Lately, I have found myself attracted to moral nihilism, as espoused by Mackie and Joyce. I define moral nihilism as the denial of the existence of objective moral truth. However, as moral nihilism is both counterintuitive and uncomfortable, I would like to ask whether any of you are aware of any convincing arguments that refute this position. As I am an atheist, please keep in mind that any arguments that invoke God would not be convincing. In the following, I will summarize the case for moral nihilism:
The only evidence for the existence of objective moral truth is our so-called moral intuition. However, this intuition is unreliable, and it may be alternatively explained by natural selection. It is unreliable because there is wide disagreement over the actual content of objective moral truth (Mackie’s “argument from relativity”). It may be explained by natural selection by noting that empathy (the basis, in my view, of moral intuition) would likely promote group coherence and cooperation for mutual benefit, thereby enabling those with empathy to survive and reproduce more successfully than those who are non-empathetic. Furthermore, if objective moral truth existed, it would be a strange metaphysical entity indeed (Mackie’s “argument from queerness”), as it would be intrinsically motivating, yet not confirmable by sense-data. Therefore, applying Occam’s Razor, one should not posit such a strange entity if the only evidence for it (so-called moral intuition) is unreliable and may be explained instead by a scientific theory (natural selection) that is widely accepted.
For those who reject moral nihilism, I propose the following challenge: How would one motivate a non-empathetic atheist–who is convinced that he will not get caught–to refrain from a harmful action (such as torturing a child for fun)? And if one cannot do so, how can one posit the existence of objective moral truth (objective in the sense that it applies to everyone, and moral truth in the sense that it should provide at least some motivational force)?
Again, I am looking for convincing arguments against moral nihilism. Thank you for your time.
There is no such thing as morality, so perhaps your moral nihilism does not go far enough. It isnt that there is no objective moral truth, it is that morality itself, the concept, is meaningless under its commonly-understood definitions.
There is no “rule” or “law” or “expectation” out there in reality somewhere, some metaphysical standard, which judges what we do; actions are what they are, they originate based on the sum of their causal influences and have certain effects. Some of these effects will be beneficial for some people or things, and some will not be. What is commonly-understood as morality is nothing more than the sentimental-emotional reservation or repulsion to certain actions or events, and this reservation is entirely determined by the organic biology and psyche of the organism (us, you and me, every human). We have certain mammalian instincts which compel us to feel emotional reactions of certain types to certain situations, and we have psychological conditionings from a variety of sources which further impact this emotive schema. We learn acceptable and unaccetable behaviors or thoughts, we are conditioned to have certain emotional reactions to certain stimuli, and we have a basic affective empathy or sympathetic reaction to other humans in certain circumstances. Of course each person has varying degrees of these reactions, and some do not have them at all, depending upon the unique biological and psychological constructions of the individuals in question, as well as their unique environmental histories.
There is nothing metaphysical, ethereal, “moral” about these reactions, they are perfectly natural and perfectly able to be explained and understood in naturalistic terms. Any concept of morality which attaches any meaning to these natural emotional-affective responses (or to the secondary and learned or rationalized cognitive belief structures which arise on top of these affective responses) that is over and above individualized biological-psychological structural response is patently false; there is no morality other than understanding our own personal nature in terms of our feelings, instincts, passions, desires, conditionings, etc. Thus self-awareness, personal integrity and self-honesty are the only “moral” criteria, and these are moral only in the sense that they allow us to understand ourselves and the parts of ourselves which generate these “moral” sentiments and beliefs, and thus we gain control over them through this awareness and understanding of them - thus we become able to act more rationally and honestly, with less self-deception, rationalizing, denial, evasion, ignorance. Personal self-honesty, the will to not lie to oneself (and the self-awareness, introspection and reason required to sustain this self-honesty) is the only conceivable “morality”.
If our higher reason, coming from this perspective of honesty and self-awareness and logic, affirms some belief like “It is wrong to harm another perrson”, then that belief will gain formative effect upon our behaviors and thoughts and feelings, and this could be called a “moral belief”, but there is nothing objective about it, it does not apply to anyone else other than ourselves, and it is not “true” in any sense other than that it is a specific affirmation which we have rationally and openly decided to follow for ourselves - ie. its “truth-value” is always and everywhere contingent upon the fact of our conscious affirmation of it. Other than this sort of higher reason, “morality” is nothing more than instinctive biological and learned psychological emotive reactions or cognitive responses, nothing more.
