Atheistic Moral Realism?
Via exapologist, a paper by philosopher Erik J. Wielenberg which is essentially a response to various theistic criticisms of atheistic moral realism (or, more precisely, “non-natural non-theistic moral realism.”) His view is that there are ethical brute facts, which are metaphysically necessary and require no grounding or justification.
I read the paper quickly, mostly because I could tell that the objections which Wielenberg addressed were not at all the sorts of objections that I would raise to atheistic moral realism. (My impression was that Wielenberg handled most of them adequately.) The sort of objection that I would raise to atheistic moral realism is essentially Mackie’s argument from queerness, which Wielenberg briefly discusses in his paper. It has been a while since I read Mackie’s paper, so I won’t attempt to reproduce his arguments. Instead, I will simply raise my own objection, which I think Wielenberg should address if he has not already.
Professor Wielenberg has written an entire book defending his atheistic moral realism, and probably appreciates my free advertisement.
Suppose there are such things as ethical brute facts even if God exists, as Wielenberg maintains there are. Wielenberg believes, that “pain is intrinsically bad.” In fact, Wielenberg believes that it is necessarily true that pain is intrinsically bad, even in possible worlds in which no beings capable of experiencing pain exist. (He makes this claim explicitly about another ethical brute fact: “The state of affairs that it is just to give people what they deserve obtains whether or not any people actually exist.”)
The claim, in other words, is that there are necessary ethical brute facts about the psychological states of contingent sentient beings like humans (pain, after all, is a psychological state).
The problem with this claim, to me, is that it is extremely bizarre. As far as I can tell, Wielenberg must believe that the entirety of human existence can be explained by science except for our moral beliefs, which concern an utterly different, non-scientific kind of brute fact (namely, the ethical kind). In an age when scientists fantasize about a Theory of Everything – a complete theory – a theory with no exceptions – such an exception for ethical brute facts is glaring.
Of course, atheistic moral realism could be true - but I see no reason, apart from a fear of moral nihilism, for it to be true. In my opinion, it would be much, much more ontologically elegant (and thus plausible) for the naturalist to reduce morality to psychology, rather than positing ethical brute facts that are not empirically discoverable.
(Let me put this another way. As far as I can tell, most scientifically oriented atheists would agree with the following principle: If something can be reduced, it should be reduced. There are, in fact, many scientists currently seeking to demonstrate that our moral beliefs can be explained purely in evolutionary terms. If Wielenberg accepts the general principle I just mentioned, he needs to explain why morality is not susceptible to the same sort of reduction that all sorts of other things have been. If he does not accept the general principle, however, he needs to explain why he is in disagreement with other atheists – especially when he believes that pretty much everything else about humanity can be reduced by evolution.)
If ethical brute facts are not empirically discoverable, how are they discoverable? How does Wielenberg know that his ethical beliefs are any better than anyone else’s? How did humanity as a species evolve to apprehend ethical truths at all? After all, if naturalism is true, human evolution was not affected at all by ethics. Thus, if E is an ethical brute fact, it is perfectly conceivable to me that humanity could have evolved such that most humans (including Wielenberg) strongly believe that not-E obtains. In other words, even if Wielenberg’s thesis is true, I do not see how he can escape a radical skepticism about his ability to discern ethical truths.
What advantage does theism give us with respect to these concerns? I think the existence of ethical brute facts becomes much less spooky if God exists – if our origins (and the origins of the universe) are transcendent and personal rather than (solely) natural and impersonal. And I am far from alone in having this intuition.
There is, admittedly, a lot more to be said (and a lot that could be done to organize my thoughts). But, if naturalism is true, I think the burden of proof lies on the naturalistic moral realist, not the naturalistic nihilist.
Suppose you’re agnostic about metaethics and about God’s existence, and you’re trying to find out which positions are most plausible.
Now, if you conclude that nihilism is most plausible in metaethics, then that gives you a good reason to accept atheism. After all, theism is incompatible with nihilism.
But now instead suppose you conclude that realism is most plausible in metaethics. This leaves you with two general options: atheistic moral realism or theistic moral realism. And the whole question is whether there is any advantage the one might have over the other. Now it’s clear that atheistic moral realism has the advantage of ontological parsimony. And supposing that moral realism involves spooky facts, I don’t see how things get less spooky by introducing a spooky supernatural being into the mix. On the contrary, that would seem to make things more spooky. So atheistic moral realism apparently has the additional advantage of being not as spooky.
