What Is Morality?
When it comes to moral systems, atheists are are “all over the map.” An atheist can be an emotivist, a quasi-realist, a universal prescriptivist, an error theorist, a relativist, a naturalist, a non-naturalist, a deep ecologist, an egoist, an Objectivist, an atheistic Jain or Buddhist, a situational ethicist, a deontologist, a virtue ethicist, an extropist, an ideal observer theorist, a happiness utilitarian, a preference utilitarian, a humanist, etc.
Atheists keep making up new moral systems, too. Stefan Molyneaux has something he calls Universally Preferable Behavior. Francois Tremblay has something else. Ebonmuse has universal utilitarianism.
Atheists are very confused about morality.
I’m very confused about morality, too. No system is clearly more correct than all the others, at least not yet. Our methods for measuring what materials and forces exist in the universe are much better developed than our methods for measuring moral values. Finding and explaining morality is very difficult, especially when “Goddidit” is not considered a useful answer.
But I have found one moral theory that seems to me to describe moral values that really exist. I’m not sure about this theory, but it is very promising. I keep looking and I just can’t find what’s wrong with it, whereas it’s easy for me to find genuine problems with the other moral theories I’ve encountered.
I’d like to share this moral theory with you.
Instead of doing a series of posts, I wrote a very short ebook about it (43 mini-pages). The book starts out as a plain talk introduction to “meta-ethics.” I compare all the major moral theories and explain why they fail so badly. Then I introduce the moral theory that so intrigues me, and explain why I think it succeeds.
I even made a video that can serve as the trailer for this book. Watch it here.
Download
So here it is, my free ebook/audiobook on morality:
43-page .pdf ebook (5.2mb)
57-minute .mp3 audiobook (9.8mb)
If you have questions or objections to the ideas in the book, they are probably answered on this page. But the book itself is the best introduction to its ideas.
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Well done Luke and keep it up!
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Yes, well done, Luke. This is what the internet was meant for: the free exchange of ideas.
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Luke, this is an interesting theory. You are on the right track in considering desires as the basis for actions. I looked through the 100+ comments on the related thread and didn’t see a direct answer to this -
You state on p24:
” ‘morally good’ means ’such as to fulfill more and greater desires than are thwarted…’ ”
What does ‘greater’ mean here?
Also, you list a sunset as something ‘directly’ desired. In this case, I assume the ‘action’ the desire would lead to is ‘contemplating the sunset’. So here, the action is a mental activity, not necessarily a physical movement or work. Right?
Thanks.
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Mark,
Read the last three comments on this post. I think it might answer the first question. It seems that it was settled that “stronger” was an accurate description of what he meant by “greater”.
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Thanks Lorkas, yes that helps. Somehow I missed that whole thread. I’ll review it, ponder, and return with more questions if I have any.
(Still interested in the ’sunset’ clarification – it may be in the other post comments as well)
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I suppose many of us have a desire to experience sunsets, yes. Desire are often for mental states, but often they are for states of affairs to be effected in the world that extends beyond our minds.
“greater” means “stronger.” Your desire to not die is stronger than your desire for ice cream.
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Luke,
Good discussions there. I have a few suggestions of refinements to your moral theory but first I wanted to make sure I understand the overall purpose of the theory. My understanding:
OK, wow I finished the other thread(s)
You (as a naturalist) are seeking to describe why we have certain desires. Desires are merely thoughts and thoughts are merely chemical reactions. So your theory tries to determine why certain chemical reactions occur and not other chemical reactions. You are not ascribing quality to these reactions. In the sense of traditional morality, there’s an idea of quality – “better” “virtuous”, etc. You have dismissed these and are simply describing why certain reactions tend to occur and other reactions are less prevalent.
If so, then this theory is like a biologist studying why mold grows more thickly on the east wall of a cave than on the west wall. Or how a chemist might determine how oxidation is affected by relative humidity. The purpose/value/worth of these scientific exercises is equivalent to the purpose/value/worth of your exercise regarding brain chemistry.
Correct?
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Um, kinda. I think I would then say that “value” exists not as some magical intrinsic property of certain things, but value exists as a relation between desires (brain states) and states of affairs in the world.
