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!

What should we make of the proposal that there's no such thing as objective morality, that morals are just determined by cultures or by individuals? That's what I'd like to address in this post. I specifically engage the cultural relativism advocated by Ruth Benedict, who claimed that “good” and “evil” are socially determined. I argue instead for the moral absolutism advocated by the British Catholic analytical philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (G.E.M. Anscombe).

This post will proceed by considering the appeal of, and arguments for moral relativism; the arguments against moral relativism; and the interplay between moral relativism and Anscombe's moral philosophy on the question of conscience.

The Appeal of Moral Relativism

 
The rise of moral relativism is closely related to the process of globalization. In earlier times, when individuals were exposed primarily or exclusively to their own cultures, it was easy to imagine that one's culture's morals simply reflected morality. The spread of Christianity throughout Europe (and Islam throughout much of the rest of the world) had a similarly homogenizing effect on morality: pagan mores gave way to an Abrahamic moral code that held largely intact from one nation to another. What was immoral in France was likely immoral in Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland as well. This moral uniformity lent itself strongly to the suggestion that these mores reflected the natural law, that these were objective rules of morality existing apart from any particular culture.

As Christianity's influence on European and North American culture waned, this uniformity began to break down. Simultaneously, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians began to examine cultures with moral systems dramatically distinct from, and even diametrically opposed to, Christian culture. For example, anthropologist Ruth Benedict argues against moral objectivity by telling stories about the (allegedly) paranoid and violent culture on Dobu island in northwest Melanesia, a culture that she described as treating violence as acceptable, while ostracizing the kind and helpful.¹ In the light of these alien moral codes, what had once looked like common-sense moral rules reflecting a universal human consensus now appeared to be arbitrary social conventions. The cultural relativist argues on this basis that the notion of an objective and transcultural morality is illusory.

Instead, the argument goes, we must learn to value tolerance, since to insist upon Christian morality would be an arrogant imposition of our own culture. Certainly, the morals on Dobu seem barbaric and evil, but Benedict argues that “the very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society.”² That is, we see Dobu morality as wicked because we approach it with Western eyes. They would likewise see Western morality as wicked, given their own cultural formation.

The Problem with Moral Relativism

 
Without question, G.E.M. Anscombe, whose adherence to moral absolutism is well-established, would reject moral relativism of this sort. Francis J. Beckwith gives several reasons why in answering the above line of argumentation. First, this cultural relativism conflates preference-claims with moral-claims, so that “killing people without justification is wrong” is treated as a merely subjective preference, like “I like vanilla ice cream.”³ Second, relativism is premised off of the idea that, since cultures cannot agree on what objective morality is, there must be no objective morality. Logically, the conclusion does not hold: the people of Dobu might have cosmological and scientific beliefs radically at odds with Western cosmology and science, but we would not rationally conclude that, therefore, there must be no objective cosmology or science. Worse, if the mere existence of disagreement means that the belief is not objectively true, then the disagreement over cultural relativism disproves it.⁴ Third, the cultural relativists typically exaggerate the disagreements between cultures, and ignore underlying commonalities between moral codes.

Additional problems with cultural relativism can be seen from the real-life encounter of General Sir Charles James Napier, British Commander-in-Chief in India from 1849 to 1851, with certain Hindu priests. The priests were protesting the British ban on Sati, the practice of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre. They argued that Sati “was a religious rite which must not be meddled with,” and “that all nations had customs which should be respected and this was a very sacred one.”⁵ Napier responded:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pyre. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."⁶

Napier's response highlights several problems facing cultural relativism. Where cultures clash, whose moral code should triumph? For the British to “tolerate” Sati would involve violating their own moral codes. For that matter, whose morals should triumph within a particular culture? Should the Indian brides simply “tolerate” being thrown into the flames against their wills because of popular morality? Or should cultural morality simply be decided by the powerful imposing their will—be that the Indians forcing brides onto the pyre, or the British forcing them to stop? Quickly, this devolves into pure Nietzschean will to power.

As Beckwith notes, “cultural relativism is making an absolute and universal moral claim, namely, that everyone is morally obligated to follow the moral norms of his or her own culture.”⁷ This is problematic, both in that it is self-refuting (since the crux of cultural relativism is the rejection of such absolute moral claims) and that it would eliminate any possible social progress, since no one could upset the moral norms of his or her own culture. For that matter, the whole notion of social progress would have to be rejected, since “progress” implies some comparison of a culture to an external standard of some kind.⁸

Moral Relativism and the Problem of Conscience

 
That moral relativism cannot be endorsed in total does not mean that it is entirely without merit. Take, for instance, this claim by Ruth Benedict:

"The concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of the good. It is that which society has approved. A normal action is one which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society. Its variability among different peoples is essentially a function of the variability of the behavior patterns that different societies have created for themselves, and can never be wholly divorced from a consideration of cultural institutionalized types of behavior."⁹

