Early in this review series, I mentioned how Sean Carroll's new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016), gradually becomes weaker as you move through the chapters. It starts off strong and invigorating as he talks about cosmology and fundamental physics, his specialities. But as he moves into the philosophy of mind, meaning, and morality, he gets a bit wobbly.

Moving From Ought to Is

That's evident especially in his chapter on "What Is and What Ought To Be." The chapter starts off fine. Carroll agrees with David Hume, the famous skeptic whom Carroll deems a "forefather of poetic naturalism", that we can never derive an "ought" from an "is." In other words, we can never take a description of the world (how the world is) and logically deduce a prescription (how we ought to behave in response.) Why? Because for naturalists like Carroll and Hume, "is" is all there is. There's nothing outside the natural world to tell us how we ought to behave in response to the natural world. But maybe the natural world itself can offer guidance? Unfortunately no, says Carroll. He writes, "The natural world doesn't pass judgment; it doesn't provide guidance; it doesn't know or care about what ought to happen" (396).

Some atheists disagree, such as Sam Harris. Harris tries to defend objective morality on scientific grounds, suggesting that moral acts ("oughts") are those which bring about the flourishing of sentient creatures. In other words, we ought to do things that bring about the most flourishing. And on this view, it's true that science can tell us what brings about the most flourishing (at least some types of flourishing, that is.) But bracketing the vaguely defined concept of "flourishing" (who decides what counts as flourishing?) the big problem with Harris' view is the hidden premise that we ought to prefer and promote the flourishing of sentient creatures. On what authority does this rest? Is it an objective principle or just Harris' personal belief, one that many people may share, but not all?

Science can only provide us guidance about what to do if we want to attain a specific goal (e.g., sentient flourishing). But science can never reveal moral values or duties suggesting we ought to pursue those specific goals. This is a major reason why Harris' proposal fails.

Carroll understands all of this. He denies that morality can be grounded within science. However, he does think we can discover moral duties using the "tools of reason and rationality" (401).

“Be Excellent to Each Other”

Here's where things get a little wonky. Strangely, Carroll quotes (approvingly) a moral axiom from the 1989 cult classic, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: "Be excellent to each other." Carroll writes, "As foundational precepts for moral theorizing go, you could do worse" (402). But not much, I would add. It's not clear who determines what "excellent" means. Is abortion excellent? Is murdering one person to save five more excellent? Is it excellent to leave your spouse if you find a more appealing partner?

Another problem with the Bill and Ted morality is why we should obey it. Even if we determined precisely what excellent behavior entails, why should pursue this standard of excellence? Who or what says we ought to follow this axiom? Whether it's Bill, Ted, or Sean Carroll, why should we follow their moral beliefs?

Although Carroll perhaps quoted this line as a joke—though I don't think he did, given his commentary above—it displays the same problems that Hume identified over a century ago.

Other Moral Theories

Throughout the chapter, Carroll surveys several other moral theories, seeming to settle on a form of moral relativism. He says:

"Hume was right. We have no objective guidance on how to distinguish right from wrong: not from God, not from nature, not from the pure force of reason itself....Morality exists only insofar as we make it so, and other people might not pass judgments in the same way we do." (411)

Many people would find this conclusion troubling, and Carroll doesn't shy away from its implications:

"The lack of an ultimate objective scientific grounding for morality can be worrisome. It implies that people with whom we have moral disagreements—whether it's Hitler, the Taliban, or schoolyard bullies who beat up smaller children—aren't wrong in the same sense that it's wrong to deny Darwinian evolution or the expansion of the universe....But that's how the world is." (402)

This chilling quote suggests that Carroll does not believe Hitler or the Taliban were objectively wrong in their actions. It seems he just personally disagrees with their actions because has has a different opinion of how to "be excellent". Moral relativists like Carroll have no objective basis to condemn obviously immoral acts like the Holocaust or 9/11. They're only left with strongly felt and loudly expressed opinions.

A More Judgemental Moral Relativist

It's worth noting Carroll's contention that poetic naturalists are not moral relativists, but instead moral constructivists. The primary difference, according to Carroll, is that relativists don't feel enabled to critically judge the moral decisions of others (especially those deriving from other cultures), whereas constructivists are perfectly happy to do so, even while admitting their moral frameworks are only attempts to systematize their own personal/cultural intuitions about how to act.

But in my mind, this doesn't separate moral constructivism from moral relativism; it just makes the moral constructivist a type of moral relativist. He's still a relativist, but one that is just more judgmental and critical than other relativists.

It's also worth noting that despite examining several different moral theories in his book, from constructivism, to instrumentalism, to consequentialism, to virtue-ethics, to utilitarianism, Carroll never gives serious consideration to the theistic view. He never considers God to be the objective ground of morality. This is likely because Carroll presumes poetic naturalism is true, and thereby precludes God from the outset.