So I don’t quite follow your line of thinking. (And of course this is all on the false supposition that the only two metaethical options are Mackie-style nihilism and spooky non-naturalist moral realism.)
Interesting comment. A few thoughts:
One implication of my argument is that atheists (in general) have one account of the virtue of ontological parsimony and that theists have another. My impression of the archetypal atheistic worldview is that it is reductionistic in a way that the archetypal theistic worldview is not. So I’m not sure you can say that it is “clear that atheistic moral realism has the advantage of ontological parsimony.”
More importantly: My main point here was not that theistic moral realism was more plausible than atheistic moral realism, but rather that atheistic moral nihilism was more plausible than atheistic moral realism. So I’m not sure what you said (even if it is true) necessarily undercuts any of my main argument here.
It does, however, concern what I wrote in the second-to-last paragraph. What I’d say in response to your comment is that I don’t think God would make things more spooky; on the contrary, I think His existence would allow ethical brute facts to cohere much more nicely with the rest of what we know about the world.
Hi Toweltowel,
The first time I read Joseph’s post, I had thoughts very similar to yours. But after reading it again, I think it deserves rather more attention than I first gave it, and I think he’s on to something.
Here is what I think Joseph isn’t saying: “Atheistic moral realism is unparsimonious, therefore we ought to be theists.” That would, as you point out, be rather an awful thing to say.
Instead, I think Joseph is saying something more like: “What reason could one have to be an atheistic moral realist? All the good reasons to be an atheist are also good reasons not to be a moral realist.” This is, in my opinion, a more promising way to approach the issue. And I think Joseph is at least prima facie correct. If you want to be an atheist, chances are you want to be an atheist because you’re interested in parsimony, causal closure, reductionism, physicalism, etc. And if you’re interested in those things, moral realism should be repugnant to you. In fact, the only direction from which I can really imagine atheistic moral realism being plausible is atheism based on conclusions from the problem of evil, because that particular brand of atheism isn’t too concerned with reductionism and parsimony.
So I think the issue is interesting and in need of further consideration.
I don’t see how your argument leads to different accounts of ontological parsimony. What are these accounts? Also, what account (if any) is presupposed by the curious agnostic? After all, I think these arguments ought to be directed at convincing someone who is starting out ‘on the fence’.
Why do you think atheistic moral nihilism is more plausible than atheistic moral realism? Is it because you think nihilism is more plausible than realism in general? I’m guessing not. Are you saying that this is only true for reductionist-minded atheists? But then why not be a moral realist on the model of Peter Railton or Richard Boyd or Frank Jackson?
And I don’t see how having brute ethical facts plus a supernatural creator makes for less spookiness. You suggest that they cohere well together, but I don’t see how: they seem like one thing added onto a completely different thing, both of them spooky. Maybe this question will help: do you think adding actual ghosts would make things more or less spooky for a non-naturalist moral realist?
Cameron,
What you say would only apply, if at all, to non-naturalist moral realism. And there are plenty of moral realists (probably the majority) who accept a reductionist naturalist metaphysic.
And I’m not even sure what you say applies to non-naturalist moral realism. Admittedly, non-natural moral properties aren’t exactly supported by empirical evidence. But empirical evidence isn’t everything for your average nonbeliever: there’s also basic intuitive plausibility (think of basic logical or mathematical claims, or claims about the very existence of the external world). Your average nonbeliever is likely to find “murder is wrong” far more intuitively plausible than any claim about ghosts or wizards or gods, so she’ll have far more reason to accept non-naturalist moral realism than occult beliefs or theism, despite the lack of empirical evidence. (In much the same way, I’d wager Platonism about mathematical entities has more going for it than theism for your average nonbeliever.)