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Is that value somehow different than the “value that exists as a relation between mold growth patterns(vegetation states) and states of affairs in the world.”?
I just substituted “mold growth patterns(vegetation states)” for “desires (brain states)” in your value statement.
If there is a value difference, how would you characterize it? Thanks.
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Mark,
I can’t think of any way in which a mold growth pattern is a reason for action, unlike desires. But you may be getting close to what I think is the greatest objection to desire utilitarianism – the one most likely to ultimately defeat it. The greatest objection to DU is the assertion that “There are no desires.” See here.
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The Alonzo Fyfe post reminds me of a philosopher joke told by Daniel Dennett, about 6:11 into this video.
How does a philosopher explain a magic trick?
Philosopher: Well you see: the magician doesn’t saw the lady in half–he just makes it seem as if he saws her in half.
Other: Yea, and how does he do that?
Philosopher: That’s not my department.
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Thanks Luke, I didn’t state the “mold growth” scenario well in my last post. I’m trying to determine the importance of this moral theory’s goal. I think your definition of desires is succinct and complete and is fine for the theory to proceed as stated. My question is what will you accomplish by having a “successful” theory? It looks to me like you will have a mechanism for explaining how certain chemical reactions in brains (thoughts, of which desires is a subset) lead to other reactions (thoughts/desires) and possibly to physical motion (running, chewing, etc.). To a naturalist, these bodily motions are simply molecules moving – chemicals in motion. So your theory, if successful, will explain patterns and tendencies of various molecules in motion and/or reacting under various conditions.
Now the biologist in the cave who studies mold growth is doing the same thing – studying what makes certain molecules react and move as they do. The successful chemical/biological theory describes the process. It doesn’t assign any implicit or transcendental “importance” or “goodness” to any of these reactions or results. “The mold is green” “The mold is thicker today” “The mold doesn’t grow below 32degressF” are simply descriptions.
So it looks to me like your theory is merely another chemical experiment, though more complex than the cave mold study. Your theory succeeds if it can describe the molecules in motion, but is no more important than that. I can describe and model cave mold, oxidation, and storms on Jupiter. But in no way can I judge them “good/bad” or “important/trivial”.
Likewise with your theory, I presume. Correct?
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It seems to me that you implicitly point out a distinction between desires and mold growth patterns in this post, Mark.
It is this: the patterns of chemical reactions that we call human “brain states” commonly lead to human actions, but mold growth patterns do not.
You seem to think that the naturalist is committed to viewing all phenomena dispassionately, but that’s not the case. There’s no reason why a naturalist has to say that the chemical reactions that cause us to feel love have the same value as the reactions that determine mold growth.
Naturalists are free to value phenomena differently (the Spock outlook is actually not common among naturalists!) just as theists are. The distinction, as I see it, is that in theism, it is God who assigns value, while in naturalism, human beings assign value.
It could be that I’m mistaken about what it is you’re getting at, so let me know if this is way off the mark.
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Mark,
I hold that some ‘descriptive’ reasons for action are also ‘prescriptive’ reasons for action. Indeed, this is necessary for naturalistic moral realism. If you have a desire to not be burned and a belief that putting your hand onto a hot stove will cause you to be burned, then you have a prescriptive reason for action to not put your hand on a hot stove (at the same time, this ‘reason for action’ theory describes the behavior that you WILL perform). From this simple observation, desire utilitarianism is a theory about how (1) we DO act on the strongest of our desires given our beliefs, (2) how there may be more and stronger reasons for action to promote some desires than to discourage them, and vice-versa, and (3) how this theory about reasons for action seems to fit with a great deal of our moral language, so it makes sense to call this a theory about morality.
But everything I’ve written on this blog is a mere gesture at desire utilitarianism, not a thorough defense. If I have my way, I will spend the next 15 years developing a thorough philosophical defense of desire utilitarianism, whether or not I am still a desire utilitarian when I am done.
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Lorkas, Yes, this is what I’m getting at. You said “There’s no reason why a naturalist has to say that the chemical reactions that cause us to feel love have the same value as the reactions that determine mold growth.”