So I suppose, to answer your question, this is the argument against your “moral nihilism”, because “morality” does exist, but not in the way in which you suppose, and thus your nihilism regarding “objective moral truth” is unnecessary and superfluous, considering that the concept of objective moral truth is meaningless in itself and thus no nihilism with regard to it is necessary - and furthermore, even lending the idea of objective moral truth the credibility as a genuinely meaningful concept which must be actively disbelieved (“nihiled”) is giving it too much credit, is falsely assuming that the idea is even potentially meaningful to begin with, which of course it is not.
The only “objective” morality is that which is shared among multiple individuals, but this is only a result of the sufficient co-incidence of the constitutive and formative biological-psychological factors which give rise to these so-called “moral” sentiments and beliefs. . . there is nothing in fact which is shared between the two or more individuals who hold the same moral sentiment or belief, other than that they are sufficiently similar in their biological-psychological constitutions such that they generate similar emotional and cognitive reactions to the same stimuli.
First, I do realize that you set the definition of the term ‘nihilism’ here, and I’m also aware of where that definition comes from, and as well, I know that this point is slightly trivial to the argument, but I do not think that we should identify moral relativism with nihilism. It is slightly confusing, since you can have the former without the latter if you don’t assume that moral facts must be in the form of values—they may be facts about the structure of morality, or the construction of moral behaviors without reference to any specific value set. One could easily give a nice Hegelian account of the will and its determination, and assert that it is just a brute fact about human nature, without ever making any claims about the particulars of its contents. Thus, the determination of the will to be this-or-that-way may be relative to culture, context, the individual, etc., but the process itself is a fact about morality—what is deemed moral or immoral will be affected by it.
But what concerns me more in what you say above is your allusion to naturalism as a means of value-fixing for a moral system. You state:
Now, I don’t take you to be saying that empathy, as it contributes to cooperation or some form of self-organization, is morally good; but rather that moral intuitions, whatever people claim them to be, though relativistic, are derived from self-organizational dispositions through natural selection, as they are prudent to our fitness. I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but here are some problems with either interpretation.
In the former interpretation of the statement it directly violates the naturalistic fallacy. This would entail that there are moral facts, and that the world, or worse a wicked God, naturally violates them. This suggests that Nature is a moral agent. Clearly, we don’t want to say that.
On the other hand, the latter interpretation implies that every agent with a moral perspective derived from intuition is guilty of the naturalistic fallacy, though they may not know it. But this implicates the vast majority, if not the entirety of all moral agents as being at least in part moral naturalists, via subconscious processes. You might maintain this, but it is somewhat of an odd claim—especially if an agent claims that he has moral intuition but is consciously opposed to moral naturalism, as the vast majority are likely to be. Moral naturalism is not a popular view.
Still, just because a view is odd doesn’t make it incorrect. But now let us assume that the view is correct, then you presume that moral intuition is a product of inheritance which has been selected for. However, if moral intuition does indeed come about in such a way, then the nihilist position is defeated, for moral facts can be identified with something like adaptive flexibility, or some properties correlated with fitness, or something (which we can say one ought to do) of the like. This can lead to an extremely dangerous position which was held by the Nazis—that artificially expediting the process of natural selection is a moral objective, and thus it is morally prudent to eliminate certain genes, those lacking the natural property (possibly moral nihilists in our case?), from our species.
Anyway, it’s a good idea not to attempt a naturalistic explanation of moral drives until we have a better understanding of how evolutionary mechanisms are involved in human psychology moreover. In my personal view, which I have expressed elsewhere, we can say that empathy is an ought, but it is purely a hypothetical imperative and is not naturalistic, as the relation of empathy is self-reflexive for a subject, in that all selves are interconnected as a macro-organism. (I know that this is an odd view as well, but like I said before.) Mutual benefit comes about equally for altruistic and selfish acts alike, since there is no real distinction to be made between self-benefit and the benefit of others. They are exactly the same thing. The distinction to be made in moral decisions is whether something is beneficial or harmful altogether. This discernment is rarely obvious, since complex relations may make something seem beneficial even though it is harmful, and vice versa. Furthermore, the evaluation of harm and benefit is still subject to relativism. I’m okay with that: meta-ethically I use a utilitarian model for functional purposes, though I do believe that utilitarianism has some severe inherent flaws and so should not be subscribed to, but only applied where it is prudent, e.g. where harm/benefit evaluations conflict. But I digress.
That morality arises from evolution doesn’t seem to lead to the conclusion that it should be used to continue evolution further. Designing a robot with a value system doesn’t require that the robot values the design process highly!
It is an argument in favour of environment-dependent morality - that is to say, that the morals must suit the society, and that what is appropriate for a hunter-gatherer tribesman is not necessarily appropriate to a modern urban professional.
