Introduction

Now let’s shift to explore objectivist options for naturalism (i.e., ethical naturalism) within moral cognitivism. These views reduce morals to natural facts, so that scientists can measure them empirically, whether that be physiologically, biologically, chemically, or otherwise. There are no intrinsically moral properties. Furthermore, moral statements are about facts concerning (1) objects thought to have moral value, or (2) moral actions.

Options for Ethical Naturalism

Here are some strategies for reducing morals to natural facts. Morals are:

1. What most people desire or approve;
2. What an impartial observer approves;
3. What maximizes desire or interest; or
4. What furthers survival.

First, all these kinds of things are descriptive in nature. But, that seems to lose the normativity of moral principles and virtues. How then do we get the moral ought from what simply is the case descriptively?

Morals need to be identical to natural facts. Yet, these strategies face problems. Consider (1): While what most people desire could be good (such as being loved), it also could be something clearly immoral. In the early 1800s, most people in the Deep South in the U. S. desired to keep slavery as an institution. Similarly, in the 1960s, what most white people wanted in that area was segregation from African-Americans. Yet both policies were clearly wrong.

Alternatively, while most people there did not desire to end racial discrimination against African-Americans, nonetheless Martin Luther King, Jr.’s efforts were right to try to do so. We also could look at others examples where what most people desired, or approved, was wrong, such as anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, or apartheid in South Africa.

How about (2)?  Besides the problem of how to get the normative moral property from what is descriptive, (2) raises the prospects of just how impartial anyone could be. All of us are shaped and influenced by a wide range of factors, including our worldviews. If someone is a naturalist (or a Buddhist or theist), would that person really be able to set aside all that conceptual framework to be impartial in the needed ways? Additionally, it is possible that what an impartial observer approves of still could be immoral.

Regarding (3), the same issues explored above with the southern U. S. could repeat here. And with (4), what furthers survival could be immoral. Arguably, the Nazis aimed to preserve the purity (and thus survival) of the Aryan race, but in so doing they would kill off those they deemed to be “defective.” Also, on the basis of (4), some acts of genocide could be justified. After all, if morality is what furthers survival, why should the weak survive? Yet, justice often requires defending the defenseless against those who are oppressing them.

Cornell Realism

All these ethical naturalist options are realist; they affirm that morals are real, yet they are nothing but natural kinds of things. There is another ethical naturalist option, called “Cornell Realism,” and developed by Richard Boyd (b. 1942), Nicholas Sturgeon (b. 1942), and David Brink (b. 1958). Like other naturalists, there are no intrinsically moral facts. Still, our ethical beliefs (such as Hitler was morally depraved) are justified in light of their coherence with our whole body of beliefs, which is shaped by naturalism. For them, we do not have direct access to moral or other kinds of facts; we always access them through our “conceptual grid,” or interpretive framework. Our moral beliefs and theories give us approximations to the truth.

Later, I will address this coherentist idea more. Still, we already have seen some commonalities with Kant’s views. The question will be if we can access reality at all on such a view. For now, notice that for them, moral facts still are natural facts, and though we conceive of them as moral ones, what is moral is just a matter of our interpretation. If so, a people could conceive of murder or rape as right. But, we clearly know such interpretations would be wrong.

For Further Reading

Richard Boyd, “How to be a Moral Realist,” in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 5

Ruse and Evolutionary Ethics

Michael Ruse (b. 1940) is another cognitivist in that moral sentences can be true or false. Yet, he is not an objectivist. If he were, then moral statements would be about facts concerning moral acts or objects thought to have moral value. Yet, there are no intrinsically moral properties, or any that transcend our biology. Instead, he too is a subjectivist. Moral discourse ends up being a way of describing the biological. Ruse also grounds ethics in naturalistic evolution and science.

Ruse’s Sociobiology

Ruse rejects as a myth the older paradigm that evolution is essentially progressive and that it generates value, for humans are its successful endpoint. Instead, he embraces sociobiology, in which morality is part of biology. Social norms develop by their evolutionary emergence.