I agree. So for the naturalist, these various assigned values are themselves personal thoughts which are merely more chemical reactions/molecular states. You aren’t assigning any transcendent, eternal “value” to anything. So the sum total of a human’s personal being/thoughts/desires/values is a molecular entity only, just as cave mold is a molecular entity of a different composition. So in that sense, all we are doing in these discussions is chemical analysis, and possibly chemical engineering if we want [desire
] certain brain states to prevail over others.
This is fine, I just want to make sure there’s nothing transcendent implied in the theory as stated, before I begin more detailed analysis. Thanks.
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Luke, you said “I hold that some ‘descriptive’ reasons for action are also ‘prescriptive’ reasons for action.”
As I replied to Lorkas, I see how the theory seeks to describe what people do and possibly lead to guidelines on how certain actions can lead to a more preferred mental state (Lorkas’ might call these more ‘valued’). In the end though, you are still viewing people as just molecules in motion, analogous to cave mold. So you are describing how the human molecular entity reacts, etc. You aren’t looking for any transcendent, non-material law, purpose, ‘importance’, etc. Right? This is fine, I just want to proceed on the right basis regarding what you are trying to accomplish.
Thanks.
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Desire utilitarianism posits nothing transcendent or beyond physical investigation. Yes, we’re talking about brain states – neurons and chemicals and such, and also relations between brain states and states of affairs in the world. Brain states and mold growth can both be described in chemical terms, so they are similar in that way, but there are many dissimilarities as well, which I hold to be morally significant. A thing with desires has reasons for action. A thing without desires does not.
The fact that desire utilitarianism need not posit transcendent, eternal, non-physical facts is one of its greatest strengths. Desire utilitarianism can wield Occam’s razor against other theories, for it explains moral behavior and moral facts without reference to a vastly multiplied and un-evidenced ontology.
However, brain states are not necessarily the final ends of reasons for action that exist. Evidence suggests that people do not merely desire brain states in many cases, but actually desire states of affairs in the real world. One example is that when presented with the hypothetical choice to be plugged into a happiness machine for the rest of their life or continue to experience the real world and affect it, many people choose the latter. This suggests that though we often desire mental states, are desires are not merely for internal states (like happiness).
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Thanks Luke, we’re on the same page regarding what you are trying to accomplish, I think.
Is your theory permanently biased against the conclusion that God exists and has revealed Himself through a moral law/directive/system? If your work is successful (I wish you well on your proposed 15 year pursuit of this theory) you will uncover a universal moral directive. This moral directive will reveal why people make certain choices and prescribe the ‘best’ choices in certain situations such that the ‘best of all possible worlds’ might be attained. Will you allow the possibility that the ‘best of all possibly worlds’ might include people praying to God, perhaps sacrificing to God, reading scripture, etc.? You say elsewhere that people should be willing to follow the evidence, so I presume you will allow for this and not bias your research, modelling, etc. against these scenarios.
Now if your theory does uncover such universal directives that involve God, would you say that is evidence that God put knowledge of His existence and will ‘into the fabric of the universe’? Or will you say it’s just an illusion since you can’t physically measure this God? Or if it happens to match one of the existing religious systems, will you worship the God of that religious system or just conclude that the religious authors made a ‘lucky guess’?
I trust you will allow this possibility, though your book has already stated ‘gods do not exist’ on page 9. Even if all the current religious systems were fatally self-contradictory, there could still be a ‘true’ religion no one has discovered yet. What do you think?
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Mark,
The results of the moral calculus of desire utilitarianism would not change much with the addition of a single new being with desires, unless God’s desire were infinitely strong. That’s possible, but I don’t know how you would ever gain evidence of that under popular conceptions of God (non-physical, undetectable, etc.). And wouldn’t that make God even more a slave to his desires than we are? That’s an odd theology, but I’ve seen odder.
Desire utilitarianism is not a theory about the best of all possible worlds. I’m not sure what that would mean. A world with an infinite number of desires being totally fulfilled, and no desires being thwarted? Well, no, because desire utilitarianism does not hold desire fulfillment to have intrinsic value that should be maximized. Rather, each desire that DOES exist is a reason for action. It’s not as though we have to go around maximizing desire fulfillment, though it’s an easy mistake to make.