Hi all,
I tried to address this sort of concern in the comments at my blog, and it looks as though toweltowel is largely in agreement: if we take a common methodological approach in philosophy of taking our judgements as data and then constructing theories to best account for them (where a given theory accrues support to the extent that it embodies various theoretical virtues such as explanatory scope, simplicity, etc.), one could reason to a view like Wielenberg’s as follows:
a certain range of data motivates an objectivist account ethics. But if one can’t find a suitable supervenience base for moral facts or properties in those described in physics and chemistry textbooks, then the data pressure one to posit non-physical normative facts or properties. Now suppose there are two broad sorts of theories that posit such entities: theistic and non-theistic. Then the theory that most fully embodies the relevant theoretical virtues will thereby accrue the most support. But theistic accounts aren’t as parsimonious as non-theistic accounts (why stick the moral properties in God’s essence, if the properties can do all the explanatory work all by themselves?). Furthermore, theistic accounts suffer from a number of problems (the classical Euthyphro dilemma, Wes Morriston’s New Euthyphro dilemma, this problem, etc.). Therefore, non-theistic versions of non-natural moral realism are to be preferred to their theistic counterparts.
Now the current worry being raised seems to be roughly that if one is an atheist, then one ought (*rationally* ought, I take it) to by a strict physicalist, i.e., one who adopts an ontology of just the fundamental entities postulated by our best theories in chemistry and physics (broadly construed), and whatever logically supervenes on that. Do I have it right?
This is a fairly common line of argumentation in Christian apologetics. It occurs in arguments for god based on the putative phenomena of (e.g.) consciousness, abstract objects, and (in this case) moral properties. The pattern of argument can be broken down into five basic steps. In Step One, they tell the naturalist that the kinds of entities in their ontology are limited, of necessity, to very few, and only have a limited set of properties (viz., the entities describable by the language of chemistry and physics). In Step Two, they point out that they must therefore explain all phenomena in the universe in terms of just those entities. In Step Three, they argue that certain phenomena (e.g., consciousness, the correlation between certain conscious states and certain brain states, abstract objects, and (in this case) moral properties) can’t be explained in terms of just those entities alone. In Step Four, they assert that theism is the only plausible view that has an ontology that’s adequate to explain those phenomena. And in Step Five, they invite you to conclude that theism is true.
I think these arguments are both flawed, and that the flaw in each occurs at Step One, i.e., that the kinds of entities in the naturalist’s ontology are necessarily limited to those describable in the language of chemistry and physics. This is because there is no good reason why the naturalist must accept the miminalist ontology foisted upon him by the theist. And if not, then the options for the naturalist aren’t “(i) shoehorn all phenomena into a limited ontology of fundamental entities described by chemistry and physics or (ii) believe in gods and souls and become a theist.” For there is a sensible third option, viz., (iii)* postulate more entities in your basic ontology*. Let me elaborate a bit more.
There are several versions of naturalism. Naturalists share in common the view that the natural world is all there is — there is no supernatural realm of spiritual beings. However, naturalists differ in how they define ‘the natural world’. Now there are at least three broad ways of characterizing “the natural world”, and so there are at least three kinds of naturalists — let’s call them ‘Conservatives’, ‘Moderates’, and ‘Liberals’.
Conservative naturalists are straight physicalists — nothing exists but the physical, and the physical is characterized by all and only the properties listed in physics and chemistry textbooks. Examples include popular scientific writers, such as Richard Dawkins.
Moderate naturalists differ from Conservative naturalists, in that they expand their conception of natural world so as to include abstracta (e.g., propositions, properties, possible worlds, etc.). Recent proponents include philosophers Tyler Burge, Jeff King, W.V.O. Quine, Roderick Chisholm, and Kit Fine.
Finally, Liberal naturalists differ from Moderates and Conservatives, in that they admit into their ontology of the natural world the abstracta of the Moderates, but they also allow for a conception of concreta according to which they have more properties and powers than the Conservatives and Moderates allow. Thus, perhaps they’re straight Spinozists, or type-F monists, or panprotopsychists, etc. Famous past Liberal naturalists include philosophers like Spinoza; more recent Liberal Naturalists include philosophers Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and Daniel Stoljar
In light of this sketch of the varieties of naturalism, we see that from the fact that one is a naturalist, it doesn’t follow that one is averse to entities that don’t belong to the ontology of Conservative naturalism. To put it differently: the existence of other epistemically possible versions of naturalism undercut the view that naturalism entails Conservative naturalism. But if so, then Step One of apologetical arguments of this sort – in this case, the argument from moral realism to theism – is likewise undercut. It seems to me, then, that to advance the dialogue, the theist will need to give some reason to prefer rule out not only Conservative Naturalism, but also Moderate and Liberal Naturalism. Perhaps there is some reason, but I’m afraid I don’t know what it might be. At any rate, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Cheers,
EA
Thanks for the comments, Ex, Towel, and Nico.