I don’t think there is per se a problem eliminating certain gene expressions - I don’t think there’s a clear case against eliminating cystic fibrosis, for example. There is a clearer moral case against eliminating all living CF gene carriers (or preventing their free choice of breeding) in the name of “fitness”. And it’s probably unwise to eliminate genes, as many may have as-yet undiscovered benefits under different environmental conditions.
I don’t think that the argument necessarily leads to genocide. I was just using a bit of hyperbole to point out that moral naturalism is a slippery slope.
The case of the robot is not analogous unless the robot’s design is such that it can aim towards some form of optimization through its design process and its value system is based on a property that co-varies in some way with its level of optimization.
Thank you for a very interesting post. However, I feel that the denial of the existence of objective moral truth is a meaningful position. It means that we cannot categorize any act as “right” or “wrong” in a truly objective sense, or any people as “good” or “evil.” Such a denial renders hopeless the attempts of moral philosophers throughout the ages to discover the content of objective moral truth (through such moral philosophies as Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, and Divine Command Theory). If objective moral truth does not exist, then moral philosophy is a non-starter. I believe that this is why many philosophers hold that objective moral truth does exist–because it matters.
Thank you for a very interesting post. However, I feel that the denial of the existence of objective moral truth is a meaningful position. It means that we cannot categorize any act as “right” or “wrong” in a truly objective sense, or any people as “good” or “evil.” Such a denial renders hopeless the attempts of moral philosophers throughout the ages to discover the content of objective moral truth (through such moral philosophies as Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, and Divine Command Theory). If objective moral truth does not exist, then moral philosophy is a non-starter. I believe that this is why many philosophers hold that objective moral truth does exist–because it matters.
That there is no objective priority for one value over another is one thing; given an agreed set of prioritised values, however, it’s still useful to work out the effects and consequences, and to evaluate whether those values really are what one means.
Well the question I think is how would a objective morality come about? How would we “know” an objective morality? Isn’t the very perquisites we would instinctively take for what we believe to be an objective truth be the very things that makes morality subjective. Simply because the morality makers differ from one person to the next. This seems to suggest what we think makes a morality objective makes it objective “to us" as long as we do not see other morality makers in others. Is morale objectivity just a “sense” then, a feeling? But it also seems to be an assumption that we expect from feeling that way once. That goodness has been encoded into the universe in the sense of what it is? But how could goodness be encoded? The only “nature” goodness has is the doings of goodness. But where in this nature is the supposed to that your supposed to do it because that’s what the world demands. This is why I don’t believe in morale objectivity. But so what? We can create truth as Nietchie said. We can make our truth or our ultimate value control all are saying and doings. And it can become meaningful and be given worth through our will becoming stronger by following our truth in all things. Why do we want an objective truth? It’s true you might say there’s nothing in the universe that says the masses should be happy and shouldn’t suffer but so what? Isn’t that belief that the masses should be happy and shouldn’t suffer be worth enough to follow even in spite of the fact it’s not written into the universe? Wouldn’t not following it just because of this be really and truly selfish? I think the second you start thinking the world isn’t about yourself but about the masses that you will begin to naturally stop looking for morale objectivity.
The real world is brought down to nothing in the face of the ‘more-real’ divine, apart from real world annihilation of selfishness to HIS will. This comes to the reduction of mankind to drones who survive on allowing only a limited amount of real life, and devoting this limited life to taking pity on others so that they do not do them ‘wrong’ - for ‘spiritual’ health that denies the expense of physical health towards this cause. HIS intention and/or consequence is to reduce mankind in such a way that nothing else may come of him, until his real world life is annihilated. For all the various moralities that have existed on the earth that HE is said to have created, why periodically annihilate some in the eyes of others at different points in history? The net consistency here is Zero.
The belief in God is only possible through the abstraction of ‘negativity’ on earth - towards anything merely earthly, so that the divine may be ‘conceived’ - on earth. The obvious contradiction here reduces this belief to nothing.
chap9898, your experience of moral nihilism being both counterintuitive and uncomfortable is simply a symptom of your unfamiliarity with it so far, and that you have yet to realise that it won’t do you any harm. On the contrary, you will come to realise it does quite the opposite - if you pursue it.
I don’t get why you have our moral instincts as evidence against objective moral truth, just because they can be explained by natural selection. Can’t you objectively say that we have vision? And you can objectively say that we have moral instincts. And you can say why we evolved moral instincts. That seems to be a perfectly solid base for morality to me. It is by no means a “universal morality” but I don’t see why it would need to be. But it’s objective because it isn’t based on individual feelings, but rather observations of humanity as a whole.
Moral nihilism to me seems like claiming that medicine doesn’t exist, because there is no objective reason to want to be healthy.