Good topic, I think it's imperative that we acknowledge paralogical thinking here. We are both individuals AND part of a collective society. Both are true and if we expect our society to deliver justice and goodness then we have to bring that into being by balancing those aspects. The Golden Rule is so simple and yet so elusive when people want to rationalize why they don't need to take care of each other and only take care of numero uno.
First, I dislike the word "harm." It can so easily be misused.
"Your words harmed me."
"Your identity as a cis-het-white-male causes harm to our community."
"You are required to be silent and 'hold space'; failure to do so constitutes harm."
"Your face is a micro-aggression."
"Your superior abilities harm the chances of others to get ahead." (Harrison Bergeron)
I know that the NAP can seem trite. And that coercive force can sometimes be hard to identify on the margins. (Is cigar smoke force? How about gasoline dumped in the back yard?) But "initiation of coercive force" is far easier to define, and to protect from misuse, than "harm." (John Stuart Mill can feel free to contact my lawyers.)
Second, the inductive process you describe for deriving shared moral rules is going to produce the same core rules no matter who engages in the process.
Customs will differ. Virtue-ethical SHOULDs will differ somewhat. Justice and Fairness will start to look more similar, but will still vary from culture to culture. But then you get to the MUSTs/MUST NOTs, and they all look the same. There is a good reason for that.
When you unwind these four strands of the cord of morality, it becomes easier to see which ones are subjective and which are objectively true. Objectively real? Objective facts?
That brings us to…
Third, maybe the word "facts" is getting in the way. Love is real. Is it a "fact"? Even if love were nothing more than the result of oxytocin and other trickery Mother Nature plays on us to keep us breeding and protecting other members of the species, it would still be real.
Just because we cannot dig up moral principles from the ground and eat them like carrots, or find them elsewhere in nature and place them on shelf to gaze at lovingly, does not make them not real.
When we look at the most objective aspect of morality—the MUST/NOTs—we find them throughout nature. They permeate our existence. Toddlers, animals, and even plants understand them. Every culture understands them. They are universal.
I think the urge to identify them as facts, and the failure to find them as empirically measurable objects, ends up getting in the way of embracing them as a reality, just as we embrace love as something very real in our lives.
The universe is woven together with freedom-magic, my brother. Bask in its reality!
That said, I admire your zeal! You're like someone who lives on a beach and keeps on trying to build a sandcastle strong enough to resist the waves, never having heard of dry land. But the dry land is there!
An objective moral fact is: “one should be rational”. It’s axiomatic, because to question it implies either accepting it, or else denying all knowledge in general.
If you ask “why should one be rational?”, you either:
a) will only accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case you already implicitly accept the premise.
b) won’t accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case there’s no rational means of persuading you.
Ergo you have a rational, objective metaethic. In Humean “is-ought” terms: “reason is how one comes to justified conclusions, therefore one ought to follow reason”
Your statement of the key moral problem: “even if there were moral facts or properties — which is doubtful — people would be terrible at knowing them.”
I would put it this way: “Values do exist in the sense that some actions promote life while others don’t; but because values are so contingent upon circumstances, (a) we can’t call them ‘facts’ and (b) it is impossible for the state to apply them universally.”
And my replies to your list of moral options:
<b>Deontic or Rules-based Ethics – </b>Because moral prescriptions are so situational, deontology can only provide ‘rules’ that are so general as to be worthless. A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
Your own deontological prescription, the ZAP (zero aggression principle) so joyously celebrated by the libertarians, is so porous that you can drive a truck through it. For example, where does ‘purely defensive force’ begin? Some Leftists, abetted by Democrat politicians, apply the tactic of approaching ‘fascists’ (i.e., anybody who disagrees with them) in a public restaurant and screaming threatening obscenities in their faces. Should the pleasant libertarian (or one labeled ‘fascist’) serenely ignore that and continue enjoying his crème brûlée? Yeah, right.
<b>Contractarian – </b>By this principle of ‘solidarity’ as you call it, it’s just fine to dismantle Western Civ so long as a majority have “contracted” to do so, even when the “contract” is somehow implicit, as in Locke’s contractarian society. There is even the libertarian position of allowing personal slavery, so long as someone has freely “contracted” his own slavery.
<b>Consequentialist/Utilitarian – </b>Fails on two counts: It’s impossible to evaluate a utilitarian policy until <i>after</i> it has been applied, so is therefore worthless as a prescriptive guide; it’s impossible to perform interpersonal comparisons of happiness – Bentham’s “hedonistic calculus”.
<b>Virtue Ethics – </b>This is Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous solution, offered in 1981 with his book <i>After Virtue</i>. However imperfect it may be, it is the only viable option because it simultaneously recognizes necessity of moral standards while refusing to make universal claims for them.
Good topic, I think it's imperative that we acknowledge paralogical thinking here. We are both individuals AND part of a collective society. Both are true and if we expect our society to deliver justice and goodness then we have to bring that into being by balancing those aspects. The Golden Rule is so simple and yet so elusive when people want to rationalize why they don't need to take care of each other and only take care of numero uno.
Oh, so many thoughts!
First, I dislike the word "harm." It can so easily be misused.
"Your words harmed me."
"Your identity as a cis-het-white-male causes harm to our community."
"You are required to be silent and 'hold space'; failure to do so constitutes harm."