If a god existed such that he would cause immense suffering on those who, say, rape people or have gay sex or eat lobster, then there may indeed be more and stronger desires to promote aversions to rape and gay sex and lobster-eating than to promote desires for those things – which would mean that desires to rape and have gay sex and eat lobster would be “morally bad” in such a world. Personally, I’m quite relieved there’s no good evidence to suggest a world exists, but that’s beside the theoretical point.
If God existed, this would not lend plausibility to divine command theories of ethics. Those theories fail even if God does exist. If God exists, desire utilitarianism is still more plausible than divine command theories.
I don’t understand this question. If we discovered God, that would mean God is not an illusion.
Oh, indeed. When I say “Gods do not exist,” that doesn’t mean I’m not open to the idea. That just means, as with anything, “To the best of my knowledge, gods don’t exist.”
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I’m not talking about God’s desires or benefits/penalties in an afterlife. Your theory seeks to ‘make the world better’. So if the theory found that the world could be made ‘as good as possible’ (where all desires tended to fulfill other desires and no desires thwarted any other desires) only in the case where people prayed daily or sacrificed to a God (or other religious practices), would that be convincing proof of that God’s existence? I assume so, by definition, since to not take part in these practices would be to thwart what could only be a good desire (as all bad desires would have passed away, in the best possible world). Does that make sense?
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Yeah, I can’t think of a way for us to know that we could make a better world by getting more people to pray to a certain god without first coming to know that that god exists…
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I assumed your research into human desires/actions/will/etc. would have to include a healthy consideration of religious desires/actions as these have been ubiquitous throughout human history. These effects could not be ignored by an honest researcher. However, your comments in the book and on the blog seemed to indicate you were biased against God’s existence and so your research might ignore religious effects since you ‘knew they could not exist’. Glad to hear you will consider these as well.
The point is that one possible way God may have revealed Himself to humans is through a universal moral code in which He Himself takes part/plays a role. If you discover this code (I’m not saying that you will), you must honestly conclude that God exists, even though you could not see Him, touch Him, weigh Him, etc. In other posts, you complain about theists believing in an ‘invisible’ God so I assumed you might not admit evidence that is not directly material/directly physical. In other words, you seem to dismiss anything not directly detectable through material means. But if God is not matter, He might only be detectable through immaterial means. The moral code you might discover would be an ‘effect’ of which only He could be the cause, therefore you would have scientific evidence of a non-material, non-natural sort – indeed ’super’-natural. It sounds like you agree this is possible and are not biased against it. Let me know if I’m misunderstanding you.
Moving on, are you familiar with Jonathan Edwards’ philosophical writings about the will/understanding/desires/etc? I think they are pertinent to your quest and can bring those into the discussion unless this is old ground for you.
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Not necessarily. Some quantum phenomena are not directly detectable, and yet our models of how they behave provide us with astonishingly accurate predictions of what happens in a lab. Not so with any God theory I’ve ever heard.
I’m not sure what this means. Are you ‘biased’ against flat earth theory, or have you done your best to remove your own bias, do the research, and found that there’s just no good evidence for flat earth theory?
Also, what ‘religious effects’ are you talking about? Are you saying that I should account for religious desires in my moral calculus? If so, I certainly do. It’s not as though secular desires have more intrinsic value than religious desires! They have the same amount of intrinsic value: none.
Yes, if God is both (1) a plausible explanation for some feature of the natural world, and (2) the best explanation for some feature of the natural world, and also if it is true that the strength of this (3) outweighs arguments against God’s existence, then such a discovery would compel me to believe that God exists. Same goes for the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I am not familiar with Edwards’ understanding of the will and desires. But I doubt he would be able to inform me than the very latest in neuroscience and analytic philosophy.
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Edwards would agree with you that desires are reasons for action. He states that we always choose to fulfill (realize and act upon the reason for action) our strongest desire at any given moment, indeed we can do nothing else. This might simplify your theory, as you state the moral value of a desire is how well it fulfills or tends to fulfill more(more numerous) and greater (stronger) desires. If everyone is always enacting their strongest desire at every moment, you can drop the ‘greater/stronger’ distinction. In that sense one could almost say that ‘less strong’ desires don’t exist, as they will never be acted upon (thus are not viable reasons for action) until the moment they become the strongest desire.