On this view, moral behavior simply is a biological adaptation. Cooperation with others is a good survival strategy, which he claims is virtually the norm in the animal kingdom. Since we cooperate, we are successful in surviving and reproducing. Moreover, “social success” leads to the evolution of more efficient means of cooperation.

Following Richard Dawkins’s idea of the “selfish” gene, Ruse believes that what appear to be “altruistic” acts relate back to an individual’s self-interest. That is, such acts occur because ultimately they benefit the performer’s biological ends. But, since we have a self-centered nature, and we have adapted via sociality, we need a mechanism to break through that self-centeredness. Morality is that mechanism, which has been selected for cooperative behavior.

So, Ruse thinks he can derive the moral ought from what biologically is the case and thereby avoid the issue posed by the “naturalistic fallacy”: i.e., how do we get what is morally normative from what is biologically descriptive? Moreover, he is consistent as a naturalist, denying that there are any intrinsic morals. While morality seems objective to us, it does not exist objectively (i.e., independently of us), for it is an illusion of our genes.

While this position might make Ruse’s ethics seem vulnerable to charges of relativism, he flatly rejects that charge. Instead, he strongly rejects as immoral many clear cases of wrongdoing, such as rape, Hitler’s savagery, female circumcision, and more. 

Assessment

Clearly, Ruse’s ethics is an important attempt to account for ethics in a naturalistic, evolutionary framework. Surely he is right that cooperation is a good strategy for survival, and that humans seem to have a self-centered nature. He also rightly addresses the need to preserve the oughtness of morality, that it not be reduced merely to what is the case.

Now, Ruse admits that “altruistic” and “selfish” are metaphorical ways of describing behaviors. They are not the case in reality, for morality simply is an illusion. Indeed, all moral discourse would seem to be a metaphorical way of talking about biological behavior.

In that case, Ruse’s claim that his view can preserve the normativity of morality (especially of core morals like murder and rape are wrong) seems to do nothing of the sort. As he has admitted, there are no intrinsic moral properties, even to biology. But, generally, how we talk about something does not confer new properties upon it. Clearly, Ruse is not suggesting that our moral speech adds moral properties to biology. In that case, we can talk in whatever ways we want about morality, even that murder is right, but it will do nothing to change the biological facts of the matter, that there are no moral properties in our biology.

Furthermore, due to how natural selection happened to work, it is conceivable that we could have evolved differently, such that murder or rape would not be wrong, but perhaps even right and obligatory. After all, since morality’s “objectivity” is just an illusion of our genes, then murder’s or rape’s being wrong, or justice’s and love’s being good, could have turned out otherwise, or not ever have evolved. But that seems deeply mistaken.

For Further Reading

Michael Ruse, “Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach,” in Ethical Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Louis Pojman, 4th ed.

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 5

Naturalism and Moral Cognitivist Options: Subjectivism

In terms of the meaning of moral sentences, naturalists also could be cognitivists. They maintain moral claims are truth apt, yet they still deny there are any intrinsically moral properties. There are three main branches of moral cognitivism: subjectivism, error theory, and objectivism. Subjectivists generally reduce morals to what a speaker likes or dislikes (private subjectivism), or what a culture likes or dislikes (cultural relativism). This essay will look at subjectivism in general, and then in particular at that of Gilbert Harman.

In general, while subjectivist theories about the meaning of moral statements are compatible with naturalism, there is an obvious problem with them – they reduce moral claims, which are normative, into merely descriptive ones. But that does not seem to do justice when we claim (for example) that murder is wrong. We do not mean that we simply dislike murder; rather, we mean it is wrong. For example, when we see people cry out for justice when a murder has been committed, it is not because they merely dislike murder. Instead, they know something morally wrong has been committed, and justice should be done.

