Over at The Secular Outpost, Jeff Lowder has been conducting a rearguard action to shore up the flagging fortunes of secular ethics. For instance, he posted Quentin Smith's attack on theistic ethics. Problem is, Smith's post is just a crude version of the Euthyphro Dilemma, and as I recently documented, even a prominent secular ethicist like Richard Joyce doesn't consider conventional formulations of the Euthyphro Dilemma to be sound. So Jeff is just kicking up a dust cloud to obscure the issue.
Aside: isn’t it amazing how apologists like William Lane Craig will quote Michael Ruse to make an argument from authority to support the claim that atheism leads to nihilism, but then conveniently ignore the fact that equally well qualified authorities disagree with Ruse?
I don't know why Jeff assumes that's an argument from authority. Speaking for myself, when I cite Ruse on moral nihilism, my appeal is not an argument from authority. Rather, I have different reasons:
i) Many atheists are blissfully unaware of the fact that many atheist philosophers reject moral realism on secular grounds. They think that's just an ignorant or malicious caricature of atheism by Christians. They think we're slandering atheists. In that regard, it's useful to show them that this isn't just a Christian characterization of what atheism leads to. Rather, many noted secular philosophers concede that consequence. So this is to correct their ignorance of what their own side is saying.
ii) Apropos (i), I've seen many atheists confuse moral psychology with moral ontology. They infer that because evolutionary psychology can account for our moral instincts, that's sufficient to ground right and wrong.
iii) I don't merely cite Ruse for his opinion. Ruse presents supporting arguments for his position. So that's not an argument from authority.
Jeff quotes him saying:
My claim is that the recognition of morality as merely a biological adaptation shows that there can be no foundation of the kind traditionally sought, whether by evolutionists, Christians or others!
I think Jeff then misconstrues Ruse's argument because Jeff overlooks an unstated presupposition of Ruse's argument. Remember that naturalistic evolution is Ruse's frame of reference. Now, if theistic evolution were true, then some biological adaptations might be morally normative. But he's not considering the issue from that vantage-point.
In addition, I disagree with Jeff's interpretation of Ruse's argument. At the bottom of this post I will quote Ruse. Here's my interpretation of Ruse's argument:
Evolution brainwashes us into believing that certain behavior is right or wrong. This confers a survival advantage on the species.
But there's a catch. Brainwashing only works so long as the test-subject is oblivious to the fact that he's been brainwashed. If he becomes aware of the experiment, then he's in a position to break the programming. He may not be able to change what he perceives or feels about morality. It may be like a phobia or optical illusion. You can't suppress it, but you can override it.
Unlike other animals, humans are smart enough to reflect on the fact that our moral instincts have been programmed into us by an amoral, unintelligent process. At that point, we're in a position to realize that what we took to be right and wrong is a psychological projection rather than a moral fact. There is no particular way things are supposed to be.
Here's Ruse in his own words:
I think I would still say—part of my position on morality is very much that we regard morality in some sense as being objective, even if it isn’t. So the claim that we intuit morality as objective reality—I would still say that. Of course, what I would want to add is that from the fact that we do this, it doesn’t follow that morality really is objective.
I’m saying that if in fact you’re Christian then you believe you were made in the image of God. And that means—and this is traditional Christian theology—that means that you have intelligence and self-awareness and moral ability… it’s a very important part of Christianity that our intelligence is not just a contingent thing, but is in fact that which makes us in the image of God.
What I would argue is that the connection between Darwinism and ethics is not what the traditional social Darwinian argues. He or she argues that evolution is progressive, humans came out on top and therefore are a good thing, hence we should promote evolution to keep humans up there and to prevent decline. I think that is a straight violation of the is/ought dichotomy…I take Hume’s Law to be the claim that you cannot go from statements of fact—“Duke University is the school attended by Eddy Nahmias”—to statements of value—“Duke University is an excellent school.”