As a description of the good, this account is inadequate, for the reasons discussed above. However, as a description of the influence of societies in the formation of individual consciences, it highlights a real phenomenon. In Anscombe's words, “it belongs to the natural history of man that he has a moral environment,” such that it is impossible to raise a child without this being the case.¹⁰ This moral environment includes the deliberate influence of the child's parents, but it also includes the society in which the child is raised. A child raised in the notoriously-violent Yąnomamö culture will be shaped differently than a child raised in a strictly-pacifistic Quaker community, and their approach towards moral reasoning will likely reflect this upbringing, at least initially. Benedict and the cultural relativists are right, therefore, to see culture as playing an indispensable role in the formation of individual consciences.

In fact, Anscombe and Benedict arrive at similar conclusions for the class of cases that Anscombe would describe as involving “invincible ignorance,” which she defines as “ignorance that the man himself could not overcome.”¹¹ Thus, if Abner has been taught of a certain affirmative duty, and Charles has never been taught about this (and has no reason to suspect its existence), Abner is morally responsible for his failure to perform the duty, while Charles is not. For Benedict, this distinction would be explained by reference to the differing cultural norms facing Abner and Charles. For Anscombe, it would be explained by reference to Charles' invincible ignorance. Nevertheless, the conclusion would reached along somewhat similar lines: because the two men received different moral instructions, they are held to differing standards.

Here, the agreement between Anscombe and Benedict ceases. In two major areas, they would decisively part company on the question of conscience. The first is on the relationship of social moral pedagogy to objective morality. Benedict viewed it as disproving the existence of objective morality, at least in any transcultural sense: that is, because cultures indoctrinate in differing, and even contrary ways, there can be no binding transcultural morality. Anscombe would disagree, holding that some societies are simply better or worse at moral formation, just as some parents are. Both parents and the culture possess a certain moral authority in the upbringing of children, yet Anscombe noted that this authority “is not accompanied by any guarantee that someone exercising it will be right in what he teaches.”¹² Acculturation and indoctrination must therefore be compared to an external standard of objective morality. Accordingly, we can affirm that some parents or cultures create a moral environment suitable for raising virtuous individuals, while others fail to do so, or succeed in creating viscous persons.

The second area of disagreement between Anscombe and Benedict on the question of conscience involves the degree to which the individual's socially formation is fixed. Certainly, Benedict speaks of cultural morality as a static thing: an individual believes such-and-such because these are the values of his culture. As Beckwith notes, the rigidity of such a view leaves no room for moral reformers like the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.¹³ Nor does it seem to leave room for individuals like Benedict herself, whose belief in cultural relativism was a radical break from her native culture's moral outlook. Anscombe rightly rejects Benedict's rigid view, holding instead that an individual may move closer to (or further from) objective morality throughout his life. She describes the context in which children come to reject their parents' moral authority; the same is surely true of societies.¹⁴ Individuals need not live out their entire lives blindly accepting a particular thing as true simply because society says so.

These two points prove to be crucial. Because conscience can be malformed, the individual may face a genuine moral perplexus in which every course of action is morally wrong:

"If you act against your conscience you are doing wrong because you are doing what you think wrong, i.e. you are willing to do wrong. And if you act in accordance with your conscience you are whatever is the wrong that your conscience allows, or failing to carry out the obligation that your conscience says is none."¹⁵

This moral perplexus is only comprehensible in light of the fact that relativism is wrong. We would otherwise have to affirm that “there's no such thing as false conscience. Conscience is conscience and infallibly tells you what is right and what is wrong. So conscience always binds, or else legitimately leaves you morally free to do or not do.”¹⁶

So, having rejected moral relativism, we are left facing a moral perplexus. Here, it is important that Benedict was mistaken to view socially-formed conscience as static or fixed. It is precisely in the ability of the conscience to be formed, even in adulthood, that Anscombe finds a solution to the perplexus, saying: “There is a way out, but you have to know that you need one and it may well take time. The way out is to f­ind out that your conscience is a wrong one.”¹⁷ That is, the long-term solution to the perplexus problem is to repair the damage inflicted upon your conscience, whether that damage was self-inflicted or the result of a bad moral environment.

Conclusion

 
A major appeal of moral relativism is that it tells a half-truth: culture really does influence the way that individuals approach morality. A proper moral environment is invaluable, if not indispensable. But this reality does not point to the absence of objective morality. Rather, as Anscombe shows, it points to the need of properly forming one's conscience, and ensuring a healthy moral environment for the rearing of children. To fail to take these steps risks placing you or your children in a moral perplexus, in which every possible action is morally wrong.
 
 
Originally posted at Shameless Popery. Used with permission.
(Image credit: UNAV)