But that would only enforce my earlier criticism, that Carroll's cosmic picture is not big, as his book title suggests, but is in fact too small. In his moral exploration, he fails to find a satisfying answer in part because he needlessly restricts his pool of options!

In the next post we'll wrap up this series with a look at Sean Carroll's “Ten Considerations” for naturalists. Stay tuned!

Gorgias the Nihilist, an ancient Greek philosopher, was said to have argued the following four points:

1. Nothing exists;
2. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
3. Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.
4. Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.

Of course, if you can understand his argument, he’s wrong. So too, many modern thinkers hold to positions that, fall apart into self-refutation when critically examined.

Today, I want to look at three such popular claims. In showing their inherent contradictions, I hope to show why we can (and must) affirm that knowable, non-empirically testable, absolute truths exist.

Step 1: Answering Relativism

The claim: “Absolute truth does not exist.”

Why it’s self-refuting: The claim “absolute truth does not exist” is either absolutely true or it’s not. But, of course, it can’t be absolutely true, since that would create a contradiction: we would have proven the existence of an absolute truth, the claim itself. Since it cannot be absolutely true, we must concede that there are some cases in which the proposition “absolute truth does not exist” must be false… in which case, we’re back to affirming the existence of absolute truth.

What we can know: Absolute truth exists. Put another way, the claim “absolute truth exists” is absolutely true.

Step 2: Answering Skepticism

The claim: “We can’t know anything for certain.” Or “I don’t know if we can know anything for certain.”

Why it’s self-refuting: This one is a subtler self-refutation then the first, because it looks humble. After all, if I can say, “I don’t know the number of stars in the universe,” why can’t I take it a few steps further, and say, “I can’t know anything for certain”?

Simple. Because in saying that, you’re claiming to know something about your own knowledge. When we say, “I don’t know x,” we’re saying, “I know that my knowledge on x is inconclusive.”

Take the most mild-seeming statement: “I don’t know if we can know anything for certain.” What you’re really saying is that, “I know that my knowledge on whether anything can be known for certain is inconclusive.” So you’re still affirming something: that you know your knowledge to be inconclusive.

There are two ways of showing this. First, because it could be a lie. The claim “I don’t know who took the last cookie,” could very well be proven false, if we later found the cookie in your purse. So these “I don’t know” claims are still affirming something, even if they’re just affirming ignorance.

Second, apply the “I don’t know” to another person. If I said, “You don’t know anything about cars,” I’m making a definitive statement about what you do and don’t know. To be able to make that statement, I have to have some knowledge about you and about cars. So if I was to say, “you don’t know if we can know anything for certain,” I’d be claiming to know that you were a skeptic – a fact that I can’t know, since I’m not sure who’s reading this right now.

So when you say “I don’t know if we can know anything for certain,” you’re saying that you know for certain that you’re ignorant on the matter. But that establishes that things necessarily can be known for certain.

This is unavoidable: to make a claim, you’re claiming to know something. So any positive formulation of skepticism (“no one can know anything for certain,” “I can’t know anything for certain,” “I don’t know anything for certain,” etc.) ends up being self-refuting. For this reason, the cleverest skeptics often word their skepticism as rhetorical questions (e.g., de Montaigne’s “What do I know?”). If they were to say what they’re hinting at, it would be self-refuting. They avoid it by merely suggesting the self-refuting proposition.

Finally, remember that in Step 1 we determined that the claim “absolute truth exists” is absolutely true. We’ve established this by showing the logical contradiction of holding the contrary position. In other words, we’ve already identified a truth that we can know for certain: “absolute truth exists.”

What we can know: Absolute truth exists, and is knowable.

Step 3: Answering Scientific Materialism

The claim: “All truth is empirically or scientifically testable.”

Why it’s self-refuting: The claim that “All truth is empirically or scientifically testable” is not empirically or scientifically testable. It’s not even conceivable to scientifically test a hypothesis about the truths of non-scientifically testable hypotheses. In fact, “all truth is empirically or scientifically testable” is a broad (self-refuting) metaphysical and epistemological claim.

What about the seemingly moderate claim, “We cannot know if anything is true outside of the natural sciences”? Remember, from Step 2, that “I don’t know x,” means the same as saying, “I know that my knowledge on x is inconclusive.” Here, it means, “I know that my knowledge on the truth of things outside of the natural sciences is inconclusive.” But the natural sciences can never establish your ignorance of truths outside the natural sciences. So to make this claim, you need to affirm as certain a truth that you could not have derived from the natural sciences. So even this more moderate-seeming claim is self-refuting.

Furthermore, all scientific knowledge is built upon a bed of metaphysical propositions (for example, the principle of noncontradiction) that cannot be established scientifically. Get rid of these, and you get rid of the basis for every natural science. There’s no way of rejecting these premises while still affirming the conclusions that the natural sciences produce.

