I'm sorry to hear that Stephen Black has decided to move on from TIPS - I
think we probably all agree that he has been "an absolute gold mine" (to
quote myself in a private comment I made to one of his colleagues a few
weeks ago).
That being said, I'm going to disagree with him one last time. <grin>
Stephen Black wrote:
> Rick Froman, dismayed at the distasteful implications of my
> argument that there is no universally correct morality,
> protested:
>
> > So does that mean there is no true one or just that there
> > is no scientific test to ascertain it? What of a morality that sees
science
> > as ungodly? Is that an equally valid morality even though we know
science
> > is good. It seems that you have taken morality outside of the area of
science.
>
> Exactly my point. Morality can't be established by examination of
> evidence or by logic. It's determined by belief. I might ask Rick
> to name some of the moral precepts he believes are universal.
> I'm pretty sure it would turn out that of all the enormously
> varied moral beliefs held by people across this planet, the ones
> he names turn out to be those he himself holds. Is this mere
> coincidence? Is Rick just lucky that he stands on the right side
> of every belief? Or does it indicate the profound enthnocentrism
> of the concept?
Hmm. I believe that there are moral absolutes, and I also believe
that I don't have a very good idea of what they are. I don't see this
situation as much different from our knowledge of the state of the universe.
If you were to ask me to name some true statements about the nature of the
universe, I think it goes without saying that I'd respond by naming some
that I believe. I could conceivably be wrong (in fact, I'm sure it wouldn't
take long for me to state a mistaken belief). Similarly, if you were to ask
Rick to name some universal moral precepts, he'd give the ones he himself
holds. It's neither coincidence nor (necessarily) a signal that morals are
relative - it could simply be that he's doing his best to answer the
question, but remains possibly mistaken (about what the genuinely absolute
morals really are).
I agree that "morality can't be established by examination of
evidence or by logic", but I don't agree that "it's determined by belief". I
think that whatever universal morals are out there, they precede our beliefs
as well as our actions, in much the same way that the correct answer to the
question "How many craters larger than 5 yards in diameter does our moon
have?" does. Of course moral questions differ from questions like that in
that the crater question can be answered though evidence. But in either
case, our lack of an answer in hand doesn't mean that there isn't any actual
answer.
I also think that the simplistic, largely unconsidered sets of
proposed "universal morals" we've had historically serve to block us from
actually considering morality in the depth that we really should. If there
are universal morals, they're complicated things, perhaps not easily stated.
They'll look more like the U.S. Federal Tax Code than like the Ten
Commandments. <grin>
If I personally were charged with looking into the notion of
universal morals, I'd start with what I perceive to be the incredible value
of basic phenomenology. There are things that have experiences, and things
that do not have experiences. The former set is (I believe) equivalent
(co-referential at least, and perhaps by definition) to the set of things
towards which we have moral obligations of some sort. "Mere events" occur
all the time, everywhere. "Experiences" occur much less frequently and seem
to me to be the basic unit of value. A first draft universal moral, then,
would be "what is good is what maximizes experience". Sure, that's full of
holes, and far from what people want to hear, but it's a starting place.
> There is a (limited) loophole in this dismal state of affairs.
> It's that beliefs that produce behaviour which leads to the
> survival of the group will become dominant. Beliefs that lead to
> less reproductive success will not. There is no goodness or
> badness here; only the working of evolution.
I believe that people's actions, including their statements about
their notions of morality are basically the "working of evolution". But I
believe that those actions reflect "good" at times and "bad" at other times
in a way independent of basic survival/reproduction issues. Behavior and
morality seem to have a very tenuous connection at best, even if we're only
talking about espoused morality. Even if there is, as I suppose, a genuine
universal morality, there is no reason to expect that it would actually
direct our behaviors, or our beliefs about what constitutes moral and
immoral behavior.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