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Why is the Good “to fulfill more and greater desires than are thwarted, among all desires” [p. 24], rather than, say, the least and weakest desires? This is a dogmatic foundless statement, not at all a scientific determination.
Since it is YOU that are making the moral choices, it is only YOUR desires that matter. If your desires include considering other peoples’ desires, then considering other people’s desires is good (for you) due to you having this meta-desire. Only your desires are reasons for your actions, others’ desires aren’t (directly).
If you are a sadist that enjoys raping children, why should desire-utilitarianism convince you rape is bad? You might as well argue that the rapist shouldn’t rape because a triangle has 180 angles. What’s the connection? Why should the rapist care if his desires are judged “good” by desire-utilitarianism, or god, or whatever?
Neither should we care. If we judge something as desirable (or not) – that’s what matters. There is no other sense in which something can be said to be good from your presepctive – the only “ought” that actually motivates you is the ought inside your head. Other people’s oughts are not (directly) relevant – they are relvant for other people, not for you, not for your actions and choices.
Now, most people have a fairly similar and benevolent moral nature. This allows one to speak of Humanism, and a shared (and in this sense objective) morality. But the foundation of this morality is not some abstract principle like maximizing pleasure or desires. The only real, scientific, foundation is the actual moral determinations made by real humans in their brains – their actual desires and preferences. We are still very ,very far from having a scientific understanding of our moral senses, but let us not delude ourselves to think some abstact principle, like desire utilitarianism, is influencing human moral behvaiour. The brain operates according to the moral algorithms it implements, and I very much doubt that it implements anything considerably like desire utilitarianism. The best current accounts indicate that it implements a wide array of analog, messy, algorithms that are difficult to seperate let alone code into abstract laws, but are founded on emotions such as empathy, a sense of justice and equality, an appreciation of truth, and so on.
There is room for dogmatic moral theories, in assisting us to uncover and think more clearly thorough our own moral algorithms. They should not be considered as prescriptive, however. They are only partial insights into the workings of our moral sense, and if you confuse them with your moral sense you end up doing things that deep down inside you don’t want to do.
Stay true to yourself, your decisions can only be based on your own judgments.
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Even a potential rapist is likely to have a desire to remain in society with other human beings rather than be thrown in jail (or perhaps a desire not to get killed by the husband or family of the rape victim in retribution in a society where justice is more of the vigilante persuasion). These are desires within the potential rapist that are relevant to the choice of whether or not to rape a person–you don’t have to look outside of a person to find desires that might be thwarted by engaging in an action like rape or murder.
A person might have the desire to make love with his neighbor’s wife, but also the desire to remain friends with his neighbor (and not to get attacked by him). The desire to avoid bad consequences of an action is certainly a reason to refrain from performing the action.
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Desires create as much suffering and harm as they create good. They are amoral. The reason we choose to act on some desires and not others- good or bad(sorry that’s qualitative) is probably due to the subjective view of the survival benefits of the one acting. The more developed a persons cognition and ability to see the full consequences of their actions, the more likely they will ultimately benefit the person acting and others around them, even if it involves delayed gratification or sacrifice.
The ability to realize this for ones self, develop it, refine it, to me makes us human, with “higher” conciousness. Survival first then the decorations of happiness. A realization of connectedness is also involved. ( We’re the same at some or many levels of our being, self, person,existence, life, etc.).
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Yair -
“We are still very ,very far from having a scientific understanding of our moral senses, but let us not delude ourselves to think some abstact principle, like desire utilitarianism, is influencing human moral behvaiour.”
It seems to me you are operating under a misunderstanding. So far as I understand him, Luke is not claiming that DU is influencing moral behavior. In a sense you have it backwards. DU is a system (or a means or a tool, perhaps) to objectively and universally determine whether an action is moral or not.
Luke – If I have misrepresented DU then please correct me.
I do have a question – can DU be applied to make a moral judgment in the following?