Harman’s Subjectivism

Now, for Harman (b. 1938), there is another sense of subjectivism. According to him, moral facts are natural facts. Consistent with naturalism, there are no intrinsically moral facts. Moral facts should be understood as being relational facts, which are about reasons that are grounded in a given subject’s goals. Moreover, our moral beliefs arise from our interaction with natural facts. But that interaction always is conditioned by our upbringing and psychology, so all moral beliefs are our constructs. Morals are dependent upon us, so they are subjective in that sense.

In terms of moral reasons, Harman thinks people likely have them only if they have implicitly entered into an agreement with others about what to do. Nevertheless, these motivating reasons will not be the same for all, and he thinks it is likely only some people have made those agreements. So, Harman’s ethics is relativistic.

Discussion

For now, let me make some observations about Harman’s ethics. For one, we can see a consistent naturalistic position at work, that there are no intrinsically moral properties or facts. If everything is natural, and the world has been “disenchanted” of things like essential natures, then surely morals would not have essences either.

Also consistent with naturalism is his relativism, even though many naturalists have not embraced ethical relativism as a system. Still, it is consistent because naturalists usually are nominalists, and on that view, everything is particular. On ethical relativism, there are no universal morals, which fits very much with nominalism.

Notice too that he admits morals are our constructs. This will be true of ethical relativism in general, which we will discuss later. But, later I also will address an issue that I think will show that on naturalism all knowledge, even of morals, must be, at best, just our constructs. This will stand in contrast to what naturalists who are objectivists believe.

For Further Reading

Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, and Explaining Value: And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 5

Introduction to Naturalism

The next major move in ethics has been based on naturalism, which roughly is the view that there is only the natural; there is nothing supernatural. Usually this means all that exists is physical or dependent upon the physical. There are no essential natures or universal properties, like Plato thought. Already, we have seen many shifts in this direction, with materialist, nominalist, and empiricist moves. Plus, the Scientific Revolution gave rise to the view that the universe is a causally closed machine. When Darwin’s Origin was published, there was no longer a need to appeal to God as Creator. Naturalism became the dominant worldview in the west.

Naturalistic Ethics

To be consistent, ethics needed to be adapted to a naturalistic framework. Historically, this has taken many forms. In this and the following essays on naturalistic ethics, I will focus on one or more such proposals. In this essay, I will look at naturalistic moral views that are noncognitivist. This will include A. J. Ayer’s emotivism and Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism.

Noncognitivism

Moral noncognitivism includes the views that 1) intrinsically moral properties don’t exist, and 2) moral judgments are neither true nor false. While there is some debate about what moral judgments are, noncognitivism denies a place for beliefs. Since knowledge involves justified true beliefs, there is no moral knowledge on this view.

Ayer (d. 1989) was one of the logical positivists. Fitting with naturalism, meanings had to be something physical and empirically knowable. For them, a sentence is meaningful if and only if it is empirically verifiable. Ayer denied that moral sentences are meaningful; they do not have cognitive content and cannot be true or false. Sentences like “murder is wrong” is code language that just expresses emotions; e.g., “ugh, murder!” Similarly, “justice is good” translates to “hooray, justice!” His is a kind of emotivism. (Similarly, another noncognitivist option is prescriptivism: moral sentences just express commands; e.g., “don’t murder!” They too are not true or false.)

Simon Blackburn (b. 1944) is a noncognitivist who endorses quasi-realism. He too denies the reality of intrinsically moral properties since we live in a naturalistic, “disenchanted” world. He focuses on our ways of talking morally. His project attempts to give moral discourse the right to engage in talk as though morals exist (realism), and moral claims are true or false. Based on the surface grammar of a moral sentence, we can treat them as such. But, like Ayer, there really are no morals, and moral claims are not true or false. In both Ayer’s and Blackburn’s cases, the focus is on the way we talk morally and the denial of intrinsically moral properties.  

Assessment

What should we make of these noncognitivist views? First, by reducing away any cognitive content from moral sentences, they end up being merely descriptive. But, morality deeply seems to be about what is normative, or prescriptive. If people protest against a miscarriage of justice (e.g., an unarmed African-American man who was walking down a street, but was murdered by white men), they are not merely emoting. Instead, they deeply believe there was an injustice done, which is why they are upset.