I think the structure of my argument is slightly different than the five-step structure you outlined, Ex. In particular, I never said that an atheist’s ontology was necessarily limited to conservative naturalism or strict physicalism. (I can’t imagine how I’d go about making an argument for such a necessary limitation.) Instead, I’m merely trying to figure out (as Nico said) what exactly would motivate an atheist to be a realist instead of a nihilist. (Towel, to be honest, I’m not terribly familiar with the different metaethical options and distinctions you proposed, and so I’m not entirely sure how to respond to what you wrote about them. I’m engaging nihilism and non-natural realism because those two options were the foci of Wielenberg’s paper, as far as I could tell.)
Ex, you mentioned a philosophy methodology of “taking our judgements as data and then constructing theories to best account for them.” Under consideration here are our ethical judgments, or beliefs. We have strongly held beliefs about the wrongness and rightness of certain actions. Now, regarding such ethical judgments, a moral nihilist can say something like the following: “Of course we have such strongly held beliefs, but that is not at all surprising. Such beliefs ultimately boil down to evolutionary adaptations over millions of years that allowed social primates like homo sapiens to survive. There is nothing preventing us from completely explaining our ethical beliefs in terms of evolutionary psychology – why, then, posit ‘ethical brute facts’ or anything of that nature?”
I suppose what I am trying to ascertain is what an atheistic moral realist (such as you or Wielenberg) would say in response to such a moral nihilist.
Hi J. Joseph:
Thanks for your reply.
You said: I think the structure of my argument is slightly different than the five-step structure you outlined, Ex. In particular, I never said that an atheist’s ontology was necessarily limited to conservative naturalism or strict physicalism. (I can’t imagine how I’d go about making an argument for such a necessary limitation.) Instead, I’m merely trying to figure out (as Nico said) what exactly would motivate an atheist to be a realist instead of a nihilist.
Yes, I agree that I construed the degree of commitment of my claim about Step One a bit too strongly; I’m happy to mitigate it in the way you suggest. In any case, my reply to your worry (about what would motivate the atheist to adopt such an ontology) would be the same: the data (in this case, the data of our moral judgements) motivate the atheist to adopt (what I’m calling) a Moderate or a Liberal version of naturalism over a Conservative version.
You said: you mentioned a philosophy methodology of “taking our judgements as data and then constructing theories to best account for them.” Under consideration here are our ethical judgments, or beliefs. We have strongly held beliefs about the wrongness and rightness of certain actions. Now, regarding such ethical judgments, a moral nihilist can say something like the following: “Of course we have such strongly held beliefs, but that is not at all surprising. Such beliefs ultimately boil down to evolutionary adaptations over millions of years that allowed social primates like homo sapiens to survive. There is nothing preventing us from completely explaining our ethical beliefs in terms of evolutionary psychology – why, then, posit ‘ethical brute facts’ or anything of that nature?”
Well, sure: if the data of our moral judgements doesn’t require appeal to anything beyond the ontology of Conservative Naturalism, then that is the ontology warranted by the data. But that’s a problem the atheist (I should say I’m an agnostic, btw) is happy to have, no?
Cheers,
EA
Well, what are some reasons you think that the data of our moral judgments warrant appeal to something beyond CN ontology?
Hi J. Joseph,
Well, what are some reasons you think that the data of our moral judgments warrant appeal to something beyond CN ontology?
Since I can’t claim ethics or meta-ethics as one of my AOSs, I’m pretty tentative about my views on these matters; nothing’s settled. So I’m more comfortable conditionalizing here: either moral normativity logically supervenes on the ontology of CN or it doesn’t. If it does, then we need not appeal to anything beyond the ontology of CN to explain moral normativity. But if it doesn’t, then there is pressure to accept either MN or LN. Either way, I guess I’m not seeing the need to appeal to the theistic hypothesis to get the explanatory work done re: moral normativity.
Cheers,
EA
Hey Ex,
This is hardly my area of expertise either (and, since I’m an undergraduate, it would be presumptuous to say that *anything* is my area of expertise), so I appreciate the opportunity to bounce my thoughts off you.
