If, however, we were to confine them to cages and refuse to feed them, then we are clearly doing them harm (they have a nature such that they require food and experience its absence as harmful). Moreover, it is this own-judgement of benefit/harm that allows us to make moral arguments and appeals against the powerful and the opinions of our peers – but for this own-judgement there could not have been any case against slavery, patriarchy, etc.
From this it follows that the greater the number of properties by which an object can be affected, the greater moral consideration is due that thing. A rock, for instance, cannot judge itself to have been harmed by anything, so is owed no moral consideration, except perhaps derivatively by being of interest to something to which we do owe moral consideration (by being someone’s property, say). Conscious entities that feel pain and pleasure will deserve some minimal moral concern, while self-aware entities will deserve yet more. Social animals will merit much, much more, since they can be affected not only by what happens to themselves but also by what happens to members of their social groups. Humans, finally, will bear the greatest degree of moral consideration since we can be affected in the greatest number of ways (indeed, by having our rights violated or our plans interfered with).
In any case, it should not be difficult, on inspecting an object, to ascertain which of its properties may be morally relevant. The fundamental morally relevant property must be consciousness, since without consciousness there can be neither perception nor judgement of harm or benefit. Emotional attachment, plan-making, and others are potential candidates. But to compile a list would take much more effort than I would be willing to do on a blog!
Endnotes:
[1] Unless, of course, our moral science (please pardon the term) is still in its infancy. Morality may, on this eventuality, actually be a part of the external world as much as is the sphericity of the Earth. As was the case with the Earth in days of old, ‘natural’ moral properties may not yet be obvious minus some conceptual equivalent of manned space-flight.
[2] As to why the prospect of relativism should be so troublesome to any but the most rigid of religious fundamentalists, I have to admit that I find myself at a loss. Surely we can all agree that moral relativism is, quite apart from normative concerns, a descriptive fact of human morality as it manifests in practice? What further harm can result from acknowledging relativism that doesn’t already obtain from the mere fact of it?
[3] I would be interested to know whether some evolutionary psychologist has addressed the question of why it should be that humans are so readily able to extend our sphere of moral concern so far beyond our most intimate acquaintances – as far as other living species and even, on some occasions, to inanimate objects!
[4] And because, furthermore, one could make the case that many of our apparently non-harm/beneficence matters of moral concern (social cohesion, say) could be derived from harm/benefit considerations, it would just take a lot of work. How this can be should become apparent later.
Ataraxia 