Finally, remember that in Step 2, we established the truth of the claim “absolute truth exists, and is knowable.” This is a truth we know with certainty, but it’s not an empirical or scientific question. It can be established simply by seeing that its negation is a contradiction. So that’s a concrete example of an absolute truth known apart from the empirical and scientific testing of the natural sciences.

Conclusion: There exists absolute and knowable truth, outside of the realm of the natural sciences, and not subject to empirical and scientific testing.

One of the most common observations made by opponents of religion is that we don't need God in order to have a coherent and integral morality. Atheists and agnostics are extremely sensitive to the charge that the rejection of God will conduce automatically to moral chaos. Consequently, they argue that a robust sense of ethics can be grounded in the consensus of the human community over time or in the intuitions and sensibilities of decent people.

​What I would like to do is lay out, in very brief compass, the Catholic understanding of the relationship between morality and the existence of God and to show, thereby, why it is indispensably important for a society that wishes to maintain its moral integrity to maintain, at the same time, a vibrant belief in God.

​Why do we do the things that we do? What motivates us ethically? Right now, I am typing words on my keyboard. Why am I doing that? Well, I want to finish my weekly column. Why do I want to do that? I want to communicate the truth as I see it to an audience who might benefit from it. Why would I want that? Well, I'm convinced that the truth is good in itself. Do you see what we've uncovered by this simple exercise? By searching out the motivation for the act of typing words, we have come to a basic or fundamental good, a value that is worthwhile for its own sake. My acts of typing, writing, and communicating are subordinate, finally, to the intrinsic value of the truth. Take another example.

Just before composing that last sentence, I took a swig of water from a plastic bottle on my desk. Why did I do that? Well, I was thirsty and wanted to slake my thirst. But why did I want to do that? Hydrating my system is healthy. Why is health important? Because it sustains my life. Why is life worth pursuing? Well, because life is good in itself. Once more, this analysis of desire has revealed a basic or irreducible good. Catholic moral philosophy recognizes, besides truth and life, other basic values, including friendship, justice, and beauty, and it sees them as the structuring elements of the moral life.

​When Pope Benedict XVI complained about a "dictatorship of relativism" and when Catholic philosophers worry over the triumph of the subjective in our culture, they are expressing their concerns that these irreducible values have been forgotten or occluded. In her great meditations on the sovereignty of the good, the Irish philosopher Iris Murdoch strenuously insists that the authentic good legitimately imposes itself on the human will and is not a creation of that will. At the limit, contemporary subjectivism apotheosizes the will so that it becomes the source of value, but this puffing up of our freedom is actually ruinous, for it prevents the appropriation of the objective values that will truly benefit us.

This "basic goods" theory also grounds the keen Catholic sense that there are certain acts which are intrinsically evil—that is, wrong no matter the circumstances of the act or the motivations of the agent. Slavery, the sexual abuse of children, adultery, racism, murder, etc. are intrinsically evil precisely because they involve direct attacks on basic goods. The moment we unmoor a moral system from these objective values, no act can be designated as intrinsically evil and from that state of affairs moral chaos follows.

​So far we have determined the objectivity of the ethical enterprise, but how does God figure into the system? Couldn't an honest secularist hold to objective moral goods but not hold to God's existence? Let's return to our analysis of the will in action. As we saw, the will is motivated, even in its simplest moves, by some sense, perhaps inchoate, of a moral value: truth, life, beauty, justice, etc. But having achieved some worldly good -- say of writing this column, or slaking a thirst, or educating a child -- the will is only incompletely satisfied. In point of fact, the achievement of some finite good tends to spur the will to want more of that good.

Every scientist or philosopher knows that the answering of one question tends to open a hundred new ones; every social activist knows that righting one wrong awakens a desire to right a hundred more. Indeed, no achievement of truth, justice, life, or beauty in this world can satisfy the will, for the will is ordered to each of those goods in its properly unconditioned form. As Bernard Lonergan said, "the mind wants to know everything about everything." And as St. Augustine said, "Lord, you have made us for yourself; therefore our heart is restless until it rests in thee." You've noticed that I've slipped God somewhat slyly into the discussion! But I haven't done so illegitimately, for in the Catholic philosophical tradition, "God" is the name that we give to absolute or unconditioned goodness, justice, truth, and life.

​Now we can see the relationship between God and the basic goods that ground the moral life: the latter are reflections of and participations in the former. As C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, the moral absolutes are, therefore, signposts of God. And this is precisely why the negation of God leads by a short route to the negation of moral absolutes and finally to a crass subjectivism.

Removing God is tantamount to removing the ground for the basic goods, and once the basic goods have been eliminated, all that is left is the self-legislating and self-creating will. Thus, we should be wary indeed when atheists and agnostics blithely suggest that morality can endure apart from God. Much truer is Dostoyevsky's observation that once God is removed, anything is permissible.
 
 
(Image credit: Albania News)