I thought what we were trying to explain was our moral judgments, not moral normativity; I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “moral normativity” (the moral judgments themselves, belief in moral realism, or the actual objective moral truths). As I see it, the question is whether or not CN can account for our moral judgments. If it can, it seems to me that non-theistic moral realists would have to bite the bullet and accept some non-realist metaethics. (Of course, theists would have to drop the argument from altruism.)
If it *cannot*…well, I guess I’m not sure what sorts of emendations a non-theist would make to CN that would explain our moral judgments, mainly because I’m not sure in what way a non-theist would argue that CN is insufficient to explain our moral judgments.
The simplest and most obvious example of a potential modification to CN would be the postulation of ethical brute facts. But I don’t see how the postulation of such ethical brute facts, in and of itself, helps us explain our moral judgments. I’m open, however, to hearing other proposals, because a lot of this is new to me.
Mackie’s queerness arguments are probably the best-known reasons for thinking a conservative naturalism cannot accommodate objective moral facts. But Mackie’s arguments have drawn lots of response from naturalist moral realists, especially the so-called “Cornell realists” (David Brink, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon). One of their main points is that Mackie has exaggerated the motivational influence attributed by ordinary moral thought to objective moral facts.
As for why a conservative naturalist would accept objective moral facts in the first place, it’s because naturalist moral realists typically give some deference to common sense, placing the burden of proof on those who would deny that e.g. murder is wrong.
Hi you guys,
J. John:
My remarks are similar to those of Stephen Maitzen’s in his recent comment on the originating post over at my blog, but here are some brief remarks. If there are any further comments or questions, would you mind if we referred them over to my blog? If so, I would greatly appreciate it!
In any case, you wrote:
Well, what are some reasons you think that the data of our moral judgments warrant appeal to something beyond CN ontology?
The data of (e.g.) the prima facie moral wrongness of certain actions. So, for example, I hear on the news that a mother put a baby in the microwave. Reflecting on this, I find my self thinking that what the mother did was (to put it mildly) seriously morally wrong. So I take that claim to be true. Well, what entities in the ontology of CN make it true? It’s not clear how moral wrongness even could supervene on, say, quarks. So I am hard pressed to account for the data of our moral judgements on CN.
Now I suppose a die hard proponent of CN could bite the bullet and reject the data. Thus, I could say that the appearance of moral wrongness is illusory. However, our ordinary judgements are shot through with moral judgements, and so that sort of solution is pretty radical from a theory-building point of view. if so, then perhaps there is pressure to accept the data of our moral judgements, and thus expand our ontology from CN to MN. In any case, that’s the basic idea.
Toweltowel: Good points. I would only add that Wielenberg has interesting things to say in reply to Mackie’s argument from queerness in Wielenberg’s paper.
Best,
EA
Whoops — sorry about the sloppiness of my last comment!
-EA
I have written about the argument from queerness and I don’t think it is a problem for moral realism or intrinsic value. I don’t think we can reduce moral facts to non-moral facts. Whether or not I am a naturalist is not something I am very interested in, but I think moral facts could be considered to be natural given that some mental facts are also simultaneously irreducible and natural.
Maybe someone could better explain the argument from queerness. It seems that scientists and mathmeticians readily accept objective mathematics dspite it’s strangeness. While certain mathematical truths are easier to pin down, they are no less strange and unique in the universe. Likewise, physcial laws are also strange and unique, so I’m not sure why a set of moral laws would be different. One can definitely say that they are sometimes complex, but then again so are the rules of physics. I guess the question is, “How are math and physics exempt from the argument from queerness?”
Justin, my initial response is that mathematics and physics are not necessarily immune to the argument from queerness. However, I personally see one extremely important disanalogy between morality and mathematics and physics.
Under a typical naturalistic worldview, we can speak of virtually anything in our universe in mathematical or physical terms. Moral terms, however, seem to apply particularly to one extremely narrow subsection of our universe – namely, that part relevant to the lives of sentient beings. There is (presumably) nothing mathematically or physically special about humans, yet we are very morally special. Mathematics and physics, then, may be “queer,” but they are uniformly queer, whereas morality is a “queer” irregularity.