A couple desires to engages is public sex. It is unknown whether the public desires to witness such an act or not. Or perhaps slightly modified – a couple desires to engage in public sex. Say they do this in front of a public that desires to witness such an act. Say they also do this in front of a public that desires not to witness such an act.
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Just quick edit of my previous comment -
when I say “a couple desires to engage in public sex” perhaps I should have worded it “a couple engages in public sex”. I think it makes a difference.
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Paul,
You have characterized DU correctly.
Re: a couple who desires to have public sex. Is their desire to have public sex a morally good desire? Certainly, the desire for public sex is malleable, and as such falls under moral considerations. (Since it is malleable, other people have reasons for action to encourage or inhibit this desire. If it was not malleable, we would not have reasons for action to do either.) So the question is: does a desire to have public sex tend to fulfill more and stronger desires than it tends to thwart? Does this desire tend to bring about states of affairs that generally fulfill other desires, or generally thwart other desires?
I do not know the answer. This is an empirical question, to be answered by science alone.
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1. Desire utilitarianism suffers from G.E. Moore’s <a href=”http://www.iep.utm.edu/moore/#SH3b”>naturalistic fallacy</a>. That means that while we can define X as good, that does not mean that X really is good. It remains an open question until we get some evidence. Desire utilitarianism defines fulfilling desires as good. Where is the scientific evidence that proposition? I can give you better evidence for the flying spaghetti monster. I’m pretty sure I saw something odd outside of my window last night …
2. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, beauty is also a criterion for evaluating ethics. Any ethical theory that starts with the position that torturing children to death counts as much as feeding starving children in Africa should be rejected on purely aesthetic grounds.
3. Infants do not yet have desires in terms of having intentional objects of thought. Are desire utilitarians in favor of legalized infanticide? If not they are caught in a logical contradiction (by far the best method of refuting a system of ethics).
4. Let’s go back to the sadist problem. Luke holds that the desire to torture children is bad because it thwarts the desire of the child to live. But similarly, the desire of the child to live is bad because it thwarts the desires of the sadists to torture. (This is the insight behind <a href=”http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Coase_World.html”>the Coase theorem</a>. Like preference utilitarianism, you need some measure of making interpersonal comparisons of utility (which is itself impossible). And then with that you are left with all the horrible consequences of preference utilitarianism.
5. Luke consistently argues against the coherency of the moral intuitions of the common folk but that view is wrong. Philosophers can be forgiven because they do not generally keep up with the best stuff coming out of behavioral and experimental economics. But as the Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon Smith concludes, “the subjects had it right.” Smith summarizes the literature in <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Rationality-Economics-Constructivist-Ecological-Forms/dp/0521871352″>Rationality in Economics</a> and shows that people believe in fairness, earning their endowments, reciprocity, and will enforce social norms at some cost to themselves (neuroeconomics shows that people actually get pleasure out of this).
So what did the subjects get right? That the moral reasoning of neoclassical economics is wrong, as is utilitarianism-style moral reasoning along with. Our moral intuitions are built for ecological rationality and evolutionary game theory. They enforce social norms and care about fairness and reciprocity. Utilitarians would do well to read the empirical literature – but the cost would have to be rejecting utilitarianism for some form of rights-based ethics or duty-based ethics!
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Ok, I’m striking #4 off of the list of objections. I’m still new to desire utilitarianism and did not fully appreciate how it handled conflicts of interests. My mistake! I will also soften my objection to #3 in light of how desire utilitarianism handles conflicts of interests, although it is not fully assuaged.
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JustinMartyr, you said “Desire utilitarianism defines fulfilling desires as good”. I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood what good is in this perspective. Try again.
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Dear Luke,
I read your ebook and very much appreciated your viewpoint. I have done quite a bit of reading on the subject and was wondering if I could get your thoughts on two questions.
THE FIRST QUESTION:
In your book, you said that morally-good means “such as to fulfill more and greater desires than are thwarted, among all desires”. You also said that “no desire is intrinsically better or worse than any other” (page 30). If these two statements are true, the first question I have is simply how did you objectively decide which desires or actions are greater than others?