Second, moral judgments are not identical with feelings or commands, for the former can occur without the latter. We do not need to have any feelings when we state, “Murder is wrong.” And, we can have feelings without moral judgments.

Third, there is no room for any moral education or training on these views, since there is no cognitive content to learn and therefore no real moral disagreement. But, this result undermines any training in moral virtue, such as in why we should address examples of injustices in society. It also does not do justice to the fact that many of us do disagree morally. This is plain to see when we look at the many social and moral issues we deliberate and debate.

These noncognitivist views undermine our four core morals, but there are more naturalistic options yet to be considered.

For Further Reading

A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic

Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 5

Introduction

After Kant, the next major thinkers in the Enlightenment were the utilitarians. Two exemplars were Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873). On utilitarianism, no morals are intrinsically right or wrong, or good or bad. Following the trend we’ve seen, they thought pleasures and pains, and benefits and harms, could be measured empirically. Utilitarianism uses means-to-end reasoning to determine what is moral, based on the sum of an action’s consequences.  

Bentham, Mill, and More

Bentham was a hedonistic utilitarian: what action maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain is right. He treated all pleasures and pains alike, focusing on the net quantity of pleasure. But Mill realized some pleasures (e.g., intellectual ones) are better than others (e.g., sensual ones). Thus he focused on their quality. For him, we should act to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.

There also is act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. The former focuses on individual acts; the one that maximizes utility should be performed. The latter looks at kinds of acts that, from experience, we know tend to maximize utility. This is helpful, e.g., in taxation policies, so that we don’t have to re-run the calculus each time we consider a proposal.  

Assessment

There definitely is a place for appeals to utility in moral reasoning. E.g., when crafting public policy, we should consider the likely consequences of a proposed action, even when a deontological principle clearly applies. After all, people have to live with such decisions. Moreover, utilitarianism appeals to people, especially in secular societies, as apparently being morally neutral. There is no appeal to God or some other set of values to determine what is moral.

However, what gets to count as a “good” or “bad” consequence in the first place? Who gets to decide that? According to whom is something (or someone) more valuable than another? Biases easily could enter the calculation here. To make such judgments seems to presuppose some outside standard, beyond utility.

Another issue is that utilitarianism seems inadequate in terms of how it treats motives. Yet, surely they are morally important. If someone kills another, it makes a major difference if it was done intentionally or accidentally. We rightly recognize that difference in the law.

Relatedly, utilitarianism undermines acts of moral supererogation, ones that are heroic and praiseworthy, yet not required. Suppose someone is jogging but notices another person in danger of being attacked by a third person with a knife. While we should expect that jogger to at least call for help (call the police or cry out, to scare off the attacker), it would be above and beyond the call of duty for that jogger to fight off the attacker and save the would-be victim. Yet, on utilitarianism, that act would be obligatory if it would result overall in net good consequences.

Perhaps most significantly, utilitarianism makes net utility the basis for what is moral. Consider again our core morals: murder and rape are wrong, and justice and love are good. If the good consequences of a murder outweigh the bad, then that act would be justified and even obligatory. The same goes for rape, whether under act or rule utilitarianism. But these results clearly are deeply mistaken, to say the least. If this justification held, it could be moral to rape another person, or murder a racial minority person who is protesting peacefully for civil rights. But, we deeply know such acts are wrong; otherwise, why would there be such uproars against these acts?

Likewise, justice would be reduced to whatever is the result of the calculation. A rape or murder would be just in a society that is predominately one race if that act would maximize the overall benefits for the majority. Yet, if these acts can be just on this moral system, we have lost justice. Indeed, murder’s and rape’s wrongness, and justice’s and love’s goodness, seem to be intrinsically so.

So, it seems utilitarianism undermines our four core morals and is inadequate as the basis for ethics.

For Further Reading

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 4