Ed [Edward O. Wilson] does violate Hume’s Law, and no matter what I say he cannot see that there is anything wrong in doing this. It comes from his commitment to the progressive nature of evolution. No doubt he would normally say that one should not go from “is” to “ought”—for example from “I like that student” to “It is OK to have sex with her, even though I am married.” But in this case of *evolution* he allows it. If you say to him, “But ‘ought’ statements are not like ‘is’ statements,” he replies that in science, when we have reduction, we do this all the time, going from one kind of statement to another kind of statement. We start talking about little balls buzzing in a container and end talking about temperature and pressure. No less a jump than going from “is” to “ought.”
My position is that the ethical sense can be explained by Darwinian evolution—the ethical sense is an adaptation to keep us social. More than this, I argue that sometimes (and this is one of those times), when you give an account of the way something occurs and is as it is, this is also to give an explanation of its status. I think that once you see that ethics is simply an adaptation, you see that it has no justification. It just is. So in metaethics[4] I am a nonrealist. I think ethics is an illusion put into place by our genes to keep us social.
I distinguish normative ethics from metaethics. In normative ethics I think evolution can go a long way to explain our feelings of obligation: be just, be fair, treat others like yourself. We humans are social animals and we need these sentiments to get on. I like John Rawls’s[5] thinking on this. On about page 500 of his Theory of Justice book, Rawls says he thinks the social contract was put in place by evolution rather than by a group of old men many years ago. Then in metaethics, I think we see that morality is an adaptation merely and hence has no justification. Having said this, I agree with the philosopher J.L Mackie[6] (who influenced me a lot) that we feel the need to “objectify” ethics. If we did not think ethics was objective, it would collapse under cheating.
If we knew that it was all just subjective, and we felt that, then of course we’d start to cheat. If I thought there was no real reason not to sleep with someone else’s wife and that it was just a belief system put in place to keep me from doing it, then I think the system would start to break down. And if I didn’t share these beliefs, I’d say to hell with it, I’m going to do it. So I think at some level, morality has to have some sort of, what should I say, some sort of force. Put it this way, I shouldn’t cheat, not because I can’t get away with it, or maybe I *can* get away with it, but because it is fundamentally wrong.
We’re like dogs, social animals, and so we have morality and this part of the phenomenology of morality, how it appears to us, that it is not subjective, that we think it *is* objective…So I think ethics is essentially subjective but it appears to us as objective and this appearance, too, is an adaptation.
Within the system, of course, rape is objectively wrong—just like three strikes and you are out in baseball. But I’m a nonrealist, so ultimately there is no objective right and wrong for me. Having said that, I *am* part of the system and cannot escape. The truth does not necessarily make you free.
There is no ultimate truth about morality. It is an invention—an invention of the genes rather than of humans, and we cannot change games at will, as one might baseball if one went to England and played cricket. Within the system, the human moral system, it is objectively true that rape is wrong. That follows from the principles of morality and from human nature. If our females came into heat, it would not necessarily be objectively wrong to rape—in fact, I doubt we would have the concept of rape at all. So, within the system, I can justify. But I deny that human morality at the highest level—love your neighbor as yourself, etc.—is justifiable. That is why I am not deriving “is” from “ought,” in the illicit sense of justification. I am deriving it in the sense of explaining *why we have* moral sentiments, but that is a different matter.
I think ultimately there is nothing—moral nihilism, if you wish.
How can so many otherwise intelligent folks make such obvious errors, seemingly unable to think in a straight line? Deeenial! Romans 1:18ff...
ReplyDeleteI like this line a lot Steve:
ReplyDelete"But there's a catch. Brainwashing only works so long as the test-subject is oblivious to the fact that he's been brainwashed. If he becomes aware of the experiment, then he's in a position to break the programming. He may not be able to change what he perceives or feels about morality. It may be like a phobia or optical illusion. You can't suppress it, but you can override it.
Unlike other animals, humans are smart enough to reflect on the fact that our moral instincts have been programmed into us by an amoral, unintelligent process. At that point, we're in a position to realize that what we took to be right and wrong is a psychological projection rather than a moral fact. There is no particular way things are supposed to be."