Under your definition, it seems to me that if a larger group determines that the economic benefit of the many is of “greater good” than the freedom of the few, then slavery of the few is a perfectly acceptable (ie good) action/desire.
THE SECOND QUESTION:
I think you did a good job of pointing out the fact that this moral “tug” is something that all of us feel and therefore exists in the universe. However, I don’t see your connection from “is” to “ought”. Referring to page 28… Let’s assume for a moment that you are correct and that our desires/morality are something that we received from (1) random chance (ie evolution) and/or from (2) our culture (ie a group of people who also got their morality from evolution). If this is true, then morality is simply an impulse that developed via random chance. If this is true, then there is really no reason why anyone is OBLIGATED to obey someone else’s belief of right versus wrong. If a man wants to rob a bank, the bank owners may object, the society may object, in fact the whole world may object, but so what? If the man is smart enough to get away with it, then that action will bring HIM more pleasure and financial gain than he could possibly gain from acting “good” (according to your standard) for his whole life.
It seems to me that if there truly is no God, and therefore no punishment for the actions in this life, then morality (the “you ought to or else!” variety) is an illusion. Morality just becomes another random impulse in a laundry list of random impulses that evolution (ie random chance) dumped on us over the course of time.
See the problem with your theory? If there is no guaranteed future punishment associated with acting badly (immorally), then it simply doesn’t make sense for a person to act in a way that they perceive is advantageous to others while being disadvantageous to themselves. Why would they? Why should anyone deny themselves maximum pleasure (even if they hurt others in the process) if they truly believe that (1) they are smart enough and/or strong enough to get away with it and (2) if they truly believe that there are no consequences in any afterlife?
If what you are espousing is true, then the best course of action for people in this life is to grab all the enjoyment they can grab REGARDLESS of what other people may want… because in the end everyone dies and it doesn’t matter how many people you hurt in your journey, just so long as you enjoyed it. This is the logical conclusion that your view of morality leaves us with. My question is “Why should people behave the way you (or even society) want them to behave, when it is disadvantageous for them to do so?” Your construct of morality doesn’t answer the “ought” question for those who can do whatever they feel like doing (ie those who are really good at evading punishment or those who are really powerful.) In the end, in the absence of God, those people OUGHT to behave anyway they feel like it.
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Guy
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Guy,
There are many things I want to rewrite in version 2 of that book for clarity. By “greater” I just mean “stronger.” My desire to not be tortured is stronger than my desire for ice cream.
“If this is true, then morality is simply an impulse that developed via random chance. If this is true, then there is really no reason why anyone is OBLIGATED to obey someone else’s belief of right versus wrong.”
This is correct. We must distinguish moral belief from morality itself. Morality is not the impulse or moral opinion. Morality is a calculation concerning all the reasons for action that exist. Moral BELIEF or moral OPINION is based on the impulses we evolved or were taught. All the moral beliefs in the world do not change what IS moral, just as all the astronomical beliefs in the world do not change what IS true about astronomy.
I did not say that it is disadvantageous for people to be immoral. I just said it was immoral. There are prudential oughts and moral oughts and moral goods are not always prudential goods for individual agents.
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Thanks for the detail Luke. Given your belief that there is no God, I think I am still confused as to why someone must comply with what others say is the morally correct thing to do. If there is no God, then a strong person or nation can do whatever they want, and no one can say “you did a bad thing”. The most they can say is “you are acting in a way that is contrary to the feeling of right and wrong which random chance (evolution) has impressed on my mind.” Hardly a compelling argument for someone to behave.
Morality gives people a sense of guilt and pending punishment when they break moral laws. If however, these feelings of morality/guilt/pending-punishment just evolved over time via random chance, then there is no real punishment that is pending for wrongdoers…because there is no one who can punish after this life. If that is true, then moral behavior (as a standard to which we should adhere) is a myth. There is no reason anyone MUST or SHOULD follow either the moral tug they feel in themselves nor the moral tug that others say they feel.
Once again, in the absence of a God who can punish wrongdoers, the question of ‘Why should I behave?” remains unanswered.
Thanks,
Guy
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“Why should I be moral?”
I’ve answered this several times already elsewhere, but I’ll add it to the F.A.Q. when I can…
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