"Your face is a micro-aggression."
"Your superior abilities harm the chances of others to get ahead." (Harrison Bergeron)
I know that the NAP can seem trite. And that coercive force can sometimes be hard to identify on the margins. (Is cigar smoke force? How about gasoline dumped in the back yard?) But "initiation of coercive force" is far easier to define, and to protect from misuse, than "harm." (John Stuart Mill can feel free to contact my lawyers.)
Second, the inductive process you describe for deriving shared moral rules is going to produce the same core rules no matter who engages in the process.
Customs will differ. Virtue-ethical SHOULDs will differ somewhat. Justice and Fairness will start to look more similar, but will still vary from culture to culture. But then you get to the MUSTs/MUST NOTs, and they all look the same. There is a good reason for that.
When you unwind these four strands of the cord of morality, it becomes easier to see which ones are subjective and which are objectively true. Objectively real? Objective facts?
That brings us to…
Third, maybe the word "facts" is getting in the way. Love is real. Is it a "fact"? Even if love were nothing more than the result of oxytocin and other trickery Mother Nature plays on us to keep us breeding and protecting other members of the species, it would still be real.
Just because we cannot dig up moral principles from the ground and eat them like carrots, or find them elsewhere in nature and place them on shelf to gaze at lovingly, does not make them not real.
When we look at the most objective aspect of morality—the MUST/NOTs—we find them throughout nature. They permeate our existence. Toddlers, animals, and even plants understand them. Every culture understands them. They are universal.
I think the urge to identify them as facts, and the failure to find them as empirically measurable objects, ends up getting in the way of embracing them as a reality, just as we embrace love as something very real in our lives.
The universe is woven together with freedom-magic, my brother. Bask in its reality!
It feels mean to say this, but to me, it's clear this is all futile. Moral realism is true, we know it by conscience, and if you start by dismissing it, you've exiled yourself into ethical topsy-turvydom from which there's no escape. Like C.S. Lewis said in *Mere Christianity* and elsewhere. More about it from me here: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-11-the. And here: https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-9-the.
That said, I admire your zeal! You're like someone who lives on a beach and keeps on trying to build a sandcastle strong enough to resist the waves, never having heard of dry land. But the dry land is there!
An objective moral fact is: “one should be rational”. It’s axiomatic, because to question it implies either accepting it, or else denying all knowledge in general.
If you ask “why should one be rational?”, you either:
a) will only accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case you already implicitly accept the premise.
b) won’t accept a logic and evidence based answer, in which case there’s no rational means of persuading you.
Ergo you have a rational, objective metaethic. In Humean “is-ought” terms: “reason is how one comes to justified conclusions, therefore one ought to follow reason”
There are moral universals, they're just contingent, not objective;
a) survival is a prerequisite for all meaningful goals
b) truth is a prerequisite for all non-arbitrary goals
c) sustainability is a prerequisite for all non-temporary goals
d) reciprocity is a prerequisite for civilization
Peterson puts it better; abstain from causing unnecessary harm
Max,
Your statement of the key moral problem: “even if there were moral facts or properties — which is doubtful — people would be terrible at knowing them.”
I would put it this way: “Values do exist in the sense that some actions promote life while others don’t; but because values are so contingent upon circumstances, (a) we can’t call them ‘facts’ and (b) it is impossible for the state to apply them universally.”
And my replies to your list of moral options:
<b>Deontic or Rules-based Ethics – </b>Because moral prescriptions are so situational, deontology can only provide ‘rules’ that are so general as to be worthless. A perfect example is Kant’s Moral Imperative: “Act externally in such a manner that the free exercise of thy Will may be able to coexist with the Freedom of all others, according to a universal law.” – To which a very moral Irishman might reply: “Everybody must get drunk on Sunday.”
Your own deontological prescription, the ZAP (zero aggression principle) so joyously celebrated by the libertarians, is so porous that you can drive a truck through it. For example, where does ‘purely defensive force’ begin? Some Leftists, abetted by Democrat politicians, apply the tactic of approaching ‘fascists’ (i.e., anybody who disagrees with them) in a public restaurant and screaming threatening obscenities in their faces. Should the pleasant libertarian (or one labeled ‘fascist’) serenely ignore that and continue enjoying his crème brûlée? Yeah, right.
<b>Contractarian – </b>By this principle of ‘solidarity’ as you call it, it’s just fine to dismantle Western Civ so long as a majority have “contracted” to do so, even when the “contract” is somehow implicit, as in Locke’s contractarian society. There is even the libertarian position of allowing personal slavery, so long as someone has freely “contracted” his own slavery.
<b>Consequentialist/Utilitarian – </b>Fails on two counts: It’s impossible to evaluate a utilitarian policy until <i>after</i> it has been applied, so is therefore worthless as a prescriptive guide; it’s impossible to perform interpersonal comparisons of happiness – Bentham’s “hedonistic calculus”.
<b>Virtue Ethics – </b>This is Alasdair MacIntyre’s famous solution, offered in 1981 with his book <i>After Virtue</i>. However imperfect it may be, it is the only viable option because it simultaneously recognizes necessity of moral standards while refusing to make universal claims for them.
Was any of your article inspired by pages 109ff of the wonderful book that you’re reading: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947660853